What are thoughts?
I was looking at an article, 'Thinking About Thinking' by Raymond Tallis in 'Philosophy Now' (April/ May 2021) in which he considers the nature of thought. He considers the way in which thoughts arise, especially in the mixture of images and words. He suggests that, 'Thinking about thinking gives us an excuse to visit the most famous moment in Western philosophy: Rene Descartes' cogito argument, "I think therefore I am." And so we come up against one of the puzzles...our ability to identify ourselves as the source of mental events.' Tallis says that we can trace the origins of our thinking and he makes reference to William James's ideas about the role of introspection.
Tallis points to the Ryle's analysis of the way in which 'philosophers have generally been reluctant to think of thoughts as ghostly goings on in the head'. He suggests that, 'Our capacity to think about thought is one of the family of enigmas arising out of the fundamental mystery: our ability to encompass ourselves_ as when we talk about "matter", or "human beings or the "self"; or try to get our heads round...the totality of things.'
I believe that the nature of thoughts raises fundamental questions about consciousness and the self. Neuroscientists can link thought to the brain, but I am not sure that this really gets to grips with the way we identify a sense of self through thoughts, or what James describes as the 'stream of consciousness' itself. This seems involve connections between life events, making us the authors of our own life narratives. So, I am asking what does thought tell us about the nature of personal identity and about the underlying source of consciousness? Do thoughts help to explain the nature of consciousness?
Tallis points to the Ryle's analysis of the way in which 'philosophers have generally been reluctant to think of thoughts as ghostly goings on in the head'. He suggests that, 'Our capacity to think about thought is one of the family of enigmas arising out of the fundamental mystery: our ability to encompass ourselves_ as when we talk about "matter", or "human beings or the "self"; or try to get our heads round...the totality of things.'
I believe that the nature of thoughts raises fundamental questions about consciousness and the self. Neuroscientists can link thought to the brain, but I am not sure that this really gets to grips with the way we identify a sense of self through thoughts, or what James describes as the 'stream of consciousness' itself. This seems involve connections between life events, making us the authors of our own life narratives. So, I am asking what does thought tell us about the nature of personal identity and about the underlying source of consciousness? Do thoughts help to explain the nature of consciousness?
Comments (116)
I suppose we are aware to some degree that it "I" that is having thoughts, not thoughts arising out of no one. So I'd think we'd need to have a subject of experience which is distinct and not identical to the experience of having thoughts.
Trivially, it could be said that without conscious experience, we would have no thoughts. But I don't know what these thoughts say about consciousness, aside from the apparent fact that they are part if it.
I suppose that a main part of my question is about the nature of the mysterious 'I' of which Descartes spoke. Ken Wilber spoke of this as the 'witness', and it is and it is at the interface between mind and body. I wonder to what extent the "I' is able to reflect upon it itself?
On a daily basis, we rely on the I and the incoming flow of thought, and I am interested in how this contributes to understanding, rather than a move which is taking place to simply look for answers within neuroscience, which probably began with behaviorism. I do believe that thoughts themselves can be a useful focus or perspective for philosophy. What are thoughts comprised of, or composed from, and can they be reduced to matter'?
I don't think thoughts can be reduced to matter. But they could be reduced to spirit.
We have (1) thoughts and (2) an awareness of thoughts. The subject which has the awareness of the thoughts and of itself is the spirit, "nous" or "pneuma" or what I would call "self-aware intelligent energy".
Thoughts, emotions and sense perceptions are functions of that spiritual self within us and are made of the same stuff, i.e., intelligent energy.
It is interesting to think about thoughts in connection with the whole debate about matter, mind and spirit. I certainly would not have written my question in the thread on spirit because I believe that person is merely looking for a brief definition. However, that thread alongside the article which I looked at this morning got me thinking about the nature and role of thoughts.
I think that it is possible to reduce thoughts to spirit, and certainly that was probably how it was seen in some historical contexts, but that was probably in the context of dualism, or even idealism. I believe that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction and, now, it has almost thrown spirit out of the picture entirely. It was interesting that some replies in the thread on spirit saw breath. Of course, we could ask what is breath, and it is probably the underlying source of life itself.
I do feel that many materialistic pictures of consciousness are so reductive that they appear to leave awareness out partially or entirely. As far as I can see there is a whole spectrum of ways of understanding consciousness with various degrees of emphasis on body, mind and spirit. It seems likely to me that the connection between the three are so interconnected and cannot be separated entirely, but at the same time, there are certain distinctions which can be made. I do practice mindfulness meditation in some ways, and it is on that basis that I feel able to wonder about thoughts. I know that they arise in the brain, within the body, but, on some level, I do believe that they are connected to some source which is not entirely the brain and nervous system.
I am glad that you have raised the topic of the subconscious because I do feel that many discussions about consciousness don't go into enough focus on the subconscious. We are most aware of the subconscious in our experiences of dreams and the role of the 'I' consciousness here is interesting. Certainly, in my own dreams I am still consciously related to my own waking identity. But, it seems to me that we retain the same witness consciousness in most dreams, even if events of dreams are fragmented in unusual ways.
I suspect that this depends on how well we can articulate such a phenomenon of reflection. So perhaps you'd need some kind of phenomenology that may provide a framework on how to think about these things. Or maybe we can't say much about it, which wouldn't be surprising.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Thoughts are matter. That is, they form part of the most immediate aspect of matter we can recognize to any degree, which is our experience and the thoughts we may have. This idea of "dead and passive" matter is a mistake, when we observe the world, we filter all the things out "there", including "dead matter", through the live process of matter we call experience.
But there's no reduction here, if it's all physical stuff. It can't be framed this way, I don't think.
At least, that's how I view it.
Correct. I think part of the problem is that awareness is something that is difficult to grasp, let alone analyze in detail in a scientific context. The other is that science tends to take a materialist view of reality that excludes non-materialist views. Precisely because the materialist view is unable to pin down and investigate awareness, science ought to try and apply non-materialist approaches to the subject. However, to do so would mean to renounce its exclusive materialist assumptions which few scientists are prepared to do for fear of being ostracized by the scientific community.
I am planning to read more on phenomenology because I do see this as a missing link, but not quite sure where to start exactly. I just see such divergent approaches to the nature of thoughts. In many ways, the various perspectives are only models, but, nevertheless, I do believe that there is a great bias within current philosophy to that of the neuroscientists, and it is almost overlooked how that in itself is only a model. It is from the outside looking in, with a possible claim to being objective. It all seems to me to be about angles of viewing. We have metaphysical systems which looked from the consideration of a divine order to perspectives of mind which are self organising. I am sure that they all contain elements of truth, and it all comes down to different starting points or frames of reference.
I separate "consciousness" and "subconsciousness", if only because from time to time we see nightmares. And we are afraid of them. Most likely they are seen by "consciousness". And the "subconscious" shows. Otherwise, "consciousness" would not have been frightened. :) It turns out that there are two of them.
And we "think" only about what is in our "conscious world".
This is why I am assuming that our "thinking" is simply the "processor" of our large database. Which we have accumulated over our life path.
Yes. I very much agree with that.
I especially agree with the neuroscience angle. There is very interesting work done in the field no doubt about that, but certain philosophers and scientist working in this area claim much more than is warranted from the evidence.
I don't think you can hope to explain mental processes if you leave out psychology and epistemology altogether. We speak and experience beautiful sunsets, horrific massacres, wonderful music and the like, not of the V4 cortex or the amygdala doing something which plays a part in our perception of the world.
These are just two different sets of phenomena, which are linked in a way we don't understand.
It is basically not wanting to deal with a massive portion of reality.
I would certainly not wish to leave psychology out of the discussion, because I do believe that it has so much to offer. It also has a variety of perspectives. Also, I am certainly not opposed to neuroscience, but just feel that it is almost being seen as of such importance in questions of consciousness as if it probably has all the answers.
I just wish to add that I do hope to be able to read to follow through any discussion with reading, but just waiting to see if the thread is even going to work at all, because it may be that it fizzles within less than a day. I do wish to make it work, and will try to do further reading when I can work out a picture of the way in which the thread may develop.
The area of the subconscious is a large one indeed because it does involve many interpretive viewpoints. I have come across psychology texts which see the subconscious as more of a processing of data and I think that it is possible that you see it in this way because you mentioned data and systems.
However, we do have to bear in mind that ideas about the subconscious also emerge within psychoanalytic thought. In particular, both Freud and Jung speak of it, and their approaches are extremely different from one another. I am aware that many may see the ideas of both these thinkers as being outdated and not evidence based to be worthy of serious debate. However, they do provide frameworks.I think that both writers would probably see nightmares as material which is repressed and surface.
One aspect which I am aware of is how I often notice that I begin having nightmares, or even hypopompic and hypnagogic experience when I am in stressful life situations and I know many other people who have found this too. This probably points to chemicals which are triggered by stress.
Also, I think that the systems approach of Fritjof Capra is very useful and that thoughts, including those which are consciousness and those emerging from the subconscious can be viewed as arising within us as living systems, and as parts of larger systems.
I created a thread few minutes ago .....
I would love to hear your opinion of it .....
I think that it is a very helpful quote and I feel that my thoughts seem like they are from some underlying source, such as that of a soul. One aspect of this is the way in which thoughts seem to rush in, like stimuli from the brain and senses and it is as if one's highest consciousness has to shift and select from them, as the guiding force. I believe that Plato believed in the idea of a 'daimon' as being the higher aspect which is able to oversee the thinking process.
I will have a look at your thread and try to put in a response in the next half hour.
"Thoughts" is the name we give to our inner experience when we have to put it into words to communicate with another person. Turns out when we do that, we also start communicating with ourselves, which is probably one of the definitions of consciousness or self-awareness we have recently discussed. To meet the requirements of language, we have to take something which is amorphous and non-linear and break it into defined pieces placed some sort of linear order.
On the other hand, I don't think things going on in the subconscious or unconscious become thoughts until they rise into consciousness. Now, after our previous discussions, I'm realizing I have to be careful to use the right word. The definition of consciousness I'm using is "non-verbal sentience or awareness of internal and external existence." Oh, no! Then what does it become when I put it into words? I don't want to start that conversation over again.
How would it feel if they weren't from some underlying source such as a "soul"?
It is interesting to know at what point thoughts arise whether we adopt a naturalistic approach or otherwise. Part of it probably comes down to the role of language although images and sense impressions are probably important too. I am sure that people do have some sensory impressions. However, I imagine that reflection on thoughts in the development of memory plays an ongoing role.
I can definitely remember my own life in connection with the thoughts which I had about it. I am often surprised by the way many people don't seem to remember aspects of life, like their first day at school, and it is probably connected to it not having been internalised as a thought. A little while ago, I met a woman on a bus who I sat next to on my first day at school and I mentioned that to her and she was astounded by me telling her this. I can probably remember because I have always been someone who thinks a lot.
Can you speak in your own words? Without Freud, Jung And Capra. In their time, there was no "big data", a computer, and even the "Chinese room" was just an inference. And now it is a reality.
You will notice that any thought you have may just be a fuzzy sample from a large database. Well, you (and I) have no new thoughts. Our "new thoughts" are just a "kaleidoscope" of our own old thoughts with data correction in accordance with new requests.
You simply cannot believe that your "thoughts" can simply be states of some kind of "state machine." Automatic machine. And which you consider unique and impossible to generate by a machine.
By the way, I can also be a machine, talking to a machine now.
Fair enough :up:
I am sorry if I appear to be referring to specific ideas of particular writers and this is just because they seem to have thought so much about the subconscious or systems. I see your point about a database and how we could be like databases. However, while the model of information may have some usefulness for considering our processing, but it is a picture based on our particular perspective, whereas people who lived in different historical eras may have thought in an animistic way, or in connection with the planets and stars as a basic construct for viewing and explaining the content of thoughts.
How dare you?
Blasphemy I say.
It's a bit lamentable that consciousness should cause so much controversy in philosophy.
I mean, sure, it has many aspects and you may want to highlight one aspect or another. But I don't see many people arguing about the existence of brains, for example, it's taken as a fact.
But returning to the thread, I suppose that for something to be called a "thought" properly, it should have a beginning and an end point. Otherwise we'll have to consider everything that goes on in our minds thoughts. I don't know if that's helpful...
Animism is wonderful. The trouble is, this is unprovable. I'm talking about the "souls" of people, animals and different "things".
Although they (these people) are united by the fact that they had their own database based on their own collected data. Which has been going all my life and sorted into a kind of conviction.
If we call a "microorganism" an "evil spirit", this will not fundamentally change anything. And the replacement of the "demon" with the "green UFO man" too.
To be clear, I'm totally making it up here. But I think this "dirty work" has to be cleared up a bit somehow, maybe using a totally different framework or something, but if we don't clear up what "thoughts" may be, we'll not get far.
Having said all this, if it gets interrupted, then it wouldn't be a thought. It would be mental activity. Something like that
What I'm trying to get at is that an awful lot of stuff happens when we are thinking, if we consider them all to be thoughts, then I don't see how we'd make any distinctions.
My sentiments as well. Has there ever been an occassion, in the everyday course of your private rational machinations generally, you ever said to and for yourself alone, “I think.....”?
I’m guessing.....never.
Yes. I think that's right on point.
It's all very confusing if you think about it. :lol:
I can see the relevance of the idea of a mirror as a way of seeing the whole process of thinking. It is also easy to see the danger of thinking in a narcissistic way, or of just in ways which enable us to buffer up our own egos. I would imagine that the one way we have of preventing this from happening is that we share our thoughts through conversing with others, and this exchange of thoughts probably stops us from living in our own little thought bubbles.
It is questionable at what point experience becomes thought. We are facing sense impressions and coping with the stream of thought at the same time. In some ways, perhaps we could say that the dialogue may be like a war with the possible competing demands for attention going on.
Your point about non verbal aspects of communication is important because in the processing of thought we are mostly taking more in than we can process consciously. Of course, that doesn't mean that it is forgotten. We may be asked to recall aspects of experience which we had not really thought about, such as the colour of the eyes of the person we are speaking to, and we may or may not be able to remember the correct detail. But, it does seem important to see how our thinking process involves aspects of which we are aware as well as subliminal aspects of perception. The question is whether such parts of perception are thoughts until we try to think about them?
We, in a sense, hold an image, understood in the broadest sense possible, of the entire universe, including ourselves and this image is made up of every thought you've ever had, you're having, and will ever have. Writing and speaking are media that capture these images for posterity if they're given the nod of approval by the quality police.
Hey. No fair. You didn't like that answer when I gave it for the question "what is our true nature."
How would it feel if they weren't from some underlying source such as a "soul"? This was a serious question Jack. If you want to talk about "thoughts" then you need to get your own thinking straight. You don't want to be throwing out wild ideas about underlying sources like souls, unless there's some justification. So what it is about your thoughts that makes it seem like they are from some underlying source?
Holding a mirror up of the universe and all our own previous thoughts does in some ways sound a bit like the cross between the day of judgement and an acid trip. However, I do think that in a way we do hold up such a mirror, because no matter what model of the mind we adopt we do have a certain impression of the universe and the history of our own thoughts somewhere in our consciousness....
However, the question is how accurate our mirror is and, if we carry the mirror analogy further, we have to remember that the mirror image which we see of ourselves is round the wrong way and not really accurate because most of us are not really completely symmetrical.
I was not ignoring your comment, but simply had not got the chance to reply to the comments. I don't necessarily believe in a soul. I think that it is a term, like most others which we are accustomed to using, which is dubious. I was certainly believe in souls, but that was in the context of my Catholic upbringing. I do use the term on occasions like that of the self, or even the mind, but they are all abstract approximations. So, when I say that the thoughts come from some source, it is a statement which implies that there is something beyond the physical brain, but this could be more like Jung's collective unconscious. Or, it could be like Bergson's idea of 'mind at large'. I am just not convinced that consciousness and the brain are identical.
I suppose that it is useful in thinking about particular thoughts to consider them as having a beginning and an end, but as for the process of thought itself, this is open to question because in some ways it is hard to know when thoughts stop, and the closest may be in dreamless sleep. Certainly, when we are awake it is extremely hard to stop thinking. It is sought in various forms of meditation but to completely still one's own thoughts completely is probably an art achieved only by yogis, and probably still involves certain awareness, rather than complete emptiness.
I do wonder if the reason why most scientists are not wishing to challenge the attempt to go beyond reductionist materialism is related to fear of ostracism from the scientific community. On the other hand, I think it is partly because we have made such progress in connecting the mind to the body that many see the body and the brain as primary. It is all about which is emphasised. In my thread on dualism I definitely got to the point where nonduality seemed to be the way forward. I have began reading thinkers such as Plotinus and Huxley's perennial philosophy, but it does still seem that it is hard to place some degree of emphasis on mind or matter as being more real.
You're right. We can't stop thinking outside very rare circumstances and even here it's questionable.
But now you've introduced, correctly I think, the distinction between particular thoughts and the process of thought.
Which one is it that you want to clear up on? These are different, albeit obviously related, aspects of thought.
I am not sure that we can distinguish particular thoughts from the process of thought in any absolute way because while there are breaks in consciousness and, themes within our thoughts, it is an organic structure, with many interconnected overlaps.
As one of my teachers used to say, science says that the earth goes around the sun, while everyday experience says that the sun goes around the earth. The first view may be useful to science but the second is what matters in daily life.
So, it depends what you want to achieve. Personally, I believe that science knows quite a lot about matter so perhaps it ought to try and look at spirit for a change, all the more so as it seems that the scientific view of matter consisting of energy particles or fields or whatever actually comes very close to the spiritual view that matter ultimately consists of immaterial spirit.
In fact, science is unable to explain what matter ultimately consists of while criticising the idealists for being unable to explain spirit.
If it's spiritual and psychological matters you're interested in, then obviously you place less emphasis on matter. But that's something everybody has to decide for themselves.
I think that we are in the position of making decisions about how we place the emphasis on the material or the spiritual because we are coming with the vantage point of seeing the panorama of historical views, rather than just adopting one worldview necessarily.
What is interesting is how some of the Eastern thinkers really did see the physical world as illusion, or maya. I remember when I did study the module of Hinduism, I was at the time attending Christian Union and felt that the Hindu idea of Atman, man, merging with Brahman, God, made more sense to me than the idea of eternal paradise after the resurrection.
However, even within Christianity there have been different degrees of emphasis on the physical and the immaterial. In some ways, it does seem that esoteric traditions have generally given more attention to the nonmaterial. Some esoteric thinkers, especially within the esoteric tradition even interpret the idea of the fall of the angels and of mankind into a more gross physical reality.I find this approach to be interesting, but my thinking shifts between this kind of thinking, and of viewing esoteric ideas as symbolic depictions. In other words, my own thinking shifts a fair amount over the emphasis, and I keep a certain amount of flexibility but do dwell on it.
Then there's this "abstract approximation" stuff, the soul, the self and the mind are all abstract approximations. Well what does that mean? Is it possible to say what you mean without using abstract approximations?
Your ideas about thoughts coming from a source, which you think implies something beyond the physical brain...I'm still completely in the dark about why you think any of that. And why are you not convinced that consciousness and the brain are identical?
I think that a lot of terms which we use are ambiguous. It was interesting a couple of weeks ago that there was a thread on defining the term consciousness, and it became apparent that while we use the word so often on this forum we all probably come from different understanding and usage of the term. This ranged from the perspective of the medical model to that of philosophies about states of awareness. I think that the term soul is equally ambiguous, ranging from certain religious philosophies which maintain the existence of souls as entities which can be separated from the body to ideas about soul as being about meaningful heartfelt experiences, hence, soul music.
When we engage in philosophy discussion part of it is about the analysis of terms and partly about understanding and explaining the reality behind the terms. The two are separate but closely linked, because the way we use terms is partly related to how we see reality and, alternatively, our ideas are based on our use of language.
I am not saying for sure that the mind and brain are not identical because I am not sure that it is possible to be certain in any absolute way. I grew up adopting a dualistic picture of reality, and I have certainly questioned this. However, when you look outside the perspective of thinking of science, especially the behaviourist model developed by BF Skinner, which has been so influential, it becomes apparent that the particular approach of reductionism is only one way of seeing and not the only one. Even the picture of reality in quantum physics makes a mechanical picture of reality less solid, especially the division between mind and matter. Reality, including our thoughts, may be of an energetic nature.
Some Hindus, such as the followers of monistic Advaita Vedanta, yes, though the majority are dualists. These different traditions in fact correspond to different levels of teachings regarding metaphysical realities and are not necessarily incompatible in all cases.
Besides, Platonism, for example, which sees the physical world as the realm of "appearances", comes very close to the Hindu idea of the world as "illusion". On the other hand, the Hindu concept of Maya is interpreted in many different ways. For example, the world may be an "illusion" in the sense that it is projected or manifested by the Universal Consciousness or God in the same way as a feat of magic is produced by a magician, hence God is referred to as Mayin or Magician. But, for man, especially the unenlightened, the world is and remains very real. Westerners and sometimes even Indians often misunderstand these fine distinctions and may come to the wrong conclusions.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Apparently, you're still fairly unacquainted with the history of cognitive science and the "schools" of contemporary nonreductive (supervenient, emergent) physicalism in both the philosophy of mind and neuroscience, Jack. Besides, it's much easier to derive experimentally reliable results using a reductionist approach than not – but that only gets us so far in explaining any complex phenomenon – which accounts for much of the bias rather than "fear of ostricism". Scientists tend to ostricize only other scientists who peddle "fringe", demonstrably pseudo-scientific, woo-woo (e.g. Capra, Wilbur, Leary, Jung, Chopra, Peterson, Bebe, Tipler et al). :roll:
Quoting SimpleUser
:up: Okay, I'll drink from that bottle ... Btw, welcome to TPF.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Perhaps only that "personal identity" consists in the continuity of affective memory-bodily states rather than inheres in a discrete, or concrete, "substance" independent of transient body-states (re: Buddha's anatta, Epicurus' atoms & void, Hume's bundle theory, ... Metzinger's phenomenal self modeling).
I don't think so, or not much if it all. "Thoughts" "help to explain the nature of consciousness" no more than the sight of migratory flocks of birds high overhead "help to explain" the nature of the sky.
Quoting Jack Cummins
It's a 'strange loop', or self-referential tangled hierarchical system (vide Douglas Hofstadter ... or Thomas Metzinger); the extent of self-reflection, I suspect, corresponds to the limits of the semiotic or symbolic systems available to cognition.
Basically, thinking is autonomic processing of environmental and bodily sensory inputs reflexively looped through memory correlations. "Thoughts", thereby, are referential (intentional?) narrative-like abstractions from – interpretive confabulations of – thinking; in other words, they are reflexive sub-vocalizations of which we are more often than not completely unaware (like e.g. breaths or stools) that tend to facilitate adaptively coordinating behaviors with perceptions.
So to the point: "thoughts" seem to be series / traces of irreducible electrochemical events occurring in network-like clusters (akin to static discharge bursts) frequently throughout structural pathways of the mammalian cortex (affective bottom-up, fast system 1) and by comparison only occasionally throughout structural pathways of the human neocortex (semiotic top-down, slow system 2).
Quoting Daemon
Good question!
My educated guess – Like the eye that is necessarily absent from its own visual field, the brain, lacking internal sensory organs, is functionally brain-blind, and therefore cannot immediately perceive any source – mechanisms – of its own thoughts even as it is thinking so that the cognitive illusion of an "I-self" floating free and "essentially" disembodied persists and variations of a "soul"-of-the-gaps (or more sophisticated gap-of-the-gaps aka "nonduality") are psychologically (& culturally) confabulated to (transcendentally) tether down our "thoughts".
Yes, My description of thoughts was metaphorical but it isn't completely wrong to look at it that way. Nevertheless, it probably isn't a definition a scientific, formal study of thinking would use. :grin:
Quoting Jack Cummins
My hunch is that just as mirrors come in all shapes and sizes, our minds too exhibit an immense variety, this being the result of thoughts themselves which, in a way, determines the qualities of the reflecting surface of the mind-mirror. Since each person's mind-mirror is unique to that person, the reflections/images of reality too will display commensurate variability - this is at once our greatest strength (variety is the spice of life) and our greatest weakness (which is the correct image?). In other words, thoughts, though the aim seems to be to form a faithful image of reality, modulate other thoughts in a continuous and complex web of interactions that ultimately become worldviews.
TPF is "Transaction Processing Facility" or "Terrestrial Planet Finder"? :)
Your discussion of mirrors has lead me to think of my own trip on acid, which I took twice. It was my second one, at a dance music event, with crowds of strangers and I was tripping. I went up to a mirror and I expected to see a grotesque monster staring at me. But, instead, I could see the walls and the radiator behind me, but I was not there at all. I began thinking how I must be out of my body and worried about whether I would be able to get back into it again, ever. So, I went and lay down for many hours before the trip began to end.
The reason why I am recalling this here is it could be described as the ultimate dualist trip. I am aware that it was drug induced but it did really seem as if I had lost my body. I don't know why I had this experience on acid and I don't know if other people have experienced similar ones, because none of my friends have taken acid. At the time, I I think it felt like confirmation of dualism, but as it was a number of years ago I probably don't view it in that way any longer.
I admit that I have not read much on cognitive science, and, strangely, even though I have done a fair amount of modules on psychology on various courses, it has never come into these. I do think that it is an area I probably need to read a lot more about, and I can see that it is relevant to the topic of thinking.
Some of the writers you mentioned are ones I have read, and I am not surprised that you think Jung is 'woo woo' because I realise that many people on this site take that view. But, I am a bit surprised that you view Capra in that way. What is your criticism of him? It was his book, 'The Turning Point' which I found so helpful for demystifying the new physics, and for seeing how the ideas of Descartes, especially dualism, were problematic.
Even though I realise that I need to read up on cognitive science, and probably phenomenology too, I still have some difficulty viewing thinking as some kind of electrochemical reaction. It does not seem to explain the content of thoughts, and, surely, even the cognitive theories are constructed as thought, whether expressed verbally, diagramatically, or in some other conceptual way.
Also true. But you are asking what thoughts are. So we'd at least need to be able to speak about one thought, otherwise we are just left speaking of what goes on in my head that I'm more or less aware of.
Or else, someone can say, whatever thoughts are, are part of what my brain does. But that says very little. Sure, thoughts come from the brain, not my finger.
One thing I can think of, though this may deviate from your question, is to look at some of Oliver Sack's works. He talks about people who have unique experiences, different types of thinking that ordinary people and so on.
As for Fritjof Capra, tell me what actual science he has made contributions to and which scientists cite any of his peer-reviewed publications (and not his pop-sci bestsellers). I'd stopped reading Capra at The Turning Point while doing physics coursework as an engineering undergrad (the very talky movie "Mindwalk" based on that book was quite good, I admit); I found early on he'd had neither "discovered" systems thinking nor "clarified" it for me (or any serious scientist or thinker back then or since), plus the parallels he draws between ancient mysticism or "perennial philosophies" and contemporary sciences are simply specious, even to my naivete when I was heavily into my own non-academic studies of comparative religion / philosophy.
I'm old enough to remember the late 70s (high school) / early 80s (college), Jack, how "New Age", or "new paradigm thinking" became a mind-mushing racket perfect for the head-up-your-arse conservativism of the Thatcher-Reagan era. I wish younger thinkers would study genuine evidence-based sciences before extrapolating pseudo-speculations from it that amount to little more self-confusing woo-of-the-gaps. Just think: anti-Cartesian, anti-dualistic thinking began in earnest as far back as Spinoza; systems thinking, in an empirical sense, as far back as Darwin-Wallace with biological evolution and Poincaré with precursors of chaos theory. Einstein's General Relativity is one of the most holistic theories ever produced. Capra's "work" IMO speaks only to the scientifically illiterate and/or woo-minded "new agers". The boring this-worldly fact is, mate, physical sciences are less reductive, less Cartesian-Newtonian, far less scientistic, than the fashionable p0m0 caricatures pimped off/on these fora (looking at you @Wayfarer :eyes:) suggest.
update:
This overview might be of interest to you on the subject what contemporary scientists actually philosophically assume and how contemporary sciences are actually practiced in contrast to how they're mischaracterized by pseudo-scentific woo-doctors & "shaman" so fashionable with "new age" shoppers & youtubers.
https://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-fifth-horseman-the-insights-of-victor-stenger-1935-2014/
Hmm, (just going to piece together my thoughts in the comment to build on a answer xD)
The way the brain processes thought:
A range of sensory inputs to the brain.
Our freewill which can be described as dynamic mental adaptation to current events.
Memories that sum up the history of sensory inputs on a fundamental level.
The piecing of sensory inputs together in some shape or form through freewill, but since our enviornment does not require us to actively survive it gives us the luxary of thought on other things that we will to think. . .
Common knowledge Biases that could be mistaken as assumptions:
Humans are not different to other living things in being able to observe reality only their senses.
Self reminders of word meanings:
Consciousness-
noun: consciousness; plural noun: consciousnesses
the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.
"she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later"
Nature-
noun: nature; plural noun: natures
the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
"the breathtaking beauty of nature"
In this regard every living thing with senses has a consciousness when viewed without a species bias.
Observation of reality is also observation of self by our senses or reflection of senses.
Q: Quoting Jack Cummins
A1: Thought is a translation of senses of reality to the brain, because we are able to sense ourself that we are being in this reality, our very identity. Conciousness itself is a combination of our senses and free will with memories being a type of subconcious being able to recall it.
A2: The nature of conciousness is to act in response to reality through senses, This acting or responding to reality based on senses is freewill. (Since this answer itself is a thought, it itself answers your question. ;))
Note: The fact we are able to think about such random things is because we have a history to create and learn from, the evolutionary advantage of physical creation, while not having to actively fight for survival.(in some parts of the world)
You could say we are the ultimate day dreamers of creations.
Once I remember saying to myself "I tawt I taw a puddytat."
I am not in disagreement with science and do believe in the importance of evidence based research. However, what about the arts? I don't believe that science has the exclusive view of truth. I am aware that most of my studies were arts based and I do often wonder how differently I would think if I had followed a science pathway. Psychology is interesting in this respect, because it can be studied as an art or science. But, it does seem to me that whether we study ideas as science or as an art, the result is models and metaphorical representations. Of course, these are important, but most ideas we have are only approximations, and they will be refined upon and rebuilt at some time.
I often think of our stream of consciousness as quantum randomness, indeterminacy or contingency in nature. Meaning, the reality exposed by quantum measurement is determined in part by the questions/choices the experimenter puts to nature. Then those choices come back to us later, as part of random thoughts from having the resultant sense experiences. Kind of like recycled water coming from a natural stream.
Quoting Jack Cummins
We cannot escape the subjective experience.
As James told us: Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. (James 1890:239)
And in this subjective life of ours (a subjective truth) we have things like Qualia:
[i]1. ineffable – they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any means other than direct experience.
2.intrinsic – they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience's relation to other things.
3.private – all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
4.directly or immediately apprehensible by consciousness – to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.
If qualia of this sort exist, then a normally sighted person who sees red would be unable to describe the experience of this perception in such a way that a listener who has never experienced color will be able to know everything there is to know about that experience. Though it is possible to make an analogy, such as "red looks hot", or to provide a description of the conditions under which the experience occurs, such as "it's the color you see when light of 700-nm wavelength is directed at you", supporters of this kind of qualia contend that such a description is incapable of providing a complete description of the experience[/i]
I am not sure that it makes sense to say that, 'Thoughts are matter'. This applies to individual thoughts especially. Let us say we take any individual philosophy idea, like, for example, the idea of freedom, it is a mental representation, and may be perceived by the brain or written about in many ways, on paper or spoken about but it is not a physical reality. Even ideas about physical reality, as for example the idea of a circle is separate from the physical circles in the real world. I believe that you are missing the metaphysical basis underlying thought. The empirical and metaphysical are both important in the way in which we construct and engage with thoughts.
I think that you are right to say that scientists incorporate art and, equally, the arts need to incorporate scientific evidence. It is probably a whole spectrum, especially with the social sciences falling in between the two. To focus on science or art alone would result in a lack of balance.
Freedom is an idea. We say that ideas are something that occur to people, usually through some obscure process in the brain.
I don't take anything away from freedom. Freedom is, whatever you think it means. But why isn't freedom physical? I'm not "reducing" the idea of freedom to the brain. I wouldn't even know what that would mean. All I'm saying is that a person lacking a brain cannot conceive of freedom, or anything else. We call parts of what the brain does "mental". An in fact, I think mental aspects of physical reality are the ones we are most acquainted with, because we have these ideas.
But I wouldn't say that the mental conflict with the physical. Why? The physical is just whatever there is.
Physical circles in the real world? I don't think these exist. We see representations of circles, but we never see a circle in the world. We construct them out of sense data. These form part of our innate capacities.
The only distinction I can make sense of for the moment is "mind independent" and "mind dependent". Mind independent things are what we hope our best science captures. Mind dependent things are everything else. But both are physical.
We simply don't know enough about physical stuff to claim that mental stuff cannot be physical, including thoughts. You'd have to tell me why physical stuff would repel or be incompatible with other kind of stuff. The reason I don't say everything is mental is because I don't think the world depends on me for its existence. I cannot exhaust the world by thinking about it. We don't know enough to do this.
It is interesting to think about James' idea of the stream of consciousness in relation to the quantum world, and I must admit that I probably focus on how it relates to James Joyce's stream of consciousness in fiction. The two probably interconnect somewhere as well.
I had not really thought that much about qualia until I began reading a few threads on it on this site. However, I have always been aware the way our subjective experience are so variable, especially how when a group of people draw one object or person the portrayals are so variable. I think that even our own experiences vary too. In particular, I am aware that certain music seems to sound completely different at times, depending on my own state of mind.
I don't think that we can separate the mental and physical entirely. In the previous post I have been engaging in discussions about qualia, in terms of the objective and subjective. They are different ways of perceiving, or of constructing thought but they come together in thought. Within our own experiences we can look out to the external world and within our own previous memories, but the two come together in our thinking in some kind of synthesis.
In my previous post, I forgot to say that I have read some writing by Oliver Sacks, and his observations are extremely interesting, in showing the variations of thoughts and perceptions which people can experience.
I do realise that you probably see the arts as autonomous and perhaps, the best fiction writers and rock artists are engaging with thought in a shamanic way.
Lucky you! Someone at least knows how to have fun around here!
Quoting Jack Cummins
At certain angles, your reflection falls outside your field of vision. The same may apply to self-reflection, temet nosce in that you either get a distorted image or you fail to see your reflection at all. A pity.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I never understood dualism. At first glance, it looks so easy, the basic idea being to view the world in terms of things and their opposite counterparts, the most common illustration of this being that of a man (active) and a woman (passive). However, I'm still struggling to understand the notion of oppositeness. I can't for the life of me figure out what opposite means and by that I mean its logical meaning if that even makes sense to begin with.
As human rights we do project so much, especially onto other people's. I believe that if we realise that we are projecting and see what we are projecting as being related to us individually, we are likely to gain some increases self awareness.
The word opposites does indeed imply mirror images, but it is connected to binary thinking. Dividing the world into binaries is useful in some ways, and I believe that even the development of computing used this. But, the other possibility is thinking in continuums.
I have wondered at times whether the idea of the continuum is useful for thinking about the mind and body problem. Rather than splitting the mind and body as suggested by dualism, we may be able to think of a whole spectrum of subtle states in between body and mind, as we commonly call them.
Luke Barnes critique of Stenger.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.4647\
https://mathscholar.org/2018/03/has-cosmic-fine-tuning-been-refuted/
Quoting 180 Proof
Wallace dissented from Darwin on the issue of Evolution Applied to Man
[quote=Alfred Russel Wallace; https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S724CH15.htm] Those who admit my interpretation of the evidence now adduced--strictly scientific evidence in its appeal to facts which are clearly what ought not to be on the materialistic theory--will be able to accept the spiritual nature of man, as not in any way inconsistent with the theory of evolution, but as dependent on those fundamental laws and causes which furnish the very materials for evolution to work with. [/quote]
Although, of course, this aspect of Wallace's thinking is easily dismissed as 'woo', whereas the hard-arsed scientific materialism of Darwin's Scottish Enlightenment peers as an example of 'real science', no doubt.
I almost entirely agree with that statement. But isn't less confusing to just use the term "scientism"? Materialism is also used in Marxist thought or in the ordinary usage of "buying many things."
Scientism doesn't have those problems.
Would you consider yourself a metaphysical monist?
Some other day I'd like to discuss the materialism I associate with, with your idealism. It may come down to semantics at bottom, but if there is some substance it could be beneficial for me.
Mabe in some other thread, to not derail this one. :)
Quoting Wayfarer
Well then, my friend, you're still shadowboxing with that old strawman because, typical of most idealists (anti-realists, mysterians), you incorrigibly fail to acknowledge the distinction of methodological (epistemic, or scientific) materialism and philosophical (ontic or speculative) materialism. The latter is never at issue in science.
So, "scientific materialism" does not address "the problems of philosophy" (whatever the hell those may be) but concerns itself with methodologically eliminating immaterial qualities (e.g. qualia) from materal quantifications (i.e. measurable data) in the formation of conjectures, then scientific models. And "physical laws", as Victor Stenger repeatedly points out, only refer to the structural invariants of scientific models for tracking physical regularities in nature and are not applied to nature itself as "the only natural laws". Those scientists or philosophers who talk that scientistic talk are merelly doing bad philosophy and, in my mind, do not represent the best contemporary scientific practices.
Anyway, señor, you go right on tilting at Woo-mills. :sparkle:
My view has been influenced by non-dualism, but it's a rather difficult principle to elucidate.
Quoting 180 Proof
Speaks volumes.
Quoting 180 Proof
I recognize 'methodological naturalism' as a valid working principle of science, i.e. not to assume factors that can't be accounted for naturalistically. Where it becomes problematical is when it morphs into philosophical naturalism, which it so easily does.
If you think that Frithjof Capra was a hack, so too was Victor Stenger.
:lol:
Well, since you clearly lack an adequate conception of contemporary scientific theories & practices and, for that matter the philosophy of science, Hitchen's Razor aptly applies to this latest non sequitur.
. Thoughts are your guests ...
. You are the host ...
. Thoughts are your servants ...
. You are the master ...
. But ... apparently ... for people .... it seems exactly the opposite ... isn't it?
. So ... "Do thoughts help to explain the nature of consciousness?" (That's your question ... )
. No ... exactly the opposite ... Thoughts help your ignorance to know about your consciousness ... You think that you know by thinking ... that's a paradox friend ...
. You cannot know anything clearly ... by thinking ... you can do ... by understanding ... you cannot have any preconceived ideas when you face that which is the unkown for you ... otherwise you will miss it ... right? ... For example ... you cannot understand your friend clearly while listening to him ... if the day before he did insult you ... and you carry on this stupid insult with you ... Your inner rageful thoughts ... won't allow understanding being born in you ... even if he is a completely new being while talking to you ... even if he did repent and he just would like to apologize you ... you will just listen to that thoughts ... you will not even allow him to apologize you ... because you cannot see the obvious fact that he is not the person he was yesterday ... do you understand ... Thoughts are always the past memories ... never the new ...
. So ... yes ... understanding is not a corollary of thinking ... but of listening your inner voice ... Thoughts cannot give you understanding ... it can just make your intellect sharper ... nothing else ... It can make one more and more cunning ... more and more unnatural ... more and more far away from his home ... Thoughts are like clouds ... obstructing the sun daylight ...
. They have made a lodging house of your mind. It is wrong to think of them as yours; and this same mistake comes in the way of getting rid of them. If you identify as yours, you stand in the way of their exit.
. And the thoughts which are your temporary guests become permanent lodgers. By looking at thoughts impersonally, you sever connection with them. Whenever a thought or desire is born in you, watch its birth ... see it grow before the mind’s eye ... and then observe its decline ... and the final departure.
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He would probably agree. He was a barnstorming polemicist. But he did have the occasional insight.
Non sequitur. Hitchens was not a scientist but a journalist who had studied philosophy at Oxford (tutored by Anthony Kenny). Again, Wayf, given your own intellectual proclivities, assessing others as "hacks" indicates to me you're merely projecting onto those with whom you disagree especially when they confidently dismiss your woo.
I accept Pierre Hadot’s notion of philosophy - a way of life, a way of being:
Of course science is a part of that, but currently science does not have a cosmology at all, if by cosmos you mean an ‘ordered whole’. Which is no slight on science, and no harm to philosophy, so long as you don’t confuse one for the other!
Anyway, enough squabbling, it’s unseemly.
That's interesting but binary thinking, if I understand what it really means, is still a problem. Imagine the usual way to break the habit of binary (black & white) thinking - point the person in its grips to the so-called grey area between black and white. However, if there's a grey area, there's a non-grey area. Every point in a continuum has points on that same continuum that are not that point. In other words, the notion of a continuum doesn't aid us in escaping dualism.
I read in a critical thinking book that the very idea of non-dualism is dualistic for it's the opposite of dualism. In other words, non-dualism and dualism are a pair that together reinforce dualism. It's like being a prisoner - attempt to escape and you're transferred to a high security block.
I do agree with you that it is difficult to escape dualism entirely, because while I was engaging on the thread I got to the point of embracing non dualism. However, when looking at specific philosophers who try to go beyond duality, I have not been convinced entirely that they really manage this. Yes, it's true that dualism and non dualism are once again binaries, which is why I thought about a whole continuum or spectrum of gradations from mind to body, even if there are points within the continuum.
But, as with all philosophies, we are trying to fit the reality into our constructs of this comes with certain limitations. I am sure that I am slipping into phenomenology, and I haven't read the significant writers, but I would ask where do emotions lie in between mind and body, because they are based on physical drives and instincts but also dependent on ideas, especially in the form of the ideals we have. For example, the heartbroken person may feel get to the point of being depressed clinically, which is based on neurochemistry but this is connected to ideas or ideals about the nature of love.
I do really agree with you that thoughts can be seen as 'guests' and that is why I don't see them as matter, even though they are transmitted, or arise, within the brain as a bodily organ. While I am not very familiar with cognitive science, I am familiar with the cognitive behavioral therapy model and that looks at the way in which thoughts arise in an intrusive manner, which does seem to involve seeing them as strangers which we house. I think that meditation is one way in which we are able to think about thoughts as guests, and the way in which decide to treat them in our own experience.
:gasp:
I do struggle a bit with methodological and philosophical materialism, but I am hoping that I will get there at some point. If anything, I do smile when I look at certain books and begin to think, 'woo woo'. I am serious about my questions, but try to keep a certain amount of humour.
For example: methodological naturalism denotes explaining phenomena without using any 'supernatural' entities or concepts (regardless of whether or not they are believed to 'exist').
For example: philosophical naturalism denotes committing to nature – natural entities or concepts – as all that exists which, therefore, entails the nonexistence of 'supernatural' entities or concepts.
One can be methodological X without also being philosophical X (like e.g. most experimental scientists, engineers, modern/conceptual artists, social critics & religious skeptics) or vice versa, though many people are both, I think, because it's cognitively easier.
I can see your purpose of naturalistic explanations. What I see as being a particular problem is when people make particular arguments which depend on certain ideas about the supernatural. Being by nature a bit of a 'woo woo', mystical psychonaut, I am inclined to contemplate all kinds of possibilities, but I am aware that these are only speculation, so I prefer not to use these as a premise or foundation. I think that I can live with uncertainty, and I do wish to be able to formulate arguments on the basis of what is known, rather than the unknown.
[quote=The Gay Science]Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.[/quote]
It is interesting to see this thread pop up suddenly and it probably is connected to qualia. The idea of thoughts as 'shadows of our feelings' of Nietzsche is interesting here. I also wonder where dreams fit into this because they may be shadows of thoughts and feelings.
I'm not saying that the internal experiences are not real, or that there is no connection between what's happening in our minds, and the concepts we use. I'm saying that we lack the objective component to be able talk sensibly, in some cases, about consciousness or the self. In other words, we can't get beyond ourselves, we lack the proper view.
I think each side of the argument tends to go to far in one direction or the other, and they stick with their particular conceptual view. The problem is probably linked with linguistic boundaries, i.e., what can be sensible said about the subject without talking nonsense. So, I see the problem, at least much of the problem, as a conceptual one. We have a tendency to limit our conceptual view based on a theory, and if this theory comes up against another theory, with a different conceptual view, then the clash. It's like chess conflicting with checkers. My piece doesn't move like your piece, etc.
Just some thoughts.
:up:
I like Strawson's definition here of the "mental", which is "occurrent experiential episodes". The happenings that go on in your mind now and the nows that go on beyond this instant, as you "focus" on them, constitutes mental happenings.
A thought would be a mental happening that has a (inevitably arbitrary) beginning and end point, which if someone asked you about it, you could say, I was thinking about how Airplanes go through clouds or how Descartes thinks of metaphysics, etc.
Of course, what we verbalize captures a part of what goes on in our heads, as we don't express colours and emotions and the like with mere words.
In one sense we are inclined to say that if I express my thoughts or feelings, then those are my thoughts or feelings. They're not shadows of my thoughts or feelings. We just don't talk like this, at least generally. Imagine someone saying, "Here is a book that expresses my thoughts, but they're not the real thing. They're only shadows of my thoughts or feelings." So, the wording is a bit strange, to say the least.
On the other hand, if I use a concept to refer to objects in space, that concept is not the actual thing, it's simply used to refer to the thing in space, depending on the context. So, we think of the concept as a kind of reflection of the thing. In this sense, one might say that the concept is a kind of shadow of the thing, it's not the real thing. However, if you're not careful in your wording, you're going to run into problems.
Lastly, to refer to dreams as "shadows of thoughts" also seems a bit strange. Last night I experienced shadows of thoughts. What would that even mean? This seems like even more of a confusion. However, I think we can sympathize with the questioning of what dreams are, many of us do have questions. Again, we have to go back to how we use the concept generally.
For Nietzsche , like Freud, thoughts are the tip of an iceberg. It is the feelings-values lying below the surface as implicit or unconscious that gives thoughts their sense and purpose. People think they know their thoughts , but they often can’t tell you the larger system of values they hold that make these thoughts coherent.
It could be asked where in the mind do thoughts come and how much is a posteroi or a priori. Each of us lives in a world of subjective experience, based on social meanings and logic, and thoughts may come somewhere in between. Plato spoke of the Forms outside of us and current perspectives in cognitive psychology speak of the way human beings are hardwired, which may include some innate aspects of human nature, as well as human nature. But, in understanding thoughts it may be about trying to put together the various sources which come into play in understanding the divergent sources of the streams of thought processes.
Really? That's like asking 'where in the sky do winds and clouds come from' as if the latter are not aspects of the former (i.e. as if facial-expressions are not aspects (your) face). Waves "come from" tidal currents deep beneath the surface of the ocean generated by diurnal temperature gradients and the moon's gravity, no? More precisely, I surmise from the extant neuroscientific literature that thoughts "come from" subpersonal processes (brain sys 1) and only occasionally, barely, intermittenly are experienced consciously as subvocalizations (brain sys 2) used most basically to track or trace predictions about one's environment (or one's own feelings and other thoughts), and therefore thoughts are transparent to themselves just as everything visible appears within eye-sight except its own seeing.
I also think this thought-transparency (which gives rise to the naive question "where do thoughts come from?") is the source of "subjective experience" insofar as we cannot ever get out of our own heads (i.e. spatiotemporally unique, embodied, perspectives) to perceive our own cognitive processes as they are happening objectively. Thus, idealist confabulations-of-the-cognitive gaps since our brains are biased to project patterns (e.g. fact-free narratives – just-so stories – that mistake correlations for "causes") where they don't – can't – recognize any patterns. Aside from contemporary neuroscience (e.g. T. Metzinger, S.Dehaene, A. Damasio, S. Seung, D. Kahneman), the speculations about "self-identity" by e.g. Laozi, Buddha, Heraclitus, Epicurus ... Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault-Guattari, Dennett et al suggest that Humans may, in fact, be "zombies" cognitively complex enough to delude themselves that they are "(phenomenally self-aware) persons". :eyes:
Interesting, and it may be that we are 'zombies' or
'robots' I have read some of the writers, but not all,but do wonder if there are certain criteria of self awareness, and to what extent this may be established. I am not wishing to collapse the problem to that of relativism, but am wondering how the nature of thoughts can be critiqued. How do we evaluate thoughts and their significance?
Please elaborate. I don't grok the question.
This thread was one which I created several months ago, so I am trying to tune into it again. That may even be relevant to the issue because specific thoughts arise at times and states of consciousness. So much may be about specific moments, and mindfulness of this. It may be that thoughts arise almost spontaneously at times, but they are probably connected to aspects of awareness which are form of subtext to the most conscious aspects of awareness. In other words, some thoughts may arise out of the blue, but they may be aspects of subliminal awareness, which have not been expressed, or formulated into words, previously.
I don't quite agree that each of us lives in a world of subjective experience. I think we have both subjective and objective experiences. However, both worlds are real, and both are important to who we are as individuals.
I'm sympathetic to Plato's ideas, because my own take is that the unifying principle of the universe is consciousness itself. My reasons for believing this have to do with my studies of NDEs and DMT, and what people are describing during these experiences. If it's true that consciousness is the unifying principle of the universe (by universe I mean all that exists), then there may be some deeper connection between each of us. Moreover, if there is an intelligence in back of the universe, not some religious God, but something much more profound, then Plato might have a point. However, some of this is speculation, but I think more and more, the scientific community is considering consciousness as a possible candidate for a unifying principle. I strongly lean is this direction. I think the truth lies somewhere between the dogma of religion, and the dogma of the materialist.
:up: