Thinking as the activity of operating with signs‏

     The nature of thinking

We wrongly interpret thinking as a medium.  

This is a puzzlement caused by the mystifying use of our language.  

This kind of mistake recurs again and again in philosophy.

We are tempted to think that things are hidden.  
Yet nothing of the sort is the case.  
It is not new facts about time which we want to know.  
All the facts that concern us lie open before us. (p. 6)

"It is misleading then to talk of thinking as a 'mental activity'.

We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs.  
This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing;

by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by

imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks.  If then

you say that in such cases the mind thinks, I would only draw your attention

to the fact that you are using a metaphor, that here the mind is an agent

in a different sense from that in which the hand can be said to be the agent 

of writing". (p. 6-7)

"If again we talk about the locality where thinking takes place we have right to

say that this locality is the paper on which we write or the mouth which speaks.

And if we talk of the head or the brain as the locality of thought, this is using

the expression "locality of thinking" in a different sense." (p.7)

"We think with our mouth" or "we think with a pencil on a piece of paper". (p. 7)

"Perhaps the main reason  why are we so strongly inclined to talk of the head as the

locality of our thoughts is this: the existence of the words "thinking" and "thoughts"

alongside of the words denoting (bodily) activities, such as writing, speaking, etc…."

"… thinking essentially consists in operating with signs." (p. 15)

It is misleading "if we say 'thinking is a mental activity' (p. 16), 

Thinking is an activity of the hand.  The mind does not think.  The hand is the agent in

writing.  The locality where thinking take place, the paper or the mouth.  Wrongly we talk

of the head or the brain as the locality of thought.  We think with our mouth (p. 43)

We think with a pencil or a piece of paper.  Thinking is a bodily activity: writing, speaking

is something not nothing.

The word = its use

The idea of our visual field being located in our brain arouse from a grammatical

misunderstanding (p.9)

Thinking, hoping, wishing, believing not independent of thought, hope, wish (p. 41)

Thinking is not a private experience.

"Make the following experiment: say and mean a sentence, e.g.: "it will probably rain

tomorrow".  Now think the same thought again, mean what you just meant, but without

saying anything (either aloud or to yourself).  If thinking that it will rain tomorrow

accompanied saying that it will rain tomorrow, then just do the first activity and leave

out the second. -If thinking and speaking stood in the relation of the words and the melody

of a song, we could leave out the speaking and do the thinking as we can sing the tune

without the words." (p. 42)

It is imposible to think without saying anything.

Ludwig Wittgenstein.  The Blue and Brown Books.
Harper & Row.  New York.  1965 (based on the second edition published in 1960)