Thursday, February 22, 2007

 

You know the old cliche phrase "think outside the box"? Sometimes I feel like I have a hard time thinking inside the box. I've cultivated abstraction, objectivity and introspection for so long that even when I'm just trying to reason coherently within a conventional framework, my mind insists on digressions into epistemological questions about the validity of the framework, or metacognitive observations of what it's doing and why, or metametacognitive consideration of these metacognitive observations. It's not just distractibility; it's too systematic and consistent. If you want to characterize it as pathological, it's closer to obsessive compulsive: it's hard for me to just be in the world, in the moment, perceiving, problem solving, and acting, because my mind pulls me away, down into itself or off into the abstract, conceptual world, depending on how you want to look at it.

Like now: I'm trying to work on a paper, develop an analysis, and instead I feel compelled to think out loud, here, about things like my obsession with metametacognition.

Labels: meta metacognition epistemology

posted by Miles 9:39 AM

Comments:

If I ever need to describe your personality to a stranger, showing them this post would clearly be part of my approach.

From the day I met you, this natural tendency towards cogitation / meta-cogitation has been a core and unchanging piece of who you are. It's also not something I've ever seen in another person. Some days I love it, some days it drives me completely batty, but always it's a part of what makes you Miles.

# posted by  Anonymous : 5:07 PM

 

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