Philosophy: The nature of thought

[Truthstalker]

Does thought require a linguistic structure to exist? I think semantics is possibly required for linear thought, but what about what them there artists do?

What is the nature of thought? Where does it come from? What happens to a thought after you are done thinking it?

Thoughts or non-thoughts?

 

[Benedictus]

What is the nature of thought?

I suppose a person’s answer to that would depend upon whether that person believed in a spiritual soul or whether we can explain thought through the functioning of our brains alone.

If thought is a function of our brains alone (without appealing to some sort of spiritual soul), what does that say about our thoughts and decision-making? If our thoughts are merely biochemical reactions, do we have free will? Is everything we do deterministic? It’s seems to me that if all of our brain activity is deterministic, then it’s safe to conclude that we have no immortal soul and it follows that there is no God.

On the other hand, if our brain activity isn’t deterministic, then how do we think? Why do we think certain thoughts and not others? Does the anwer lie with quantum mechanics and the idea that some things can’t be known determinictically, only probabilistically?

 

[JimG]

Well, my answer is not new. I consider thought to be the product of the human intellect, and the human intellect to be a faculty of the human soul, which is spiritual in nature. Thus, what intellect generates–thoughts–are not material. Which is the reason that humans can generalize–go from the specific to the general.

But because human beings are a composite of body and soul, the body is also involved. To quote an old maxim: there is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses.

We know the world first through the senses, physical senses which bring us information about the outside world. All of that information is integrated by the brain and abstracted by the intellect. The end result is that humans are not just sensate, but thinking.

(But note that because the senses are involved, imagination, dreams, and thoughts, can be and are accompanied by physical sensations and images. That doesn’t mean that the thought itself is physical. The thought is an abstraction generated by the intellect.)

 

[Nita]

Does thought require a linguistic structure to exist? I think semantics is possibly required for linear thought, but what about what them there artists do?

?

My instinctive response was that it does require semantics. But then, I thought about those times when there’s been something I wanted to convey - in my mind it was very clear - but was unable to find words to clearly convey it. So, it was in my mind and therefore a thought. Yet it had to be present (to some degree anyway) without words, or else I’d have just been able just to voice those words.

Also thought of those whom God has gifted with infused knowledge, or those who have seen visions. The knowledge is in their mind, but often there are no words to express that knowledge. Yet they are able to think about it.

Interesting. I’ll have to give it more thought.

Nita

 

[I_Leatherman]

Outside of movies, are there really any super criminal minds. If crime were just a job would’nt there be criminal genius. Like the Nobel Prize for organized crime or something.
The fact is, I think, that the criminal mind is not an inspired mind. This is enough to tell me where thought originates or can originate.
Of course, when a thought does occur to you a neural pathway just for that thought is created in your brain and there it remains.
So much art and so many discoveries are the result of inspiration, so much so you’ll often find herds of artists wandering the landscape wearing haunted expressions searching for inspiration. Or sleeping scientists dreaming of benzene rings dancing in the air.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Does thought require a linguistic structure to exist? I think semantics is possibly required for linear thought, but what about what them there artists do?

What them there artists do: today a friend and I were talking about learning. Thinking at its best is about learning. That is one of its purposes. And the one which suits this discussion for now. So Jean Piaget came up.

The main processes which Piaget puts forward are:

assimilation and accommodation as co-contributors to adaptation (learning).

As a painting and pottery teacher, I continually coach students frustrated with their own work on these two polarities of learning and creativity. Not in Piaget’s words exactly. But let’s use his terms here.

Assimilation: There is a time to discipline one’s skill by assimilation which I contend is most efficiently achieved by means of setting up experiments with constants and adding one variable at a time. This might compare to what we have been discussing over several threads now: linear thinking.

Accommodation: Then there is a time to let go. This is a kind of immersion in the experience of and interaction with life by means of a diffusive consciousness which was enabled by the assimilation of knowledge through linear thinking. This is still thinking but it is not linear thinking.

Both kinds of thinking are aspects of learning.

Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of adaptation, Piaget’s term for what most of us would call learning…

He noticed, for example, that even infants have certain skills in regard to objects in their environment. These skills were certainly simple ones, sensori-motor skills, but they directed the way in which the infant explored his or her environment and so how they gained more knowledge of the world and more sophisticated exploratory skills. These skills he called schemas.

For example, an infant knows how to grab his favorite rattle and thrust it into his mouth. He’s got that schema down pat. When he comes across some other object – say daddy’s expensive watch, he easily learns to transfer his “grab and thrust” schema to the new object. This Piaget called assimilation, specifically assimilating a new object into an old schema…

When our infant comes across another object again – say a beach ball – he will try his old schema of grab and thrust. This of course works poorly with the new object. So the schema will adapt to the new object: Perhaps, in this example, “squeeze and drool” would be an appropriate title for the new schema. This is called accommodation, specifically accomodating an old schema to a new object…

Assimilation and accommodation work like pendulum swings at advancing our understanding of the world and our competency in it. According to Piaget, they are directed at a balance between the structure of the mind and the environment, at a certain congruency between the two, that would indicate that you have a good (or at least good-enough) model of the universe. This ideal state he calls equilibrium…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Benedictus:

I suppose a person’s answer to that would depend upon whether that person believed in a spiritual soul or whether we can explain thought through the functioning of our brains alone.

Or upon what is being observed.

If we observe what God has created and there is a spirit in what God created, then is our thinking not spiritual in nature?

If we observe what Man has created and there is no spirit in what Man created, then is our thinking not materialistic in nature?

This is the difference between creation and invention. God creates. Man invents. Now them there artists: the best of them – whether contemporary, renaissance, medieval, or whatever – tap into God in some way, in some form.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Also thought of those whom God has gifted with infused knowledge, or those who have seen visions. The knowledge is in their mind, but often there are no words to express that knowledge. Yet they are able to think about it.

Yes, or think about survivors of trauma. They think about that trauma constantly but in a way we have not yet discussed. In a kind of spinning-the-wheels way. In a way that is disconnected from learning and therefore from survival. Learning is central to survival.

When trauma survivors are exposed to art therapy, they are able to work through ways of finding images to describe or comment on or propose resolutions to trauma. This releases tremendous emotional energy.

Part of art therapy is to help the trauma survivors translate those images into the release of emotional energy and then into interpretation and resolution by means of words.

Now what them there artists do: Artists may or may not have traumas to resolve. But they are able to tap into the power of direct emotional communication. The best of them open up a hole in the world through which the spiritual and the material marry.

Mark Rothko and Joseph Beuys are very potent artists in this respect even though their work is non-imagistic. Both of them had traumas to work through. Rothko said that tragic experience is the only source of art. He developed colour fields which are large blocks of many-layered colour on canvas. I don’t know what Beuys said, but he was downed in a plane over Finland. The natives wrapped him in reindeer fat to keep him warm and thus saved his life. He had an epiphany about life and created a work from that epiphany called Fat on Chair.

 

[dessert]

Don’t forget about music, it is an expression of thought.
The nature is emotion and I believe our thoughts stem basically from our emotions. Our desires. Jesus said we are to think on things that are true. Dessert

 

[Ani_Ibi]

dessert:

Don’t forget about music, it is an expression of thought.

Yes. This is old though. Pythagorean in origin. I just started a thread on math and mysticism. I wanted to give a better reference on Pythagoras’s thoughts on math and religion, but couldn’t find it online.

dessert:

The nature is emotion

And observation and reason. We are given these two gifts not only for survival purposes but to see God in Creation.

dessert:

and I believe our thoughts stem basically from our emotions.

Some do sometimes. But do you think that all thoughts stem from emotions always? If so, why?

dessert:

Our desires. Jesus said we are to think on things that are true.

To desire ‘the good.’ This is wisdom.

Therefore the desire of wisdom bringeth to the everlasting kingdom. Wisdom 6:21 DRC

 

[lavalamp]

What is the nature of thought? Where does it come from? What happens to a thought after you are done thinking it?

Well, science does not yet have an explanation how brain activity results in the fact of our experience. Scientists can say these cells react in this way to this stimulus and are connected to these other cells etc., but they can’t say how you feel a sense of self.

So we are left to philosophy and careful self-examination.

Thoughts come from our mind’s reaction to stimuli, memory, and “hard wiring.” Example: see a dog, remember facts about dogs, run away because it is foaming at the mouth.

Thoughts are either acted upon, stored in some type of memory, or are forgotten depending on the nature of the idea in the thought.

At least that’s how I see it.