i like these two sections from the philosophical investigations (wittgenstein) on this general question of thinking:
Quote:
114: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.5: "The general form of a proposition is: This is how things are."----That is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the things nature over and over, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.
115: A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
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without reflexivity, we trace outlines that we infer from the conventions of representation. so there is a way in which we do not think particularly: we shuttle back and forth conventions to forms we organize in terms of these conventions, checking the fit, but not necessarily wondering about the process itself.
2. interior: rehearsing what one is going to say is like the good comrade ms says above, a stress management technique. that's it.
3. there is an amazing book about a guy who thought mostly in picture: "mind of a mnemonist" by a.r. luria.
you should check that out.