John Maynard Keynes? Daniel Dennett? Isaiah Berlin? Eloise Jarvis McGraw? Herman Melville? T. H. Pear? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Are our thoughts composed of basic elements? Do we contemplate words, pictures, video snippets, or perception patterns while cogitating?
I was reminded of this classic epistemological question by recent advancements in the field of artificial intelligence. The latest generation of systems is multi-modal. These systems can use text, images, and video as input and output.
A pertinent anecdote states that a prominent intellectual was once asked about the building blocks of thought:
“Do you think in words or pictures?”
“I think in thoughts.”
This adroit and humorous reply has been attributed to the English economist John Maynard Keynes. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: John Maynard Keynes died in 1946. The earliest attribution to Keynes located by QI appeared in the journal “Synthese” in 1982 within an article titled “How to Study Human Consciousness Empirically” by U.S. philosopher Daniel Dennett. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
John Maynard Keynes was once asked whether he thought in words or pictures. His reply, which the heterophenomenologist applauds, was “I think in thoughts”.
The accompanying footnote indicated that Dennett heard the anecdote from a prominent British historian of ideas:2
Reported to me by Isaiah Berlin, in conversation.
QI has not yet found any direct evidence that Keynes made the remark under examination. Instead, the story was relayed from Isaiah Berlin to Daniel Dennett. A 1994 citation from Berlin which is presented further below indicated that Berlin’s knowledge was indirect. He did not hear the comment directly from Keynes. Hence, the support for the attribution to Keynes is weak.
The notion that humans might “think in thoughts” instead of words has a long history. The famous U.S. novelist Herman Melville published a semi-autobiographical work titled “White Jacket or, The World In a Man-of-War” in 1850. During one scene the captain of a ship contemplated forcing crew members to shave their beards. Melville presented the interior monologue of the captain, but this passage was followed by a fascinating comment about the accuracy of such depictions:3
There is no knowing, indeed, whether these were the very words in which the Captain meditated that night; for it is yet a mooted point among metaphysicians, whether we think in words or whether we think in thoughts. But something like the above must have been the Captain’s cogitations.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1878 educator E. Booth published an article which referred to the well-known biblical scene during which Adam gave names to the animals of the world. Booth speculated about the thought processes of God:4
We may even go to Scripture for authority: “And God brought unto Adam every beast of the field and every fowl of the air to see what he would call them.” Here a query naturally arises: Has God a language, or does He think in thoughts alone, and use words only when addressing man?
In 1920 Professor T. H. Pear of the University of Manchester delivered a speech at a gathering of science teachers about “Training In Scientific Thinking”. Pear mentioned different descriptions of cogitation:5
Many people do visualize while thinking; in some cases there are actual mental pictures, in others images of sounds, words, or of movements, but there are persons who can only describe their methods of thinking by stating that they “think in thoughts.”
In 1937 an article in an Iola, Kansas newspaper contended that words had primacy in the mechanisms of thought:6
If anything in the whole field of education has been tested and proved, it is the obvious fact that ability to think depends heavily if not almost entirely upon knowledge of words. “Words are the tools of thought.” We do not think thoughts; we think words. If our knowledge of words is limited, our ability to think is circumscribed in exactly that degree.
In 1959 Eloise Jarvis McGraw published “Techniques of Fiction Writing “. She discussed the necessity of revision while composing stories:7
Now—why can’t we just put it down right the first time? I think there are several reasons. First, there is a great difference between thinking and speaking; more than one realizes until one tries to capture a mental image on paper. We do not think in words, we think in thoughts. The struggle to translate the language of the mind into the language of the tongue is the battle in which every writer is constantly engaged, and often it is frustratingly difficult, like trying to change apples into potatoes.
In 1962 Eloise Jarvis McGraw published a piece titled “Good Writing Is Rewriting” in the magazine “The Writer”. McGraw’s article was based on her book, and she reprinted the passage given above.8
In 1982 Daniel C. Dennett reported the anecdote about John Maynard Keynes within an article in the journal “Synthese”. Dennett stated in a footnote that he heard the anecdote from Isaiah Berlin as mentioned previously in this article.
In 1991 Dennett published “Consciousness Explained” which contained the following passage:9
The British economist John Maynard Keynes was once asked whether he thought in words or pictures. “I think in thoughts,” was his reply. He was right to resist the suggestion that the “things we think in” are either words or pictures, for as we have seen, “mental images” are not just like pictures in the head, and “verbal” thinking is not just like talking to yourself. But saying one thinks in thoughts is really no improvement. It just postpones the question, for a thought is just whatever happens when we think — a topic about which there is no settled agreement.
In 1994 Isaiah Berlin with editor Henry Hardy published “The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism”. A footnote in the book referred to the anecdote:10
There is a story that the economist J. M. Keynes, when asked whether he thought in words or images, replied, ‘I think in thoughts.’ This is amusing but, if Hamann is right, absurd.
The phrasing used above signaled that neither Berlin nor Hardy had direct evidence supporting the anecdote.
In 2017 an interview with Daniel Dennett was published on the “Edge” website, and Dennett presented the tale again:11
I like to quote Maynard Keynes on this. He was once asked, “Do you think in words or pictures?” to which he responded, “I think in thoughts.” It was a wonderful answer, but also wonderfully uninformative. What the hell’s a thought then? How does it carry information?
In conclusion, this response was attributed to John Maynard Keynes in 1982 which was many years after his death in 1946. Direct evidence is lacking; hence, the support for this attribution is weak. In 1850 Herman Melville mentioned a controversy amongst metaphysicians over “whether we think in words or whether we think in thoughts”. In 1920 Professor of Psychology T. H. Pear remarked that some people have asserted that they “think in thoughts.”
Image Notes: Picture of the word “LOVE” together with its reflection in a swimming pool from Nick Fewings at Unsplash. The Image has been resized.
Acknowledgement: QI saw this quotation in Dennett’s book “Consciousness Explained” and also noticed it was listed in the April 2018 issue of “The ‘Quote…Unquote’ Newsletter” from British quotation expert Nigel Rees. This inspired QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1982 November, Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Volume 53, Number 2, Article: How to Study Human Consciousness Empirically Or Nothing Comes To Mind, Author: Daniel C. Dennett, Start Page 159, Quote Page 176, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. (JSTOR) link ↩︎
- 1982 November, Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Volume 53, Number 2, Article: How to Study Human Consciousness Empirically Or Nothing Comes To Mind, Author: Daniel C. Dennett, Start Page 159, Quote Page 180, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. (JSTOR) link ↩︎
- 1853 (First published in 1850), White Jacket or, The World In a Man-of-War by Herman Melville, Volume 2 of 2, Chapter 85: The Great Massacre of the Beards, Quote Page 243, Richard Bentley, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1878 October, American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, Volume 23, Number 4, Thinking In Words and Gestures by E. Booth (Anamosa, Iowa), Start Page 223, Quote Page 224, Published by The Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf and Dumb, Washington D.C. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1920 December, The School Science Review, Volume 2, Number 6, Training In Scientific Thinking, (Abstract of an address given by Professor Pear at the Manchester Meeting of the Association of Science Teachers June 19th, 1920), Start Page 221, Quote Page 222, Published for The Science Masters’ Association by John Murray, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1937 December 29, The Iola Daily Register, Ready for Edification, Quote Page 6, Column 1, Iola, Kansas. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1959, Techniques of Fiction Writing by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Chapter 15: Good Writing Is Rewriting, Quote Page 171, The Writer Inc., Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1962 May, The Writer, Volume 75, Number 5, Good Writing Is Rewriting by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Start Page 8, Quote Page 8, The Writer Inc., Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1991, Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett, Chapter 10: Show and Tell, Quote Page 298, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1994 (1993 Copyright), The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism by Isaiah Berlin, Edited by Henry Hardy, Chapter 6: Language, Footnote 1, Quote Page 75, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- Website: Edge, Article title: “A Difference That Makes a Difference”: A Conversation With Daniel C. Dennett [11.17.17], Date on website: November 22, 2017, Website description: “A living document on the Web to display the activities of ‘The Third Culture’. (Accessed edge.org on January 11, 2024) link ↩︎