We Can See Only What We Can Think

Dear Michael, Thank you for this piece that "re-awakins" my thinking about thinking, that has me wondering about epistemology, that is, how we know our truth. I would like to add that there is a range that extends beyond thinking. As a novelist, I look for sensory details that might bring alive a setting for the reader. While you're quite right that the reader is conditioned to experience that sense through the filter of her thoughts, the sense sits at the experiential foundation of the rational thought. Similarly with feelings. I'm presently collaborating on memoir with my mother. She's more of a feeler; I'm more of a thinker. I'm trying to channel her feelings that have been shaped from having lived nearly a century in India, Canada, and America, places that have different ways of thinking, but essentially the same way of feeling. One could say that Mom's feelings are the elephant upon which my writing rides. The elephant will go in any direction it wants to, while the rider attempts direction. We teach this idea of the elephant and the rider at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. It helps the highly rational students get in touch with their feelings as the develop greater interpersonal range. I'll close here with a linguistic formulation I like to share with the students: when you say "I feel that" or "I feel like," that is a thought not a feeling. Thinking is necessary but not sufficient. We must also sense and feel our way into all that the world has to offer. By integrating our thoughts, senses, and feelings, we develop our language of truth. Thank you ... Raj

I like that image of feelings being the elephant that our thinking rides. It's too bad the elephant is so ignored. Awareness comes around -- I learned 50+ years ago that "I feel that" and "I feel like" are expressing a thought and not a feeling, and I guess are ways to ignore or reframe or distance from the elephant. Thanks.