Thinking-of, Thinking-for, Thinking-with.

Streetlight

I want to outline three 'types' of thinking, with an eye to prompting a reconsideration of what we normally take thought to be.

Thinking-of

The first type, the most common and 'spontaneous' way in which we 'think about thought', is that of thinking-about or thinking-of. This is 'intentional' thought, thought directed at a particular thing or object: I am thinking about Santa Claus, I am thinking of Sally. This is thought modelled on a kind of subject-object distinction, where thought has a correlate in something else outside of it: there is thought, and the thing that is thought of. I won't say too much about this because it should be pretty familiar.

Thinking-for

The next type of thought I wanna sketch out is thinking-for. Thinking-for refers to the way in which how we think differs depending on the 'reason' we are thinking. My inspiration here is the linguist Daniel Dor, who, reflecting on questions of 'linguistic relativity' (how does language shape thought and experience?), notes that the evidence points to the idea that language shapes thought when we aim to put things in words. He calls this thinking-for-speaking or even experiencing-for-thinking. This in contrast to other kinds of thinking. He illustrates this with a set of fascinating experiments comparing how different cultures examine the same set of pictures, depending on whether or not they are asked to describe them.

Using eye tracking technology, the experiment looks for differences in the way users of different languages look at a picture. When asked simply to examine a certain picture, there are very few differences in how different language-users look over the picture. When, however, asked to describe the picture in words, "speakers’ eyes rapidly focused on the event components typically encoded in their native language, but only when asked to describe the events... The stories told by the speakers highlighted properties of the picture-story, in correlation with the grammatical patterns of the languages. ... Speakers of English and Spanish, languages that mark progressive aspect, describe two events as aspectually different ... Speakers of German and Hebrew, languages that do not mark progressive aspect, treated the events as aspectually similar [not describing temporal apsects of the picture - SX]" (Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination)

In other words, the way we think - what we pay attention to, how we 'parse out the world' - is very much dependant on what we are thinking for. The implication if we extrapolate a little, is that there is a thinking-for-speaking no less than a thinking-for-dancing, or thinking-for-writing-this-post, or thinking-for-sex and so on. The big upshot here is that this implies that there is no 'general model' of thought. This is the interest in considering 'thinking-for': unlike 'thinking-of' or 'thinking-about', which has the tendency to 'assimilate' all thinking under a general model, 'thinking-for' pluralizes thought, it enables us to acknolwedge various kinds of thought, rather than making thought a monolithic action that is the same in all circumstances.

Thinking-with (or, thinking-in-terms-of)

Thinking-with is a third model of thought, which, like thinking-for, has the advantage of pluralizing kinds of thought. The best way to illustrate it is with an example, so consider what is sometimes called 'population thinking'. 'Population thinking' is, as the name implies, thinking of things in terms of populations. It's roots are in evolutionary biology, where it's said to have its origins. The idea is that population-thinking - thinking in terms of populations - is what allowed Darwin and others to really consolidate the theory of evolution. Population thinking meant thinking beyond individual organisms, and to take into consideration organisms in the plural. Population thinking however is not limited to biology. To quote the cognitive scientist Dan Sperber, even something like the US Consitution can be thought of in population terms:

"Take the United States Constitution. It is commonly thought of as a text or, more accurately, since it has been repeatedly amended, as a text with several successive versions. Each version has millions of paper and now electronic copies. Each article and amendment has been interpreted on countless occasions in a variety of ways. Many of these interpretations have been quoted again and again, and reinterpreted, and their reinterpretations reinterpreted in turn. Articles, amendments, and interpretations have been invoked in a variety situations. In other words, there is a population the members of which are all these objects and events in the environment plus all the relevant mental representations and processes in the brain of the people who have produced, interpreted, invoked or otherwise considered versions and bits of the Constitution. All the historical effects of the Constitution have been produced by members of this population of material things and not by the Constitution considered in the abstract. The Constitution, then, can usefully be thought of as a population, and so can all laws." (cite. See here for more).

With the effects of COVID-19 all around, we are now pretty used to thinking in terms of populations. Broadening our scope, one claim I want to make is that philosophy has a particular affinity in terms of thinking-with. Historically, philosophy has largely been a series of contributions to new ways of thinking-with: one thinks-with Plato's Ideas, Wittgenstein's language-games, Kant's transcendental, etc, etc. Thinking-with (or thinking-in-terms-of) is a series of 'ways' of thinking, brings some things to our attention and bracketing out other things, highlighting some aspects of reality over others, in order to bring out something salient. Thinking-with is often implicated in thinking-for: I think-with something in order to think-for something - I think-with the hammer in order to think-for repairing the shed.

Concl.

The even larger and final point that I simply wanted to make is that we tend too much to consider thought in terms of thinking-of. Thinking-For and Thinking-With are even perhaps our predominant modes of thinking, which we commonly overlook in favour of a rather simplified model of thought as 'correlate' to the world. Arguably the entirety of 'epistemology' exists only because of the predominance of 'thinking-of'. So too the whole notion of 'idealism', which largely works according to a very impoverished understanding of what thought is. But thought is more plural, more diverse, and more interesting than is often given credit.

Streetlight

@csalisbury I've been meaning to write the above for a while, but your thread on explanation prompted me to finally get around to it. Can be considered an indirect response.

bongo fury

I won't say too much about this because it should be pretty familiar. — StreetlightX

And coherent? That local problem solved, now cast the net wider? That move always disappoints me. Always cast wider, sure, but don't assume we've drilled deep enough, or that drilling deeper won't, and casting wider will, effect a better map of the territory. In this case, don't further entrench all of the mythology of subject/object, of mental words and pictures, albeit circumscribing it.

Of course I can hate the recipe but love the pudding, of which the proof will be in the eating. Thanks for the book recommendation. And the thread.

Streetlight

And coherent? — bongo fury

I don't think it's a question of coherence (what indeed would it mean to ask this?) so much as a question of situating it's significance in the right way. There's nothing particularly 'wrong' with thinking-of: we do it all the time, it's an important part of thinking, it has it's uses, etc. My worry is more its overdetermination of thought as such, the way it can occlude how thought can and does function in different ways, for different means and ends. Once it becomes possible to acknowledge thinking in terms of thinking-for and thinking-with (and not just thinking-of), one is confronted with different kinds of questions about thought, about its 'relation' to the world, about its nature - and different 'answers'.

Don't underestimate the move of re-situating ("casting the net-wider") - it has retroactive effects that modifies the apparently 'local' as well. It changes the significance of 'thinking-of', and all one would like to associate it with.

bongo fury

Don't underestimate the move of re-situating ("casting the net-wider") - it has retroactive effects that modify the apparently 'local' as well. It changes the significance of 'thinking-of', and all one would like to associate it with. — StreetlightX

Sure, we hope it will. I just said don't assume that, and don't perpetuate too many myths about the supposedly narrower question in the process.

Carry on :clap:

Janus

↪StreetlightX

Reminds me of, and likely maps onto, the common distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, combined with the further distinction I have long drawn of knowing-with.

Streetlight

knowing-with — Janus

Tell me more!

Changeling

Thinking-across, thinking-to, thinking-...from. :chin:

Streetlight

Sure - multiply and proliferate- if you can give subsrance to it :)

Number2018

↪StreetlightX

Probably, it could be reasonable to frame the three ways of thought that you discuss by using the concept of the image of thought.

there is no 'general model' of thought. This is the interest in considering 'thinking-for': unlike 'thinking-of' or 'thinking-about', which has the tendency to 'assimilate' all thinking under a general model, 'thinking-for' pluralizes thought, it enables us to acknolwedge various kinds of thought, rather than making thought a monolithic action that is the same in all circumstances. — StreetlightX

If one particular image of thought – ‘thinking-of’ (representational thinking) prevails over others, it is not enough to point out that "’thinking-of’ has the tendency to 'assimilate' all thinking under a general model." It may look like the tendency is generated by routine, "natural" ways of thinking or universal characteristics of mind. Yet, there are a variety of apparatuses and processes, subtly and effectively maintaining the dominating model while oppressing the alternatives. To resist and expose these apparatuses, one has to start thinking differently, inventing different images of thought. Likely, there is no peaceful coexistence of various kinds of thinking. The contention should be part and parcel of their multitude.

Streetlight

Probably, it could be reasonable to frame the three ways of thought that you discuss by using the concept of the image of thought. — Number2018

Oh that's great, I never thought to make that connection! But yeah, now that you mention it it's obvious that thinking-of is indeed a representational model of thought, or what I referred to as thought with a correlate.

Your point about it not simply being a 'natural' way of thinking is well taken as well. It is, I'd perhaps prefer to say, a way of thinking about thought that comes only thought is taken as an explicit subject of thought itself. As in, for the most part, our everyday, waking, living, loving thoughts do not conform to that model - we are constantly thinking-with and thinking-for, our modes of thinking are constantly engaged in the world around it, modulated by and engendered by our various encounters. But it's that dis-engagement, when thought bears upon itself and becomes inward-dwelling that thinking-of tends to become predominant. There's a kind a Nietzschean 'genealogy of modes of thought' to be written here, the story of how thought becomes 'interorized', turned upon itself and then serving to dominate the other modes of thought (the revolt of slave-thought over master-thoughts, as Nietzsche might put it!). Thanks for your post, really good.

Harry Hindu

Using eye tracking technology, the experiment looks for differences in the way users of different languages look at a picture. When asked simply to examine a certain picture, there are very few differences in how different language-users look over the picture. When, however, asked to describe the picture in words, "speakers’ eyes rapidly focused on the event components typically encoded in their native language, but only when asked to describe the events... The stories told by the speakers highlighted properties of the picture-story, in correlation with the grammatical patterns of the languages. ... Speakers of English and Spanish, languages that mark progressive aspect, describe two events as aspectually different ... Speakers of German and Hebrew, languages that do not mark progressive aspect, treated the events as aspectually similar [not describing temporal apsects of the picture - SX]" (Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination) — StreetlightX

In other words, the way we think - what we pay attention to, how we 'parse out the world' - is very much dependant on what we are thinking for. — StreetlightX

If there were very few differences in the way users of different languages look at the picture prior to being asked to describe it, and the differences arise when asked to describe the picture, then another explanation could be that we parse the world in similar ways prior to learning a language, and the description isn't reflective of how they parse the world, but reflective of the limits of they language that they use to describe it.

If language had such a drastic effect on how we think, then I would expect to see pre-language children, or pre-language adults like Ildefonso (https://vimeo.com/76386718) looking at the picture the same way and once they learn a language then how they look at the picture prior to being asked to describe it would be different.

We must all parse the world similarly prior to learning a language if we all are capable of learning a language in the first place. We would need to be able to understand the difference between the sound of someone's voice vs. other sounds in our environment and understand that the voice is an attempt at communication - that the sound is about something else that isn't the sound, just like a thought-of is about something that isn't the thought.

In being asked to describe something, you are no longer just thinking-of the picture. You are thinking-of the words and grammatical rules used to represent your thinking-of the picture. Words are about things just as thoughts are about things. So you're not pluralizing thoughts in thinking-of thoughts this way. You're simply adding another level of thinking-of.

creativesoul

There are some thoughts that consist of correlations drawn between language use and other things. All of the 'kinds' in the OP include such. The third kind has no exceptions. They all consist of correlations between language use and other things. The first two kinds have exceptions, and the differences which make those exceptions so are left sorely neglected.

In other words...

Some thoughts do not consist of correlations drawn between language use and other things. All of these thoughts lie beyond the scope of the OP, aside from some of the first and second kind. However, because the OP does not draw a distinction between these differences(which are ontological/elemental in nature) - as it stands - it is inherently incapable of taking proper account of such pre and/or non linguistic thought.

creativesoul

Interesting way to parse some thought out nonetheless...

:smile:

creativesoul

So, while this framework may lead to interesting and novel considerations regarding the three different kinds of thought described, it does not have what it takes to be able to pick out and effectively talk about some differences that matter most when it comes to how well our notion of thought fits into a timeline of evolutionary progression.

There are language less creatures capable of forming, having, and/or holding thought or belief about things and for specific reasons and/or purposes despite their own inability to take an account of their own thoughts.

Those language less thoughts described above come long prior to language use, and thus long prior to all cases of thinking in terms of, as well as some(perhaps most) of the first two kinds as well. The neglected kinds of beliefs I'm attempting to shed some much needed light upon consist in their entirety prior to our picking them out and describing them; prior to language use; prior to naming and descriptive practices. Thus, we can get those rudimentary basic beliefs quite wrong, even when and if they become the focus of our attention... as a subject matter in and of themselves.

In the very same way, Mt. Everest exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices as well.

The point, I suppose, is that while there could be some useful practical applications of this framework, it simply cannot qualify for a good reliable trustworthy baseline from which to conclude/infer much at all. It is not very strong justificatory ground for any broad-based universally applicable claims regarding all thought itself.

The actual, real, point of view invariant, elemental distinction(s) between thought that is existentially dependent upon naming and descriptive practices and thought that is not is left sorely neglected. As a result, I find the that framework itself is inherently inadequate for taking proper account of that which exists in it's entirety prior to naming and descriptive practices.

Language less thought is one such thing.

If thought evolves over time, and it most certainly does, and we do not have a good grasp upon what rudimentary thought is, what it consists of, and what it is existentially dependent upon... then we cannot have a good grasp upon such language less thought when and if our framework of choice cannot take it into proper account; one that is amenable to evolutionary progression and our current knowledge base. An acceptable framework also facilitates adequate descriptions of observable events and perhaps even permits us to sensibly and justifiably discuss how these and other thoughts influence subsequent thoughts and behaviours.

:smile:

Janus

↪StreetlightX

I'm a bit under the pump at the moment, but I intend to expand on this when I find the time to do so adequately. :smile:

Number2018

↪StreetlightX

It is, I'd perhaps prefer to say, a way of thinking about thought that comes only thought is taken as an explicit subject of thought itself. As in, for the most part, our everyday, waking, living, loving thoughts do not conform to that model - we are constantly thinking-with and thinking-for, our modes of thinking are constantly engaged in the world around it, modulated by and engendered by our various encounters. But it's that dis-engagement, when thought bears upon itself and becomes inward-dwelling that thinking-of tends to become predominant. — StreetlightX

You make an excellent point here! Yes, it is still necessary to counter the dominating model of thought, based on the image of the sovereign rational subject. Indeed, representational thinking does not cover the entire domains of our thought, which are embedded within our daily practices. Yet, your vision of ‘thinking for’ should be enriched with various connections and dimensions. Otherwise, being contained within the particular ontological domain, which is related to our experience, your image of thought may eventually get explained and controlled by rational models. One of the possible strategies could be the fragmentation of the image of the centralized subject. Accordingly, we could consider subjectivities, agencies, assemblages, or multitudes, constituted by the parts that are independent of the whole. And, an individual thinking process would become just one of their working parts.

Thinking-with is often implicated in thinking-for: I think-with something in order to think-for something - I think-with the hammer in order to think-for repairing the shed. — StreetlightX

Probably, the fragmentation of the image of the subject can also help to disclose unavoidable relations between ‘thinking for’ and ‘thinking with.’Also, your previous attempts of thinking subjectivity differently could be brought back here. Isn’t subjectivity, discussed in https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4250/subjectivities, related to your ‘thinking for’? If yes, we need to understand how automized, unconscious, and deindividuated subjectivities are embedded into our intimate experiences. And, is your ‘thinking with’ affiliated to collective subjectivities of https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6887/collective-subjectivity/p1 ? The answer could help us to better apprehend the radical changes of social agency, starting from Canetti’s crowd subjectivity up to aleatory digital communities of our time.

Number2018

↪StreetlightX

There's a kind a Nietzschean 'genealogy of modes of thought' to be written here, the story of how thought becomes 'interorized', turned upon itself and then serving to dominate the other modes of thought (the revolt of slave-thought over master-thoughts, as Nietzsche might put it!). — StreetlightX

This project has already been successfully persuaded, for example, by Foucault or D & G. However, after them, it looks like we should not get engaged in ‘interiorization’s genealogy’ anymore. During his career, Deleuze has steered away from the critique of ‘interiorization,’ focusing on ‘exteriorization.’ And, we need to examine the reasons for this turn.

Harry Hindu

reminds me of, and likely maps onto, the common distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, combined with the further distinction I have long drawn of knowing-with. — Janus

Knowing-how is simply a sequence of knowing-thats. Knowing-with is simply knowing-how to use a language, and knowing-how to use a language is a sequence of knowing-thats (the rules of the language). A plurality of thought and knowledge is more complex than is necessary to explain the dynamics of thought (Occam's Razor and all).

Words are just particular visuals and sounds in our experience of the world. If we can know-with and think-with particular visuals and sounds that we call "words", then why can't we know-with and think-with other visuals and sounds (and even other sensory data like tactile and gustatory and olfactory sensory data) that aren't words? And why wouldn't knowing-with and thinking-with words fall into the same category as knowing-with and thinking-with other sensory data?

Indeed, representational thinking does not cover the entire domains of our thought, which are embedded within our daily practices. — Number2018

So words don't represent, or mean, something that isn't the words being used? And by mean, or represent, I also mean to act as a stimulus to drive a particular behavior in someone (the behavior isn't the word being used to drive the behavior), because meaning and representations are causal.

Number2018

↪Harry Hindu

Indeed, representational thinking does not cover the entire domains of our thought, which are embedded within our daily practices.
— Number2018
So words don't represent, or mean, something that isn't the words being used? And by mean, or represent, I also mean to act as a stimulus to drive a particular behavior in someone (the behavior isn't the word being used to drive the behavior), because meaning and representations are causal. — Harry Hindu

When I hammer a nail, my thinking (it may or may not be accompanied by a verbal act) is different from thought in each of the following situations: I plan to hammer a nail, I order to do it, I take a verbal account of how I do it, or I teach somebody how to do it. Nevertheless, despite of the distinction between all these ways of thinking, each of them is virtually given when I hammer a nail.

Harry Hindu

When I hammer a nail, my thinking (it may or may not be accompanied by a verbal act) is different from thought in each of the following situations: I plan to hammer a nail, I order to do it, I take a verbal account of how I do it, or I teach somebody how to do it. Nevertheless, despite of the distinction between all these ways of thinking, each of them is virtually given when I hammer a nail. — Number2018

I don't understand when you say "my thinking is different from thought..." Thinking and thought are the same process.

The rest of your post doesn't seem to address my question. I asked if the sound of a word is about something that isn't the sound of the word. I'm also asking is the thought of hammering a nail the act of hammering a nail. If your answer is yes, then you are a solipsist. If no, then thoughts are about things (of which thoughts could be a thing, hence we can turn our thoughts back on each other, just as we turn our view back on itself in being self-aware). In other words, a word or thought is about things other than the word or thought.

Number2018

↪Harry Hindu

I will answer you later

Number2018

↪Harry Hindu

I don't understand when you say "my thinking is different from thought..." Thinking and thought are the same process. — Harry Hindu

Yet, in some situations, the use of one word may be more appropriate than the other. In my examples, I applied ‘thinking’ to the case, where I am hammering a nail so that I am part and parcel of the whole act: my unconscious, conscious, sensor, and kinetic processes are immediately engaged as the working parts of the whole act. In the rest of my examples, I “do things with words,” there are a variety of speech acts. To underline the difference, I used different words.

I'm also asking is the thought of hammering a nail the act of hammering a nail. — Harry Hindu

I think that when I am hammering a nail, my thought is neither the thought of hammering a nail nor the act of hammering a nail. In this instance, my thought constitutes the different mode of thinking, ‘thinking for.’

The rest of your post doesn't seem to address my question. I asked if the sound of a word is about something that isn't the sound of the word. I'm also asking is the thought of hammering a nail the act of hammering a nail. If your answer is yes, then you are a solipsist. If no, then thoughts are about things (of which thoughts could be a thing, hence we can turn our thoughts back on each other, just as we turn our view back on itself in being self-aware). In other words, a word or thought is about things other than the word or thought. — Harry Hindu

Thank you, now I understand your question better. Please note, that you posed the question in such a way that it has just one (yours) answer – If I disagree, that would mean that I am a solipsist. From my perspective, your answer - “a word or thought is about things other than the word or thought” constitutes just the relative truth, taken to the particular frame of reference. ‘Thinking about’ (or ‘thinking of’, StreetlightX’s concept) expresses just one, isolated way to conceptualize the relation between ‘things and words.’ It is possible to show that all speech acts, affiliated with the processes of the hammering a nail (‘thinking for’), are not merely determined by social conventions and individuated performances in Austin’s sense. They are unseparated from collective infrastructure so that their real agents are various populations. That is why ‘thinking with’ is necessarily implicated in ‘thinking for.’
The set of social presuppositions, virtually present in the thinking process as well as the physical part of the act of the hammering, is necessary for the successful accomplishment of the whole operation.

Streetlight

One of the possible strategies could be the fragmentation of the image of the centralized subject. Accordingly, we could consider subjectivities, agencies, assemblages, or multitudes, constituted by the parts that are independent of the whole. And, an individual thinking process would become just one of their working parts. — Number2018

One of the things that attracts me to thinking-for and thinking-with is precisely that they make thought a matter of transindividuality in the first place. To think-with the hammer makes the hammer a part of thought: it's lopsided weight in my hand, the dynamics of my swing, the need to avoid bashing my finger in - thought here is already a matter of 'assemblage', a looping circuit from body to environment and back again, immediately sensuous without intellect being bracketed off into a autarkic space of it's own. Alphonso Lingis (writing under the aegis of Heidegger) conducts a nice phenomenology of this:

"What understands that it is possible to pound in the tack or the spike with this hammer is not a logical intellect that represents alternative positions of terms identified, but our practical power to grasp hold of the hammer and manipulate it. Sensing the recalcitrance of things, our hand senses its possible impotence.... An agent who forms his forces according to diagrams read off from the implements fits himself into a series of equivalent and interchangeable agents. One takes the place another has vacated before the punch press and makes the operations with the rhythm the punch press dictates, making oneself another punch press operator... The world disintegrates into discontinuous functional units, but the agent experiences himself as continuous with other agents" (Lingis, Sensation)

Similarly with thinking-for - in fact more obviously so. To think-for is to have to comport our thoughts in a certain way for the sake of what impels it: language, dance, loving, hunting. Thought here is directly implicated with an outside without which there would be no thought at all. The danger to avoid is in believing that there is thought that is 'for itself' before it is for anything else: all thought is in a certain sense thinking-for, all thought is already implicated in an outside long before it becomes a self-enclosed reification. Descartes was wrong long even before he existed, and all idealism is derivative trash.

Re: Subjectivities - yeah, again, another connection I hadn't thought to make but you're totally right. Although I will say that here the topic is much narrower - in the previous threads I tried to think subjectivities as a series of capacities of capacities for action, and in terms of collective subjectivities, I tried to think how the very form of subjectivity could itself be transindividual from the start. Here I think I'm dealing with one particular capacity - the capacity for thought, although I'm not entirely clear about how to articulate this with the notion of subjectivity. In all three cases I'm trying to implicate an Outside directly into what is traditionally considered self-enclosed and autonomous, injecting an irreducible measure of heteronomy (as a condition of autonomy!). But the exact relation between the subject and modes of thought is something I think to consider more extensively.

Number2018

↪StreetlightX

One of the things that attracts me to thinking-for and thinking-with is precisely that they make thought a matter of transindividuality in the first place. — StreetlightX

I agree with you. We need to reorient our thinking towards Outside, exteriority, or transindividuality.

To think-for is to have to comport our thoughts in a certain way for the sake of what impels it: language, dance, loving, hunting. Thought here is directly implicated with an outside without which there would be no thought at all. The danger to avoid is in believing that there is thought that is 'for itself' before it is for anything else: all thought is in a certain sense thinking-for, all thought is already implicated in an outside long before it becomes a self-enclosed reification. — StreetlightX

Now I better understand your undertaking of ‘thinking-for’ and ‘thinking-with.’ All in all,
you have done a great job! Yet, I want to point out a few things.
When you write:
" what we pay attention to, how we 'parse out the world' - is very much dependant on what we are thinking for. The implication if we extrapolate a little, is that there is a thinking-for-speaking no less than a thinking-for-dancing or thinking-for-writing-this-post or thinking-for-sex and so on, "
it may look like you accentuate the particular moment of thinking that could fit for the concept of intentionality. “Intentionality is that feature of the mind by which it is directed at, or about, or of objects and states of affairs in the world.” (John Searle, Seeing things as they are). In Searle’s approach, ‘intentionality’ covers both ‘thinking-of’ and ‘thinking-for.’ Therefore, Searle's intentionality could re-establish the predominance of the centralized rational subject.
Probably, out of your examples( there is a thinking-for-speaking no less than a thinking-for-dancing or thinking-for-writing-this-post or thinking-for-sex and so on.), we could prioritize thinking-for-speaking to make your concept more rigorous. My thinking-for-speaking (or thinking-for-writing) would be determined mostly by a set of speech acts that I can utilize, recollect, connect with, invent, than by my immediate environment or merely by my desire to speak. Otherwise, my intention to speak may not become thinking-with-speaking, remaining just a vague transient thought.There are virtual instances that subtly direct and manage my immediate conscious acts. In other words, when I write or speak, I actualize a virtual assemblage of enunciation. To make it clear, I try to connect your concepts to D&G’s theory of double articulation from “A thousand plateaus.” “There are two distinct formalizations in reciprocal presupposition and constituting a double-pincer: the formalization of expression in the reading and writing lesson, and the formalization of content in the lesson of things…
There are two poles: the facial articulation of expression (face-language), and the manual articulation of content (hand-tool).” Your quote: “An agent who forms his forces according to diagrams read off from the implements, fits himself into a series of equivalent and interchangeable agents” allows us to conceive thinking-with-hammering in terms of populations, but also to implement D&G’s “lesson of things, the manual articulation of content.”
Further, when I am hammering a nail, the whole operation would be impossible without a variety of institutionalized verbal performances (speech acts) that I previously performed, or I was acted upon: learnings, teachings, instructions, rules, orders, programs, etc.(D&G’s “reading and writing lesson”). Similarly, a virtually present collective assemblage of enunciation determines my thinking-for-dancing or thinking-for-sex at the moment of thought's emergence , even without being consciously actualized in my mind. Probably, we could extrapolate so that thinking-for-dancing and thinking-with-dancing also constitute reciprocal presupposition which is governed by a social-collective infrastructure. And, it could help us to better understand

the exact relation between the subject and modes of thought — StreetlightX

Deleteduserrc

Never responded to this thread, but I'd like to now. I like the three categories and have found them useful recently. This will be scattered, because my thoughts are.

I think we'd probably both agree that thinking-for is nested. I've tried to suggest recently that philosophy is, at base, a thinking-for explanation. By that I mean that the broadest philosophical circle, the outer (or inner) matryoshka, is explanation. To explain is to find something static that underlies flux. This (static idea) explains that. Novalis said, and Heidegger requoted: 'Philosophy is really homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere." That sounds right to me : wherever you are, and whatever is happening, you can bring it back into explanation, you can re-domesticate it. Now, of course, this is just what a lot of contemporary philosophers militate against - Derrida's differance is the obvious example. But this is still a concept one returns to in thought, which still effectively grounds no matter how many times you erase or strike-through a word. At the limit, the impossibility of final explanation takes the function of final explanation. Wittgenstein, decontextualized, but perfectly apt - 'You are sitting at a loom - even if it is empty -and going through the motions of weaving.'

I still think this is broadly right.

And I also think thinking-for (and -of and -with) are all handy tools outside of that context.

I think I've mixed up two things in the past. One is philosophy, in the sense outlined above, and the other is academic discourse. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to talk about the intersection of academic discourse and philosophy. Obviously, most of academic discourse is not discourse about philosophy, but that's what I'm going to talk about here.

Academic Discourse isn't necessarily trying to find an ultimate explanation, as with philosophy. The explanation has already been effectively decided upon. A shared methodology has determined in advance the kind of thing which will be accepted as an explanation.

From this, a family of thinking-fors crop up. One is thinking-for the massaging of inconsistencies latent in the current discourse, to be the one who does the personal labor of working them out. You develop what's there. Another is thinking-for the application of the discourse to fields as-yet untouched by it. Another is thinking-for Iconoclasm, trying to tear the whole thing down by finding a fatal flaw.

Most of these are, of course, nested in a broader thinking-for-recognition -- which of course, that's a primal human need.

At the end of the day, everything I'm saying breaks down into something middle school english simple - man versus society. Thinking-for always has to involve the social whole. But there's also a thinking-because-you-have-to which is just the mind and body (of the individual or a sub-societal group)working itself out, as one composes a song because one knows what note comes next, or as a group spontaneously creates what they need to.

But There's something about the intersection of philosophy and academic discourse which seems to take the social aspects of academic discourse and the inherent self-tail-biting aspect of philosophy and fuse them into a self-perpetuating machine. What is the thinking-for here? It seems like it has to do with a certain enclosed and ambivalent relationship toward recognition.

ztaziz

I completely agree, however I would project many more categories.

Thinking to, thinking on, thinking off of, thinking during, etc.

I think dissecting thought in this way is useful, for philosophy of mind; but we should remember our thinking in a whole-form.

Thinking-of, Thinking-for, Thinking-with.

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