When one thinks, one is doing something. Thinking is conduct resulting from interaction with the rest of the world. It's inapposite to say that we observe ourselves when we're doing something, as if we're watching ourselves when we, e.g., walk. When I walk, I don't observe myself walking, I merely walk.
I'm aware that I'm walking, but that isn't the same as observing myself walking. There is no me apart from the me that is walking, observing the walking me.

We can certainly think about what we do. We may also think about how we think. But in doing so we don't stand apart from ourselves, we're just thinking (something we do). Understanding this, we don't create entities out of metaphors, which is to say needlessly.

When one thinks, one is doing something. Thinking is conduct resulting from interaction with the rest of the world. It's inapposite to say that we observe ourselves when we're doing something, as if we're watching ourselves when we, e.g., walk. When I walk, I don't observe myself walking, I merely walk.
I'm aware that I'm walking, but that isn't the same as observing myself walking. There is no me apart from the me that is walking, observing the walking me.

We can certainly think about what we do. We may also think about how we think. But in doing so we don't stand apart from ourselves, we're just thinking (something we do). Understanding this, we don't create entities out of metaphors, which is to say needlessly. — Ciceronianus the White

Saying thinking is conduct merely exchanges one problematic word for another. Conduct, how one comports oneself, it too confining. Thought is an event, in time. This works best. But then, there are other features that cannot be simply dismissed. I walk along, but how is it I know this? Not IN the walking, certainly, for walking is not a reflective affair. Only when I stand apart from it, if, say, I trip, or something stands in my way, then walking is suspended, pending a resolution. Of course, I may take up other "issues" about walking int his suspension a well. I may ask, what is the nature of "knowing" how to walk at all? I could take the idea of walking up in a variety of contests. But consider, I walk, and AS I walk, I place the event of walking in before my awareness. This is a different event altogether from merely carrying out a well practiced routine. When one is walking, it might be said, the walker IS the walking, and if one is hammering one IS the hammering. Just so, when one IS thinking, one IS the thinking, but here is the rub: When I place my thinking before my awareness, I am not the thing I am aware of. Just as when I stop hammering and consider what hammering is about, or, while hammering I allow my attention to pull apart from the rote, physical process and "observe" the unfolding of the hand grasping the handle, the muscles squeezing, and so on, I no longer AM simply the act of hammering. I am doing something altogether different.
This "difference" makes the distance I refer to above. I argue that this distance always has its object, but all that is can be made an object, and so there is no one thing that the subjective end's egoic center can identify with.

It is this "distance" between the thinking subject and the thought that is thought I wish to look at more closely, for it is in the reflective act, where one stands apart from any and all possible experiential events, that "distance" is made possible. In other words, when I think, I can bring question to the thought (question, the piety of thought, says Heidegger), or when I simply observe the thought as it is being thought, and thereby, I no longer identify with the thought, but stand apart from it. This distance is essential to understanding what a person IS at the level of basic questions and assumptions. — Constance

There is mechanical associative thought and conscious thought. Dostoyevsky describes mechanical thought:

“Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

Plato refers to conscious thought which begins with forms. It is the process of immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles. Can the philosopher become capable of more than babble and pouring from the empty into the void? Can the philosopher stand apart from mechanical thought so as to invite conscious thought to respond to the deeper questions or the aim of philosophy as the need for meaning?

Are we not committed to affirming the transcendental ego? — Constance

There is not a transcendental ego, per se. If it is affirmed that there is a conception under which all my representations are united, and it is called “ego”, the representation of which is “I”, then the deduction of its possibility, is transcendental.

Parsimony and speculative consistency suggests, then, that the question become, are we committed to affirming the ego transcendentally, to which the proper response would be.....yes, but iff one wishes to affirm the conception of ego at all.

But still....this is metaphysics, so if one doesn’t satisfy, pick another.

When I place my thinking before my awareness, I am not the thing I am aware of. Just as when I stop hammering and consider what hammering is about, or, while hammering I allow my attention to pull apart from the rote, physical process and "observe" the unfolding of the hand grasping the handle, the muscles squeezing, and so on, I no longer AM simply the act of hammering. I am doing something altogether different. — Constance

You're hammering and thinking about hammering as you hammer. We're quite capable of doing both if we want to, and without distinguishing ourselves from our thinking or our hammering.

when I think, I can bring question to the thought (question, the piety of thought, says Heidegger), or when I simply observe the thought as it is being thought, and thereby, I no longer identify with the thought, but stand apart from it. — Constance

But Heidegger would never say that the ‘I’ stands apart from the thought , and neither would Husserl, so your transcendental ego is not the ego of phenomenology but of Kant.

Identity is limited by understanding.

Interesting. Care to say more?

what do you want to ask?

The more context I have the better I can answer.

Not asking. Listening.

Your initial statement, your follow-up exposition.

Isn't it self explanatory? You can't be something without knowing how?

how can you be human without knowing what a human is?

Your understanding prevents you

Intelligence is a curse?

In matters of skill, I agree. But you asked about knowledge of being human, which is more than a skill.

Why isn’t it the case that I must be human in order to even ask what a human is?

Bad example I agree

Being human is a skill

Nahhh. Using a chainsaw is a skill. If a human is a member of a certain class of carbon-based intelligence, then the being of human, is a condition of that class. Skills are learned, conditions are given, in this case, given naturally.

babys dont know how to be human and anyways i think its better for it to be a skill otherwise people dont get to chose who they want to be.

I suppose identity is limited by understanding means not to let your beliefs restrain you.

People can choose who they want to be all day long. Choosing and attaining are two completely different things, though, right?

Can I choose to want to be a physicist? Sure, I can. Will I ever be one? Not impossible, from a practical point of view. But I can also choose to want to be an inhabitant of Mars, which is impossible for me practically, even if not impossible logically.

If this is what you meant by identity being limited by understanding, than I will agree, but only with respect to limitation in choice to a particular type of human I might choose to be, predicated on the means for attainment of that identity. However, as for the identity of being human in general, I don’t agree.

And not letting beliefs restrain you falls into the realm of practical possibility, rather than human identity predicated on a limiting understanding alone.

Everything is possible. why can't a human not be a human?
Attainment vs choosing?
I suppose you can't build something without blueprints

Errrrr....no it isn’t. It does not follow from the fact that not everything is known, that everything is possible. I mean....it’s not possible to know everything, so knowing everything is possible, is itself impossible.

So there is free will?

Free will is not a thing, hence cannot meet the criteria regarding knowledge of its reality. Best I can say is, there is free will if one needs there to be. It may be nothing more than an explanatory conception, the reality of it being irrelevant.

what advice do you have for my coming to conclusions to quickly?

Are we not committed to affirming the transcendental ego? It can be said that this egoic presence IS thought, and that there is no separating thought from identity. One can say this even of the structure of experience itself, so while there may certainly BE a structure to thought, and, as Wittgenstein said, this structure dominates in describing the world and cannot be second guessed, its embodiment, thought, that is, can be made an object of intention (or, attention, if you prefer). Keep in mind that the "true" nature of logic never makes an appearance, so what we say of logic remains only about the way logic "shows" itself. And in the act of reflective thought, thought becomes an object for itself. — Constance

I think it's an important idea but the following observations come to mind.

First, the term 'thought' is rather vague, isn't it? I'm not asking for a definition of 'thought', but a distinction can be made between the habitual flow of thought, the 'inner voice' which accompanies all our waking moments, and the kind of thought that characterises the attainment of insight or the pursuit of rigorous principles in mathematics, or engagement in a creative act, for example. 'Thought' exists on a lot of levels from the transitory to the foundational so using it as a general term is not sufficiently precise, in my view.

As for the structure 'dominating in describing the world' - I agree that the mind interprets experience according to the structured processes of apperception that are built up by the process of socialisation, education, and so on. That we can't step outside that structure and see 'the world as it is' in another way (although the significance of the term 'ecstacy' might be noted, as it means precisely ex- stasis, outside the normal state.) However, I think that realising that the 'structure of the mind' does this, is extremely important, in fact it's the very first step in philosophy proper (as for example in the opening paragraph of World as Will and Representation.) Few attain it.

As for 'thought thinking about itself', in one way that is true - I'm doing it now, writing this post. But in another way, it cannot be true. There is a saying from the Upaniṣads, 'the eye can see another, but cannot see itself, the hand can grasp another, but cannot grasp itself.' That is an analogy for the impossibility of the mind making an object of itself, which it can't do, for just that reason. Knowledge, generally, presumes that separation of knower and known - but in the case of the question 'who or what is the knower', we're not outside of or separate from the object, or, put another way, object and subject are the same. The response to which ought to be something very like the Husserlian Epoché.

Ehhhhh.....I don’t do advice. But I can tell you, without experience, you’re usually gonna lose.

Books. And more books. Always books.

A couple of dictionary snippets:

Transcendental ego, the self that is necessary in order for there to be a unified empirical self-consciousness. For Immanuel Kant, it synthesizes sensations according to the categories of the understanding. Nothing can be known of this self, because it is a condition, not an object, of knowledge. For Edmund Husserl, pure consciousness, for which everything that exists is an object, is the ground for the foundation and constitution of all meaning. — Britannica

Transcendental apperception is the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences (differing in both time and topic, but all belonging to self-consciousness). For example, the experience of "passing of time" relies on this transcendental unity of apperception, according to Kant.

There are six steps to transcendental apperception:

1. All experience is the succession of a variety of contents (an idea taken from David Hume).
2. To be experienced at all, the successive data must be combined or held together in a unity for consciousness.
3. Unity of experience therefore implies a unity of self.
4. The unity of self is as much an object of experience as anything is.
5. Therefore, experience both of the self and its objects rests on acts of synthesis that, because they are the conditions of any experience, are not themselves experienced.
6. These prior syntheses are made possible by the categories. Categories allow us to synthesize the self and the objects.
7. One consequence of Kant's notion of transcendental apperception is that the "self" is only ever encountered as appearance, never as it is in itself. — Wikipedia

NOTE: '4' seems anomalous to me, but i include it for completeness.