Thoughts, Connections, Reality
This is, I'm certain, too obvious to state but for the sake of clarity, thoughts have, for good reasons no doubt, been 99% of the time, viewed with a rational/logical lens; humanity has, for most of its history, been (pre)occupied with the logical link between thoughts (ideas/concepts/theories).
It's not too difficult to see why this is so? My best hunch is we're in the process of creating the best model of our universe; the purpose of this model is beyond the scope of this discussion. Suffice it to say that we're building a matrix/system of thoughts, linked to each other logically.
As far as I can tell, the intention appears to be to makes the matrix as fragile & as delicate as possible kinda like how Popperian science is inherently destructible with a single falsifying observation. Surely, if we're after the best model, our criteria, as of necessity, must be proportionately rigorous.
Enough about that.
What I would really like to do is explore the possibility space on the matter of thought connections. Is it that only logical connections between ideas reveal truth/sense/reality?
Some options:
1. Free Association (non-logical): The low hanging fruit. Very useful as a memory aid but, in some cases, is the basis for deep, albeit personal, meaning. For example mementos. We could, you know, consider humanity as an individual. What does our collective memory have to tell us?
N.B. Logic + Memory = IQ
2. Synchronicity (Carl Jung): I couldn't think of anything else.
3. Emotional connections (Off the top of my head).
4. Left for the reader as an exercise.
In a nutshell, thoughts could be connected in many different ways than just logically and they maybe equally, if not more, important for...you know for what.
It's not too difficult to see why this is so? My best hunch is we're in the process of creating the best model of our universe; the purpose of this model is beyond the scope of this discussion. Suffice it to say that we're building a matrix/system of thoughts, linked to each other logically.
As far as I can tell, the intention appears to be to makes the matrix as fragile & as delicate as possible kinda like how Popperian science is inherently destructible with a single falsifying observation. Surely, if we're after the best model, our criteria, as of necessity, must be proportionately rigorous.
Enough about that.
What I would really like to do is explore the possibility space on the matter of thought connections. Is it that only logical connections between ideas reveal truth/sense/reality?
Some options:
1. Free Association (non-logical): The low hanging fruit. Very useful as a memory aid but, in some cases, is the basis for deep, albeit personal, meaning. For example mementos. We could, you know, consider humanity as an individual. What does our collective memory have to tell us?
N.B. Logic + Memory = IQ
2. Synchronicity (Carl Jung): I couldn't think of anything else.
3. Emotional connections (Off the top of my head).
4. Left for the reader as an exercise.
In a nutshell, thoughts could be connected in many different ways than just logically and they maybe equally, if not more, important for...you know for what.
Comments (81)
It depends on the ideas and logic used. Ideas and logic seem to couple themselves naturally, like Earth has coupled naturally with Sun. Ideas are not randomly appearing. They arise in the context of familiar ideas or locations, and I think any attempt to project the straight jacket of logic conformally to ideas and their connections is a constraining Bonzai excercise, probably ending in a last desparate Kamikaze effort to escape the bondage.
And...
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say, but I am sure enough to be able to say you're wrong.
Here are two thoughts:
The NE Patriots will win the Superbowl this season.
The Earth revolves around the sun.
What logical connection do these thoughts have? What kind of connection of any kind do they have other than the fact that I have thought both of them? They are both expressed in English.
Anyway, as I said in my OP, it's an uphill task to think in ways different from the ones we're habituated to. Logical connections between ideas have been the norm for thousands of years. We need to think outside the box as it were, not a walk in the park for sure.
Incoherent writing/speech (violations of the law of noncontradiction for example or no logical continuity between something said/written and what precedes it) may possess a nonlogical pattern. What say you?
I don't think our thoughts are connected logically. I'm not sure they are necessarily connected at all. Certainly some are not.
We're on the same wavelength.
Literature? Poetry? Music? Religion? These also have their own logics, realities and truths though, no?
The Super Bowl season might depend on whether the Earth is still revolving around the Sun. Though we could conceive of a Super Bowl season in which the Sun is revolving around the Earth from our frame of reference.
It'd be weird to say facts in and of themselves have no "logical" connections to any other facts. That they are facts at must entail a vast array of logical connections, right?
If we didn't understand many of the logical consequences/implications from the statement of a fact, would we understand the fact?
Thoughts are not facts. And, no. Although it is not the subject of this thread, facts are not connected logically either.
Empty/nonsense books/poetry/music? Can you cite some examples?
Yes, own logic: It appears that we can't break our habit of thinking in terms of logic (that's how deeply embedded it is in our psyche) and that's why we have paraconsistent "logic", dialetheistic "logic", and so on. Are these really logic or is "logic" an empty word in these cases? It's kinda like saying atheism is just another kind of theism.
Yes, there are different kinds of logic. I see the idea of logic as being the idea of the connectivity and coherence of thought. If thoughts were disconnected (if there was no underlying logic of their associations and relations) we would have nothing. So there is formal, rule-based logic, but I would say there are also logics of metaphor, of painting, of poetry, of music, of athletics, of dance, of metaphysics, phenomenology and so on.
Also, we have deductive, inductive and abductive logic. Logic, logic everywhere...when you stop to think...: :wink:
Yes. We like to think that our thought processes are rigidly rational, but as Hume noted, more often than not, our reasoning is in service of our "passions". Typically, the link between a fact and its meaning is it's emotional significance. That's because memories are more likely to be stored in the brain when synapses are "influenced" by emotions. Events that arouse no emotions are quickly forgotten. Apparently, the neurotransmitters and hormones react to potential positive or negative effects on Me. Opportunities for sex or harm, are more likely to make an impression on memory, and subsequent thoughts, than irrelevant abstractions. So, my answer is no --- it is not only logical connections between ideas that reveal truth/sense/reality. Any more questions? :smile:
This review describes the evidence of modulation of memory and synaptic plasticity produced by emotional arousal, stress hormones, and . . .
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5652299/
Interesting but what about memory impairment associated with depression and trauma. These have been documented or so I'm told. Funnily, this doesn't seem to happen with emotions at the other extreme (euphoria, ecstacy) or does it?
It gets a little confusing though. Psychoanalysts like Freud were known to have studied so-called repressed memories of childhood trauma.
However, it makes more sense to remember bad experiences if only so that we can learn valuable life-lessons from them.
There's a paradox in there somewhere.
The issue seems more complex than it seems at first glance.
Quoting Gnomon
So, we've arrived at an apophatic understanding - thoughts are not necessarily about logical connections! Now what?
Quoting Janus
Recommended activity for eudaimonia! :up:
If I may ask, how are thoughts connected to each other? Same question for ideas as expressed in propositions, theories, beliefs, and so on.
I'll speak, tentatively, for knowledge, thoughts, feelings, memories, fantasies, imagery, and other mental ... what's the right word? Experiences? Phenomena? I won't speak for facts, propositions, theories, etc. My way of seeing these things is based on introspection and it is idiosyncratic. I've laid it out on the forum before. I don't propose it as the truth. It's just a way of thinking that I find helpful and that fits my own experience of those phenomena and how they relate.
When I think about this, I can see an image in my mind. It's a cloud lit from within. Like a cloud, it is amorphous and it's elements are not well defined. I can think of this several ways. Sometimes, as someone with an interest in eastern philosophies, I think of this as the Tao as discussed in the "Tao Te Ching." Sometimes I think of it as a model of the world I carry around with me that allows me to see, feel, how new knowledge fits in with my current understanding. It includes things I learned in school, sure, but also many more things I never learned explicitly. Things I just accumulated based on experience from the time I was born. Nobody ever taught me that if I let something go it will fall to the ground. I knew it before I had words and long before I'd ever heard of gravity.
Sometimes my inner engineer pops out and I think of the cloud as a truss, a structure made up of connected elements. Any change in one element telegraphs through the whole structure resisting the change. Unless the new element is consistent with what I have experienced, it will have a hard time fitting in. Here's an example of a truss:
So, back to the question of what connects the different elements. First - I'm sure there's probably more than one cognitive science way of seeing this such as, speculatively, the location where the element is stored in the brain or when the memory was created. Maybe there is some sort of tag that allows connection of thoughts, memories, etc. with similarities. Someone help me out here.
Personally, when I create a new thought, idea, memory, I experience it as tagged with a mental image. Letters I sometimes experience as colored. I usually see "L" as white or beige. "D" as a light yellow. Since those colors are similar, when I can't think of someone's name, I may come up with Dan when his name is Larry. Other tags might be a feeling, mood, tone. Of course, there are billions, trillions, quadrillions of connections between neurons in the nervous system, so things are immensely more complicated than this.
Without going any further, I don't experience ideas as connected logically. Maybe someone with more of a cognitive science or cognitive philosophy background can help here.
Wow! You have your very own personal system! Go T Clark, go!
Quoting T Clark
You seem to be on top of things. :up:
Since you mentioned Taoism & gravity, I read a book The Tao of Physics. There was something in it about how a teacher shouldn't teach about gravity unless the student asks the question "why do things fall?"
Taoism, if I'm correct, is paradox-oriented; Not at all sure if they're true paradoxes but the general idea seems to be nonsense makes sense or there's no such thing as irrationality, every fool or looney needs the right context to be seen as wise or sane respectively.
Quoting T Clark
Synesthete, lucky you. My only claim to uniqueness is I'm unlucky, bad luck follows me everywhere.
Quoting T Clark
That must be the Taoist in you. How does that fit into your professsion as an engineer where you'd be constrained by logic. Should I walk on a bridge you built?
Everything I wrote is based on my personal experience of thinking from the inside. That's what it feels like to me. I'd like to hear what a cognitive scientist has to say. I'm skeptical that the incredibly complex process of thinking is mediated by logical connections between thoughts.
As @Janus said, it's all logic which I interpret to mean that just like chaos is order undeciphered, illogic is logic undeciphered. How does that make you feel?
Logic, it seems, has morphed. meaning-wise: It was once a specific way of thinking (contradiction intolerant systems like categorical, sentential, predicate logics) but now it's just a [s]specific[/s] way thinking (contradiction tolerant systems; vide paraconsistent logic, dialetheism, logical nihilism). Illogical is now meaningless.
It's a long story, but no.
Quoting Agent Smith
What makes you think that engineers are "constrained" by logic? I've always thought that Taoism is the philosophical system most consistent with science. Anyway, I never designed bridges, so you're safe.
Quoting Agent Smith
I don't know what that means. @Janus wrote
Quoting Janus
I don't think that is true. Again, I'd like t hear from someone who knows more than I do.
Quoting Agent Smith
I not sure what you mean here either. Seems like you're saying that there is something that connects thoughts, we'll just call it "logic" even though it isn't what we normally think of as logic. Kind of a circular argument.
Headed for bed.
Good night. I'll reply to your earlier post (if I feel up to it).
[quote=From Jurassic Park]I don't want to know what it is not, I want to know what it is.[/quote]
Quoting T Clark
It's a mathematical science, isn't it? I wonder, seeing that math seems limited (no contradictions allowed) and not limited (quantum weirdness) by classical logic, if there's something paradoxical about the math-logic relationship.
Quoting T Clark
Not circular argument, ad hoc hypothesis is more apposite. Any way of thinking is given the name logic.
I meant that ideas find their meaning in contexts, in their relations and associations with other ideas. It's not all formal, rule based logic, but poetry. for example has its own logic; if it didn't it would be unintelligible, a string of disconnected random ideas. with no overall context or associative "glue" to bind them together.
:up: Could it be that it's intelligible, yes, but not in a logical way?
How about keeping logical connections intact as you seem to prefer but consider it foundational, the ultimate/final/true link between thoughts and overlay on that other kinds of connections, one being emotional. I simply rearranged the system so as to give some semblance of independence or distinctness to [s]nonlogical[/s] supralogical relations. Successful? I dunno!
Quoting Janus
Interesting! Random thoughts for the conscious mind but may not be so for the subconscious. What does our subconscious/unconscious have to say about logic?
The underlying assumption: The universe (is supposed to) make(s) sense, logically. Is there a deductive argument to support this?
1. With 1 cut, you get 2 slices
2. With 2 cuts, you get 4 slices
3. With 3 cuts, you get 7 slices
4. With 4 cuts, you get 11 slices
5. With 5 cuts, you get 16 slices
.
.
.
Series: 2, 4, 7, 11,16,... [no pattern detectable] Emotions, others
First difference: 2, 3, 4, 5 [half a pattern!] Inbetween stuff (fuzzy: logic? illogic? Dunno!)
Second difference: 1, 1, 1, 1 [Full pattern!] Logic as fundamental
Our biological body, especially our brain, is ambitious in offering us a seamless experience. Just like our thoughts, the brain weaves our senses together, giving one coherent moving picture. Logic is the same. It's a function of association, chaining thoughts together to give one coherent stream of thinking.
In this sense, I disagree with the notion that "thoughts could be connected in many different ways other than logic". Logic is an automation. You can not stop it.
In order to think, we must perceive and experience different phenomena. The first time you encounter a unique phenomena, you learn about it. This is your reference. From this moment onward you compare any similar or same phenomena with this original phenomena. You examine if your impression of it is consistent. These references make up our toolkit for logic - and logic itself is the act of comparing these references to the thing itself, checking both for integrity and consistency in our stream of world perception.
In the same vein, I then disagree with the idea that
Quoting Agent Smith
There is no truth or reality in logic. If anything, through logic, as it is based on our experience, we may reveal something about ourselves. But just because our logic allows us to have a seamless mind experience, it doesn't mean that it necessarily reflects reality in any way.
One practical example to demonstrate all that I mean:
1. You learn of "apple" as you eat a green sour fruit. This is now your reference.
2. You see another green fruit. It's form is very similar. You logically believe it is an apple.
3. You try the fruit but the taste does not match your reference. Your logic tells you that this is not apple.
4. You learn that this is "pear" not "apple". You now have two different references.
5. You get a third fruit. The form is the same as apple but the colour is red.
6. Based on your previous experience, this might be "apple" or "pear". Either way you know it to be "fruit"
7. You try the fruit. It tastes similar to apple but is less sour and more sweet.
8. Through the form, flesh consistency and similar taste, you learn that red fruit is also "apple"
9. Your reference is updated once again.
Apple is now: The shape of an apple. Red or green. Sweet or sour. NOT a pear.
Pear is now: Not the shape of an apple. Green. Sweet. NOT an apple.
This is how we learn our entire life, making unbelievable amounts of associations that in turn build our internal function for chaining thoughts - logic.
Why not? Is illogic always involuntary? :chin:
Quoting Hermeticus
That's a tautology (I think).
Quoting Hermeticus
Why?
I don't think we ever act illogically on our account. Every decision we make is made through logic. It's always other people that tell us "you're acting illogical" because their logic does not pertain to our logic. That, or we learn that our action was illogical afterwards - that is the natural process I have described.
Quoting Agent Smith
Thoughts and logic go hand in hand. If I want to think of a particular thing, I first have to know the thing. I've showcased how we learn of new things through association and comparison. Comparison in itself is an act of applying logic. Logic is the principles we appy to check for consistency. It makes sure that our comparisons are valid.
When you perceive something that looks like an apple, you immediately recall your "apple reference" and logically determine whether you're looking at an apple - only then do you proceed to active thought where you might think "Oh, how nice would it be to eat this apple."
Sure. You could compare the colour of an apple to the length of the sides of a triangle. But that's an illogical comparison and in an actual situation aside from philosophical talk, you would not do this. It's not valid. Rather, you would compare colour with colour and length with length because that's the logical thing to do.
I dunno! You mean to say "everyone has their own logic" and that there's no such thing as universal logic. Are you conflating agenda with logic? Possible but not necessarily.
Quoting Hermeticus
I shouldn't do this but I could do this. Why should I bother about what I should/shouldn't do? Yes, yes, to be illogical has, I believe, fatal consequences but then argumentum ad consequentiam (fallacy).
Quoting Hermeticus
If I don't do this, does it lead to a contradiction? A category error? Yet, if the point is to explore the mind world, why get bogged down by (silly) rules? The man who refused to compare the sky to a dog is better than a man who does?
That said, it does look like, for the present, (the assumption seems to be) logic is foundational (you talked about consistency, perhaps there's more) but only to the extent that we, ourselves, are concerned (anything illogical elicits THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE!). Maybe we're AI with thinking restrictions; deliberate/accidental, I have no idea.
If not, we need proof that the universe is logical. Do you have one? Your post in the other thread of mine was interesting to say the least.
Yes. Logic is subjective, I have no doubt about this - otherwise we wouldn't be flinging hundred of thousands of words back and forth in this forum.
Quoting Agent Smith
Would you compare the colour of an apple with the sides of an triangle for me? I'm curious how it would go :P
Have you ever gone against your own logic in any given situation? I don't think I have. I don't think I could. Imagine being a perfectly joyful person attempting to kill yourself. You could try. Would you be capable? Probably not. Likewise, people that do commit suicide go against an instinct that is supposedly hardwired into us. They do so because to them, it is the logical thing to cease their suffering rather than continuing it.
Logic is a monumental force. We see it today in the divide of our society regarding Covid and all that. Both parties are reasoning perfectly logical in their own frame of mind - yet the other, to them, appears completely delusional. If you take it as the principle that guarantees us a persistent worldview, as I suggest, then we might even consider it as an anchor for our identity. Logic ties our impressions of the world together and identity is rooted in our world- and self-view.
Quoting Agent Smith
When I do something like this in programming I get:
Error CS0019 Operator '==' cannot be applied to operands of type 'int' and 'string'
and my program stops and cancels.
How would we go about comparing sky and dog?
1. We list all characteristics that is sky.
2. We list all characteristics that is dog.
We look at our list, see that they aren't comparable by any of their characteristics and throw that error code "Can not compare type 'animal' with type 'location'. My program (comparison) stops and cancels.
"AI with thinking restrictions" is not too far off. We can view anything in the frame of programming - as a language it's reflective of human experience afterall.
I wouldn't call it restrictions though. Just like a computer program, we have certain functionalities and certain procedures on how we process anything.
Machine learning is only as good as the data/training you provide your algorithm. It's the same with thinking and logic. I make more experiences (data) and train my algorithm (logic) - in turn, my ability to assess (thinking) and handle future experiences grows (learning).
Quoting Agent Smith
Well, I'm not a defender of the idea that the universe is logical. As stated, logic to me is clearly subjective. I suggest that providing a seamless experience may be foremost. Meaning that if the world appears to be logical, it is because I've constructed my world view to be logical.
Quantum superposition as I've mentioned in the other thread supposedly breaks the law of non-contradiction. I don't really want to talk about quantum theory too much. I hardly have a clue about the math you asked about in the other thread and in the end they mostly remain theories - with many open questions and things we do not know yet.
However, I would like to point out one more quantum aspect that may be supporting my ideas. The Observer effect. It strikes me as fascinating that these quantum particles would remain in undetermined, paradoxical states until they are measured.
The question I ask myself is: What happened?
The obvious option is that it's the quantum particles own behaviour. It changed when measured, simple as that.
Another option is that the quantum particle does not change at all. It actually is undeterminable and paradoxical and chaotic. However, as we are "made" with a seamless experience as primary feature, we can not perceive impossible things - hence the experience we can not understand is translated to something we can understand - one determined logical value at a time.
Quoting Janus
I'm ok with that, I guess, although it is pretty circular. Earlier, I described possible connections between thoughts based on my personal experience:
Quoting T Clark
I guess that describes what the two of you would call a "logic," whether or not you would agree with my particular formulation. If that's the case, then we agree.
It strikes me that thoughts, ideas, whatever, are not really stored in the brain at all. In my experience, they are created and recreated as needed. So, something is stored, but not fully formed ideas unless they have been memorized.
In what sense is logic subjective. What I've been told is identifying and avoiding biases (subjectivity) is a critical aspect of logic and rationality. In other words, logic is what objectivity looks like under the current set of circumstances.
That said, many different strains of logic have budded out from classical logic (Aristotle, Chyrsippus, Frege) and we have this rather confusing array of choices that are either simply (mind) games of the benign kind or created out of necessity as classical logic fails to capture the richness of reality and human experience. Would you call this subjectivity or would you consider this a diversification of objectivity?
Quoting Hermeticus
Good question. I've always been intrigued by how language seems to have a much greater domain than logic. For instance. I can write/speak a contradiction. Here's one :point: I exist and I don't exist. However, I can't (seem to) think it! I wonder what advantage this give us? What's the upside of being able to utter/pen down "nonsense"? Is this a feature or a bug?
Quoting Hermeticus
Probably...
Quoting Hermeticus
:ok:
Quoting T Clark
Please explain! Quoting T Clark
It's wordplay I'm afraid.
Quoting T Clark
Memorized and stored where?
Quoting Agent Smith
What hasn’t been mentioned so far are
1)Phenomenological Intentionality. This is not a causal
logic but an entirely different way of looking at meaning creation.
)Wittgensteinian language games:
This, too, is not a causal logic.
I haven't made a study of memory enhancement and impairment. But my general impression is that depression is associated with hormone imbalance, causing overall mood level to go downward from the baseline. That would also tend to diminish the "fixing" of memories. And presumably euphoria would do just the opposite --- up to a point of diminishing returns. If you are interested, you might Google "bipolar studies memory", to see if remembrance matches the mood swings. It's possible that too much of a hormone could be as bad for memory establishment as too little. :sad:
"Studies report that some people with bipolar disorder have complained of memory impairment during high moods, low moods, and at times in between."
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314328
Quoting Agent Smith
Like dogs, associations with taste & smell may help humans to embed memories. But, for optimum memorizing, we should aim for the sweet spot between the extremes of emotion. Unfortunately my typical bland mid-range mood doesn't seem to result in a good memory. So, I guess my baseline is already on the low end. :smile:
What you find most interesting is what you will mostly remember.
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. And as soon as”
? Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove: 1
[quote=Wikipedia]Monkey mind or mind monkey, from the Chinese compound x?nyuán and the Sino-Japanese compound shin'en ?? [lit. "heart-/mind-monkey"], is a Buddhist term meaning "unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable".[/quote]
Method to madness?
Western-world humanity maybe. The western ideal wants people to be 100% (scientifically) rational machines. With 100% rational thoughts (whatever that may mean). I can be 100% rational without thinking scientific though. What rationality you refer to? Only when you know that you can decide if you think rational.
In the sense that it's us who invented it.
What would happen to this endeavor if all thought consisted of connections? We would be exploring the possibility of connections connections...
See the problem?
Can you think of any thought which is not associative, or in other words, "connective"?
Cannot. That is exactly the point. Talking in terms of "thought connections" like the OP chose to do is an inadequate method for better understanding what thought is and how it works.
Can you explain how thought works other than in terms of association, whether logical, metaphorical, magical, poetical, or whatever?
"In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou'd be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding."
Bold letters inserted by me.
He's probably right.
No. What is the problem?
The issue is random thoughts but according to Ramsey theory, true randomness doesn't exist.
Is mathematics invented or discovered?
The 'problem' amounted to conflicting understandings is all. I mean, yours and my own, respectively. We have two very different notions of what counts as thought at work. It's as if we're working from two incompatible definitions of the term "thought". Oh, and apologies are on order here. The problem actually wasn't one with what you wrote, per se. Unless of course, I'm right. You see, I am of the belief that all thought consists entirely of correlations, and since correlations are akin to connections such as they are, when I see another write something like "thought connections", I cringe because, on my view, that would be like saying "correlations connections" or even "connections connections". So, my apologies for failing to spell that out clearly enough in muh first post.
Now, to this 'issue'...
We cannot say what a random thought even is, unless we first know what a thought is, for the former is a kind of the latter, a sort of sub-species, so to speak. So, circling back to the differences of notions or definitions here, I'm curious to know what you mean when you use the term "thought".
I don't know enough about "Ramsey theory" to comment about that aspect of your issue.
Well, as astute as Hume was regarding some things, his notion of thought is found sorely wanting. His understanding worked from the notion of perception commonplace at the time. "Perception", as was used historically, was fraught.
I've explained my objection above, for the third time. Yes, I can explain how thought works. I would not talk in terms of "thought connections" for all the reasons mentioned heretofore.
Sure, one need not agree with Hume's account of perception or the mind, to find merit in his thinking.
What he could not do, given his philosophy, is to find a "real connection" between thoughts, it was beyond him, unless he postulated what he calls a "fiction", meaning, more than is warranted by empirical evidence.
But putting aside his empiricism, he could not find a way to connect thoughts, he had to assume a connection. Sure, we can say that Kant might have solved this, or that connections are innate.
But his powers of reasoning was extremely sophisticated.
Point being, I don't see that we've improved on his reasoning in this topic, we don't know what it is that connects our thoughts.
I think we have, considerably. The notion of "what connects our thoughts" is problematic itself. It's based upon an understanding that led itself to a question about our thoughts that it could not answer because of the inherently deficient framework underwriting the question itself(because of the fact that Hume worked from a misunderstanding, an inherently emaciated notion of human thought/understanding).
To be more precise, I should've said what "principle" connects our thoughts, or even hazard to say what law. Of course, there's something in the brain that does this, but it seems to me we are in the dark here, because very little is understood about the mind/brain relation, outside of a dependency relation.
Who do you have in mind or what school of thought or theory do you have in mind when discussing these topics?
I've no particular conventional understanding in mind. Indeed, philosophy proper hasn't gotten much right at all as far as human thought goes.
I work from a strong methodological naturalist bent. Dennett's work is impressive, however, I do not think that everything is physical. I would, however, readily agree that everything - including thought - depends on the physical. I also reject many another historical dichotomy, on the same grounds of inadequate explanatory power. For example, the subject/object dichotomy, the internal/external dichotomy, the mind/body dichotomy, the physical/immaterial, the physical/mental, etc.
For nearly twenty years(when I first began studying and reading philosophy), I've been developing my own understanding of human thought and belief and all that that includes and/or leads to.
It makes no sense to me to wonder what 'connects our thoughts'. Very very roughly put:Our thoughts connect us to that which is not as well as ourselves, by virtue of leading up to an initial understanding of the world and ourselves("worldview" is more palpable to me).
Some of our thoughts are products of a process commonly characterized or described as thinking, imagining, pondering, wondering, remembering, envisioning, etc. However, those are much more complex thoughts than the much more simple ones we first began with; those that the capable beasties still have in spades. Human thought has evolved over time as has everything else. It began simply and grew in it's complexity over time. A proper adequate notion of thought ought be able to adequately take all that into account; it ought be readily amenable to be rendered in terms of it's evolutionary progression.
It's terminological at this point. I think being a naturalist monist would be liable to least offense, depending on how you think of "the natural". If by the natural, you have in mind, everything that is, then fine, no problem. If by natural you mean, everything discovered by the sciences, then I think we restrict naturalism unnecessarily.
I believe I can understand, to an extent, that everything "depends on the physical" to mean that, the stuff that science describes, is fundamental and often provides the basis for which to proceed: neuroscientists study brains, cognitive scientists study photons hitting the eye, everything is made of the stuff physics describes.
Quoting creativesoul
Replying very roughly too, I'd think we could say that we are frequently thinking, sometimes what we call "ideas" follow each other. If I'm thinking of fixing a wall, the ideas I may have of a hammer, a tile and glue, follow from this situation. Is this order necessary, in some manner? I think so, but it's hard to provide an explanation for this.
Other times, in ordinary life, I find that ideas simply "flow", thinking about say, Palestine, followed by thinking about perception and then thinking about my phone that just ringed, etc. There seems to be no order here.
I agree that thoughts connect us to ourselves and to the world. The problem is how to account for the thoughts I have and how do they connect to "me" and the world. On occasions an "physical objects" prompts an idea. The "me" is never too far off, in my experience.
That's my initial approximation.
What we're attempting to describe existed in it's entirety long before we began attempting to take it into account. Sure, the terms we use are pivotal to our success, but I do not see how any more focus upon that is helpful, unless we're somehow violating our own prior use, or some other issue resulting from our use arises...
How to account for thoughts...
All thought consists entirely of correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things. Memory is but a repeat of correlations previously drawn.
Ideas, concepts, hypotheses, theories, dreams, words (their meaning), and so much more, are thoughts.
That's odd...
We cannot sensibly swap these words whenever and wherever we chose. That inability to remain sensical when doing so tells me - quite clearly- that all those things you mentioned are not the same.
Here's the thing, I've repeated this too many times here, I don't want to bore people. Very briefly "materialism"/physicalism made sense back in the time of Descartes, it was mechanistic materialism, the world - heck the universe - worked like a gigantic clock.
But Descartes could not account for the creative aspects of language use, nor thinking in general, based on materialism, which is why he postulated the res extensa. This was believed by many, including Newton, until, to Newton's own dismay, he discovered that materialism is false, the world does not work according to mechanistic principles:
"It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum... is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it."
With that, "materialism" collapsed. And hasn't been restated in an intelligible manner. Chomsky details this very lucidly.
You can say physicalism is whatever physics says. That narrows outlook not focusing on physics.
Quoting creativesoul
Sure, this follows when dealing with "ordinary objects", what about between thoughts? How do we account for correlation here?
What I mean is that all thought is existentially dependent upon physical things. The periodic table of elements and all that that current conventional understanding entails. Physical stuff was first, and other stuff(not simply physical) came after... simply put.
Could you elaborate? Are you referring to the time period between thoughts?
I'm not sure we're on the same page here. What I wrote there was simply the most basic claim that I've been able to arrive at over the years that seems to be universally applicable; i.e., an adequate, albeit very basic, description of all thought, regardless of complexity.
I can give examples that more or less follow. Suppose that right now, I have in mind an idea I'd like to convey. I have a computer at my disposal, obviously a keyboard, and some ideas in my head as to what I'd like to say.
In this situation, in which I'm in front of an object, with a goal in mind, I can find a connection between the ideas of transmitting these thoughts, via a keyboard, being careful as to avoid a typo and so on. I see individual letters in my keyboard, which I can use to form words that convey an impression from my head into yours.
This can be accounted for by the circumstances I'm in now. The ideas of a computer, a keyboard, letters and what example to use can be pointed to concretely to account for the connection of my thoughts.
In another circumstance, say I'm walking around in my neighborhood listening to music, I can be thinking of, the war in Yemen in one instance, onto the favorite part of the song that is playing, then thinking about Hume, my dinner with my friends and what I should do tomorrow.
In this latter circumstance, it's less clear to me how to account for how the ideas I have when walking and thinking form a connection or follow. It could be totally random. I'm a bit skeptical on this conclusion, but it's possible.
In any case, I'm off to sleep.
Sleep well.
Aren't you merely using the keyboard to state your thoughts? Are you merely expressing your thoughts about thought here via common language use?
You see, that's one place where philosophy proper has failed miserably. They've yet to have taken into proper account the differences between thinking about thought and thought. As simple as that sounds, it is a major flaw that has led to the inherent inability for current conventional understanding to arrive at a notion of thought that is amenable to evolutionary progression.
Thought is most certainly an autonomous process. We need not turn it on. We cannot turn it off. We can, however, influence it, intentionally and accidently. Random thoughts? Well, I am a firm believer in a causal universe, so strictly speaking if by "random" we mean spontaneously formed completely devoid of prior influence, then I would say that there are no such thoughts. Well, at least not once we've begun the mastery of common language. The simplest of thoughts must begin free from prior influence, but those kinds of thought are the most basic kind of simple elementary composition... the basics that begin to develop into what we call "minds", and those do not include language use. The correlations are not drawn between language use and other things.
Are they not mental objects? Do we not think about them?
There's more than one way to skin a cat. Rain, cloud, two thoughts, "connected" because they're thoughts, but also connected in a causal sense. I'm interested in connexions that go beyond the simple classificatory.
The "keyboard" is a construction of the mind on the occasion of sense. I use it to try to approximate my thoughts via word use, such that what I'm thinking now can be evoked in your own mind when reading these words. It's not an exact science, far from it.
Quoting creativesoul
Could well be. It's already hard to talk about what thinking is. Thinking about thinking is ever more complex, but we seem to do it.
Quoting creativesoul
Interesting. So on your view, most (if not all) our thoughts follow a causal process?
As I read it the OP is merely asking whether only the logical connections between thoughts reveal "reality" or whether other connections such as the imaginative, intuitive, metaphorical, analogical, magical and so on also reveal "reality" or some aspects of it, so your objection that talking about thought connections is equivalent to talking about "connection connections" seems somewhat inapt.
I've no idea what you're trying to say here. What's the significance of encapsulating the term keyboard in quotes?
Are you referring to the word or what the word picks out to the exclusion of all else? Perhaps, you're referring to all the different ways you use the term? I'm lost here...
Quoting Manuel
Causality always plays a role. Thought is itself efficacious.
That's not the way I talk. I reject the very notion of 'mental objects'.
Quoting Agent Smith
What does that have to do with anything. We think about trees too, but trees are not thoughts anymore than all those other things you've named are.
Why would you do that? Are thoughts not mental objects? Are they then pulmonary/renal/hepatic/cardiac/etc. objects?
Quoting creativesoul
We think about something, then we think about some other things. Are these things connected in one sense or another? Is there a pattern in our thoughts? Not necessarily logical though.
I reject the mental/non mental dichotomy as well as the subject/object dichotomy upon grounds of inadequate explanatory power. Not all things are one or the other. Some things consist of both, and thus are not adequately described in terms of either. Thoughts, and thinking are two such things.
A pattern? Not my choice of descriptions...
All thought consists entirely of correlations drawn between directly and indirectly perceptible things. We are the bridge that 'connects' all our thoughts together. Are they always logical? Of course not.
What do you mean by that? Isn't a correlation a pattern?
Quoting creativesoul
Everything, as far as I can tell, is brought to our attention, as a thought. I dunno about perception (e.g. is seeing a tree is a thought?), but seeing a tree does bring to mind the concept/idea of a tree.
That's exactly what I wanna find out. What nonlogical correlations/patterns exist in re our thoughts?
Yes, yes!
1. Logically meaningful (the usual deal)
2. Illogical and yet meaningful (contradictions ok, but more...)
3. Alogically meaningful (Free association, etc.)
Simply that a keyboard is also something which we construct in our cognition, there are no keyboards in nature. It's also an idea. Nothing beyond that.
Nature excludes humans and all we've done?
No... we are part of nature. That doesn't mean that the things we experience aren't a product of our cognitive capacities.
I'd be very conservative in what I'd attribute mind independence to.