Our conscious thought processes are all the ones we are conscious of. Some of them are verbal, in words, eg thinking about what you want to say before saying it. Some of them are nonverbal, like a conscious awareness of guilt.
Most people have some form of inner monologue, aka self-talk, but not all. It sounds like you may be one of those with limited or no self-talk. Whereas I might think, in words, “I should get up or I’ll be late for work”, perhaps you experience a rising sense of guilt.
To benefit from this article you’ll need to translate it to fit your brain patterns.
I have given you the wrong impression, I assure you I have a very verbal, very longwinged inner monologue which uses a lot of words and sentences. However I wouldn’t consider it the sole or perhaps even the chief source of my planning, although sometimes it is involved in how I plan. So when the author says “verbal conscious planner” are there other ‘planners’ I should be excluding from my personal translation? How would I know?
I’m just wondering if there’s a specific reason that the author has referred to it as a VERBAL conscious planner, and if willpower is therefore only applicable to what is verbal? Because as I understand it, especially in the dual-theory of memory which divides memory into Declarative/Explicit Memory and Non-Declarative/Implicit Memory (to which it is easy to draw an analogy between System 1 and 2, or the Elaboration Likelyhood model of attitudinal change) - the verbal is explicit, the non-verbal is vague in this dichotomy.
Why refer to it as a “verbal conscious planner”—why not just say “conscious planner”? Surely the difference isn’t haphazard?
“Our conscious thought processes are all the ones we are conscious of.”
Could you rephrase this less tautologically? - because now I’m wondering a lot of perhaps irrelevant things such as: is it necessary to be conscious of the content of a thought, or only that a thought is currently being held? What micro-macro level of abstraction is necessary? For example, if I’m deliberating if I should check if a pair of shoes are available on an online store still discounted am I conscious of the thought if I think “shoes on online store” or must I refer to “that pair of red converses on ASOS”?
I just worry that this is perhaps a logocentric view of willpower.
Thanks for the extra information. Like you, my plans and my planning can be verbal, non-verbal, or a mix.
Why refer to it as a “verbal conscious planner”—why not just say “conscious planner”? Surely the difference isn’t haphazard?
I can’t speak for the author, but thinking of times where I’ve “lacked willpower” to follow a plan, or noticed that it’s “draining willpower” to follow a plan, it’s normally verbal plans and planning. Where “willpower” here is the ability to delay gratification rather than to withstand physical pain. My model here is that verbal plans are shareable and verbal planning is more transparent, so it’s more vulnerable to hostile telepaths and so to self-deception and misalignment. A verbal plan is more likely to be optimized to signal virtue.
Suppose I’m playing chess and I plan out a mate in five, thinking visually. My opponent plays a move that lets me capture their queen but forgoes the mate. I don’t experience “temptation” to take the queen, or have to use “willpower” to press ahead with the mate. Whereas a verbal plan like “I’m still a bit sick, I’ll go to bed early” is more likely to be derailed by temptation. This could of course be confounded by the different situations.
I think you raise a great question, and the more I think about it the less certain I am. This model predicts that people who mostly think visually have greater willpower than those who think verbally. Which I instinctively doubt, it doesn’t sound right. But then I read about the power of visualization and maybe I shouldn’t? Eg Trigger-Action Planning specifically calls out rehearsed visualization as helping to install TAPs.
Our conscious thought processes are all the ones we are conscious of. Some of them are verbal, in words, eg thinking about what you want to say before saying it. Some of them are nonverbal, like a conscious awareness of guilt.
Most people have some form of inner monologue, aka self-talk, but not all. It sounds like you may be one of those with limited or no self-talk. Whereas I might think, in words, “I should get up or I’ll be late for work”, perhaps you experience a rising sense of guilt.
To benefit from this article you’ll need to translate it to fit your brain patterns.
I have given you the wrong impression, I assure you I have a very verbal, very longwinged inner monologue which uses a lot of words and sentences. However I wouldn’t consider it the sole or perhaps even the chief source of my planning, although sometimes it is involved in how I plan. So when the author says “verbal conscious planner” are there other ‘planners’ I should be excluding from my personal translation? How would I know?
I’m just wondering if there’s a specific reason that the author has referred to it as a VERBAL conscious planner, and if willpower is therefore only applicable to what is verbal? Because as I understand it, especially in the dual-theory of memory which divides memory into Declarative/Explicit Memory and Non-Declarative/Implicit Memory (to which it is easy to draw an analogy between System 1 and 2, or the Elaboration Likelyhood model of attitudinal change) - the verbal is explicit, the non-verbal is vague in this dichotomy.
Why refer to it as a “verbal conscious planner”—why not just say “conscious planner”? Surely the difference isn’t haphazard?
Could you rephrase this less tautologically? - because now I’m wondering a lot of perhaps irrelevant things such as: is it necessary to be conscious of the content of a thought, or only that a thought is currently being held? What micro-macro level of abstraction is necessary? For example, if I’m deliberating if I should check if a pair of shoes are available on an online store still discounted am I conscious of the thought if I think “shoes on online store” or must I refer to “that pair of red converses on ASOS”?
I just worry that this is perhaps a logocentric view of willpower.
Thanks for the extra information. Like you, my plans and my planning can be verbal, non-verbal, or a mix.
I can’t speak for the author, but thinking of times where I’ve “lacked willpower” to follow a plan, or noticed that it’s “draining willpower” to follow a plan, it’s normally verbal plans and planning. Where “willpower” here is the ability to delay gratification rather than to withstand physical pain. My model here is that verbal plans are shareable and verbal planning is more transparent, so it’s more vulnerable to hostile telepaths and so to self-deception and misalignment. A verbal plan is more likely to be optimized to signal virtue.
Suppose I’m playing chess and I plan out a mate in five, thinking visually. My opponent plays a move that lets me capture their queen but forgoes the mate. I don’t experience “temptation” to take the queen, or have to use “willpower” to press ahead with the mate. Whereas a verbal plan like “I’m still a bit sick, I’ll go to bed early” is more likely to be derailed by temptation. This could of course be confounded by the different situations.
I think you raise a great question, and the more I think about it the less certain I am. This model predicts that people who mostly think visually have greater willpower than those who think verbally. Which I instinctively doubt, it doesn’t sound right. But then I read about the power of visualization and maybe I shouldn’t? Eg Trigger-Action Planning specifically calls out rehearsed visualization as helping to install TAPs.