Not surprising, if that "word" had not been in your consciousness. ;-` How about a succession of applications of the mind to thought then (with or without engaging your thoughts having to do specifically with words)?
And how do you like what Roscoe has had to say here?
Let's get your Roscoe question out of the way first: Don't think much of his effort here. It is unbearably reductionist. I can't imagine thinking to be merely a succession of states, even if I try. The thinking mind seems to be a comprehending whole that can engage a variety of symbolic objects. To dissect thought into "parts" (or t-states) is to murder the thinker.
Having said that, Roscoe is right that the mind engages symbols that are not "words," in the ordinary sense of language. Playing a passage of music in my head, I'm way too busy engaging the voicings of chords, the various movements progressing in rhythmic time, the emotional color, and so forth, that I have no room for words -- or any use for them at all in this kind of thought process.
Likewise I can deal in other kinds of non-verbal symbols, such as mathematical objects -- equations, algorithms, archetypal geometrical figures, etc. Or graphic images of reality that crop up from time to time.
Which is where another bone to pick with Roscoe comes up. He seems to think that words are entirely derived, at least remotely, from sensory experience. This is nutz. The contemplation of musical ideas (in contradistinction from a musical composition actually played), mathematical objects, God Himself, are not "sensory experiences." At least they have not been so for me.
Roscoe refers to a certain "mind-clearing" that can be achieved by means of certain meditative practices, and uses this to show that thought is independent of symbolization. His argument seems to go: Even if symbols are absent, thought goes on. And then he goes "Eureka!!! Mind is clear [of words and all other symbols]! And yet thought is happening! Therefore, the thinker doesn't need symbols to think!"
Having been there, done that, all I can report is this: If you are asserting a clear mind, you have formed a thought. And your mind is no longer clear, because it's thinking about something.
If you do this meditation "right," you wind up with absolutely zero thought. The mind holds zero content. All that is "left" is a mysterious sense of completely inarticulate self-awareness. Period.
Fortunately, this is not the "normal" state, nor is it easy to achieve.
Anyhoot, I think Roscoe's got some problems with his thesis. For one thing, it seems that it's only a quick hop from "t-states" to the association of the event of a given t-state with a corresponding electrochemical event in the brain. That is, I suspect that Roscoe takes the materialist view of mind, which is to say that it is only an epiphenomenon of brain function.
Good night, dear Brother Arlen!