Here is a great description of non-thinking experience.
The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception V Examination of the Content of Experience
According to our conviction, Johannes Volkelt has been remarkably successful in delineating within clear outlines that which we are justified in designating as pure experience. This description simply shows us the images which pass before our consciousness in a brief period in a manner utterly void of interrelationships. Volkelt says
“For example, my consciousness now has as its content the impression that I have worked diligently to-day; immediately thereto is linked the impression that I can with a clear conscience take a walk; again there suddenly appears the perceptual image of the door opening and the postman entering; the image of the postman soon appears with out-stretched hand, then with mouth opening, then doing the opposite; at the same time there blend with the perceptual content of the opening mouth all sorts of impressions of hearing — among others, that of rain beginning outside. The image of the postman vanishes from my consciousness and the impressions which now enter have as their content, one by one: grasping the scissors, opening the letters, a critical feeling at illegible writing, visual images of the most varied written symbols, and, united with these, manifold imaginative images and thoughts; scarcely is this series at an end when there reappears the impression of having worked diligently and — accompanied by depression — the consciousness of the continuing rain; then both of these vanish from my consciousness and there emerges an impression whose content is that a difficulty supposed to have been overcome in to-day's work has not been overcome; accompanying this there enter the impressions: freedom of will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, incomprehensibility, etc., and these unite with one another in the most varied and complicated ways — and so it continues.” Here is described for us, with regard to a certain limited space of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thinking has no participation. It need not be supposed that a different result would have been attained if, instead of this every-day experience, we had described what occurs in a piece of scientific research or in an unusual natural phenomenon. In these cases as in that, what passes before consciousness consists of unrelated images. Thinking for the first time institutes interrelationship.
Comments
Here is a great description of non-thinking experience.
The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception
V Examination of the Content of Experience
According to our conviction, Johannes Volkelt has been remarkably successful in delineating within clear outlines that which we are justified in designating as pure experience. This description simply shows us the images which pass before our consciousness in a brief period in a manner utterly void of interrelationships. Volkelt says
“For example, my consciousness now has as its content the impression that I have worked diligently to-day; immediately thereto is linked the impression that I can with a clear conscience take a walk; again there suddenly appears the perceptual image of the door opening and the postman entering; the image of the postman soon appears with out-stretched hand, then with mouth opening, then doing the opposite; at the same time there blend with the perceptual content of the opening mouth all sorts of impressions of hearing — among others, that of rain beginning outside. The image of the postman vanishes from my consciousness and the impressions which now enter have as their content, one by one: grasping the scissors, opening the letters, a critical feeling at illegible writing, visual images of the most varied written symbols, and, united with these, manifold imaginative images and thoughts; scarcely is this series at an end when there reappears the impression of having worked diligently and — accompanied by depression — the consciousness of the continuing rain; then both of these vanish from my consciousness and there emerges an impression whose content is that a difficulty supposed to have been overcome in to-day's work has not been overcome; accompanying this there enter the impressions: freedom of will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, incomprehensibility, etc., and these unite with one another in the most varied and complicated ways — and so it continues.”
Here is described for us, with regard to a certain limited space of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thinking has no participation.
It need not be supposed that a different result would have been attained if, instead of this every-day experience, we had described what occurs in a piece of scientific research or in an unusual natural phenomenon. In these cases as in that, what passes before consciousness consists of unrelated images. Thinking for the first time institutes interrelationship.
My interest at the moment in in what is meant by Experience in the book Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe world view.