The Observing Self vs The Thinking Self

[rousseau]

I've been reading The Happiness Trap recently and it had a chapter on the 'observing' self, in contrast to the 'thinking' self. The distinction is that a part of our mind is observational and aware of it's surroundings, and the other part thinks, typically about problems and issues.

I found this interesting. Yesterday I made a few attempts to be more observational, but one way or another I'd find myself falling back into the thinking self. And that got me to thinking about the utility of both processes, and why we would favor one over the other at different times.

Basically I came up with that the observing self scans the immediate environment for relevant stuff happening, and if nothing relevant is happening it starts thinking about problems that aren't exactly immediate to help solve those too. It doesn't make sense to expend energy on an environment that has no relevance to us, so we start thinking about how to solve problems that aren't in the immediate environment.

I also wonder if there are gender differences here at a broad level: women are more observational because they need to keep children alive, right now. While men are less observational because throughout history they've been faced with more abstract/distant, rather than immediate problems.

 

[Jokodo]

Keeping children alive is fairly abstract/ distant - certainly compared top dealing with an injured bison charging at you, feeding a child can always wait another hour, even if it may not sound pretty.

Science is about testable hypotheses that make sense given the context of our knowledge of the world. Not arbitrary conjectures that happen to sound nice to your ear and appear to confirm whatever it is you were already suspecting.

 

[rousseau]

Keeping children alive is fairly abstract/ distant - certainly compared top dealing with an injured bison charging at you, feeding a child can always wait another hour, even if it may not sound pretty.

Science is about testable hypotheses that make sense given the context of our knowledge of the world. Not arbitrary conjectures that happen to sound nice to your ear and appear to confirm whatever it is you were already suspecting.

Sure, but the hard data doesn't exist so I'm conjecturing based on anecdotal experience. I could be totally off base but that's the arena we're in, if you don't want to take part, fair enough, or if you want to find hard data to prove me wrong, you're free to do that too.

 

[steve_bank]

Typical Buddhist and Hindu thought, which leads to the question what is that which I call myself? There is no answer only a realization to be experienced.

My observing self observes my thinking self. My thinking self contemplates my observing self. Who or what is observing my observing and thinking self?

Traditional eastern metaphysics. Google Atman Wiki. Ancient perennial questions.



The OP is a question for the metaphysics forum.

 

[Jokodo]

Keeping children alive is fairly abstract/ distant - certainly compared top dealing with an injured bison charging at you, feeding a child can always wait another hour, even if it may not sound pretty.

Science is about testable hypotheses that make sense given the context of our knowledge of the world. Not arbitrary conjectures that happen to sound nice to your ear and appear to confirm whatever it is you were already suspecting.

Sure, but the hard data doesn't exist so I'm conjecturing based on anecdotal experience. I could be totally off base but that's the arena we're in, if you don't want to take part, fair enough, or if you want to find hard data to prove me wrong, you're free to do that too.

Your conjecture doesn't even make sense. Over 90% of our time, our s species consisted of only foragers. If, between childcare and gathering roots on the one hand vs. hunting on the other one requires more direct, immediate responses, it's hunting

 

[rousseau]

Typical Buddhist and Hindu thought, which leads to the question what is that which I call myself? There is no answer only a realization to be experienced.

My observing self observes my thinking self. My thinking self contemplates my observing self. Who or what is observing my observing and thinking self?

Traditional eastern metaphysics. Google Atman Wiki. Ancient perennial questions.

The OP is a question for the metaphysics forum.

I don't know that I expect hard science to come out of this thread - I definitely don't have the time to research the question more thoroughly. But based on my own observation I figure these are at least two separate, mental processes, likely signified by the folk terminology of 'observing' and 'thinking'.

The observing is likely a kind a kind of external searching, while thinking is a constant scanning of our memory bank in relation to what's observed. And when there is nothing to observe it is advantageous to be aware of past/future issues. Complete inaction doesn't solve problems.

 

[rousseau]

Keeping children alive is fairly abstract/ distant - certainly compared top dealing with an injured bison charging at you, feeding a child can always wait another hour, even if it may not sound pretty.

Science is about testable hypotheses that make sense given the context of our knowledge of the world. Not arbitrary conjectures that happen to sound nice to your ear and appear to confirm whatever it is you were already suspecting.

Sure, but the hard data doesn't exist so I'm conjecturing based on anecdotal experience. I could be totally off base but that's the arena we're in, if you don't want to take part, fair enough, or if you want to find hard data to prove me wrong, you're free to do that too.

Your conjecture doesn't even make sense. Over 90% of our time, our s species consisted of only foragers. If, between childcare and gathering roots on the one hand vs. hunting on the other one requires more direct, immediate responses, it's hunting

Child-rearing requires a more consistent presence, with a stable problem space. Most of womanhood throughout history has been 'don't let my child die' and 'be good/efficient' at household tasks. This requires a completely different, but equally important skill-set as hunting. To hunt you're dealing with the outside world, which is less predictable and requires a greater amount of abstract problem solving.

This is a bit of a simplification of gender differences at a broad level, but you can see the results borne out by how men and women are actually employed, and what their gender roles still are today.

But again - I'm not trying to write a science textbook here, this is a forum on an obscure message board that no one visits. The conversation doesn't have to be that serious.

 

[steve_bank]

Typical Buddhist and Hindu thought, which leads to the question what is that which I call myself? There is no answer only a realization to be experienced.

My observing self observes my thinking self. My thinking self contemplates my observing self. Who or what is observing my observing and thinking self?

Traditional eastern metaphysics. Google Atman Wiki. Ancient perennial questions.

The OP is a question for the metaphysics forum.

I don't know that I expect hard science to come out of this thread - I definitely don't have the time to research the question more thoroughly. But based on my own observation I figure these are at least two separate, mental processes, likely signified by the folk terminology of 'observing' and 'thinking'.

The observing is likely a kind a kind of external searching, while thinking is a constant scanning of our memory bank in relation to what's observed. And when there is nothing to observe it is advantageous to be aware of past/future issues. Complete inaction doesn't solve problems.

Today this is probly all under psychology, possibly cognitive psychology. I am sure these questions by this time have all been systematicly addresses in psychology along with experimental evidence.

Instead of pop philosophy try some undergrad texts in psychology. An old one I read but probably still good is Gestalt Therapy. It is about a way of perceiving and tying all the function together. 'forming a gestalt' is a common term. It means viewing things as a whole at the same time instead of a reductionism of parts.A variation is a holistic view. I doubt there is one absolute approach.

Yours may be as good as anyone's.

Psychology is the soft part of it. Neuroscience has ling since identified specific areas of brain where deferent functions are located. I hit my head and ended up with speech aphasia from a subdural hematoma, fluid on the brain. It compressed the speech center. I could think clearly and imagine words, but I could not speak.

Damage to the impulse control center can lead to aggression and violence, and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking".[1] Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into various other modern disciplines such as Cognitive Science and of psychological study, including educational psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, linguistics, and economics.

 

[Jokodo]

Your conjecture doesn't even make sense. Over 90% of our time, our s species consisted of only foragers. If, between childcare and gathering roots on the one hand vs. hunting on the other one requires more direct, immediate responses, it's hunting

Child-rearing requires a more consistent presence, with a stable problem space. Most of womanhood throughout history has been 'don't let my child die' and 'be good/efficient' at household tasks. This requires a completely different, but equally important skill-set as hunting. To hunt you're dealing with the outside world, which is less predictable and requires a greater amount of abstract problem solving.

This is a bit of a simplification of gender differences at a broad level, but you can see the results borne out by how men and women are actually employed, and what their gender roles still are today.

But again - I'm not trying to write a science textbook here, this is a forum on an obscure message board that no one visits. The conversation doesn't have to be that serious.

Sure, this is but a message board. Yet, we have sections on Miscellaneous Discussions, Other Philosophical Discussions, Social Science, Pseudoscience, Elsewhere - each of which along with several more I forgot is better suited for random musings of this sort. You posting it under Natural Science is strong evidence that you severely overestimate the scientific value if your prejudice cum confirmation bias. What you call anecdotal experience is a far cry from qualifying as data, and your logic doesn't look like much more than a feeble attempt to dress up your prejudices as rational.

And if you think you have addressed my objection, think again. Hunting - and in particular big game hunting where the hunter puts himself at risk, which is of particular relevance here since small game hunting and trapping has often been the domain of both genders - requires more, not less immediate reactions than childcare, more, not less presence.

 

[ronburgundy]

I'm not sure about the notion that the "observing self" deal with immediate problems while the "thinking self" deals with more distal problems. While distal problems do likely entail mostly thinking rather than observing, I think immediate problems require both and we tend to vacillate between the two when solving immediate problems.
It's a matter of whether the solution to the problem lies in gathering more information versus reasoning about already gathered information, especially if there is not a truly immediate threat where there is not time to think. Most efforts to deal with an immediate problem in front of you don't entail a pressing threat that must be reacted to within seconds. For example, you encounter a river that you need to cross. You might start by observing to gather the important facts, then switch to thinking to put that info together with past experiences and form hypotheses about what will work. Then you switch back to observing to doublecheck whether the current situation has the same factors as the situations where a potential solution worked in the past, and so on. Sure, if you a charging lion chasing you to that scenario, then you just observing and reacting without much reasoning, but those situations are relatively rare.

As for the gender roles thing, males have historically put themselves more often in immediate danger during hunts and inter-tribal conflicts. Those are situations where there is little time to reason, and rather reactions must be more instinctual and rely upon more mid-brain than forebrain areas. In contrast, females spent more time on problems where there is a luxury of more time to reason about optimal strategies, whether gathering fauna, figuring out how to process it into immediately edible and storable substances, using varied substances for medical purposes and developing them into clothing and shelter, etc. But again, since the majority of problems entail combining observing with thinking, it seems unlikely that this would have produced notable differences between the genders.

 

[Jokodo]

I'm not sure about the notion that the "observing self" deal with immediate problems while the "thinking self" deals with more distal problems. While distal problems do likely entail mostly thinking rather than observing, I think immediate problems require both and we tend to vacillate between the two when solving immediate problems.
It's a matter of whether the solution to the problem lies in gathering more information versus reasoning about already gathered information, especially if there is not a truly immediate threat where there is not time to think. Most efforts to deal with an immediate problem in front of you don't entail a pressing threat that must be reacted to within seconds. For example, you encounter a river that you need to cross. You might start by observing to gather the important facts, then switch to thinking to put that info together with past experiences and form hypotheses about what will work. Then you switch back to observing to doublecheck whether the current situation has the same factors as the situations where a potential solution worked in the past, and so on. Sure, if you a charging lion chasing you to that scenario, then you just observing and reacting without much reasoning, but those situations are relatively rare.

As for the gender roles thing, males have historically put themselves more often in immediate danger during hunts and inter-tribal conflicts. Those are situations where there is little time to reason, and rather reactions must be more instinctual and rely upon more mid-brain than forebrain areas. In contrast, females spent more time on problems where there is a luxury of more time to reason about optimal strategies, whether gathering fauna, figuring out how to process it into immediately edible and storable substances, using varied substances for medical purposes and developing them into clothing and shelter, etc. But again, since the majority of problems entail combining observing with thinking, it seems unlikely that this would have produced notable differences between the genders.

I commend you on the way you manage to stay on point and friendly while destroying this kind of just-so stories. I'm lacking that patience.

 

[steve_bank]

The question for me is how much is conscious deliberation and how much is natural response based on ecxerience.

When learning to drive you have to think and concentrate/ With experience driving becomes a natural learned reflex. One navigates heavy traffic while having a conversation with a passenger.

 

[Speakpigeon]

According to my own observations, thinking puts you in a sort of "mental mode" whereby your brain shuts off not only perception of most of your environment but also the usual range of the impressions you would normally have about it when you are not busy thinking.

This suggests that the brain will somehow prioritise to some extent thinking over you paying attention to your environment.

However, the brain clearly "keeps an eye" on your immediate environment all along and will interrupt your thinking if ever any unusual event should take place. The same prioritisation takes place for example when you are asleep, your brain shutting off not only your perception of your environment but also that of your own body, and even shutting off your ability to control your body, most of the time at least.

Thinking is therefore best understood as an evolutionary advantage, as seems pretty obvious. Yet, thinking can get you killed, so there has to be a trade-off between a limited number of casualties, fallen in the act of thinking, and the more general benefit of having individuals improving their own prospect for survival by thinking things through before action, and indeed improving the survival prospect of their community.

I would have though this mechanism to be worthy of a scientific study. It is indeed one of the most important aspect of our psychology. It is the one aspect that underpins and defines what it is to be human. I would guess all animal species with a brain do it, but obviously only to a much smaller extent.

It is again noteworthy that our social life allows and indeed discriminate in favour of having many people spending their professional life essentially devoted to thinking rather than acting. Surely, there has to be a reason?

And yet again, you have the usual hardcore materialist and pseudo-science crowd complaining. What we should complain about is that the question is not yet properly investigated by science, if indeed it isn't.
EB

 

[Jokodo]

According to my own observations, thinking puts you in a sort of "mental mode" whereby your brain shuts off not only perception of most of your environment but also the usual range of the impressions you would normally have about it when you are not busy thinking.

This suggests that the brain will somehow prioritise to some extent thinking over you paying attention to your environment.

However, the brain clearly "keeps an eye" on your immediate environment all along and will interrupt your thinking if ever any unusual event should take place. The same prioritisation takes place for example when you are asleep, your brain shutting off not only your perception of your environment but also that of your own body, and even shutting off your ability to control your body, most of the time at least.

Thinking is therefore best understood as an evolutionary advantage, as seems pretty obvious. Yet, thinking can get you killed, so there has to be a trade-off between a limited number of casualties, fallen in the act of thinking, and the more general benefit of having individuals improving their own prospect for survival by thinking things through before action, and indeed improving the survival prospect of their community.

I would have though this mechanism to be worthy of a scientific study. It is indeed one of the most important aspect of our psychology. It is the one aspect that underpins and defines what it is to be human. I would guess all animal species with a brain do it, but obviously only to a much smaller extent.

It is again noteworthy that our social life allows and indeed discriminate in favour of having many people spending their professional life essentially devoted to thinking rather than acting. Surely, there has to be a reason?

And yet again, you have the usual hardcore materialist and pseudo-science crowd complaining. What we should complain about is that the question is not yet properly investigated by science, if indeed it isn't.
EB

And why would you think it isn't being properly investigated by science?

 

[rousseau]

I'm not sure about the notion that the "observing self" deal with immediate problems while the "thinking self" deals with more distal problems. While distal problems do likely entail mostly thinking rather than observing, I think immediate problems require both and we tend to vacillate between the two when solving immediate problems.
It's a matter of whether the solution to the problem lies in gathering more information versus reasoning about already gathered information, especially if there is not a truly immediate threat where there is not time to think. Most efforts to deal with an immediate problem in front of you don't entail a pressing threat that must be reacted to within seconds. For example, you encounter a river that you need to cross. You might start by observing to gather the important facts, then switch to thinking to put that info together with past experiences and form hypotheses about what will work. Then you switch back to observing to doublecheck whether the current situation has the same factors as the situations where a potential solution worked in the past, and so on. Sure, if you a charging lion chasing you to that scenario, then you just observing and reacting without much reasoning, but those situations are relatively rare.

I agree. By 'immediate' I more meant that the observing self is a scanner of the here and now, the present, what's happening around us. While the thinking self is a scanner of our internal memory. To literally solve problems both are needed, but the observing self is what notices that problems in our immediate environment exist.

As for the gender roles thing, males have historically put themselves more often in immediate danger during hunts and inter-tribal conflicts. Those are situations where there is little time to reason, and rather reactions must be more instinctual and rely upon more mid-brain than forebrain areas. In contrast, females spent more time on problems where there is a luxury of more time to reason about optimal strategies, whether gathering fauna, figuring out how to process it into immediately edible and storable substances, using varied substances for medical purposes and developing them into clothing and shelter, etc. But again, since the majority of problems entail combining observing with thinking, it seems unlikely that this would have produced notable differences between the genders.

Perhaps. In the original post I certainly wasn't claiming that this was true, rather just posing it as a question.

I do wonder how central the 'watchful eye' on children has been for the evolution of women, though. I mean, in some respect keeping your children alive is the fundamental task of a family. A man can bring home hundreds of lbs of bison, but if the child's died it's all for naught.

Again.. I'm not claiming this is true, just posing it as a question for discussion..

 

[ronburgundy]

I'm not sure about the notion that the "observing self" deal with immediate problems while the "thinking self" deals with more distal problems. While distal problems do likely entail mostly thinking rather than observing, I think immediate problems require both and we tend to vacillate between the two when solving immediate problems.
It's a matter of whether the solution to the problem lies in gathering more information versus reasoning about already gathered information, especially if there is not a truly immediate threat where there is not time to think. Most efforts to deal with an immediate problem in front of you don't entail a pressing threat that must be reacted to within seconds. For example, you encounter a river that you need to cross. You might start by observing to gather the important facts, then switch to thinking to put that info together with past experiences and form hypotheses about what will work. Then you switch back to observing to doublecheck whether the current situation has the same factors as the situations where a potential solution worked in the past, and so on. Sure, if you a charging lion chasing you to that scenario, then you just observing and reacting without much reasoning, but those situations are relatively rare.

I agree. By 'immediate' I more meant that the observing self is a scanner of the here and now, the present, what's happening around us. While the thinking self is a scanner of our internal memory. To literally solve problems both are needed, but the observing self is what notices that problems in our immediate environment exist.

As for the gender roles thing, males have historically put themselves more often in immediate danger during hunts and inter-tribal conflicts. Those are situations where there is little time to reason, and rather reactions must be more instinctual and rely upon more mid-brain than forebrain areas. In contrast, females spent more time on problems where there is a luxury of more time to reason about optimal strategies, whether gathering fauna, figuring out how to process it into immediately edible and storable substances, using varied substances for medical purposes and developing them into clothing and shelter, etc. But again, since the majority of problems entail combining observing with thinking, it seems unlikely that this would have produced notable differences between the genders.

Perhaps. In the original post I certainly wasn't claiming that this was true, rather just posing it as a question.

I do wonder how central the 'watchful eye' on children has been for the evolution of women, though. I mean, in some respect keeping your children alive is the fundamental task of a family. A man can bring home hundreds of lbs of bison, but if the child's died it's all for naught.

Again.. I'm not claiming this is true, just posing it as a question for discussion..

But keep in mind that males don't spend most of their time away from their mate and children. If they did, then other males and predators would take their mates and children. So, males spent time not only keeping a watchful eye for threats to their kids but to their mates, and the latter probably moreso than females were concerned about threats to their mates (b/c finding another male with available sperm is far easier than finding a female with an available womb).

There are just too many variables at play to have any confidence in these speculations. It's a fun way to pass the time over drinks, but it isn't science, it's story telling. On rare occasions, there are ways to test competing stories with current empirical data, then it becomes science. One of the best examples I have seen of this is this paper where they use data on phylogenetic trees, the related of various species, and when in evolution they are thought to have a shared ancestor to test competing theories about what function "romantic" pair bonding between adults (males and females in a long term relationship). By looking at how other various traits (immaturity at birth, whether the male provides parental care) covary with pair bonding across species and how those species relate to each other in the phylogenetic tree they could test the plausibility of models which assume which traits preceded others in evolution and thus which are plausible functional relationships between traits and which are merely a incidental.

 

[Speakpigeon]

According to my own observations, thinking puts you in a sort of "mental mode" whereby your brain shuts off not only perception of most of your environment but also the usual range of the impressions you would normally have about it when you are not busy thinking.

This suggests that the brain will somehow prioritise to some extent thinking over you paying attention to your environment.

However, the brain clearly "keeps an eye" on your immediate environment all along and will interrupt your thinking if ever any unusual event should take place. The same prioritisation takes place for example when you are asleep, your brain shutting off not only your perception of your environment but also that of your own body, and even shutting off your ability to control your body, most of the time at least.

Thinking is therefore best understood as an evolutionary advantage, as seems pretty obvious. Yet, thinking can get you killed, so there has to be a trade-off between a limited number of casualties, fallen in the act of thinking, and the more general benefit of having individuals improving their own prospect for survival by thinking things through before action, and indeed improving the survival prospect of their community.

I would have though this mechanism to be worthy of a scientific study. It is indeed one of the most important aspect of our psychology. It is the one aspect that underpins and defines what it is to be human. I would guess all animal species with a brain do it, but obviously only to a much smaller extent.

It is again noteworthy that our social life allows and indeed discriminate in favour of having many people spending their professional life essentially devoted to thinking rather than acting. Surely, there has to be a reason?

And yet again, you have the usual hardcore materialist and pseudo-science crowd complaining. What we should complain about is that the question is not yet properly investigated by science, if indeed it isn't.
EB

And why would you think it isn't being properly investigated by science?

What we should complain about is that the question is not yet properly investigated by science, if indeed it isn't.
EB

if indeed it isn't.

if indeed it isn't.

if indeed it isn't.

Yes?
EB

 

[rousseau]

I agree. By 'immediate' I more meant that the observing self is a scanner of the here and now, the present, what's happening around us. While the thinking self is a scanner of our internal memory. To literally solve problems both are needed, but the observing self is what notices that problems in our immediate environment exist.



Perhaps. In the original post I certainly wasn't claiming that this was true, rather just posing it as a question.

I do wonder how central the 'watchful eye' on children has been for the evolution of women, though. I mean, in some respect keeping your children alive is the fundamental task of a family. A man can bring home hundreds of lbs of bison, but if the child's died it's all for naught.

Again.. I'm not claiming this is true, just posing it as a question for discussion..

But keep in mind that males don't spend most of their time away from their mate and children. If they did, then other males and predators would take their mates and children. So, males spent time not only keeping a watchful eye for threats to their kids but to their mates, and the latter probably moreso than females were concerned about threats to their mates (b/c finding another male with available sperm is far easier than finding a female with an available womb).

There are just too many variables at play to have any confidence in these speculations. It's a fun way to pass the time over drinks, but it isn't science, it's story telling. On rare occasions, there are ways to test competing stories with current empirical data, then it becomes science. One of the best examples I have seen of this is this paper where they use data on phylogenetic trees, the related of various species, and when in evolution they are thought to have a shared ancestor to test competing theories about what function "romantic" pair bonding between adults (males and females in a long term relationship). By looking at how other various traits (immaturity at birth, whether the male provides parental care) covary with pair bonding across species and how those species relate to each other in the phylogenetic tree they could test the plausibility of models which assume which traits preceded others in evolution and thus which are plausible functional relationships between traits and which are merely a incidental.

I agree, that's the why of the thread, passing the time and if someone cares to make a thoughtful post, that's great. If I didn't have an unending list of things to do in both my personal and professional life I might even take a look for evidence on Google Scholar.

 

[rousseau]

The question for me is how much is conscious deliberation and how much is natural response based on ecxerience.

When learning to drive you have to think and concentrate/ With experience driving becomes a natural learned reflex. One navigates heavy traffic while having a conversation with a passenger.

I think that's a third process - integrating new, learned, and repetitive experiences into a more automated system. IOW, things that we do frequently and consistently, eventually we should be able to do automatically and without effort. The ancient Chinese called it wu-wei, in modern terms it's unconscious competence. In terms of neurophysiology it's done via the strengthening of pathways (that's likely a simplification).

Things that are novel take conscious deliberation, things that we are very experienced with become more integrated and automatic.

 

[fromderinside]

Those of us who practice(d) Human Engineering call it fitness expertise accompanied by practice effect under high motivation, or in Aviation, Golden Arm.