Thought and ideas arise between self and world, not inside the individual

Evidence

When I try to think about thinking, for instance retracing where an idea of mine came from, the limitations of English force me to say that “I” “produced” an “idea.” But none of these things are stable entities, and this grammatical relationship among them is misleading. The “idea” isn’t a finished product with identifiable boundaries that one moment sprung into being—one of the reasons artists so hate the interview question, “So what was your inspiration for this?” Any idea is actually an unstable, shifting intersection between myself and whatever I was encountering. By extension, thought doesn’t occur somehow inside of me, but between what I perceive as me and not-me. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 484

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s core thesis that cognition is enactive and relational, not internal production.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s critique of the isolated Cartesian subject as a fiction. — connects to: Autonomous thinking self is a fiction; mind is relational communication — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 464; Human existence is defined by exposure to the world, not retreat into the self — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 160; Husserl’s late thought abandoned inwardness for a shared social world — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 165 (+2 more)