Is thought partly propositional?
Thought includes:
reasoning, contemplation, musing, pondering, consideration, reflection, introspection, deliberation, study, rumination, cogitation, meditation, brooding, mulling over, reverie, brown study, concentration, debate, speculation;
Are propositions or the propositional form an aspect of this? Is yes, how? As an oject of some action?
If no, then how do you invision thought?
reasoning, contemplation, musing, pondering, consideration, reflection, introspection, deliberation, study, rumination, cogitation, meditation, brooding, mulling over, reverie, brown study, concentration, debate, speculation;
Are propositions or the propositional form an aspect of this? Is yes, how? As an oject of some action?
If no, then how do you invision thought?
Comments (40)
I buy that there are propositions. I don't buy that there is anything with no location in time or space. On my view, meaning is mental, and mentality is a subset of brain function. So the location in time and space of propositions on my view is identical with the locations in time and space of particular brains.
So you're pondering proposition P.
P is your brain state.
I can't have your brain state because I don't have access to your brain.
Does that mean we can't ponder the same proposition?
The universe has no location in time or space. Is that object an exception? Or is there no universe?
Thought is the primary post-survival functionality of rational beings. It is the ground of all conscious activity, which, ironically enough, includes attempting to explain what it is to think. Such is the inevitable circularity intrinsic to the human cognitive system: thinking about thinking is just thinking with itself as its own object. Which goes very far indeed in explaining why nobody really knows what thinking actually is.
Accordingly, I don’t envision thought at all, but rather envision a logical procedure, theoretical at best, the constituency of which IS the act of thinking, the purpose of which is to justify the internal correlations between observation and experience in a sensible, meaningful way on the one hand, and to test the limits of purely speculative reason on the other.
Propositions are not used in internal construction of thoughts because language in and of itself is not used in the construction of cognitions generally; propositions, and by association, language, are used only in the communication of the objects of private thought, as a possible means to facilitate mutual understanding.
Time is an absolutely necessary condition for thought, whether private or projected; we never have more than one thought at a time, and we never have time empty of thought while conscious, aware and otherwise properly cognizant, which makes explicit thoughts are always a succession in time.
I think of consciousness as the relative state of being conscious, just as redness is the relative state of being red, as fitness is the relative state of being fit. The state of being conscious, or all that of which one is conscious, is the manifold of representations necessarily all united in one faculty, which has the name consciousness. It follows that while the faculty itself has no need of time, the manifold of representations within the faculty, does, for all representations are derived from experience a posteriori or understanding a priori, both of which operate within the condition of time.
I understand transcendent to mean that which lies outside possible experience. But while we can think of possibilities outside experience, those thoughts would be merely ideas or notions, thus have no object from which a representation could be derived, hence no member in the manifold in consciousness.
So....no, no transcendent vantage point, at least within the context of the foregoing theoretical doctrine. When push comes to shove.......just another opinion.
Correct, they're not going to be identical, but they can be as similar as, say, two copies of a music CD.
Quoting frank
Sure it does. It is all locations of time and space.
I think you'd need to argue for this. It's not a scientific conclusion.
It's a good practical one. I use that conclusion all the time in interactions with others and it leads to expectations being met. This is of course fallible and depends on many factors - like how well I know them, how much time we had to communicate, how often do we seem to take the same ideas in the same ways as far as expected behavior and further communication - but I can even tweak things given my knowledge of others and myself and the context. IOW I have a sense of how close our senses of something will be or not. And sometimes....Quoting Terrapin Stationin the ways I experience the results.
Where are space and time located?
Space is location. It's the extension of matter/the extensional relations of matter.
Space isnt something that exists "on its own," independent of matter, and it's not a container of any sort. Same with time.
So in your view matter isn’t extended within space? Just extended?
It's ontology/metaphysics. Science doesn't really comment on it either way. I'm a nominalist on the nominalism vs realism (on universals/types) issue.
You can say "within space." It's a manner of speaking about extensional relations. That's what space is.
So where are “extensional relations” located?
They are locations, and locations are always defined in terms of relative extensional relations.
It would make no sense to say that locations have no location, right?
Sure, that was my point and objection to your view view that there isn’t anything with no location in time or space.
So if you had a universe of two locations, for example, it might be the case that each location is two meters to the right or alternately the left of whichever point we're using as the reference point.
Your objection was that it would make no sense to say that locations have no location? Ohhhkay.
I misread your post. But maybe that’s a fair question: Where is my location located?
"Located" adds nothing there. "Where is my location" is the same thing. It makes no sense to say that's not a location.
My location is a location, I understand that. But where is it?
I have no idea beyond "somewhere on Earth," but presumably you know your address.
I don't think nominalism leads one to believe that if two people contemplate the same proposition that their brain states are similar.
Where is “somewhere on Earth” located? Somewhere in space. Space you say is “extensional relations”. Where are they located? You say they are themselves locations. But where are locations? They are things within space. What/where else are they?
Again, as I wrote, "They are locations, and locations are always defined in terms of relative extensional relations."
So, for example, the Earth is located between the orbits or Venus and Mars.
They can't be contemplating the same proposition. What I said is that they can be similar.
It doesn’t matter how locations are defined. I’m asking, where are they? Where is “between the orbits of Venus and Mars” located? The answer, it seems to me, is “somewhere in space”. All locations are things within space.
No, space isn't something separate from locations, separate from extensional relations. It's identical to them. The orbit between the orbit of Venus and Mars is where the Earth is located, that's its location. It's not located "in" something else that's akin to a container.
That’s pure assertion, I’d say. Even accepting all that, the question remains: Where are locations? Locations have a location, sure, but where?
This is what happens when meaning is thought of as mental furniture.
Instead, think of meaning as what happens when words are used; the meaning is not in @Terrapin Station's head, nor is it in @frank's head; rather it is in the conversation and the ensuing comments.
Meaning is shared, not private.
All reports/accounts of thought are propositional. That is, all thinking about thought is propositional. Not all thought is thinking about thought. There is a distinction to be drawn between reports/accounts of thought, and what's being reported upon and/or accounted for. There are remarkable differences concerning existential dependency and elemental constituency.
Here's a report on the bombing of Guernica...
All reports/accounts, including but not limited to those of thought, are propositional.
Better?
:wink:
Propositions are verbal.
Thoughts may be verbal and/or non-verbal. (Paivio, 2007)
Paivio, Allan Urho. 2007. Mind and its Evolution: A Dual Coding Theoretical Approach. Mahwah, NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
"Pure assertion" as opposed to?
At this point, you should be able to answer these questions as I would. That doesn't imply that you'd agree with me, but you should be capable of understanding my view so that you could answer as I would.
Locations are the answer to where. When you answer where something is, you give a location. So the "where" of any location is the location in question. Locations are given relatively, as I've explained.
As opposed to argument or observation. What I observe about locations is they exist within a unified space (a thing is here relative to a thing over there, with here and there being parts of space). All you’re doing is refusing to make that observation and insisting it’s not the case.
I’ve noticed there’s a specific thread about this anyway so should post there about this instead.
Are you suggesting that you or anyone else is presenting arguments or observations? Just curious.
Quoting AJJ
You've got to be joking. You observe "unified space"? Can you point to what you're looking at?
Quoting AJJ
Explain how you're observing that "here and there are parts of space," please.