0:11

Hello, and welcome to Overthink.

0:13

The podcast where you get

0:13

to hear your two favorite thinkers

0:18

overthinking a lot of stuff all the time.

0:21

I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson.

0:23

And I'm Dr. David Peña Guzman.

0:25

And David, we made it. It is our 100th episode.

0:29

I feel like I would always think about

0:29

podcasts having 100 episodes and feel

0:33

like I would think that that meant

0:33

that they've been going on for so long.

0:37

And it doesn't feel like

0:37

it's actually been that long.

0:39

I'm kind of in shock that it's

0:39

been 100 episodes, to be honest.

0:42

I know I'm so excited

0:42

about reaching this milestone.

0:45

I'm over here like, imagining little

0:45

trumpets and confetti flying around,

0:52

but does feel like we haven't been

0:52

doing this all that much, but I have

0:56

to say by the standards of the world

0:56

of podcasting, we are in the minority

1:01

because most podcasts bail out when they

1:01

hit like the double digits of episodes.

1:06

So by now we are a longstanding

1:06

podcast in the community of

1:12

podcasting and it feels really good.

1:15

Which I think has translated,

1:15

you know, in terms of our listenership

1:19

and how people are engaging with us

1:19

as hosts, you know, like the ways

1:23

that people know what Overthink is. It's so exciting and it's been really

1:25

fun, I think, from my perspective to

1:29

have a creative outlet in this way and

1:29

also to be able to learn about so many

1:34

different areas of philosophy, because

1:34

a lot of times, you know, we're reading

1:39

new articles or books for episodes, and

1:39

I feel like it's just also broadened

1:43

my horizons of what kinds of things

1:43

I'm thinking about, what kinds of

1:46

interlocutors I have in mind, and so on.

1:49

I would add another point to that,

1:49

which is that not only are we learning a

1:53

lot about all these areas that we decide

1:53

to take on as episodes, but we've also

1:57

gained a lot of insight into each other,

1:57

as thinkers and as friends also, because

2:04

one of the things that I really look

2:04

forward to whenever we settle on a topic

2:08

what ideas am I going to have?

2:11

But also, how is Ellie going to

2:11

surprise me with the ideas that she's

2:15

also going to bring to the table?

2:18

I love that this has been for us

2:18

both an outlet for intellectual

2:21

creativity, but also a kind of

2:21

laboratory for working and reworking

2:26

our friendship along intellectual lines.

2:29

And so I'm very thankful for that, Ellie.

2:31

Yeah!

2:31

Speaking as your buddy David and

2:31

not just your wonderfully smart colleague.

2:38

Yeah, work husband. I prefer that work husband.

2:41

Maybe I prefer work wife.

2:42

You're right. Okay just constantly appropriating

2:43

women's culture, David.

2:50

But thanks for saying that. I, I recently was talking to my long

2:51

time friend and roommate from Atlanta

2:56

from back when we were in grad school

2:56

there, Isa, who loves our podcast.

3:00

So just a little shout out. Hi! And I was telling her that, you know,

3:01

you and I sometimes have a hard time

3:04

disagreeing about topics when we're

3:04

discussing them because we share

3:07

so many of the same intuitions. And she very kindly was

3:09

like, you know what? But even when you agree, you agree for

3:11

different reasons, like you have the

3:15

same view, but you have different ways

3:15

of backing that up and understanding it.

3:18

And I feel like that's a really, that was

3:18

a helpful thing for me to think about.

3:22

Yeah, no, we have not fused

3:22

into a single Borg like mind on This

3:28

podcast, we still have our own ideas

3:28

and our own approaches, and I do think

3:32

that they complement each other well. And I say that just in terms of

3:34

our styles, but also in terms

3:38

of our intellectual interests. We bring different things

3:39

to the conversation that end

3:42

up creating nice synergies.

3:44

Mm hmm. Yeah. So now as we are overthinking our

3:45

podcast, Overthink, in these first

3:49

few minutes of our 100th episode, we

3:49

want talk about how we came to this

3:55

name a little bit because we decided

3:55

to go meta for this episode and do an

3:59

episode of Overthink on overthinking.

4:01

So to start, we just wanted to share

4:01

how we ended up naming the podcast

4:07

this way and tell you some of the other

4:07

possible names that we were considering.

4:12

So David, what's your, what's

4:12

your narrative of how we came

4:14

up with the name Overthink?

4:16

So for our listeners, I just want

4:16

you to visualize the following, Ellie and

4:19

I have this old Google doc where we have

4:19

notes from the time when we were beginning

4:25

to think about doing a podcast together. So it's very old and we put all

4:27

the names that we were considering

4:30

in this Google document.

4:31

It's 53 pages.

4:33

It's, yes, it's 53 pages, and

4:33

I think we ended up with overthink

4:39

because it felt tongue in cheek, because

4:39

overthink is something that we're told

4:45

we shouldn't do, but it's also something

4:45

that philosophers encourage us to do.

4:51

And so we like that kind of sense

4:51

of playfulness to the topic.

4:55

But we did consider some other names,

4:55

some of which were decent, some

4:59

of which were honestly horrendous.

5:01

Yeah. So on the horrendous note, here's

5:02

a few that we were considering.

5:07

Mountains out of molehills. Two smart cookies.

5:12

Philosophy hotspot. Burn after reading.

5:16

David, that was yours. What is that?

5:18

Isn't it a movie

5:18

also, burn after reading?

5:22

Yes, that's it. That's especially bad.

5:24

Here's, here's a couple

5:24

that I came up with.

5:27

Gadflies. Belabor the point.

5:31

Midwives of ideas.

5:33

Midwife, you see I am your midwife.

5:37

I'm your wife and your midwife.

5:39

Okay, okay, true, true, true. You're my work midwife.

5:44

I cringe to think about how close we came

5:44

to naming this podcast Featherless Bipeds.

5:50

Honestly, I love that name. I still stand by it.

5:54

I think it is so good and unique

5:54

and original and also accurate.

5:59

We are featherless bipeds.

6:02

Yeah, I talked a little

6:02

bit about that as a possible

6:05

name in another episode, but

6:05

yeah, it's not, not a bad one.

6:08

It's just, it doesn't have the same

6:08

ring as Overthink and we got so

6:13

close to naming our podcast that

6:13

and yeah, I really like Overthink.

6:17

Yeah. there is a lot. Ellie, we cannot go through all of them.

6:21

Oh my god. Okay, last we'll move on.

6:23

The Theory Spinsters. What is going on with that one?

6:29

The feminine thread running

6:29

through all these names evident.

6:34

It's evident.

6:35

I do feel like Overthink, when

6:35

we were trying on these names, it

6:37

was like trying on a bunch of pairs

6:37

of jeans, and Overthink just fit

6:41

like a good pair of Levi's 501s, and

6:41

a few years later, it's just worn

6:45

itself in, in a very comforting way.

6:50

and I like that it's like an

6:50

injunction, it's a call to action.

6:54

It's like an order. Overthink. And it's counterintuitive, right?

6:58

Because it's something that,

6:58

like I said, we typically tend

7:01

to think of in a negative light. So it fits in a really fun way.

7:09

Today we're talking

7:09

about overthinking.

7:12

For our 100th episode,

7:12

we want to go meta and ask:

7:16

is overthinking a bad thing?

7:19

Under what conditions?

7:21

And how can we praise

7:21

examined in a world that resists it?

7:32

In an 1818 article entitled Lecture

7:32

on Hamlet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

7:39

argues that this famous Shakespearean

7:39

character is the epitome of overthinking.

7:46

He argues that Shakespeare went about

7:46

creating characters by essentially

7:50

imagining a person who had either

7:50

an excess or an absence of a

7:55

particular trait, and then imagining

7:55

what their life would be like in

7:59

light of that presence or absence. And in the case of Hamlet, Shakespeare

8:02

invented a man who had an excess of

8:08

thinking and rational capacity, so

8:08

much so that his thinking capacities

8:14

overwhelm his capacity for sensibility.

8:17

So here we have the

8:17

overthinker par excellence.

8:21

And you can see that a lot in

8:21

Hamlet's soliloquy and in other aspects

8:26

of the play too, some of his dialogue.

8:29

He's just obsessed with figuring out

8:29

what the right course of action is

8:34

and is constantly hesitating, right?

8:36

I think Hamlet is also associated with

8:36

hesitation of not being able to act

8:41

because he's too caught up in thinking.

8:44

And it's also interesting

8:44

to me because Hamlet is Is.

8:48

often additionally

8:48

associated with depression.

8:52

He's known as a character who exemplifies

8:52

like a depressive attitude towards the

8:58

world, to the extent that some people

8:58

have kind of diagnosed this fictional

9:02

character of with depression or,

9:02

you know, prior to that melancholia.

9:06

And this connection interests me

9:06

because there's a lot in psychology

9:11

research associating overthinking

9:11

with negative mental health outcomes.

9:15

What we call overthinking is more or

9:15

less what psychologists call repetitive

9:20

thought, or the process of thinking

9:20

attentively, repetitively, or frequently

9:25

about oneself and one's world. That's a definition from this

9:27

2003 article by Segerstrom.

9:31

There are a lot of different

9:31

kinds of repetitive thought that

9:34

psychological literature focuses on.

9:36

I went down quite a rabbit hole of

9:36

looking into them for this episode, but

9:41

one common form is depressive rumination.

9:43

So I want to say a little bit about that

9:43

in light of, I think, this common cultural

9:48

narrative that we have that overthinking

9:48

is a bad thing because there is some

9:52

research to suggest that that is true.

9:55

The notion of depressive rumination

9:55

is associated with the psychologist

9:59

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, who developed a

9:59

theory of the link between depression

10:04

and rumination in the 1990s that she

10:04

calls the response styles theory.

10:09

And according to the response styles

10:09

theory, rumination is a way of

10:13

responding to distress that involves

10:13

repetitively and passively focusing

10:18

on symptoms of distress and on the

10:18

possible causes and consequences of them.

10:23

And so if you are experiencing

10:23

distress, you might focus on like,

10:27

well, why am I feeling this way? And what is going to happen as

10:29

a result of me feeling this way?

10:34

And you're just kind of obsessively

10:34

going into these thought loops.

10:37

And this is associated with the

10:37

onset of depression and also

10:40

with the maintenance of it. So if you get caught in these

10:42

thought loops, you know, thinking

10:45

things like, I'm worthless.

10:47

There's no meaning to my life. Nothing's ever going to get better.

10:51

Then you're actually maintaining

10:51

your depression, even though it's

10:54

arguably a way for your nervous

10:54

system to try and overcome it, right?

10:57

It's a response to distress, but

10:57

it's a really unproductive response

11:00

to distress because it ends up

11:00

actually making you feel worse.

11:04

it ends up amplifying your stress

11:04

because as you point out, it redirects

11:08

your focus over to your own mental state,

11:08

which is why often people think about

11:14

these thought loops as targeting the self.

11:17

And one of the consequences, of course,

11:17

of getting trapped in one of these thought

11:22

loops is that it entirely disconnects

11:22

you from the world of action, right?

11:27

Like you're unable to do the sorts of

11:27

things that you would want to do or

11:31

that would bring about a shift in your

11:31

mood, a shift in your perspective.

11:36

And just to go back for a hot second to

11:36

Hamlet, I think you really see this in

11:41

the character of Hamlet, who is consumed

11:41

by trying to figure out who killed

11:45

his father in order to get revenge.

11:48

And there is a very famous

11:48

scene in the play where Hamlet.

11:52

He finds the person who killed his father,

11:52

who is just sitting inside a church, and

11:57

he's about to get the revenge that he's

11:57

been wanting this whole time, and he gets

12:01

caught in one of those thought loops. Hamlet starts thinking, Oh, this

12:03

guy is here, but if I kill him right

12:07

now, then maybe this is not the

12:07

right decision because he's praying

12:11

in church right now, which means

12:11

that God has just forgiven him.

12:15

And so if I kill him, he's

12:15

going to go to heaven.

12:17

And that means that he's not

12:17

going to suffer eternal damnation.

12:21

And so at the moment of action, the

12:21

thought loop intervenes, and he's

12:26

unable to do the thing that was

12:26

his goal from the very beginning.

12:30

Absolutely. And I think it would be important

12:30

to put a couple things in context

12:33

here in connection to Hamlet. One is that this guy is his stepfather,

12:34

so it's not just a rando, right?

12:39

And another is that, the form of action

12:39

that he is wanting to take is murder.

12:44

so I would maybe caution against, a

12:44

correlation, when, Nolen-Hoeksema is

12:50

talking about depressive rumination,

12:50

she's talking mostly about thoughts

12:54

of, one's own, esteem in the world,

12:57

a sense of worthlessness, a sense that

12:57

nothing's ever going to get better.

13:00

So there's this really strong

13:00

evaluative component to it.

13:03

I think what, Hamlet has going on in

13:03

this scene that you're talking about

13:06

would be one of the other kinds of,

13:06

repetitive thought that psychologists

13:11

focus on, possibly simply worry, is

13:11

another form of repetitive thought.

13:17

I would say that it's more than

13:17

just worry because all I wanted to address

13:22

by that is that there is a dissociation

13:22

from the world of action and behavior in

13:27

the case of rumination, where the thought

13:27

process gets started and it prevents

13:32

you from ever reaching that point at

13:32

which you have to leap from realm of

13:37

thought to the realm of practical action.

13:39

But yes, of course, I don't say that

13:39

the way out of a thought loop is

13:43

through murdering your stepfather. That is not the takeaway here.

13:47

also with respect to rumination,

13:47

though, one of the aspects of the

13:50

definition of rumination is that

13:50

rumination involves thoughts that

13:54

don't have immediate environmental

13:54

cues associated with them.

13:59

So when you're ruminating, it's actually

13:59

not on a situation in which you currently

14:02

find yourself like in a material sense. It's either more abstract or

14:04

actually more imaginative.

14:07

It's thinking about, like, "Oh, is the

14:07

person I have a crush on thinking about

14:11

me when they're not there in the moment?"

14:14

And the fact that those cues are

14:14

outside of the immediate environment

14:18

would suggest that it's a case of the

14:18

mind fleeing from the surrounding world

14:25

in a way that, is tricky to get it to

14:25

come back, which is what makes things like

14:31

depression and other forms of rumination

14:31

as well so difficult to treat and to

14:36

control because they represent this kind

14:36

of flight of our psychology from reality

14:42

in many ways, a kind of dissociation.

14:46

You know, even though Hamlet's a

14:46

young man, rumination is much more common

14:52

among women than among men on the whole.

14:54

And it's also much more common for women

14:54

to be depressed than it is for men to be.

14:59

psychologists acknowledge that

14:59

it's not a mere coincidence

15:02

that women tend to be prone to

15:02

rumination and to depression, right?

15:05

Because there's actually a pretty tight

15:05

link between depression and rumination.

15:10

Yeah, and here we're talking

15:10

about a kind of rumination that

15:13

has to do with a vicious cycle,

15:13

where you get dragged into a mental

15:18

whirlwind that is difficult to break.

15:20

But I would also add that there are

15:20

other forms of rumination that maybe

15:25

have more to do with just amplifying

15:25

things that are insignificant in

15:31

various contexts, and that still

15:31

would be a kind of overthinking.

15:34

And here I want to make a pivot for a

15:34

moment from the psychological more to the

15:38

physical, because I read an article about

15:38

chronic pain where the authors suggested

15:44

that one of the ways in which we can

15:44

really overthink our relationship to our

15:48

body is when we ever we have chronic pain,

15:48

because of course pain is aversive, we

15:55

want to do everything in our power to make

15:55

it subside when it's there and to prevent

15:59

it from arriving when it's not there. And the author of this piece talked

16:02

about her chronic leg pain, and she

16:06

suggested that often people who suffer

16:06

from chronic pain, what they face is

16:12

precisely a problem of overthinking,

16:12

where they start attending to every

16:17

little sensation that might come from

16:17

their bodies and interpreting that

16:21

information as pain before the body and

16:21

the mind really tell us that it is pain.

16:28

So it's a case where our expectation

16:28

and our heightened attention to certain

16:32

things becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

16:36

And so here we're talking not so much

16:36

about the mind getting itself in a loop,

16:41

but the mind bringing something about

16:41

through expectation and prediction.

16:45

Definitely, and I found a

16:45

little bit of that in some of the

16:48

work that I was looking at too. Not only is rumination associated with

16:49

depression, but it's also associated

16:53

with anxiety and with physical outcomes.

16:58

But lest you as a listener think

16:58

like, okay, so this podcast called

17:03

overthink is just going to be all

17:03

about why overthinking is terrible.

17:07

This is only part of the story

17:07

and it is a part of the story that

17:10

that is worth mentioning, right? I know like in my own life, I've

17:12

experienced some really destructive

17:15

thought loops that I would

17:15

consider to be overthinking that

17:18

My life is better without them.

17:21

There are also forms of constructive

17:21

overthinking or repetitive

17:26

thought, as it's called in

17:26

the psychological literature.

17:28

So I want to think a

17:28

little bit about those two.

17:31

Because also included in repetitive

17:31

thought, are things like planning,

17:35

problem solving, mental simulation,

17:35

and cognitive and emotional processing.

17:41

for listening. And some of these forms of

17:41

overthinking have been associated

17:46

with some really positive mental

17:46

health outcomes, especially when

17:50

they are undertaken in certain ways.

17:55

So, take cognitive

17:55

processing, for instance.

17:59

Cognitive processing is a process

17:59

of actively thinking about a

18:04

stressor and its implications for

18:04

your life and for your future.

18:10

This kind of processing is

18:10

hypothesized to be central to

18:14

overcoming post traumatic stress.

18:17

So PTSD has been associated with

18:17

repetitive thought patterns, but

18:22

also overcoming PTSD is associated

18:22

with repetitive thought patterns.

18:27

It just depends on the kind of repetitive

18:27

thought patterns that you are engaging in.

18:31

And so some psychologists have suggested

18:31

that major traumatic events challenge or

18:37

destroy key aspects of yourself, right?

18:40

And this produces emotional distress

18:40

and repetitive thought can be a

18:44

way of resolving that distress

18:44

that leads to personal growth.

18:48

I really like what you're saying

18:48

now, Ellie, because we need to keep in

18:51

mind the difference between positive

18:51

and negative forms of rumination.

18:55

But when we talk about the negative

18:55

form of rumination, we also have to

18:58

recognize that it can take various forms.

19:00

Because an article that I read

19:00

for this episode, which is called

19:04

Rumination as a Transdiagnostic

19:04

Phenomenon in the 21st Century, which

19:08

appeared in the journal Brain Science. makes the argument that for a very

19:10

long time, people, especially in

19:14

psychology and cognitive science, have

19:14

thought of rumination and overthinking

19:19

largely in connection to depression

19:19

and melancholia, because their focus

19:23

is on forms of rumination, where the

19:23

self is the object of that kind of

19:29

thought pattern and thought loop. But there are other forms of rumination

19:31

that have nothing to do with the self

19:35

and your reference in particular to

19:35

PTSD reminded me of this connection

19:40

because they say when somebody suffers

19:40

from PTSD and they play and replay

19:47

let's say a traumatic event like a car

19:47

crash or an earthquake or a war scene

19:53

in their minds We have every reason to

19:53

believe that is a kind of rumination.

19:58

It's just not a self

19:58

directed kind of rumination.

20:02

It is what they call event based

20:02

rumination, where you ruminate

20:07

about the world and about things

20:07

that have happened in the past.

20:11

But of course, if we then go back to

20:11

the positive form of rumination, the

20:14

article that I mentioned about chronic

20:14

pain also makes this point that in the

20:19

same way that overthinking can be at the

20:19

root of the problem for people suffering

20:25

from chronic pain conditions, it too

20:25

can be part of the solution if you, for

20:30

example, start focusing on other aspects

20:30

of the experience, like the fact that

20:35

it's transient, or if you start focusing

20:35

on new ways of describing what is

20:40

happening to you that shift the experience

20:40

from the kind of negative end of the

20:45

hedonic spectrum to the positive one.

20:48

That's an interesting take on it. I hadn't come across that in my research,

20:49

because one thing I did find is that

20:52

constructive forms of repetitive

20:52

thought have been the subject of much

20:56

less research than unconstructive

20:56

repetitive thought, and I think you

21:00

kind of alluded to that as well. One thing I found really interesting

21:02

when talking about constructive

21:05

repetitive thought is that even when the

21:05

contents of our repetitive thoughts are

21:09

negative, there are different ways of

21:09

engaging with those negative thoughts

21:14

that are more and less constructive.

21:16

And so let's say you're caught in a

21:16

depressive thought loop of thinking

21:20

to yourself, I'm worthless and

21:20

things are never going to get better.

21:24

If you have a problem solving approach

21:24

or an evaluative approach to that

21:31

thought, it's just going to make you

21:31

feel worse because you're going to know

21:34

like this isn't solving any problems. Like me thinking I'm worthless

21:36

isn't getting me anywhere.

21:39

And then you're going to exacerbate

21:39

it actually like making it even worse.

21:43

But If you take a more searching or

21:43

exploratory perspective on things,

21:49

what in the literature is called

21:49

experiential rumination, then it can

21:54

actually be kind of constructive. And I think this sounds quite a bit

21:56

like mindfulness practice, right?

22:00

This idea of non judgmental awareness

22:00

of what's going on with you.

22:05

This experiential rumination actually

22:05

improved outcomes for depressive patients.

22:10

And why do you say that

22:10

it's similar to mindfulness?

22:13

Is it that the authors made an

22:13

explicit connection to that?

22:16

Because I'm trying to get an

22:16

image of what experiential

22:19

rumination looks like in practice.

22:22

It looks like recognizing

22:22

I'm having this thought, getting

22:26

curious about your experience. And in fact, the author of the study that

22:28

I'm talking about here has a footnote

22:31

saying this actually is different

22:31

from mindfulness, but the way that he

22:34

characterizes mindfulness as super narrow.

22:36

And as somebody who's been practicing

22:36

meditation for a long time, I

22:39

think it's very fair to say that

22:39

experiential rumination is a form of

22:43

mindfulness based on the way that it

22:43

was being described in, in the pieces.

22:48

Ah, I don't know, Ellie. I think that's still a little

22:49

bit unclear in my mind.

22:52

I would want to know a little bit more

22:52

about why they're calling attending

22:56

to experience, and what you're

22:56

feeling and thinking in the moment,

22:59

rumination per se, and then what that

22:59

really looks like practically in the

23:04

context of, somebody being told that

23:04

they should do this by a therapist

23:09

or a doctor or something like that. Is it something that

23:11

they do in the clinic? Is it something that they do at home?

23:14

Is it a one time exercise or more of

23:14

a global shift in one's perspective?

23:19

What's this positive form of rumination?

23:22

Well, it's still a form of

23:22

rumination because it's repetitively

23:25

focusing your thoughts on the

23:25

self as well as symptoms and mood.

23:29

It's just that you're engaging with

23:29

that in a different way and that's

23:32

one of the ways that the author

23:32

distinguishes it from mindfulness.

23:35

Although, as I said, I feel like it is

23:35

fair to consider it a form of it because

23:39

in mindfulness the author notes there

23:39

is a focus on bodily states whereas

23:44

this is really more about just thinking.

23:46

And so idea is that you're just engaging

23:46

in this nonjudgmental awareness,

23:52

and they were doing some, clinical

23:52

studies to try and induce this state of

23:56

rumination among patients, but really

23:56

to induce, again, this experiential

24:01

form where it's not, it's not

24:01

feeding the cycle of I am worthless.

24:06

It's noticing those

24:06

thoughts when they arise.

24:10

And that is a form of metacognition.

24:12

know, therefore, and it's about the self. So it would meet the definition

24:14

of rumination as it's being used

24:18

in the psychological literature.

24:19

Yeah, no, if the point is to

24:19

attend to when those negative thoughts

24:24

emerge so that then you can re pivot

24:24

in connection to them, it strikes me

24:29

as somewhat similar to what I mentioned

24:29

in connection to chronic pain, which

24:32

is that instead of just thinking,

24:32

Oh, I feel something in my leg.

24:35

It must be pain. You really attend to when it emerges,

24:37

when it doesn't, and maybe the fact

24:42

that you still can do a number of things

24:42

when it appears, so that it breaks

24:46

this idea that it's incapacitating

24:46

or debilitating right away.

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25:16

Whenever we accuse somebody

25:16

of overthinking things, we do

25:21

so with the assumption that we

25:21

understand what thinking is, such

25:25

that we can identify those cases

25:25

where somebody is overdoing it.

25:30

And the discussion that we just

25:30

had about psychological rumination,

25:35

I think defines overthinking as

25:35

a kind of getting stuck, right?

25:40

Like you can move forward in your thought

25:40

process and you're just like spinning

25:46

the wheels without making any progress.

25:48

I almost think of a car that's

25:48

stuck in mud and you're stepping on

25:52

the gas and the wheels are turning

25:52

but you're not actually moving.

25:56

That's what we tend to think is

25:56

happening in these cases, right?

25:59

That's what it means to overthink. And I think if that's the notion of

26:01

overthinking that is at work here,

26:05

it means that the implicit notion of

26:05

thinking that we're dealing with is

26:11

the idea that thinking is or should

26:11

be a continuous stream of mental

26:18

activity, which is how a number of

26:18

philosophers have thought about it.

26:22

That's how a lot of early modern

26:22

thinkers like Hume and Locke

26:26

thought about what thinking is. It's a kind of flow and association

26:28

and connection of ideas.

26:32

And it's also how William James,

26:32

the father of American psychology,

26:37

defines conscious experience.

26:39

He uses the metaphor of the stream.

26:41

And what I want us to think about

26:41

a little bit, Ellie, is that

26:45

this is only one way of thinking

26:45

about what it means to overthink.

26:49

And I'm going to pitch now an

26:49

alternative account, and I want

26:53

to get your thoughts about that.

26:54

Right, hit me.

26:55

So what I'm going to mention

26:55

here, I'm getting from a 1941 essay

27:00

called Co conscious Mentation that

27:00

was written by Charles Oberndorf, and

27:05

it's a contribution to psychoanalysis. According to Oberndorf, our experience

27:07

of thinking is not, as these modern

27:13

thinkers or William James would have

27:13

said, a stream of mental activity.

27:18

Rather, there are often many cases where

27:18

our experience of thinking is actually

27:23

a split or a dissociation between two

27:23

coexisting processes of mental experience

27:30

that are happening at the same time. So think about, for example, Ellie,

27:32

when you're watching a movie and you're

27:36

paying attention to the movie, of course,

27:36

but you're also already thinking about

27:40

why you hate the movie so much, like

27:40

everything that makes it so terrible.

27:44

This sounds like what I articulated

27:44

when we had the bad movies episode.

27:47

Like, I actually often movies with that

27:47

sort of dual thought process going on.

27:51

Yeah, and so that dual thought

27:51

process is what he calls co-conscious

27:55

mentation, and he says, look, this is

27:55

a normal feature of our mental life.

27:58

In fact, that's what thinking often is.

28:01

It's this duality where we're

28:01

entertaining two ideas and trains

28:05

of thought at the same time. Unfortunately, sometimes that

28:07

duality can be accentuated to the

28:13

point that it becomes pathological. And what should be a minor split

28:15

becomes a full blown dissociation that

28:20

culminates in a kind of obsessive form

28:20

of thinking or negative rumination

28:26

that can potentially lead us to

28:26

derealization and depersonalization

28:31

in the most extreme cases, right? Where your thought kind of splits,

28:33

producing a kind of psychosis.

28:37

And so here overthinking is no longer

28:37

getting stuck and spinning your wheels

28:43

internally, but rather a kind of normal

28:43

splitting that becomes abnormal and the

28:50

creation of a rupture in your mind that

28:50

can no longer be brought back together.

28:55

Okay, this one is

28:55

definitely my form of overthinking.

28:59

The co-conscious one.

29:01

The co conscious mentation. Yeah, I mean, not in terms of full blown

29:02

derealization or depersonalization, but

29:07

definitely some low level dissociation

29:07

that happens for me quite frequently.

29:12

No, very frequently. And I feel like I am just

29:14

constantly co consciously mentating.

29:20

Even as a long time meditator, when they

29:20

tell you when you're studying meditation,

29:24

it's not about stopping thoughts. It's about just kind of like

29:26

not investing so much in them.

29:30

That is the only way I've kept

29:30

meditating so long because if

29:33

was about stopping thoughts,

29:33

like, it would never work for me.

29:37

And in fact, okay, one time when I was

29:37

in grad school, I was applying for some

29:42

fellowship or job that required mailing

29:42

in letters of recommendation, which is

29:47

like pretty unheard of now and was even

29:47

unheard of then it was all via email.

29:52

And so, my recommenders had to print out

29:52

their letters of recommendation, put them

29:56

in envelopes, and then I sent them in.

29:58

And I have to admit that I put one

29:58

of them up to the light just to

30:03

like, see just like a little, a

30:03

little glimpse of what it was saying.

30:08

I didn't want try and read entirely,

30:08

but I was just kinda curious.

30:11

So I it up to light and was

30:11

I'll let myself read a phrase.

30:15

And the phrase I read was something

30:15

like, her mind is always active.

30:20

It never rests. And I was like, then that caused

30:21

me to spit out being like.

30:24

Is this a good recommendation

30:24

or a bad recommendation?

30:27

Because that could really go different ways.

30:29

Oh my gosh, I wish I had some

30:29

insight into what people wrote about

30:33

me and my letters of recommendation,

30:35

David underthinks. He actually doesn't really think at all.

30:39

yes, no, I was about to

30:39

say, if I am one of these two

30:42

models of overthinking, I am

30:42

definitely not the co conscious one.

30:47

I am the continuous stream and

30:47

getting stuck in the mud one.

30:51

So I honestly, really,

30:51

I'm an underthinker.

30:54

and I'm, it's something that has, I don't

30:54

say that with pride, but I also don't say

30:59

that with any shame, because it has served

30:59

me really well in many areas of my life.

31:04

But when I do overthink, it takes the

31:04

form of me zooming in on a detail and

31:10

spinning my wheels and rehearsing it

31:10

and going over again and again, without

31:16

getting the kind of resolution that,

31:16

okay, either I've said what I had to

31:20

say or I've done what I needed to do.

31:23

So I'm the kind of person that's

31:23

in the shower, holding the shampoo

31:27

bottle, yelling at somebody, telling

31:27

them something that I should have told

31:30

them a long time ago, but it is rare.

31:33

It is rare.

31:34

Okay, just repetitively thinking about that. But so, so would you really

31:36

say you're not an overthinker?

31:40

I mean, as somebody with a PhD in

31:40

philosophy who has a podcast called

31:44

Overthink and has written a book?

31:48

no. obviously I'm a thinker and an overthinker

31:49

in the positive academic sense of the

31:53

term, but a number of people have told

31:53

me sometimes positively, sometimes

31:57

negatively that I underthink a lot

31:57

of things and just let them go by.

32:02

I just give myself over to that, let's

32:02

say the Jamesian stream of conscious

32:07

life, like somebody floating down.

32:11

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you, you are that way.

32:13

And then somebody else has

32:13

to, like, fish you out.

32:16

Yes, actually, this, like,

32:16

all of my interpersonal relationships

32:21

are with experiential fishers

32:21

who take me out of that flow.

32:25

don't You don't have to tell me that. Believe me.

32:30

Touche.

32:31

I just feel like I, so one

32:31

thing I really like about myself

32:35

is this penchant for overthinking.

32:37

And like you said, you like and don't

32:37

like your, quote, underthinking.

32:41

I like and don't like my overthinking

32:41

because I definitely am just,

32:45

like, having ideas all the time.

32:48

Especially, I mean, I will say I think

32:48

this has to do with having material

32:51

conditions that foster my flourishing. Like, I definitely am not having

32:53

ideas all the time if I'm in,

32:57

like, a very uncomfortable

32:57

situation or if I am experiencing,

33:01

like, negative mental health. So I don't so much resonate with,

33:02

like, the depressive rumination

33:07

that we talked about before. But I do think experiential rumination

33:09

is very often a part of my life and

33:13

I actually ruminate more when I'm

33:13

like in a good place in my life.

33:18

I'm just constantly repetitively thinking

33:18

things through whether it's like random

33:24

ideas that I'll have for the podcast. I feel like I have so many of those at

33:25

just like different parts of the day.

33:29

That's like what is happening

33:29

to me in the shower or thinking

33:31

about my research or I really like

33:31

everyday problem solving as well.

33:35

We mentioned that is a form

33:35

of repetitive thought as well.

33:38

Thinking about like, what's the optimal

33:38

way that I can structure my morning

33:43

so that like, my skincare is on point.

33:46

An optimizer!

33:47

I know, I know.

33:48

You are like optimizer

33:48

bordering on perfectionist in terms

33:53

of like my limited experience of the

33:53

ways in which you might overthink.

33:57

Yeah, I don't know if I'm a perfectionist. And I also hope that I'm an optimizer, not

33:58

in like the gross capitalism, Taylorism

34:04

factory assembly line kind of fashion.

34:06

There's another way?

34:08

I really think there is, thinking

34:08

about when is best for me to have my

34:12

coffee in order to facilitate like

34:12

a pleasant and thoughtful morning?

34:17

How can I kind of figure out when I

34:17

should be doing my meditation during

34:21

the day in order for it to fit in?

34:24

Like all of these questions, I

34:24

just love thinking about them.

34:28

Remember when we did the regret

34:28

episode, we noticed that one of the

34:32

big differences between us is that

34:32

you tend to regret small things,

34:36

Misplacing your keys that I think now

34:36

we can think about as obstacles to

34:41

that kind of day to day optimization

34:41

that you're talking about.

34:44

Whereas I don't think about the details. If anything, I regret big life

34:46

decisions that then prompt a

34:50

kind of moral reflection and

34:50

sometimes some moral crisis in me.

34:54

But yeah, I think maybe it's a

34:54

difference of detail versus large scale.

34:58

So it's about

34:59

Mm hmm.

35:00

where you place the focus.

35:03

Yeah. And it's certainly not

35:03

always a good thing either.

35:05

I mean, I think sometimes I overthink

35:05

in a bad way as well, like I

35:11

need to get out of my head a bit. And this is why a lot of times when

35:13

I meditate, I use as anchors sensory

35:17

things like sound is a really helpful

35:17

anchor for me I focus on the breath when

35:21

I'm meditating, it's really helpful. It's almost impossible

35:22

for me not to control it.

35:25

And my meditation teacher has said

35:25

that she thinks I also have trouble not

35:30

controlling my thought patterns as well,

35:30

which I think to some extent, obviously

35:34

Like letting go of thoughts or

35:36

what? Yeah, like I just want to follow my

35:37

thoughts because I think they're fun!

35:40

And so then I, it's not like

35:40

controlling them as in think about

35:45

this and don't think about that. It's more just. Like, instead of letting them

35:47

go, like you mentioned, it's

35:50

kind of continuing to feed them.

35:52

And I find that really enjoyable from

35:52

a certain angle, but from another

35:56

angle, it can really separate me from

35:56

my environment and mean that a lot

36:01

of times, like, I might be physically

36:01

in one place, but my thoughts are

36:04

just completely somewhere else.

36:06

I see. But it seems like then in this case, you

36:06

are actually like attaching yourself to

36:11

particular lines of thinking and like

36:11

wanting to pursue them without letting

36:15

them roll off your back as in certain

36:15

forms of meditation maybe is encouraged.

36:20

yeah. It's the thought that in the

36:21

psychological literature is

36:23

called perseverative cognition. I found all, like, I found all these

36:25

fancy terms for repetitive thought.

36:28

I didn't want to list them, but they're

36:28

kind of popping up here and again.

36:32

Yeah, no, I ran into that

36:32

term and I had to Google it and I

36:34

actually think it's really useful. And for me, when I think about the kind

36:36

of rumination that I'm most prone to,

36:41

I do think it is not the kind of self

36:41

directed rumination that is at the

36:47

root of conditions like depression.

36:50

I am much more likely to suffer from

36:50

external event based rumination, like

36:55

the one that is associated with PTSD.

36:58

So I don't have negative

36:58

thoughts about myself.

37:00

I have negative thoughts about the world

37:00

when I have those negative thoughts,

37:05

because obviously it can't be me. The world is broken The blame goes out.

37:11

The way that says

37:11

so much about you, David.

37:14

Again I say that without

37:14

pride and without shame.

37:18

Okay, I want to talk about

37:18

another perspective on thinking too.

37:22

You mentioned this co conscious mentation

37:22

notion and then like the wheels getting

37:25

stuck in the mud notion of overthinking

37:25

and the way that those are like based on

37:30

different ways of conceptualizing thought.

37:33

And another way of conceptualizing

37:33

thinking that I want to bring in the

37:35

mix is from the philosopher John Dewey,

37:35

the American pragmatist philosopher, who

37:40

was writing about a century ago, because

37:40

his view of thinking has been really

37:44

influential in philosophy of education

37:44

to the point that our educational model

37:49

is, to a large extent, educational. actually based on Dewey's principles,

37:50

and arguably would be better if it

37:54

were more based on his principles,

37:54

but that's a story for another time.

37:58

Dewey essentially has a view

37:58

that thinking is problem solving.

38:02

He thinks that our thought

38:02

processes begin when we find

38:05

ourselves faced with a problem. And they end once we've resolved

38:07

that problem through testing our

38:11

various explanations or solutions.

38:14

And he gives a metaphor of thinking

38:14

being like finding yourself at

38:18

a fork in the road and not being

38:18

sure which direction to go in.

38:22

You could once you find yourself in this

38:22

fork, just start walking in one of the two

38:26

directions and hope for the best, but more

38:26

likely you're going to try and gather more

38:30

information about which direction is best

38:30

before embarking on one path or the other.

38:36

Girl, I'm just going to

38:36

look at Google Maps, obviously.

38:39

I know, right? Poor Dewey did not have access to

38:41

Google Maps because his book, How

38:45

We Think was published in 1910. So said, he said, you'd probably climb

38:48

a tree to see in both directions.

38:53

Like, that would be your form of

38:53

thinking, you know, , and then you'd look.

38:59

And what you're looking for when

38:59

you do that is going to depend

39:02

on what your objective is. If your objective is to reach the

39:04

City of London, you're going to

39:07

be looking out for tall buildings. But if your objective is to take

39:09

the most beautiful path, then you're

39:12

just going to be looking to see which

39:12

path has more trees, or is there a

39:16

brook or a beautiful field that seems

39:16

to be in one direction or another.

39:20

So thinking is a form of problem

39:20

solving that's rooted in the

39:23

objectives that we're seeking. We want to seek to confirm or

39:25

deny different beliefs, whether

39:30

they have to do with a state of

39:30

affairs or about what we should do.

39:34

Yeah, no, based on this, I can

39:34

definitely understand how overthinking

39:39

then it could be a potential danger

39:39

for Dewey because you'd either just

39:43

be continuing to think after you've

39:43

already found out a perfectly practical,

39:47

viable solution, or you would be spinning your wheels without ever arriving at any solution to begin with.

39:48

Totally, and this goes back

39:48

to the wheels stuck in the mud

40:00

metaphor that you mentioned earlier. Dewey does think about thinking.

40:03

as a more reflective process than

40:03

just a car driving along naturally.

40:08

So it's maybe a little bit different

40:08

from the metaphor that you brought

40:10

up earlier, but it is as though once

40:10

we have gotten to our destination, if

40:16

we continue to think about that, then

40:16

we would be in a bad place for Dewey.

40:21

And this is part of why education

40:21

is so important for him because we

40:24

can't solve problems If we don't have

40:24

a reservoir of knowledge, including

40:28

knowledge of past experience, to

40:28

draw on, nor can we really know how

40:33

to recognize problems as problems.

40:36

So the point of education for him is a

40:36

disciplined and logically trained mind.

40:41

And that mind is able to judge

40:41

how far to take each step of the

40:45

process, how to recognize where to go

40:45

next, and when the process is over.

40:49

And he says there aren't any recipes for this. Each case needs to be taken for itself.

40:53

So it really is a kind of

40:53

practical wisdom that we're after.

40:57

It's not just like some set of

40:57

knowledge that we have that we can

41:00

perfectly apply in each and every case.

41:03

although one worry that emerges

41:03

for me when we equate thinking with

41:08

problem solving in this Deweyan

41:08

tradition is that it limits the realm

41:13

of thought to precisely those problems.

41:16

that we agree collectively

41:16

have a solution.

41:20

And leaves outside of the realm of thought

41:20

and also outside of the realm of education

41:24

here, thinking more institutionally,

41:24

all those themes and problematics that

41:29

don't have a solution that anybody

41:29

could present as the right answer.

41:35

So I'm here thinking about things

41:35

like metaphysical problems,

41:39

philosophical conundrums. Are those things for which we

41:41

can come up with a solution?

41:44

I don't know. And I think this might explain the

41:44

anti-metaphysical orientation of

41:51

a lot of pragmatism that grows out

41:51

of this Deweyan way of thinking.

41:57

Because of course, when you're

41:57

dealing with metaphysical

41:59

problems, there are problems. There are just, no

42:01

solutions on the horizon.

42:04

Yeah. So Dewey's view is helpful if you're

42:05

trying to figure out why your coffee

42:09

tastes bad and how you can make

42:09

it better or what optimal schedule

42:13

you should have in the morning

42:13

for when you drink your coffee.

42:16

But yeah, maybe not for some

42:16

of these broader questions.

42:18

And I know we're going to talk about that

42:18

a little bit more in a moment, but I just

42:21

want to say one thing that I do like about

42:21

this view is that Dewey emphasizes the

42:27

affective aspect of problem solving and

42:27

thinking, where he says that the feeling

42:33

of a problem is where thinking begins.

42:36

And have to accept that during

42:36

that entire process of thinking,

42:39

there is a felt discomfort, because

42:39

we're suspending our judgment.

42:43

And so critical thinking requires

42:43

getting comfortable with that felt

42:47

discomfort that happens when we don't

42:47

immediately know the answer to something.

42:50

And I think that emphasis on being

42:50

comfortable with the discomfort is

42:54

something worth preserving, especially

42:54

in a society that increasingly is looking

42:57

for quick and easy answers to problems.

43:02

Yeah.

43:08

I would say that among academics,

43:08

we philosophers are the ones that are

43:25

most frequently and most viciously

43:25

sometimes attacked as overthinkers.

43:33

Which is why our podcast name is so great.

43:35

Yeah, I think there's something

43:35

about philosophy, about the kind of

43:39

discourse that we have in philosophy,

43:39

about the sorts of questions that

43:43

we deal with and the sorts of

43:43

solutions, to go back to Dewey for

43:46

a second, that we propose that just.

43:49

doesn't jive well with our society's

43:49

conception of what proper thinking

43:55

is, such that in the eyes of

43:55

society, the philosopher is always

43:59

the person who is overdoing it.

44:02

I agree with

44:03

you that

44:04

philosophers have

44:05

a

44:05

special relationship with overthinking. And one way that you might see

44:07

that is in the fact that PhD

44:10

means Doctor of Philosophy. So it's like if you're a PhD in

44:13

neuroscience, you're a Doctor of

44:17

Philosophy of Neuroscience, which

44:17

means you are the overthinker

44:20

of neuroscience par excellence.

44:22

But I also feel like one of the places

44:22

where overthinking really gets used as

44:29

an accusation is in English classes.

44:32

You know, when you're like talking about

44:32

a text in an English class and either

44:37

really going deep on the character

44:37

psychology or the prose or potentially

44:41

like author's intentions or structure,

44:41

whatever it might be, all of those

44:45

really juicy, fun conversations that

44:45

you have in an English seminar room,

44:49

y'know, some bro just might come in and

44:49

be like, I think we're overthinking it.

44:53

And it's really hard. It's, it's like such a devastating,

44:54

it's no, but I was having so much Yeah.

44:58

fun.

45:00

That leads me to maybe change

45:00

my original claim a little bit.

45:03

And now I'm going to propose that the

45:03

people who are accused of overthinking

45:07

the most in higher education today

45:07

are humanists to, make room for our

45:12

colleagues in the English department. But what really strikes me about

45:14

this is that nobody says this about

45:19

other academics who engage in equally

45:19

rigorous and abstract forms of

45:26

cognitive labor, like mathematicians,

45:26

or physicists, or biologists.

45:32

I don't think I've ever heard anybody say

45:32

to a biologist, Oh, dude, I think you're

45:36

mapping this molecule in too much detail.

45:39

You're overthinking it. And so it seems to me that the accusation

45:40

is often made against people who pursue

45:47

critical and interpretative methods

45:47

that are not consistent with scientific

45:55

epistemology, but are associated

45:55

with art, literature, and philosophy.

46:01

I have a theory about this. I think it's because people are

46:02

understanding thinking in Dewey's

46:05

terms, which is as problem solving. Granted, Dewey was like

46:07

very pro humanities.

46:09

He has amazing philosophy of art,

46:09

but I think that's the way that we've

46:13

had this kind of pragmatist tradition

46:13

show up in our culture in decades.

46:18

It's in this real faith in science because

46:18

it's problem solving and the sense that

46:23

the humanities are useless because they're

46:23

not solving these real world problems.

46:27

Yeah, and I think that problem

46:27

would also explain why we're so

46:30

worried about credentialing or pushing

46:30

people to the STEM disciplines or

46:33

making sure that there is an applied

46:33

dimension to their degrees, which is,

46:37

a reality that you and I are living as

46:37

people who work in higher education.

46:41

But this actually I think is a great

46:41

segue because one of the people that I

46:46

want to bring into the mix here is the

46:46

German critical theorist Max Horkheimer.

46:52

Who worried that the kind of critical

46:52

thinking that we need to resist modern

46:58

day capitalism is disappearing from

46:58

society precisely because this kind

47:03

of thinking is associated with the

47:03

humanities and not with the ruling

47:09

spirit of scientific rationality, which

47:09

is what dominates our culture nowadays.

47:15

And Horkheimer is a member of the

47:15

Frankfurt School, this really important

47:19

German school of thought that then

47:19

kind of like became a thing in the U.

47:22

S. because a lot of the thinkers

47:23

were expelled from Germany

47:25

because most of them were Jewish. And the Frankfurt School was

47:27

actually really critical of Dewey

47:30

and the pragmatist tradition. They associated that way of thinking with

47:32

instrumental reason, which is associated

47:37

with science, et cetera, et cetera. I wrote a paper in grad school about

47:38

how they didn't really give Dewey a

47:42

fair shake also story for another time.

47:45

but yeah, they really are working

47:45

with a pretty different conception

47:48

of what thinking is, where

47:48

thinking is not problem solving.

47:52

Yeah, and for them, thinking

47:52

is philosophy, where philosophy means

47:57

specifically critical thinking in the

47:57

vein of especially Marx and Hegel.

48:03

And here I want to draw primarily from

48:03

an article that Horkheimer wrote in 1939

48:09

called The Social Function of Philosophy.

48:13

Where he argues that people in the

48:13

1930s really felt the need to justify

48:19

philosophical thinking by showing

48:19

that it is actually scientific, even

48:25

though people don't realize that it is. And he argues this is the exactly

48:26

wrong way to approach the question

48:31

of the value and the social function. of philosophical thinking, because

48:33

the value of philosophy is not

48:37

that it can approximate the

48:37

natural or the physical sciences

48:41

and maybe ape them or mirror them.

48:44

Rather, the value of philosophy

48:44

lies in the fact that it is a non

48:49

instrumental form of thinking that

48:49

enhances our human capacities.

48:54

And as he says, at one point,

48:54

can point to no successes.

49:00

in many ways, it's the fruitlessness

49:00

or the futility of philosophy that

49:05

is ultimately its saving grace.

49:08

In a very reductive way. Philosophy for philosophy's sake.

49:11

I think he would hate that formulation,

49:11

but maybe we can use it for now.

49:15

Yeah, no, but it seems like he

49:15

agrees with this notion that philosophy

49:19

is the epitome of overthinking, but

49:19

he wants to reevaluate what that

49:23

means so that it's not a criticism

49:23

as much as a form of praise.

49:27

And there's a quote that stood out to

49:27

me from his essay where he says, the

49:32

real social function of philosophy lies

49:32

in its criticism of what is prevalent.

49:37

Philosophy is inconvenient,

49:37

obstinate, and, with all of

49:42

that, of no immediate use.

49:44

In fact, it is a source of annoyance.

49:49

One of the ways that Horkheimer

49:49

had a huge impact on me is in this

49:55

idea that common sense, it should

49:55

always be an object of distrust, and I

49:59

think this quote really gets at that.

50:02

But the reason that I said I think

50:02

he would hate the phrase philosophy

50:04

for philosophy's sake is because when

50:04

you mentioned that he says philosophy

50:09

claims no victories, what he means

50:09

is no instrumental or practical

50:14

victories, philosophy does serve

50:14

an important role as a catalyst of

50:19

social critique and also of negation.

50:21

So it's not philosophy for philosophy's

50:21

sake in the sense of an ivory tower,

50:25

idol, or leisure based pursuit.

50:28

Rather, it's for, I would say, a

50:28

recognition of the contradictions

50:33

within the status quo, which arguably

50:33

has extremely revolutionary potential.

50:38

No, you're right to make that

50:38

observation because, of course, as

50:41

a member of the Frankfurt School

50:41

and as a neomarxist, Horkheimer is

50:44

also very critical of various forms

50:44

of idealist philosophy that on his

50:50

view are not materialist, right? They don't draw our attention to

50:52

understanding the contradictions

50:54

of the present order. And he captures this at one point in

50:56

the article by saying that being a

51:01

philosopher means precisely pointing

51:01

out the fissures in the system.

51:05

And he says, I don't mean like a doctor

51:05

who finds a cure for an ailment or a

51:11

solution to a problem, but rather like

51:11

a dialectician, who, like Socrates

51:18

in antiquity, shows you your own

51:18

contradictions and basically forces you

51:24

to confront the fact that things need

51:24

to change even by your own standards.

51:29

And I think that this is, a

51:29

line of thinking that we find

51:32

in many other, representatives

51:32

of the Frankfurt tradition.

51:36

For example, it's also an argument

51:36

that was made by Herbert Marcuse,

51:39

who wrote an article in 1965 called

51:39

Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture,

51:45

where he basically makes the same

51:45

argument and he uses the term non

51:50

operational thinking to capture that

51:50

which philosophy offers us and the

51:56

reason for which we ought to cherish it.

52:00

And at one point he says, what we really

52:00

need to be protecting in our society are

52:05

those places where culture can take place.

52:08

And by culture, he means all the things

52:08

that get denigrated in the present, art,

52:13

humanities, poetry, so on and so forth.

52:17

I'm just gonna say, working on

52:17

culture seems pretty Deweyan to me.

52:22

Yeah, fair enough.

52:23

Preserving, preserving

52:23

a space for culture.

52:26

Yeah, preserving a space for culture. And I think where they would both

52:27

agree is that institutions of education

52:31

can probably do that, depending on

52:31

how they are organized and arranged.

52:35

But in this piece from 1965, Marcuse

52:35

actually has some unexpectedly concrete

52:41

recommendations of how we can protect

52:41

philosophy and critical thinking.

52:45

That is unexpected for

52:45

a Frankfurt School thinker.

52:48

Oftentimes they eschew concrete recommendations.

52:51

Yeah, very much so. And for example, Marcuse says that you

52:52

can be a scientist and still contribute

52:57

to critical thinking, but only if

52:57

you become a theoretical scientist

53:02

rather than an applied scientist. So he says, I want to see theoretical

53:04

sociologists, theoretical biologists,

53:09

theoretical physicists, and that

53:09

would be a way of reconfiguring higher

53:13

education for him to make it more

53:13

aligned with this promotion of culture.

53:18

He also says that universities

53:18

should forego vocational training

53:23

and really focus on liberal

53:23

arts whole citizen education.

53:28

And that they should be financially

53:28

independent so that they don't have to

53:31

worry about, making deals with industry

53:31

and selling their soul just to have

53:36

enough money to do what they're supposed

53:36

to do in order to fulfill their mission.

53:41

and I will say that that financial

53:41

aspect is a problem increasingly for the

53:45

humanities, especially in Europe and the

53:45

UK, but also for sciences everywhere.

53:50

Because this idea that in order to get

53:50

funding for a given project, you have to

53:54

have a clear research program and a sense

53:54

of the results that you might find really

54:02

stymies a lot of research in the sciences

54:02

and increasingly in the humanities.

54:06

I feel like my European colleagues

54:06

are always having to define their

54:10

new projects before they actually

54:10

figure out what's going on.

54:13

And I'm like, oh my god, I may

54:13

or may not be a third of the

54:17

way through my book project. And please don't ask me

54:18

for an elevator pitch.

54:21

I'll have something to say

54:21

about it once it's done.

54:23

But for now, I'm in this Deweyan

54:23

space of suspending judgment

54:27

and feeling the discomfort.

54:29

Yeah, no, because it does

54:29

seem like it gets things backwards

54:32

because instead of beginning with the

54:32

problem, working through inhabiting

54:36

that do we in space of discomfort,

54:36

and then hopefully find a solution.

54:41

It means that if you need funding, you

54:41

have to begin with the solution off

54:45

right up front as a research proposal.

54:48

And then hopefully work backwards from

54:48

the solution, which is exactly the way in

54:52

which thought shouldn't necessarily move.

54:54

I also think that this pressure for

54:54

funding has another consequence,

54:58

which is that it pushes research

54:58

in the direction of problems.

55:03

where practical solutions are

55:03

possible, which is why most

55:07

funding today goes to the sciences. how many grants are there out there

55:09

for metaphysics or for theology?

55:14

if you really do a comparison and do

55:14

the math, it's like night and day.

55:19

Honestly, even among physicists,

55:19

I've heard from my brother in law,

55:22

who's a physicist, that there's kind

55:22

of a conception nowadays that physics

55:26

hasn't made genuine progress in a while.

55:29

And, you know, you could trace that,

55:29

I think, also to these funding systems

55:33

too, where there's not enough funding

55:33

that's going towards what's known in

55:37

science as basic research, or just

55:37

kind of letting people think about

55:41

things and then seeing what happens.

55:44

No, I know some physicists

55:44

who do theoretical physics, like the

55:48

more heady speculative dimension of

55:48

physics, like how many universes there

55:52

are, wormholes, things like that.

55:55

And sometimes they are ostracized

55:55

in their own departments because

56:00

they're seen as the theoreticians

56:00

who failed to be philosophers.

56:04

And that shouldn't be

56:04

in a physics department.

56:06

Because, if you're a physicist. You should be doing work that, at least

56:08

in principle, is translatable into

56:13

some applied domain, whether that's

56:13

engineering or some other related field.

56:18

Yeah, and you know, we're

56:18

really focusing here on the value of

56:22

non instrumental reason and that can

56:22

constitute a defense of a certain kind

56:27

of overthinking in, capitalist society.

56:30

However, I also want to introduce a

56:30

more Marxist critique of this, which is

56:38

one that actually the Frankfurt School

56:38

has sometimes been targets of by other

56:42

Marxist thinkers, which is this idea

56:42

that praising the life of thinking can

56:46

remove you from material transformation.

56:49

So we mentioned earlier that the Frankfurt

56:49

School's way of thinking about thinking

56:53

has a lot of revolutionary potential. But some other Marxist thinkers have

56:56

thought that they were actually way

57:00

too obsessed with thinking because

57:00

according to Marx himself, ideology

57:05

is always going to be the ideology of

57:05

the ruling class and transformation

57:09

needs to be sought through material

57:09

conditions and thinking will follow.

57:12

versus the other way around.

57:14

And I know that's a little bit of

57:14

a reductive approach to Marx here

57:17

about which people have different

57:17

views, but this is something that

57:20

Marx at, you know, at least in like

57:20

one famous passage explicitly says.

57:24

so, yeah, I think potential to critique

57:24

the penchant for this kind of critical

57:31

thinking from a different angle,

57:31

which is actually a Marxist angle.

57:34

Yeah, and I think the Marxist

57:34

angle can also be articulated in

57:38

terms of a critique of the possible

57:38

elitism that can emerge this.

57:42

Because, so this is something that I

57:42

noticed in the Marcuse article, that

57:46

when he's giving this defense of the

57:46

university, he does say, what I want are

57:52

elite universities, where like the, creme

57:52

of the creme, is that how you say that?

57:56

The creme of the creme? The creme de la creme.

58:00

The creme of the cream. Get educated, even if that's not true.

58:04

democratically accessible.

58:06

And so you can end up with this

58:06

elitism at the level of critique that

58:12

doesn't sit well with, I think, the

58:12

fundamental spirit of Marxism, which

58:17

is precisely that at some point,

58:17

unlike Hamlet, you have to jump from

58:23

thought into the world of action.

58:26

And in the case of Marx, of

58:26

course, that means revolutionary

58:29

action that will completely alter

58:29

social relations on the ground.

58:33

And at the same time, I think the Frankfurt School was understandably wary of that jumping

58:35

into action, being predominantly

58:39

comprised of Jewish thinkers who had

58:39

to flee Germany during the Holocaust.

58:44

So I don't know that we're coming to

58:44

any final conclusions here other say

58:48

whether you see overthinking as a good

58:48

thing, a bad thing, or a neutral thing

58:53

that could potentially become good or

58:53

bad depends on your view of thinking.

58:57

And we hope that you'll stay with

58:57

us for however many future episodes

59:01

we create on this overthinking

59:01

project of which this is our 100th.

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