Not thinking in words

A few years ago, I took an interest in something called ‘Descriptive Experience Sampling’, with some report of same to be found at reference 1. One of the conclusions was that I spent of lot of my waking day engaged in inner thought, with my impression being that most of that inner thought was in the form of words; that is to say words, phrases and some sentences. Words which were not be articulated out loud but which, nevertheless, may well have been articulated. The vocal machinery was activated – an important feature of the phenomenon  of inner thought because there is only one lot of vocal machinery and one can only articulate one thing at a time – we can’t do multi-taking or multi-threading with the voice in the way of many modern computers – and telephones for that matter. This interest has recently been revived and I have been working through the paper at reference 2, a survey of what is known about this phenomenon of inner thought.

This lead onto a suggestion that high functioning people with ASD – autistic spectrum disorder – may be more likely to think in terms of pictures, or perhaps patterns, than the rest of us. This in the context of one Daniel Tammet, to be found at references 3 and 4.

Then a couple of nights ago, while waiting to go to sleep, I though to try a little more inner thought for myself, and set myself the task of thinking through cutting out a mortise and tenon joint. In oak, as it turned out, a hardwood with a distinctive feel and smell to it. Much more satisfactory than softwood, with which neither my tools nor my technique are sharp enough to do a good job.

The joint

Figure 1: the joint

The figure above gives the general idea of such a joint, the sort of joint that might be involved in, for example, making a table. Where we would have the rail jointed to the very top of the stile (or leg), which is not always the case.

The tenon is cut with a tenon saw and trimmed with suitable chisels. And a wooden mallet, with a hammer doing bad things to the boxwood handles of (my) chisels. While the mortise, in hand work at least, is often drilled out with brace and bit, and then finished with suitable chisels. Usually including a suitable mortise chisel, the heaviest grade. I was taught that it was wise to do the tenon first, as that was more apt to go wrong and to require adjustments to the mortise, adjustments which could not be made if it had been done first.

Figure 2: assembling the joint

Figure 3: trimming the tenon

Assembling the joint usually involves more fiddling about than Figure 2 above would suggest. And at least when I am doing it, a fair amount of chisel work is needed on both mortise and tenon before one gets a snug fit – and not so snug that one bursts the mortise. I would not recommend the action shown in Figure 3, feeling much more comfortable when the piece of wood I am working on is firmly secured by cramp or vice – but it does give something of the idea. And Bing is much less stressful than getting BH to snap me at work!

Joints are usually glued together and cramped while they set. But they may be reinforced by one or more wooden dowels through both tenon and stile. And where the tenon goes right through the stile, perhaps sticking out half an inch or so, the joint may be tightened by the use of wedges at the two thin ends, pushing down between the edge cheeks and the stile of Figure 1, with the whole planed flat and smooth when the glue has set and hardened, usually overnight.

As hinted above, a joint which should not be attempted without a woodworker’s bench fitted with a woodworker’s vice. A chisel which slips on a piece of loose wood can do a lot of damage – and I have the scar to prove it.

I should add that while I have cut quite a few mortise and tenon joints over the years, perhaps as many as a small number of hundreds, I have not cut one for some years now. Perhaps as many as ten.

The first thought

Some drink taken during the day, Sunday, and some whisky last thing.

While not fully dark outside, the curtains were drawn and my eyes were shut. There was little going on and inner thought could rule – in a way that it does not when, for example, one is walking down the road, as I was when I was doing my descriptive experience sampling, back in the second half of 2016.

I found it very hard to proceed through the cutting in an orderly way, from marking out the two pieces of wood to be joined, through cutting the tenon and cutting out the mortise, to assembling the finished joint. What I got was much more episodic, vivid episodes, but in no particular order.
The episodes were mostly about chisel work, both on trimming the tenon (less) and on cutting out the mortise (more). Nothing on saw preliminaries to the tenon and nothing on the drill preliminaries to the mortise. Nothing on the often fraught final assembly with glue and cramps.

The vivid chisel episodes involved hallucinating (if that is the right word) the feel of the handle of the chisel in the hands. A feel which was much more to do with the action of the edge of the chisel on the wood than with the pressure of the handle in the palm. A feel which had been transmitted up the blade of the chisel, into the handle. One could really feel the different kinds of chip and shaving coming off the wood; feel rather than see. Maybe I was nearly producing the hand movement needed to do this in much the same way as one  nearly produces the tongue and mouth movements needed to articulate words out loud when saying them to oneself, in inner thought. But I was not aware of any actual movement in my hands.

I think there was also something here of the distinctive smell of fresh oak chips and shavings.

Figure 4: the mortise gauge

There were some episodes about marking up the joints on the wood before starting. The use and feel of both hands on the mortise gauge, very like that snapped above. The pressure on the thumbs pushing the points (top left) through the hard wood, to get a good pair of lines. Note that the gauge would be the other way up when being used, points down.

The knife work and chisel work needed to get the good line in the wood needed to get a good cut with the saw.

Figure 5: a marking knife

A digression to the fact that my marking knife (something like that snapped above) had been ground out of a rather sturdy knife once intended for something quite different, possibly something to with propagating fruit trees.

Trying to bring some order into this with inner words failed. The words prompted a bit of related imagery, but failed to bring about any proper order and the images remained episodic, in no particular order. Indeed, the words seemed to get in the way of the experience, an attempt to corral an experience in a clumsy and inappropriate word.

This apart, words did not seem to feature at all.

A second thought

Tried again the following evening after rather more whisky, but didn’t seem to be able to get going at all. But better the following morning – and different from the previous occasion. More words and less vivid. But still episodic in no particular order. Still unable to progress through the task in an orderly way.

Started off on the tenon. Making the various cuts with the tenon saw, cleaning up afterwards with a chisel. Cutting the four bevels (chamfers in Figure 1 above) on the end of the tenon to help it into the mortise later.

Then the word ‘blunt’ came to mind and I started to experience the different feel of cutting with a blunt saw to cutting with a sharp saw. The sometimes tedious business of making the cuts.
But no mistakes in this reverie, for example letting the saw drift past the line into the shoulder of the tenon.

Then I started to think about how long it was since I had sharpened a saw, never mind this one. And here words come into their own, as one cannot directly experience this sort of thing with the other senses; one cannot experience the passage of time in a condensed form. Words might be clumsy, they might only approximate to the thing itself, but thy are all that one has. Which might be different for the signing deaf who, as it were, think with their hands? Perhaps signing to oneself is more expressive than talking to oneself? Perhaps it is easier to be expressive when one has an audience other than oneself?

Figure 6: a brace and bits

Some time with the mortise. The feel of the brace and bit as it slowly sinks into the hard wood. The distinctive half discs of wood being pulled out of the hole by the screw of the bit. Roughly cutting out the hole with a mortise chisel, on which one needs to keep a firm grip to stop it twisting and making the hole too big. Cleaning out the hole with a bevel chisel. Either left hand holding the chisel and right hand with mallet, or left hand holding the blade of the chisel, guiding it, and the right hand pushing handle, with the rounded end of the handle in the palm. Echoes of the sensations one gets from the hands, and to a lesser extent from the body at large, when so doing.

By way of a postscript, I tried calling relevant images to mind during this afternoon’s brick walk, for which see reference 5. I found that I could call up the images from Figures 4 and 6, 4 better than 6 for some reason, but they were fleeting and a bit disembodied. Not much substance to them. No associated muscular activity that I could detect.

Conclusions

It seems that I can have, I can conjure up inner thoughts which are not words, quite a lot of them.

An important prerequisite seems to be being at rest, with eyes shut, preferably in the dark. To make enough space for expensive non-verbal imagery, one needs to shut down sensory input from outside. Maybe another aspect of this is that internally generated images do not have the strength of images coming from the outside, and one needs quiet for them to make it to consciousness.

An experiment which has the advantage that one is better able to report what is going on than when one is dreaming, than when one is asleep, which I had thought I was not after the first think – although I am not so sure about that after the second think.

It seems likely that in the rather contrived situation described above, I will start to think about the words needed to describe the experience during the experience. Perhaps I will shift from describing the experience to describing the activity I am trying to experience; not the same thing at all. And there will be interaction between the words and the experience. Maybe the words will not be forcing the (internally generated) experience in a top down way, but there will, at the very least, be a partnership.

In any event, something to be tried again. To see how the experience develops with practise. To try and see whether there really is interaction with trying to capture the experience after the event – which seems likely. Maybe to try other scenarios: I have cycled a few miles over the years and perhaps I can summon up the sensations involved there. Then maybe something which does not depend so much on repetitive muscular activity, activity which clearly is remembered in some obscure part of the brain.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/01/progress-report-on-descriptive.html.

Reference 2: Inner speech: development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and neurobiology – Alderson-Day, B., and Fernyhough, C. – 2015.

Reference 3: Savant Memory in a Man with Colour Form-Number Synaesthesia and Asperger Syndrome - Simon Baron-Cohen, Daniel Bor, Jac Billington, Julian Asher, Sally Wheelwright and Chris Ashwin – 2007.

Reference 4: http://danieltammet.net/.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/dry-run.html.