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Oooo, one less limb. Fun fun. ^^

And I prefer the opposite, that you can think too much, but you can't think too well. Heh. ^^

razz

ninja Or is he not thinking enough?

Is there a difference?

Eh, you can never think too well. And the only difference is process. I just see results. ^^

I did take an AP Lit class actually. However, it did not show how thinking too well was the problem. It is, in fact, when you overthink an issue that it begins to become too complex or useless. Thus you think too much, not too well.

I'll take it with a different teacher if you will. ^^ Though honestly your class sounds too bland. I much prefer authors to critics, such as John Donne. Donne points out that complexity is not derived from quality of thought, as one might think, but from quantity. As he states, the most complex of problems are often the most simple, just wrapped around themselves. Quality is when thought reaches the point at which it is the clearest and most concise, providing the reader with simple meaning. Donne would argue that authors such as Hamlet think not too well, but too much, though that does not subtract from their work. Some of the most fascinating literary work is the most complex, and thus the most over thought, yet the works which are the highest in "quality" are those which show the clearest thought process. Thus I define quality more highly than quantity, as you do, as I like to be concise. ^^

Most critics are authors themselves, though I can't name any works by Herald Bloom; Nietzsche obviously wrote his fair share of books.

I have to say this John Donne sounds rather...... mixed up, perse. To define quality as only the point where thoughts and philsophies are most clear and concise doesn't sound completely correct to me. What you describe as "Quality" would best be described by the word you used to define it, concise. I refer to quality as a relative measurement of the thoroughness, perhaps complexity if you will, of thought as well as its conviction.

While I'm on this point and it's fresh in my mind, I just want to request that you be careful when using the terms over thought and over think, as they can be ambiguously interpreted as too much or too well, and that seems to be the heart of our debate. Also at this point I'd like to replace the word complicated, which I used in my last response, with the word compound. That way it's easier to discern; complexity and complicated would be best used interchangably as the dictionary mentions it. Again, compound being the number/quantity of thoughts examined rather than the depth of one thought, although part of this debate might be where one thought ends and another begins.

I would more argue that the more complex and high quality literary works are not overthought; I think the more appropriate term might be that in some cases they are misinterpreted. Also, I think that the highest quality works can be the most abstract as well as the clearest.

I suppose the best thing that can be drawn from this is that it's possible to think too much by compounding more subjects than one can handle and it's also possible to think too well by going so in depth on a single topic that nothing is done or resolved. Thereby, I retract the statement I made in my first response, which most likely ignited this debate, and rephrase it to saying that "I can't think too much I can think too well x.x" as I can only say this for certain about myself and no one else. Furthermore, I believe that your post in saying I was "thinking too much" is incorrect because, since I was only thinking on the one topic that your reasoning had been altered by your short stay here, it was not compounded with other thoughts and thusly not a matter of quantity but instead a matter of quality which your statement is disregarding of. In other words, we were both mistaken at one point or another.

I think we can also say that the difference is somewhat related to process; quantity related to the number of processes and quality to the depth of a given process or number of processes. However, the best resolution to this is in the preceding paragraph.

And just to clear up a typo on your last post, Hamlet wasn't an author, at least not the one I was referring to.