There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought

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CARRUTHERS: "In ordinary life we are quite content to say things like “Oh, I just had a thought” or “I was thinking to myself.” By this we usually mean instances of inner speech or visual imagery, which are at the center of our stream of consciousness—the train of words and visual contents represented in our minds. I think that these trains are indeed conscious. In neurophilosophy, however, we refer to “thought” in a much more specific sense. In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals. "
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All he’s done is redefined “thought” to exclude actual thoughts (inner speech, visual imagery, stream of consciousness, etc) and only include “judgments and decisions” which are only a fraction of actual thoughts.
 
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Thoughts are formed in subconscious mind. We are not aware of process which leads to a single thought. Thoughts are brought into conscious mind for conscious judgment though. Judgment is needed to make a relation between thoughts. Thoughts are divided to false and true which this, the division of thoughts, is also performed consciously. These, when we compare things, judge thoughts and decided, are done consciously using working memory. Why conscious mind is needed? Because we need to make sense of certain things when we are dealing with a certain situation. Otherwise there was no need for consciousness.
 
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A cultural that re defines life and marriage should have no problem redefining thought. Soon, they’ll outlaw thoughts that don’t exist anyway. At least I think they will.
 
Athanasiy said:
How can we disprove this theory by a scientific arguments?
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What part of it upsets you? What do you see as the real-world impact of what Carruthers is saying?

In other words, what about it makes you want to disprove it?
 
The article gave a very close description of how “thoughts” and “decisions of the will” appear in consciousness. However, without subsequently admitting of the “Soul”, there will be no discovery of the “source” of the appearance of these thoughts and exclamations of decisions; the body, including the brain, is disposed to being moved in every one of its movements, including conscious thought, being thus entirely passive (to the animation of the soul).

That being said, it was refreshing to see recognition that the thoughts and decisions appear from nowhere, and are not a development in consciousness but appear suddenly to consciousness; knowing and willing happen in the soul, the intellect and will, the will then animating the body to exclaim, “I understand” and to rattle off the understood detailed thought or see the understood intelligible image.

John Martin
 
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“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
CS Lewis
 
“The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words ‘true’ or ‘false’”.
-C.S. Lewis
 
Athanasiy said:
How can we disprove this theory by a scientific arguments?
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Well, he is arguing that if one of two theories is true (with some of his mostly unstated assumptions), then conscious thought does not exist.

Now, is either of those two theories (with his assumptions) more likely to be true than the proposition “Conscious thought exists.”? Definitely not (otherwise he would have given just one of them).

Do those theories exhaust the possibilities? No, it doesn’t look like that.

So, since we do know that conscious thought exists, and since that is far more certain than just about anything he mentions, we can treat his argument as an unfinished “reductio ad absurdum”. That is, if either of two theories is true together with some assumptions, then conscious thought is not possible; since conscious thought exists, then either neither of two theories is true, or some of the assumptions are false.

And, of course, there is no need for “scientific” arguments here. After all, we are not dealing with science here. The argument is proposed by a philosopher and is based on psychology and “neuropsychology”, which are protosciences at best (and pseudosciences at worst).
 
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