Metathinking
I'm using metathinking in the sense of thinking about thinking. Personally I find this to be very difficult. If I'm out walking my thinking is not linear at all. All kinds of thoughts come and go. It takes all my mental bandwidth to just carry a thought as I deal with the hurley-burley of a busy sidewalk. Thinking about what I'm thinking then is hard.
For thinking about thinking I use mechanical aids like writing and reading; literacy. That way a thought or line of thought gets captured and I can then just think about that. The semi-permanence of the text draws my attention back to the thought if my attention should wander.
With thinking I have to follow my thoughts wherever they lead. With metathinking I can sit back and think - is this thought a valid or good or interesting thought?
Trump is famous for his so-called "weave" when he speaks. This is an example of what thinking is like when metathinking is absent. It's chaotic and thoughts jump all over the place. For him it works. He's going for an emotional reaction not a reasoned response and the lack of reason allows emotion to come to the fore.
I admit that I'm prejudiced in favor of rational thinking. I like how metaliteracy lets me construct or understand complex ideas. Perhaps pre-literate cultures have their ideas forced into a structure that is simple and easy to speak and think. Like spirits controlling the weather who can be placated like people are.
Literacy has not been common among people until a thousand years ago. It seems like literacy blossomed with the invention of the printing press and that coincides with the growth of science. Metathoughts could be distributed very widely.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.