Can a Thought Cause Another Thought?
This is a problem that arises when considering psychologism and logic as rival accounts of what
thinking is. Versions of this go back as far as Frege, probably further. Karl Popper also addresses this implicitly when he considers objective knowledge versus the psychological fact of thinking. Similarly, Donald Davidson is interested in reasons as causes of physical actions, but his thesis in Actions, Reasons, and Causes would presumably apply to mental actions (thoughts) as well. On the other hand, Nietzsche wrote, It is just an illusion that one thought is the immediate cause of another thought. The events which are actually connected are played out below our consciousness. (What he has in mind here is of great interest, but outside the scope of my OP.)
There are reasons for questioning whether the concept of causality as such is even a useful one; the excellent OP by @T Clark and subsequent discussion shows why. But for this thread, Im going to accept the idea that our common understanding and use of cause is meaningful, and refers to a genuine phenomenon in the world. As @T Clark allows, It works for certain everyday events at human scale, e.g. if I push the grocery cart it moves. I think we should see thought-to-thought connection as another example of an everyday event at human scale at any rate, thats the premise of what follows.
The question is whether the movement from one thought to another is a type of causation, and if it is not, how should we describe this familiar experience? Im not going to defend a particular answer to this question, but try to show why the problem needs consideration.
Heres the set-up:
A. I think: I wonder how my friend Ann is doing.
B. I then think: Its her birthday soon; I must get her a present.
The most standard description of whats going on here is, I believe, something like: The first thought reminded me of the second thought, or When I thought of Ann, I remembered it was her birthday soon, which reminded me that I want to get her a present.
But can we also speak of this in casual terms? Again, this seems in accord with common usage. We might say, Thinking of Ann caused me to remember her birthday. But perhaps this is just loose talk.
What sense of thought is being appealed to here? Is it thought as a mental event (presumably grounded in brain activity), or is it thought as proposition or propositional content?
Googles ever-helpful chat-program presumably reflecting some kind of cyberworld consensus would like to straighten this out for us:
Causation involves a physical connection between events, while entailment is a relationship between propositions.
The first thing to notice about Googles physical connection between events idea is that it begs the question of what mental-to-physical causation would have to consist of. The connection between a thought (I want to call my friend) and an action (I pick up my phone) is stipulated to be a physical connection, if it is indeed to be causal. Now our helpful but not very deep chat-program has in mind things like billiard balls, of course, where both cause and effect are physical. But this wont do as an allegedly obvious description of mental-to-physical causation; it would need to be demonstrated and argued for, showing that the mental part is really somehow physical.
A causal connection between thoughts is even less acceptable as a physical connection between events. If it were causal, it would be an example of mental-to-mental causation, with no reference to the physical whatsoever.
Or would it? Putting aside the question of physical reduction, is a thought a strictly mental or psychological event, something that happens in time?
We need two important discriminations here. First: There is an entire debate that could be launched at this point concerning the relation between minds and brains, between thoughts and neural events. That is not the debate I want to open. If you believe, with Googles chat-program, that any causal connection must be physical, and that therefore, if thoughts cause other thoughts, then they can only do so via a description in terms of neuronal activity not much in this OP will really interest you. The physicalist reduction of mind to brain is a respectable (though I think misguided) position, but the problem Im raising assumes it is incorrect.
Second: We need to further distinguish the two senses of thought. Lets return to the two quoted statements in A and B. We can view these statements in two distinct ways. On one view, they represent thoughts that occur to a particular mind at a particular time. They are psychological events. They begin and end. They will presumably be correlated in some way with brain events but, as above, were assuming they dont reduce to brain events.
The other way to view them is as propositions. On that view, neither A nor B is to be identified with any particular mental utterance. They are not thoughts, except in Freges use of the term, by which he only means what we now call propositions.
Since propositions, on the common understanding, occupy no physical or mental space this is somewhat mysterious, but it is the usual construal they can hardly be the subjects or objects of causality, or so it would appear. (In this they are rather like numbers: we certainly dont say that 2 + 2 cause 4.)
But the first view, where the quoted statements in A and B are my thoughts or your thoughts, can be analyzed differently. We all know the experience of having a thought, A, which leads directly to another thought, B. Ordinary language endorses statements like my When I thought of Ann (A), it made me remember that I hadnt yet gotten her birthday present (B). How strong is made me remember in such a phrasing? This can be debated, but the causal implication remains, or at the least a cause-like influence: Thought B would not have occurred to me, had I not had Thought A first, and this happened very directly, much as an efficient cause operates.
To keep this use of thought distinct from the propositional content of a thought, Ill call it a W2 thought from now on, in honor of Poppers World 2 of mental events. (Those of you who know Popper will recognize my set-up as Popperian in origin, with propositions in this case being examples of World 3 objects.) The key distinction between thoughts and propositions, on this view, is that W2 thoughts occur in time and space, as individual mental or psychological utterances, whereas propositions (again, somewhat mysteriously) do not. My W2 thought can never be the same thought as your W2 thought, even if we think the same proposition. That is because it occurs in my mind, not yours.
As philosophers, well probably also want to give a more nuanced story about this, which might include an account of how the mental supervenes on the physical, such that brains and W2 thoughts can thrive together. But even without such a story, theres a clear sense that the arrow of causation (or influence, if you prefer) goes one way and not the other, when it comes to W2 thoughts just as it does in the physical world. And we certainly make counter-factual assertions about how W2 thoughts link together (If I hadnt W2-thought about Ann, I wouldnt have W2-thought of her birthday present).
So the question I want to pose is simply this: When we speak of one thought causing another, are we speaking about W2 thoughts, or about propositions?
If the former, then we need a theory about how psychological events can be causative. I think (though Im not certain) that such a theory long the Holy Grail of this area of inquiry would equally explain both mental and physical effects. In other words, if we can understand how my thought of Ann causes me to think about her birthday present, we can also understand how that thought might cause me to pick up the phone and call her. This seems to be a general problem about the causal power of W2 thoughts, not a specific one about mental-to-mental causation.
If the latter, then we need a theory about how propositions can be causative. Why this is different from W2 thoughts being causative is crucial to understand. If a proposition can be said to have causal power, then this must be so regardless of any particular instantiation or utterance of that proposition. Such a theory would argue that the power is not psychological but rational. The fact that the W2 thought of Ann leads to the W2 thought about her birthday is not (adequately) explained merely by the congruence in time, in my brain, of the two thoughts. Rather, it is explained by the rational connection between the meaning or content of the two thoughts that is, their propositional content.
This idea is perhaps clearer if we substitute a genuine entailment for the less formal example of Ann and her birthday: I think, If all humans are mortal and everything that is mortal is beautiful, and Socrates is human, then Socrates is beautiful. I then think, Socrates is mortal. Lastly, I think, Therefore Socrates is beautiful. Why do I think Therefore Socrates is beautiful? Am I caused to do so? Not everyone who has the first two thoughts understood now as W2 thoughts would go on to conclude that Socrates is beautiful. Only someone who understands the connections of propositional content will see the necessity of this. So a great deal hangs on whether this kind of necessity a strictly logical or rational necessity can ever be considered causative.
This takes us back to the Google chatbots confident statement that causation involves a physical connection between events, while entailment is a relationship between propositions. We have good reason to doubt the first half of that statement; Im suggesting that the second half is also suspicious, if its meant to imply that entailment is not or cannot be causative. Entailment is indeed a relationship between propositions, and the connection between the two Ann thoughts is also a relationship between propositions, but this formulation is nearly empty. What do we actually understand about the nature of these relationships?
Not enough, I believe. The floor is open. And if I were critiquing my own OP, Id start by asking, Is it really possible to ?have a W2 thought without understanding its propositional content (assuming it has one)? What do we mean when we talk about having a thought, anyway? Id also raise the question of whether asking Can a Thought Cause Another Thought? is clear enough, without first being much more specific about what we want cause to cover.
Comments (149)
Do all thoughts have or need a cause? But first of all exactly what is a thought? Is it that voice we hear in our heard, or do we have unheard thoughts as well?
Thoughts are like actions. They're a continuous process. Whether one gives birth to another or spawns subsequently is not the question here. When I eat, I drink. It's continuous. My throat is full, so I water down. You can call it a reaction or a simple chain of actions.
Good question. But do you mean "thoughts" understood as my W2 thoughts, or thoughts as propositions?
Quoting Sir2u
I'm suggesting that "thought" can be understood in at least two ways. The "voice in the head" version would be what I'm calling a W2 thought. Unheard thoughts? I think not, for purposes of this discussion. (I'm assuming you mean "unheard" metaphorically, so it translates to "thoughts I'm not aware of having.")
Quoting Copernicus
I agree, they are. So, as with actions, we tend to divide them up into identifiable segments, while allowing that the process is continuous. We can ask, How does thought A lead to/cause/remind us of thought B, in the same way that we can ask, How does my action of chewing a mouthful of food lead to/cause me to have a drink? There are still causal questions involved, or at least there may be.
Causality (necessity and response).
Now, if you ask why the universe has causality as its founding grammar, that's a different discussion.
Can you give the source to the quotations you are using?
Quoting J
You have to define what you mean by a cause if this conversation is to go anywhere. If you think @T Clark has given that definition, then you need to provide the source where he does so.
Quoting J
If you disagree with the LLM's definition then you need to provide an alternative definition of "cause."
Quoting J
(Another thread where we are taking our cue from LLMs, by the way - in this case apparently without any real understanding of what one is even appealing to.)
Quoting J
Quoting J
So what made you think of Ann (W2) in the first place?
I come from sociology rather than philosophy, so my first impulse is always two things: (a) what's the theory, and (b) how do we operationalise it? But I'm not a very systematic thinker at the outset. So here I go:
My first thought reading this was that you went straight for the "hidden variable". As far I read you, you meant to ask whether thought A causes thought B. But you interpret thought A as "thinking of Ann". However, thought A is literally wondering how Ann is doing. You topicalise a rather specific ignorance and thereby show interest. That is I was automatically seeing "thinking of Ann" as a background process that instatiates as both A and B. Wondering how Ann is doing and her birthday are two different elements you could connect with Ann.
That suggests we're instinctively leaning towards a different approach: (a) A --> B, or (b) A <--[Thinking of Ann]-->B, where the order of the alphabet is the order of the surface manifistation.
You address the difference here, I think:
Quoting J
Here's the thing: I don't have an inner voice, and when I think words its formulating a thought with a background stream running to see if my word-thought expresses what I'm actually thinking. For me, "unheard thought" is core thinking and the verbalisation is surface expression there-of, at most assymptotic to the "real" thought. This is why the connection to propositions feels... strange. Propositions, for me, go top-down, while thinking is bottom-up, and verbalising a thought creats a loop of bottom-up - top-down - bottom up.... Words are externalised meaning and thought is internalised meaning. It's not quite so clear a differentiation, and verbalising a thought changes the flow of consciousness of course. But I can't easily pin down a single thought.
So for me, in the above example there would be an ongoing Ann-stream, with "how is she" surfacing firt and then the topic of birthday "intruding" and integrating. To do this, a second stream must be present (a keep-track-of-the-date stream, maybe; or a I-recently-forgot-another-birthday stream).
Isolating words is far easier than isolating thoughts, so propositions are helpful tools to put down an anchor so to speak, but I think it would be a mistake to conclude from a clearly demarkated proposition to a clearly demarkated thought. Words kind of externalise meaning and thereby encourage the repetition and variation of a thought-pattern. They're kind of thought attractors.
So if you'd be excluding "unheard thoughts", I probably have little to contribute. It leads to a highly unintuitive theoretical frame work for me.
It might be any number of things -- a picture, a scent, a dream, Proust's cookie, or, of course, a previous thought. I'm not suggesting that only a previous thought can cause a current thought. The OP is asking into what might be going on when such a situation does appear to occur.
And then there's "unheard thoughts" . . . see below.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Ah, I see. No, that wasn't the situation I was presenting. To be more specific: Something brings the thought of Ann to mind (see above). The "thought of Ann" might be a mental image, or her name, a memory associated with her -- I can only call upon your agreement here that something happens to which we refer when we say "All at once I thought of Ann and [now the words enter] wondered how she was doing". So this is thought A. And this, in turn, begins the process of reminding or causing which produces thought B -- I must get her a birthday present.
Quoting Dawnstorm
It does sound as if our mental processes are quite different, but I hope you'll stay on the thread anyway. The issue you're raising about "unheard" or background thoughts is definitely germane. I'm quite sure that some such thing goes on, just as you say (it may be part of what Nietzsche had in mind); I only hesitate to call them thoughts, preferring to reserve that term for what presents itself to awareness. But I'm happy to consider a different, broader categorization. Would you say that, in your "stream-of-Ann" thoughts, there is an element of causation that produces A, B, C, et al.? And can the surface-level thought A indeed cause thought B to rise up as well? Or is causality altogether the wrong way to think about this process?
Looking at it in terms of semantics, I'd say the connections between thoughts is associative. There are many common, that is communally shared, associations between ideas. Entailment would seem to be a stricter rule-based associative relation between ideas.
Looking at it from a physical perspective, the semantic relations could be physically instantiated as interconnections between neural networks.
I have no problem with that but, like talk of "relationships", are we really saying much when we say that connections between thoughts are associative? What we want to know is the nature(s) of those associations. And my question here is, specifically, can these associations include causal connections?
Quoting Janus
Something like that, yes. In the OP I tried to sidestep the question of mind/brain, since it's so complicated and contentious. But it's like a fly that won't go away. Might it be the case that there is no tractable way to understand non-physical causation (if it exists) until we understand how a brain can be a mind? Could be. (Even phrasing it this way becomes controversial, of course.)
Quoting J
The processes of smelling and recognizing a scent or image would then be the unheard thought, a trigger or as you said "a mental event (presumably grounded in brain activity)" that activates the little voice in the head (W2) thought All at once I thought of Ann.
Not all thought processes are voices in our heads. When you touch something hot, the last thing you literally do is think "Shit, it's hot". The brain has already finished the processing of the information and taken the necessary actions.
Think of a spiders web, is there any part of it that is not connected to every other part of it? As memories are created there is a lot of information recorded about that event and are tied to it. If you later come across one of those details in other circumstances they will cause a connection to the other event.
Imagine that you are getting your first kiss, the place that you are at, the time of day, the music you are listening to, the food you eat, and many other details get recorded as well. Depending on the actual event the emotions you feel, like getting horny, embarrassment because your hornyness is showing will be recorded as well.
Now imagine being with your parents and the music that you heard during your first kiss starts playing. You might just get embarrassed again.
This is the key (problematic) statement. What sort of causality is involved here? Do you mean "cause" at the level of neuronal activity? Or does one idea cause the other? If so, how? Or -- if this were a matter of strict entailment -- does the first idea necessitate the other?
Great. That's exactly what I'd like to hear about: Can we give a sense of causality to entailment or logical equivalence?
Thanks for the call out. All of the issues that have shown up in this thread so far are exactly the reason I tried to avoid a discussion of mental cause in my previous thread. It just gets too muddled and confused and physical cause is muddled and confused enough without any help.
Yeah, I think that is correct:
Quoting Leontiskos
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Quoting J
Association has a causal component. For the example given, the association will only occur within a mind that has assigned the name "grasshopper" to both the cocktail and the insect. Such an assignation does not occur without causal experiences, and beyond this, the names themselves become entangled in the experiences via memory.
But if you want a causal-deterministic account of association or mental thought sequencing, then you are effectively negating the possibility of mental phenomena that is qualitatively different from physical-deterministic phenomena.
Well, I used the words "externalise" above in a context like "language externalises throught". Maybe I should use the World 2 & 3 model to give you some hotch-potch ad-hoc model of my own?
Basically, both A and B are part of the "stream of Ann", so part of the stream of Ann is also part A and B. So what you have here is a sequence A -> B, where both A and B are part of an ongoing process.
So: some initial trigger made you "think of Ann". This is vague and unspecific; some set of neurons triggering maybe? It's pre-conscious and manifests as "How is Ann doing?" That manifestation is what you would like to call a thought. Now, if these exact words pop into your head, then you have something that persists in its form longer than anything in the actual stream. But it's made of language, which, for you to learn it, has to be a World 3 object, and once you have these words, you have soething that endures and triggers compatible World 2 thoughts. That works as communication from person to person, or as a particular form of memory from self to future self.
For example, if Ann were a mutual acquaintance of ours, you could say "I wonder how Ann is doing," and then I would wonder, too. Inside your head, it's a similar process; you just eliminate one person and it's all yourself. But the words are cultural set-ups that you've calibrated to your word-habits. Basically:
Thinking of Ann -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing -> Production of World3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" which overlaps with ongoing World 2 thought -> Potential for recall of World3 object ("I wondered how Ann is doing.") and creation of World 2 thought similar to earlier thought.
You can analytically set the boarders anywhere in the process. Is the thought "I wonder Ann is doing" viewed as a type that anyone can have? Is it the thought that's in your brain? Is it the World 3 words and its associated propostion?
It's possible, for example, that "thinking of Ann" sets the stream in motion and some other stream (the birthday stream, the october stream, whatever) intersects and creates the World 3 sentence "Oh, right, Ann's birthday is coming up soon." And it's possible that stream initiates at roughly the same time as "how is Ann doing," but the former is more "primal" so it finishes production sooner. If that is the case, there is little causal connection. But if the production of the World 3 object somehow influences the "thinking-of-Ann-stream", it could do so in a way that kick-starts the Ann's-Birthday stream, and then there could be some causal connection (how do we differentiate between cause, influence and trigger, for starters).
I'd also like to note that world 3 objects aren't always as fixed as words. Take the concept of "story". I've never read much of the Moby Dick book, but I've seen the film with Gregory Peck. I've read Kipling's Jungle Books and seen the Disney "adaption". To what extent do the books and films contain the same story? Does the mode of "telling" change the story? The Moby Dick story as presented in book and film is a World 3 concept, and it frames the differences between instantiations. There are more differences with the jungle books, here. You extend the scope of the term "story" to some extent. You might, for example, feel as I did that it's "not the same story anymore". But that's influenced by context: it's supposed to be an adaption, but it isn't. This flips on its head with "Kimba the White Lion" --> "Lion King", where "it's practically the same story" because the inspiration goes unnoticed. If attributed and names kept, for example, one might say "it's not the same story anymore"; i.e. create mutually exclusive sentences that on the thought-level are quite compatible if contextualised. So what is a "story"?
If you're substituting "thought" here, you'll run into similar problems, because a thought put into words is always also a world 3 object. You're referring to propositions, here, for example. Now I think that, and that's probably controversial, that a thought you don't share and only think to yourself is also partly a world 3 object if you include the words. You certainly have a world 2 thought, too, but when looking at this from an analytic point of view there's a danger that you attribute world 3 properties to a world 2 object. For example:
Quoting Patterner
Quoting J
As maths, a world 3 object, entailment pertains even outside of any thought.
Inside a thought, that particular mind must know how to do addition first. Which is why the description of a causal chain is complex.
I think there's a danger here that the straightforward and stable entailment serves as a model for mental causation. It's not an invalid model, necessarily, but the mental processes just aren't as straightforward. (And then there's the problem that world 3 objects need to be maintained by world 2 process for them to exist, but my head's spinning already.)
I hope I'm making sense. This is the third version of this post.
I would bet a large majority of those who read my post had the thought of what I had in spoilers in their minds before they looked. If so, the only reason was that they were thinking about 7 + 5. I didn't even have to put the =, or say to add the numbers. But they thought, even if not explicitly, "I need to find the sum of those two numbers." Then they did so. Adding is thinking, and having "12" in your head means you're thinking "12". And it came about because the thought "7 + 5" was put in your head. What else could be responsible for you thinking "12"?
There's a lot to reply to, but let me start with the important point you raise about where to place language in our model of thought. If I understand you, the W2 thought should be seen as pre-linguistic, and this is part of why it is a W2 object. Its nature is "mentalese," not linguistic or propositional. When words enter the picture, we now have a W3 object, because language is a human construction. So: Quoting Dawnstorm
Next, this W3 linguistic object may (though it needn't) "exert an influence" on the stream-of-Ann thoughts (which, to repeat, are understood as W2 objects) so as to generate a W2 thought about Ann's birthday, which gives rise to the W3 proposition "It's her birthday soon". You ask, sensibly:
Quoting Dawnstorm
I can't decide if this matters. In my OP I tried to use phrases such as "cause-like" or "influence" in addition to "cause," to show that I wasn't committed to a strict view of what a cause must be, in this context. Suppose we accept the premise -- "there could be some causal connection" -- and take it as written that we're including a whole family of verbs like "trigger," "influence," "give rise to," "generate" etc. The important point seems to be that a counter-factual explanation can be offered using any of them.
You also raise this problem:
Quoting Dawnstorm
In raising this, are you asking whether linguistic expressions using indexicals can be shared types? That's a sub-problem, and an interesting one; I'm not sure. But are you also asking whether the W3, linguistic thought "I wonder how Ann is doing" can ever be a W2 thought? That is, must it somehow be stripped of language before we can place it "in the brain" as a psychological or mental phenomenon? I wouldn't say so, but your model may insist on it. I'd stay closer to our common way of speaking: When I say, "This morning, I thought about how Ann is doing", I'm saying both that I had the mentalese, W2 experience we're both trying to pin down, and that I formed the thought into words. In doing so, it remained a thought, thought it's now arguably crossed over into the human-made world of linguistic artifacts.
Actually, let me stop right here and ask whether I'm understanding you. I don't want to maunder on if I haven't grasped your basic points. (And I'll come back to your issues about how fixed a W3 object must be, and whether entailment can be fitted comfortably into this scheme.)
So why is any of this a problem? Isn't your straightforward description adequate?
Here's how I would put the problem: We don't know how mental events can cause anything. We don't know if this happens by virtue of what they mean -- which I think is your suggestion -- or because of some other property. We like to conceive of an entire world of meanings "in our heads": thoughts and images and memories all influencing and generating each other. What I'm calling the logical or propositional version of this would endow the meanings/contents/propositional content of thought with causal power. The psychological version, in contrast, would call this hopelessly mysterious, and insist that the causal relations must lie elsewhere -- @Dawnstorm's "stream of thought", perhaps. And this is to ignore the physical-reduction model (as I promised I would, since I think it's wrong) which says that only brain events can cause other brain events, period, end of story -- the "meanings" are free riders of some sort.
If I'm right that you see a clear explanatory connection between Thought A ("7 + 5") and Thought B ("12"), can you say more about the causation involved? How does A cause B? Where does such a relation occur?
Come around for the thread of Proclus' Elements in a few weeks; he's got some great ideas on this. :grin:
Most W2, I think.
Quoting J
One such is epiphenomenalism: mental events supervene on physical events, and are not reducible to them, but themselves have no causative power. Here, the apparent causation is illusory.
I prefer: mental events supervene on physical events because they are two perspectives on the same thing. Both are equally causative because both refer to the same reality.
Causation between billiard balls is not illusory. What is "really" happening is not electrostatic forces between atoms transmititting momentum. Rather, both the macro view (the billiard ball of everyday life) and the micro view are different perspectives one can take on the same thing. One perspective is not privileged over the other.
And so, mental events cause mental events, and brain events cause brain events: both are true, depending on how the event is framed.
How the very same thing can be framed as a brain event or a mental event is just the hard problem.
Most W2, I think.
Quoting J
One such is epiphenomenalism: mental events supervene on physical events, and are not reducible to them, but themselves have no causative power. Here, the apparent causation is illusory.
I prefer: mental events supervene on physical events because they are two perspectives on the same thing. Both are equally causative because both refer to the same reality.
Causation between billiard balls is not illusory. What is "really" happening is not electrostatic forces between atoms transmititting momentum. Rather, both the macro view (the billiard ball of everyday life) and the micro view are different perspectives one can take on the same thing. One perspective is not privileged over the other.
And so, mental events cause mental events, and brain events cause brain events: both are true, depending on how the event is framed.
How the very same thing can be framed as a brain event or a mental event is just the hard problem.
From a phenomenological perspective associations would not seem to be rigid or precise. They are more analogical, metaphorical, than logical. As to whether they are causal, if all our thoughts are preceded by neural activity, then the activation of one network which we might be conscious of as an association would presumably have a causal relationship with the neural network which it is experienced by us as being associated with.
Quoting J
That's an interesting question which I'm afraid I have no idea how to answer. I have often thought that we cannot ever understand how a brain can become a mind, because the latter just intractably seems to be something so different to any physical process. That said, I have an open mind about what understandings might appear in the future.
It's not causation. It's memory retrieval. With unfamiliar people or territory, however, imagination is the source of continued thoughts.
Causation is physical. Causation is the true measure of empirical observation.
Could you expand on this? I have Thought A and then retrieve a memory so as to have Thought B? Why that particular memory?
Quoting L'éléphant
We can stipulate that, certainly. Do you think there's an argument for why it must be the case, or does it represent a kind of bedrock commitment to how to understand the concept?
Quoting Janus
Agreed. The term is vague for the very reason that it can cover so many varieties.
Quoting Janus
This is a version of the reductive argument I proposed to ignore: It's the neuronal activity doing the causing, not the thoughts or the meanings themselves. On this understanding, do you think we should deny that my thought of "7 + 5" causes (or otherwise influences or leads to) the thought of "12"? Would this be better understood as loose talk, a kind of shorthand for "The neuronal activity that somehow correlates with or gives rise to the thought '7 + 5' causes the neuronal activity that . . . " etc?
Quoting hypericin
Good, though of course "perspectives" needs a lot of filling in.
Quoting hypericin
The interesting question here is whether we need to reform our use of "cause" and "causative" so as to allow legitimate talk of mental causation, or whether it's the concept itself that has to be expanded. "Equally causative" could be understood either way.
I think what you're describing is close to the truth, but as you say:
Quoting hypericin
Which leads back to my observation that we probably can't pick and choose different threads of this tangled web and claim to understand them while remaining ignorant about the others. We may need an entire comprehensive theory of consciousness before we'll understand what we now call, rather gropingly, mental causation. But we also need good philosophical analysis of the current concepts, so maybe we can do something useful in the interim.
Once the thoughts were in your head, they caused other thoughts. That's what they do. It's not always as predictable as with simple arithmetic, because other factors are involved. Other thoughts you're already having; memories that the implanted thought brings up; other sensory input your receiving; and others. But 7 + 5 is such a simple thing that it isn't easily overwhelmed by other things before 12 shows up. So it's good for the demonstration.
As to the "how" that you're asking? Good question. But we don't really have the answer to that for physical causation, when it comes right down to it. The negative charge of the electrons on the outer surface of one object repel the negative charge of the electrons on the outer surface of another object? In [I]Until the End of Time[/I], Brian Greene writes:
We don't know what charge is. We can't know how it works. We only know what it does. Maybe that's bottom-level.
I don't know that we can't figure out more about thoughts causing thoughts than we currently know. I'm very happy to discuss it, but can't be of much help. But I imagine we'll reach a bottom level.
This theme has cropped up early and often on the thread: Our conceptual understanding of an apparently local, tractable problem like "How does one thought cause another?" immediately draws us into a theoretical morass about causality and consciousness, with so many empty places on the map that it's hard to know what more to say. In that spirit, your insistence on (what seems) the undeniable causal connection between the thought of "7 + 5" and the thought of "12" is salutary. This much, at least, we know, phenomenologically -- this is certainly how it appears. Or if this isn't true, I'd say the burden of proof is on the denier to say why not, even in the absence of a good explanation for it.
I think that's how I presented it, but it's a simplification. There's a lot of overlap. Language that doesn't create an artifact (sound or scribbles or signing) is entirely "inside the head", so to speak. This is difficulat to parse out. The key issue here is that there is a pre-linguistic flow that is less clearly demarkated and also less repeatable than the linguistic aspect of the flow. A W2 thought will involve language, but not all of the language in your head is exhausted within the W2 framework. (Maybe it becomes clearer if you consider Wittgenstein's private language argument here.)
Maybe (not sure but maybe), there's this mentales flow that is entirely a W2 object; the linguistic level that is both a W2 and a W3 object, and then the propositional layer which is entirely a W3 object, but has to be represented in W2 to exist (as all W3 objects) - probably via the W2 part of language, which has to connect to the sublinguistic flow for meaning to occur.
Under that model it's not entirely clear what a W2 thought is. I don't think can begin to delimit a "thought" before I've got a model of what actually happens. For example, I said this:
Quoting Dawnstorm
But it's entirely possible that in some situation it's:
Thinking of Ann -> Production of World 3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing...
A particular situation might trigger a word habit, which is then associated with a thought habit. That is: I could easily imagine both word-first and concept-first situations.
Now that I've (hopefully) clarified, it should be clear that I'm not saying this:
Quoting J
When you think a word, you think the sign-body as well as the meaning. It depends on the person how you internally think the signbody: some people might hear it said (they literally have a word in the head), some people might just think the word purely abstractly - I don't know if that is possible; for me, thinking a word is performative - I believe I can sometimes - not always - detect micro movements of the speech aparatus (the vocal chords are probably not involved, I'm more thinking about the tongue, palate etc.)
But the meaning is doubled; the canonical meaning of the word needs to fit into the stream of what you want to say. That process would usually be automatic and unconscious, but you'll notice it when you can't think of word, or think of many words none of which fit. What I'm thinking here is that there's not necessarily a 1:1 relationship between say a word (both it's sign-body and canonical meaning) and what concept you wish to impart. But I'm not sure how to model that relationship. There's a wholistic flow that you need to partition for langauge, but there's also the pre-partitioned word-stuff that you import, so there's some sort of give and take here (and that give and take regularly crosses the borders between worlds 2 and 3). I have no model for how this works at this point.
That said, we can still pose the question, Is anything in the process of stringing two thoughts together an instance of causality? I don't think it matters where we draw the borders, taxonomically, between W2 and W3 thoughts, or how we conceive of that fuzzy realm of experience. If we decide that some sort of causation is indeed a factor, then we can go back and try to understand what causal powers W2 or W3 thoughts (or combinations thereof) might have. My OP was meant to highlight some of the problems with both W2 and W3 thought-causality, when the two are taken as distinct types -- but they needn't be.
Getting back to your point that Popper's World 3 isn't reliably populated with discrete "objects" -- I quite agree. Your example of "story" shows this very well. But I suppose the same could be said for good old World 1 objects. For most purposes, we may want to regard a toothbrush as a single object, but there may be occasions when we need to see it as more than one (if I'm in the bristle-making business, for instance). The division among Popper's worlds mostly holds up, and is useful; it's the addition of "object" that is problematic. But let's not get sidetracked in mereology.
You also said, in your earlier post:
Quoting Dawnstorm
and:
Quoting Dawnstorm
Both these observations are at the heart of the causal problem. Does entailment pertain/exist even with no mind to think the constituent propositions? (If a conclusion follows/falls in a forest with no one to think it, does it display an entailment? :smile: ) Understandably, "Yes" is a tempting answer. But this raises the headache I alluded to in the OP: What sort of being do propositions have? Can they be created (thought) as W3 objects in good standing, and then persist "out there" somewhere when no one thinks them? I'll send us all back to Plato for that one.
But if it is meaningful to speak of an entailment as forcing or necessitating a conclusion, doesn't this have to happen in a mind, in conjunction with some W2 thoughts? I can just about accept mindless propositions (though see Rödl and others); but causing new ones, by virtue of entailment, without a mind to do it looks like a step too far. If there is mental causation, perhaps we require some kind of instantiation or embodiment (en-mind-ment?) of the entailing propositions in order to effect the conclusion. Someone has to think it. Ah, but is that thinking an invention or a discovery? And is it genuinely necessitated? "I was caused to conclude that Socrates is mortal!" Sounds odd, yet . . .
I think we can reasonably say that the thought "7 + 5" may lead to the thought "12", or it may lead to the thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or whatever.
I won't rehearse possible stories about neural networks, since that it what you propose to ignore.
I don't think it even needs to be expanded. If we understand that thought and brain activity are actually the same things, and brain activity is understood as causative, then thought must also be causative, and we can use causative language around it.
Quoting J
Again, I don't see why. We don't need to understand how thought can be brain activity, only that thought is brain activity.
I agree that '12' would be the most common association, my point was only that it is not, by any means, the only possible association. If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem.
I've had that happen plenty of times too! Which perhaps reminds us that "to understand" is broad, and often incomplete. Math isn't my forte, so I've frequently looked at a piece of math and said to myself, Yeah, I get that, and then it turns out that there was a whole other level of implication and elegance that I'd missed. I wasn't wrong, exactly, in what I thought I understood; it was just "through a glass darkly."
On the other hand causation is often distinguished from correlation (association?) with the idea that to qualify as causal, when X occurs Y must occur.
I think you're right. But, regardless of the specific thought "7 + 5" causes, it causes another thought. I'd say it's overwhelmingly likely that it will cause "12" or another mathematical thought than, say, "Fidel Castro". Because meaning is the key, and there's very little possibility that anyone associates "7 + 5" with Castro more than with 12 or some other mathematical idea. Even now that I've created an association between 7 + 5 and Castro, 12 is still stronger, and the next time you think 7 + 5, you'll first think "12", [I]then[/I] you'll think "Castro", [I]then[/I] you'll think "Patterner is an idiot."
Perhaps an image worth considering, is a pulsating web of causality, with many thoughts causally interacting with each other, and those interactions occurring in what for the most part are subconscious ways? Are the thoughts Keynes thinks in things, or rather complex dynamic sequences of events?
I haven't heard of that one; thanks for bringing it up. I was vaguely aware of research, but nothing drug related.
Quoting J
I'd like to highlight the difference between an entailment not being thought, and there being no mind to potentially think it. People who can work through an entailment can do so because they know how entailment works. Knowledge underlies all thought in many ways, but is passive without thought OR action.
So:
Quoting J
Yes, they can "persist", but no, not, in a platonic idealist way. I think propositions are at their most stable when they're not being thought, because that means they're passively available as memory traces. It's when they activate in social situations that they change. Knowing of a proposition is passive and provides structure; thinking it is making a problem of it and potentially changing it.
But that's not the extent of it. If the knowledge of knowledgable agents across a relevant population then there's a structural conflict potential: that's when stuff gets unstable, and people try to push for more favourable knowledge or repair what they have (as it's been useful so far). The most prominent example currently, I think, is the gender discourse. The need to express certainty hints at conflict. Things that actually are certain don't even need to be thought. And that's a problem with the current gender discourse: there are people who are forced to think of gender nearly always, and people for whom the binary is so certain that they don't even understand what others are talking about, with all sorts inbetween.
For an example of shared knowledge that nearly no-one questions in daily life, look at money. (Things might be different in specialised context like the stock market. I don't know enought to even speculate.) Certain aspects of language come to mind; for example, every native speaker of English knows that English is an accusative-nominative language, which they demonstrate just by speaking. That knowledge is embedded in the praxis of speaking, though. Most people don't know that they know that; they don't know it could be different (you'd need to be either interested in linguistics, or speak a language that's ergative-absolutive, like Basque).
So finally:
Quoting J
Yes and no. Again you need to step from the mental level to the social level. An entailment doesn't force a conclusion in any given individual's W2. There's ignorance; there's making mistakes, etc. But all these things only make sense before a social background; there has to be someone to plausibly be able to convince you that you're ignorant, wrong, etc. by demonstrating what it is like to be right. Unsuccessful demonstrations cause social unrest, and you have predictable conflict which is also part of the knowledge. Think again about the gender discourse, people on the extreme ends may not understand each other, but what they have in common is their mutual knowledge that they won't find agreement. Which makes much of the posturing performative for their own knowledge group.
There are many measures of the stability of social facts (W3 objects): for example, do we tend to trust the experts? Do we just act on knowledge without topicalising it? And so on.
Sociologists often speak of "consensus" here, but it's mostly not a conscious act of agreeing. Much of it is a tacit performance of the way things are. The less it's questioned the more stable it is (think for example toilet training). There could be a social scale of stability for W3 objects:
Things that most people agree upon, and disagreement is a form of stigma to reinforce the status quo.
Things that people take for granted that opportunities to agree or disagree rarely arise.
Things that people take for granted so much that most people don't know it could be different.
W3 objects do ultimately rely on W2 activity, but there's never really a context where a single mind's enough.
So:
Quoting J
Rather than "Someone has to think it," think "many people have to know it," where knowledge isn't some "justified true belief", but the capability to successfully complete social situations. You can't buy something from someone who doesn't know how to sell.
One important difference between knowledge and thought is that knowledge is continually present in the background (unless forgotten) and only activates when situationally relevant. (You could, I suppose, assume that knowledge doesn't persist but comes into being again every time we need it, but that doesn't sound plausible to me.) Meanwhile thought is situated much more episodically. This is why stuff that persists in W3 must be known but can go a long time without being thought. It mustn't be forgotten, and must be passed on to the next generation of minds to persist.
Furthermore, because what one mind "knows" (in the social sense) can be wrong only because there are people who know differently, So as long as enough people know that 5+7=12, entailment will pertain. This is an iterative process; a chicken-egg situation if you will. People know what they learn, and they teach what they know. And just like with chicken and eggs the process allows for change. What one generation teaches isn't necessarily what the next generation learns, but it could be close enough that the difference only surface in concrete situations once it's too late.
There's a hierarchy of dependence from W1 to W3. You need W1 for W2 and W2 for W3, but neither W2 nor W3 is necessary for W1 to exist. Influence, however, can go the other way. W3 can influence W2 and W2 can influence W1. It's this asymmetry that makes me think the difference between causation and influence could be vital to pin down. To put it in concrete terms: I don't think "Matter causes minds," and "Money causes anxiety," use the word cause in the same way. But I can't pin down a concrete difference.
I wonder if those who do not think in words have these sub-vocalizations.
I see what you mean, but when I spoke about "understanding mental causation," I intended to include the how as well as the fact of it. To me, that would provide true, complete understanding.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
This highlights a problem with "cause" language in this context. Certainly "7 + 5" is not a necessary cause of "12" (assuming it's causal at all). Nor is it a sufficient cause, though, as has been argued, it's a very likely one. If we end up saying that whatever follows from the thought of "7 + 5" has been caused by that thought, doesn't this amount to saying that only a W2 thought can be causative? That is, the propositional or meaning content of the thought can lead to anything, so no causation is involved at that level.
Quoting wonderer1
The latter, and surely Keynes would agree. Our linguistic habits tend to reify processes or events into discrete "things" or objects so we can talk about them more readily.
Compare it with a pool table. The cue ball, 8 ball, and corner pocket are in a straight line. Hit the cue straight into the 8, and the 8 goed in the pocket.
That doesn't mean every time you hit the cue ball straight into the 8, it will go into the corner pocket. The three are not always in a straight line. Sometimes there are other balls between the 8 and the pocket. Nevertheless, wherever the 8 ends up, having been hit by the cue ball is always the cause. At least having been hit by the cue ball is always a big factor in where it ends up.
Getting the thought 7 + 5 in your head is getting hit by the cue ball. Which specific thought it causes depends on the layout of the table. Meaning your past experiences with "7 + 5" specifically, your past experiences with math in general, and even non-math considerations (now to include my connecting 7 + 5 and Castro). But the thought of 7 + 5 is always the cause, or where you end up.
I have had an idea for a story for many years. People in a certain area seen to be going crazy. Many people are found talking nonsense. Strings of seemingly unconnected words. It is eventually noticed that they are all speaking the [I]same[/I] string of seemingly unconnected words. It turns out they have all been in an extensive, recently discovered cave that contains various archaeologically interesting things. Glyphs, carvings, textures on the walls, containers of scented things. It turns out that, seeing and smelling these things in the order you encounter them while walking through the cave inevitably leads all people to a specific chain of thoughts, because the chain of stimuli acts upon things in the psyche common to all humans. (I suppose a civilization was wiped out. As people become caught in the chain of thoughts, they become incapable of breaking out of it, and stop eating.)
I thought your Castro example was meant to show the opposite. Or perhaps we're debating shades of meaning, because I also agree that "certain things for anyone" is a valid way of putting it. It's just that these "certain things" are, as far as I can understand, limitless. Not random, though, which is perhaps your point.
My Castro example is demonstrating that the association can be anything. Because of my posts, If you get the thought "7 + 5", you will soon have the thought "Castro". "7 + 5" will have caused "Castro". Possibly even if you just have the thought "12" for any other reason. Obviously, the association is necessary. You now have an association.
I guess not all thoughts are caused by thoughts. If I see a cloud that I think looks like Godzilla, I wouldn't say a thought caused the thought of Godzilla. Sensory input and memory caused it.
We can make sentences that have never been thought before. [I]Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145.[/I] I think we can be reasonably sure that's the first time that sentence was ever thought, spoken, or written. While constructing it, I intentionally discarded anything that came to me from my surroundings. I believe no part of the sentence was was inspired by anything at all. I wanted a sentence that was entirely out of the blue. So what caused the thought of a giant mushroom festival in Kathmandu in 2145?
I happened to run across this, in Peirce:
"Affectibility" is yet another near-synonym, like "relationship" or "association" or "influence," a way of approaching the idea of "cause" without committing to it. It's also interesting that Peirce must have had propositions or other World 3 objects in mind here, since it wouldn't make much sense to suggest that my thought or your thought (qua W2 thoughts) could have this effect. What's needed is the content, the meaning, in order for the idea to "spread continuously." In fact, the very term "idea" already implies a separation from the psychologically grounded W2 thought.
In Susan Haack's essay on Peirce's "synechism," she provides this suggestion:
Here again, the distinction between World 2 and World 3 thoughts. I wouldn't care to make an argument that there is a thought-like "intelligible pattern" to be found in aspects of Nature, as Haack thinks Peirce believed. But the idea that such patterns are outside of particular minds is the whole point of asking into whether, and how, they might be causative.
Yeah, saw that. It was on the internet. Why did you think you made it up? :wink:
Quoting Patterner
Absolutely right. Those that are caused by previous thoughts are a special category. We can stretch the term "thought" until it snaps, but I agree with you (though I think @Dawnstorm would not) that whatever made you invent that sentence, it wasn't some previous thought standing in a causal relation. Dawnstorm might argue for a stream-of-thought, out of which the (linguistic) elements of your sentence popped up. But regardless of our terminology, you question is a good one: What caused that sentence (as a thought in your mind, that is, not in your post)? We're drawn to a World 2 explanation, aren't we? Some individual, particular elements in your mind and no other were the key links of the causal chain. But that's not quite right. The words and the grammar are available to all. But the absence of anything resembling entailment, or even rationality, is striking: no part of the sentence seems required by any other. (And of course it's ambiguous: Giant festival, or festival featuring giant mushrooms?)
Try to construct an explanation, assuming a sincere questioner asked you, "What caused you to think that sentence?" I wonder what you'd get. Would you wind up denying causality completely?
We can make sentences that have no clear-cut meaning until you figure out later what they might mean. I'm not even joking. I used to write SF stories, and one of my exercises was to improvise meaningless sentences to world-build around. The only example I remember:
A couple of sinker limpets got hold of me, but then the afterwash set in.
The world I came up with was one with migrating lakes instead of rivers. (Never finished thinking this through, which is probably why I remember the sentence.)
The idea I have is that thinking words is one type of thought and thinking content another, and since they run together, you can't quite distinguish word-first content from content-first words. It is a proposition universally acknowledged, that a single sentence of good standing must be in want of a truth...
That's a fun exercise! And I think it's even more difficult to answer J's question regarding your sentence than my mushroom festival sentence:Quoting J
I'm actually not ready to argue for anything yet. I'm still trying to find a way to describe what we're asking here. For example, if I were to stick with the stream metaphor, I might say that the stream isn't all there is - there's plenty of stuff that doesn't flow: the river bed, sediment, big heavy objects that cause turbulence...
My pre-occupation at that time is simply that it's hard to pin down what about the stuff that surrounds the readily-accessible sentence is thought and what isn't. And my major concern, as I think I said before (though I might have done so in a deleted response...), is that we shouldn't confuse the stability of the sentence-form with stability of sentence meaning.
Adding a 3-worlds-model on top here complicates things because now the sentence-meaning multiplies, even just from the production point of view:
A primal W2 element - what triggers the sentence productions
A W2 object triggered by the sentence - the expectation of what the W3 object is meaning to a generalised other - did I say it right?
A realigned W2 object based on using the sentence W2 object - I think I meant to say what I think others will hear.
The re-aligned W2 object is something I see people rarely pay attention to. The thing is that I suspect the re-aligned W2 object can but needn't replace the primal W2 object. The primal W2 object drives your actions while the re-aligned W2 object comes up when you need to legitimise your actions. In some cases that might lead to others seeing you as a hypocrite, while you're incapable seeing yourself as such (as your world view integrates both W2 objects as unproblematic).
Take for example grammar. It's easy to use but hard to analyse. You mention the "giant mushroom festiveal" ambiguity. Is the mushrum festival giant or are the mushrooms giant? Phrasing the ambiguity like this makes it a semantic ambiguity, but there's also a syntanctic ambiguity [giant[mushroom festival]] or [[gaint mushroom]festival], where the brackets mark constiutients ("Immediate Constituent Analysis" if you're curious). There's a different ambiguity in the whole clause, that's an obvious syntactic ambiguity, a subtle semantic ambiguity (one of emphasis probably), and rarely ever a situationally relevant ambiguity:
[[Kathmandu] [will be] [the site [of a giant mushroom festival]] [in the year 2145].] vs. [[Kathmandu] [will be] [the site of [a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145]].]
The syntactic ambiguity concerns whether "in the year 2145" is an adverbial to the clauses verb phrase, or whether it's part of the noun phrase. In either case, the festival takes place in 2145, but where in the sentence we express this changes. My hunch is that most people will have the first syntactic reading as the ad-hoc reading. But what if I replied:
A giant mushroom festival in the year 2145 is unlikely, but if it did take place Kathmandu would make for a good site.
I now copied the exact string of words, but there's now no syntactic ambiguity anymore.
If the sentence represents the thought, what about the instinctive syntactic reading of what "in the year 2145" attaches to? Is this a "thought"? Is this some background linguistic mental behaviour yet to be named, but not falling under "thought"? Is this an aspect of your model of all thought that includes linguistic aspects?
Sometimes the syntactically easier parsing is at odds with the intended syntactic perception. Take garden path sentences, where you miss the end of a unit and don't notice until the sentence either fails to parse or gives a clearly unintended reading (e.g. "The old man the boat.")
So, how many sentences can express the same thought, then?
For example: In 2145 there will be a giant mushroom festival in Kathmandu.
Same thought? The difference in formality expressed by the more conversational wording - part of the thought, or part of the thought's context?
I sort of need to answer questions like these before I can start building a model. Given that I myself have never really had cause to wonder whether thoughts can cause thoughts before reading this thread (I actually might have read similar threads in the past, but for simplicity's sake let's pretend I haven't) so I have no intuitive substratus here. I'm still trying to figure out what the topic is.
[B]How Does a Thought Cause Another Thought?[/B]
That's what we need to work on. It can happen in different ways.
"7+5" shows one way. It's such an easy one, we can't stop ourselves from solving it.
"Grassy knoll" shows another way. (At least if you're above a certain age, or you learned the association in some other way.) This type would include personal memories. At least I don't think personal memories is a different way?
Word Association shows a third way. A different type of association. When I write "black", "wet", and "boy", do you think "white", "dry", and "girl"? Not specific associations, and there are surely more likely responses to these than there are to "7+5". In response to "boy", did you think "George"? "Tarzan"? (Gilligan said "oh" when Ginger was testing him. Because "Oh boy." :rofl:) Did "wet" cause "slippery"? "Water"? "Paint"? "Willie"?
In what other ways does one thought cause another thought?
I don't think every thought causes another thought. (And I don't think every thought is caused by a thought.) But maybe every thought causes thinking?
Before asking this question, or @J's original question (Can a Thought Cause Another Thought?), I think we should ask ourselves: Do we need to analyze thoughts in terms of causation? Because so far, this discussion looks to me like a solution in search of a problem.
:rofl: Maybe so. But, then, the site could be asolutioninsearchofaproblem.com
It's precisely what counts as a thought that is insuffienctly described for me to have much of an oppinion about it.
Take "7+5". In what ways is that even thught? If I read "7+5" and think "12" then I might just cover this with a stimulus-response model without ever invoking the concept of "a thought".
Another problem: 5+7=12 is usually just memorised, so what happens is that we're completing a culturual template. In a manner of speaking, we're completing a default thought: filling a gap we automically perceive. So "5+7" might be an incomplete thought where we automatically fill the gap in the proper way.
This is not mainly describing what actually happens. For example, "5+7" = thought 1 and "12" = thought 2 might require a different theoretical model of thought than "5 + 7 = 12" is a common and context-evoking cultural template, so that "5 + 7" is auto-completed to make a recurring thought happen once again.
Take "432 + 493 = 925". If you were to see "432 + 493" and you recognise this as addition. You may solve, or you may shrug and walk away. These are two responses: do any of those involve thought? Is shrugging and walking away less of a thought than mumbling "Who cares?" and walking away, because the latter includes language and the former doesn't? Is the recognition of addition already thought, given that it's implied but not expressed in either reactions? How many thoughts are involved in solving the addition?
For example, I just went back to front: 3+2, put down 5, 9+3, put down 2, carry over 1, 4+4+1, put down 9. I could have been quicker if I'd just used 432 + 500 = 932; 932 - 7 = 925. I realised that too late. Is me automatically choosing my habitual mode a thought? To me this type of choice has a lot in common with completing 7+5; both happen almost without thinking.
What's different here is the output. If the output is language we tend to name it "a thought". I'm reminded of the line "A sentence is a complete thought". In creative writing circles this is usually used to stigmatise run-on sentences, or advocate for many short sentences over one long sentence. This has always struck me as silly. My intuition is to decouple thought and language, but if I do that what remains to look at. What kind of concrete entities remain as hints that you are thinking?
If "thought" is the process and "a thought" is a usefully demarcated stretch of that but that demarcation does not necessarily co-incide with the demarcation of the words what is there to go into the model. I'm not saying that words shouldn't be in the model, just that we should be careful not to use words and sentences as stand-in for thoughts.
This is me just rambling, really. To cut it short: I'm not convinced that "7+5" illiciting the response "12" is usefully modelled as one thought causing another (though I'm also not convinced that it doesn't). Maybe you just see "7 + 5" and think "7 + 5 = 12": maybe it's a visual stimulus triggering your mental copy of culturally template. But then for the reflected light on your retina to transform into a visual stimulus is thought necessary? And if so, how much of it? And if thought happens is there anything you could usefully demarcate into "a thought"?
Quoting SophistiCat
I just want to note that I understand these comments. For me, they point to two things: First, the difficulty of adapting our concepts of causality on the one hand, and the mental on the other, to even frame a sensible question. And second, as we've already noticed, the disconcerting way in which a perfectly simple (!) query -- Can a thought cause another thought? -- quickly expands into large theoretical questions, most of which we have at best tentative answer to.
Nevertheless, I'm going to try to post a reformulation of my initial OP question, in light of the very interesting discussion that's ensued. Hopefully later today.
Quoting SophistiCat
To this, I'd say no, we don't. I'm quite open to other hypotheses about the "relations," "affinities," "influences," "associations," et al. among thoughts. The only line I'd draw in the sand would be: We mustn't talk as if we already understand this issue, or as if there is no issue.
Yes, I'm joking.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Quoting DawnstormYou think? I intentionally looked for an example that I didn't think is memorized. I don't know that people memorize addition the way we do the Times Tables. It's also more involved than counting by 2s. And not as thoughtlessly easy as adding 1 or 2 to any number.
Well, even if it's not the best example, I'm sure we can find one that is net memorized, but is easy enough that the majority of people would add it up sticky and reading, rather than shrug and walk away.
Quoting DawnstormI haven't thought about this before, but I'm inclined to disagree. I don't see how something we are thinking short isn't, but definition, a thought. And even if we're talking about counting by 2s, which most beyond whatever age can do easily, without any sort of calculating, do we not have to think to do it?
Quoting DawnstormEither is a decision. Which sounds like a thought to me.
Quoting DawnstormI don't see how it's possible that it's not thought. Photons can hit our retinas without us really seeing it. We don't notice everything in our visual field, and wr sometimes don't notice things dead center in our visual field. But if you notice it enough to decide you are not going to do the math, you're thinking about it.
Quoting DawnstormIt seems like running to me. Running happens. It's a process. And you go for a run. Thought happens. It's a process. And you have a thought.
(Although it might be better to use the word [I]thinking[/I] for the process. Sometimes we do strange things with words. "Lowe's delivered the fencing yesterday.")
It's a difficult thing sometimes. Can a voluntary action become so habitual that there is literally no thinking involved any longer?
I do not believe driving, or walking through a crowded store, on "auto-pilot" is done without thought. We certainly relegate such things to the background. Sometimes so much so that we have accidents. And, not dwelling on any moment, nothing makes it into our long-term memory. But I have to believe there is [I]some[/I] thought involved.
I think or at least thought so. I'm, of course, uncertain, even more so now that you brought it into question. The thing is, when I read 5 + 7 in your post I didn't think 12. I knew you what you were going for, and that was enough for the purpose of this thread, which is very mentally demanding.
Now what's going on my mind here? I really did think that 5+7 is mostly memorised (of course not always for everyone). That's definitely true. So what was my thought process here? What's clear is that, even though I was prompted to "retrieve 12" and I knew I was prompted such, I didn't bother to retrieve twelve. Given my memorisation bias, I didn't bother to retrieve a synonym. "7 + 5" and "12" are labels for the same thought, so there was no need.
If that really is what happened, then we would have one concept beneath and two labels on top, and maybe three thoughts in total (one of which I didn't find necessary to activate). If this is not what happened, then it's possible that I misinterpret what's going on between thoughts and language inside my head. An my testimony on the topic would be at best unreliable.
The type of social study I gravitated towards while in University (sciology) relied a lot on self-report. So there's that.
I don't mean delibertaly sitting down and memorising tables. 12 is a low enough number so that if you've done a lot of addition by hand (as I have; when I was a kid in the 70ies even pocket calculators were expensive; these days everyone has smart phone) then you'll remember 5+7 as 12 simply by repetition. I assumed that's normal. Not something I now think I should assume.
Not for me. 5+7 and 12 are literally synonymous in my mind. No extra steps needed. No need to retrieve 12, when I already have 5+7. Interestingly, I just went through other digit-pairs that end up at 12, and it seems I take slightly longer even with 11+1. It seems 5+7 is special for me somehow. Huh. Not what I expected.
I agree.Quoting Patterner
I think you misunderstand my position. "Thought" is what's going on in when we're thinking. The process; the stream of consciousness (or part of it, whatever we're willing to count as thinking). "A thought" is unit that occurs with that process. It's perfectly possible to be thinking, but there's no good way to break what's going on apart to isolate "a single unit that makes up a thought".
So, if two thoughts are part of the same stream of consciousness, then if you zoom in one thought might cause another, but if you zoom out they're both part of a bigger thought. And it's easy to skip zoom levels without noticing. So, maybe we suspect thought 1 causes thought 2, when thought 1 is really just the beginning stage of thought 2. We've not been clear enough what happens on what level. But to be clear about that we need a sane model (and I have none).
I'm suggesting we need a model of what type of thoughts can reasonable compared to each other on a level that's relevant to causation. I'm sorry for being so convoluted, but that's just how I... think.
Quoting Patterner
Again, this was meant to be a terminological enquiry. Above it was "thought" vs. "a thought". Here it is about the place of thought within a cognitive framework. Is all cognition "thought" or is it a specialised form of cognition distinct from other terms, such as "memory", "recognition". Maybe some people would like to use "thought" only for "reasoning"?
Quoting Patterner
Yes, that's my intuition, too, until that last sentence. Here I'd deiverge, maybe like this: "...It's a process. And you have a thought/thoughts." The slash is supposed to represent a modal "or" - depending on how you count what different grammatical structures apply. I wish English would mark this in its number system: singular, plural, either. I'd have used the third form here.
Quoting Patterner
Yes, that's my intuition, too, but it makes for a really broad term. The trade off is that - suddenly - thought is everything and nothing that goes on in the mind. With a definition so broad the question "can a thought cause another thought," becomes a trivial yes, but it's no longer an interesting question on it's own. It's a doorway to host of different questions.
Finally, thought in the context of cause and effect needs certain traits amenable to cause. What are they? If we review the thread we've had "causation = physical" and "entailment = logical", and then pair that up with Popper's 3 worlds. Causation would then inhabit world 1, and entailment would inhabit world 3, but thought would inhabit world 2 (as it's centre of operation, but it has tendrils in both world 1 and 3). If causation language is biased towards world 1, then how should we model thought, if we want to focus on world 2. Does that seem like a fair description of the confusion this thread is in (or is just me overthinking things again...)
I want to hear @Patterner's response, but I'll just jump in to say that I do think it's a fair description of the confusion -- or at any rate the uncertainty -- with which I began, and which prompted me to start the thread in the first place. I don't know that anyone's responses has made it any worse, or that there would have been a clearer path to follow. I'm still working on my own restatement of the OP question. . .
"I don't see how something we are thinking short isn't, but definition, a thought."
might be better as
"I don't see how something we are thinking about isn't, by definition, a thought."
Anyway, I'll be back.
To clarify, my question was not rhetorical. Where I was going with this is that causal analysis is a choice that we make, and so is the form that it takes. We shouldn't presuppose that causation is there, and we just need to elucidate it, or if it turns out that causation is absent, then we are in trouble (epiphenomenalism!)
That said, we need a proper motivation to look for causation. The place to start would probably be the field of psychology (less so philosophy of mind, for that is where idle and wrongheaded questions often originate...) Does mental-to-mental causation figure in psychology - as distinct from reason or explanation (informally, those words are often used interchangeably)?
As for the type of causation, perhaps inferential causation would be more promising in this context, since it is quite loose (being a spiritual descendant of Humean regularity theory) and does not rely on any physicalist ontology, such as energy.
Because of the operation of the mind -- thoughts are modes of thinking. If a thought can cause you another thought, are you not removing the mind from the equation?
A thought cannot cause another thought in the way that "causation" is used in philosophy.
You seem to think that a thought that can cause another thought is a starting point of an idea. If you think of an idea then another idea comes up, this thought that you said was caused by the first thought does not enjoy a particular hierarchy in the way actual causation happens. The mind is in control. It is also selective. A thought comes as a presentation from your mind. If further information is lacking or forgetfulness ensues, then another idea will come up.
Quoting J
Because causation is an observed phenomenon. That's why it is the case that it is physical.
Quoting L'éléphantMaybe that [I]is[/I] the mind. I've asked elsewhere - What is the mind when there is no thinking taking place?
Regarding causation in general A famous example of correlation not being causation is watching a train station for a day, and noticing that every time a bunch of people gather at it, a train shows up.
One thought following another is not correlation. it is causation. Think of paparazzi. Your next thought might be that Lady Di was killed because they were trying to outrun the paparazzi. It might be pizza, because both words start with p, have zz, and have at least one a and i. Who knows how many other things the word causes people to think? But none of those thoughts were about to be thought anyway. They wouldn't have been thought (well, there are coincidences) if you hadn't been thinking about paparazzi. And paparazzi obviously did not become a thought in anticipation of Lady Di or pizza.
obviously, there are times when one thought was not caused by a previous thought. One example is you might be in the middle of thinking anything, and then you see or hear or smell something, and it entirely changes your thoughts.
They're most definitely causing the trains to show up. The proof of that if that if those people would stop showing up, the trains would eventually also stop showing up :wink:
Maybe the issue is classifying causation as "physical" or "mental" rather than simply "procedural"?
Quoting Dawnstorm
This is the way it is for you now, but what about when you were in grade school learning arithmetic? Are you saying that we only think when we are learning something new and when it becomes reflexive it is no longer a thought?
It seems to me that consciousness has out-sourced it's thinking to other (sub/un-conscious parts of the brain) once something has been learned sufficiently enough where conscious thought is no longer needed. Does this mean that thinking is no longer involved, or that thinking was simply relegated to another part of the brain that does not require updated information from the senses?
Quoting DawnstormYes, I was misunderstanding. However, I think I disagree. In what way can we not break apart what's going on and isolate a single thought? Driving into work this morning I see a lot of leaves on the ground. It's autumn. I think New Yorkers as a rule like autumn. Pumpkins and squash and apples are big this time of year. All the apple orchards have apple cider and cider donuts this time of year, and there's usually fudge also. One orchard has a cupcake festival every year, which is as wonderful thing as you can imagine. Autumn also reminds me of a particular Monty Python moment with the leaves falling off the tree, seen here:
https://youtu.be/O7rU2l9WiYo?si=r0N021_livZ8fVd2
Allof these things can be seen as separate images/moments/thoughts, can't they?
Quoting DawnstormSure, we should be able to come up with ideas for models along these lines. Any suggestions? I can't say I'm entirely clear on what you have in mind.
Quoting DawnstormDifficult to answer, since, as I've said, we don't even know what charge, which is fairly important for physical causation, is. If mental causation is a significantly different thing, it's going to be even more mysterious, since we don't have centuries of systematic study of it.
My apologies to you and . I don't know anything at all about Popper. I only heard his name for the first time recently, in another thread, and haven't been able to make head or tail out of what you two are saying about his Worlds.
Got that, I was joking, but also kind of highlighting the contrastive character of causal explanation. Claims that event A caused event B always are ambiguous if one doesn't specify (or relies on shared assumptions) regarding what counts relevantly as event A happening: is it its happening in general, its happening once, its happening in some particular way, etc.
Sorry, perhaps we should have elaborated more. Fortunately it's a pretty easy concept to grasp.
This schema, which at first glance seems a bit rough and simplistic, proves surprisingly useful as a way to at least get a foothold in these ontological distinctions.
So, for thoughts, we have a World 2 event -- a "psychological process" -- and, often, a World 3 event as well -- language, math, often expressed as propositions and entailments.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
It could also simply be that we are wrong about the causes. Train stations are built where there are towns, or close to interesting locations that humans might want to visit. It's not necessarily about where humans are, but where they might want to go. A locomotive company might make a bad investment building tracks to somewhere people are not interested in going, or are no longer interested in going.
As such, our ideas, dreams and predictions play a causal role in the world.
I'm saying that's one way to look at it. It's not actually my preferred way, but I think in a context of causation a more narrow concept of what constitutes "a thought" may be more useful than my intuitive model that is broader.
Quoting Harry Hindu
As I replied to Patterner, I'm not concerned with "thought"; I'm concerned with how to isolate "a thought" from the process of thinking such one can say that "thing" is caused. And I need to be concerned with this because I'm denying that thought corresponds either with words or propositions. The problem is that have no clear alternative.
If I engage with other people on this topic, I can't just assume we mean the same concepts just because we use the same words. I'll go into examples when replying to Patterner.
Quoting Patterner
To be precise, at no point did I retrieve the word "12". That is a fact, if my memory is reliable, which it might not be. The choice would have been subconcsious, if it's a choice at all, and not just me being busy with other things. One of my interpretations, is that - on account of me having made a strong connection between "5+7" and "12" - thinking of "5+7" already is thinking of "12". Me recognising your intention is me foregrounding your intention and thus actualising the connection between "5+7" and "12" was not neccessary. This is not a fact. This is me guessing what went on my in mind.
Part of that is - again - the connection between thought and language. Thinking "5+7=12" has many aspects to it. One is the idea of an equation. "5+7" and "12" are literally synonymous on account of what an equation means. So I can recognise addition as an equation, and can see 5+7 (and through reading actualise it in the moment) and then not actualise "12", the sign, as it refers to the same concept of the compound sign of "5+7". They have the same meaning in the value sense, but different meanings in what they represent within a mathematical operation. Since this thread, though, isn't about maths, I think I felt no need to actualise "12" because my mind/brain was busy with the topic of the thread.
This is plausible to me because the topic of this thread is highly complex; not having time for associations that would otherwise trigger seems plausible. That doesn't mean it's true, but it's the best I have.
Quoting Patterner
All I really have in mind is vague ideas and a question. That is to say, I'm not entirely clear on what I have mind either. I'm not ready to make a model yet. Currently I'm waiting for "@J's" post.
As for the three worlds: it's basically physical world, experience, and abstraction. I'm sure I use it differently than Popper did. But the basic distinction is useful when it comes up. I'm not sure I'd ever have brought it up myself.
Thus is the incredibly opaque nature of a thought having any bearing on "physical reality".
Thoughts give rise to eachother in terms of their topical content, like with your example of thinking about ann. This reminded you of her upcoming birthday.
However, i would argue this whole process is fully dependent on emotional content. Thoughts that carry less emotion are less likely to have any importance to you, and continue any newtonian chain reaction.
1) I began by saying that the question of thought-to-thought causation should be understood in the context of psychologism vs. logicism. I still think this is a possible approach, but most of the discussion focused on the Popperian vocabulary of World 2 and World 3 objects/processes, so Ill stick with that.
2) The OP assumes an overly binary version of how we have to understand what a thought is. This was partly for purposes of simplification and tractability, but also partly because I hadnt deeply considered some of the points about streams of thought and non-verbal thoughts that subsequently arose. I proposed that when we have the ordinary mental experience of first thinking I wonder how Ann is doing and then Its her birthday soon; I must get her a present, we must choose between seeing these thoughts as either psychological events in my mind, or as propositions that could find expression and possibly necessitation of some sort in anyones mind. And this is fair enough, but it suggests that thought must come equipped with certain properties it may not have, especially linguistic expression. The problems that @Dawnstorm and others raised about this are exigent.
3) So what does the question Can a thought cause another thought? really ask? I now believe its a question about a certain kind of thought, namely a thought that has been expressed linguistically and is thus a candidate for being described in propositional, World 3 terms. But not all thoughts are like this. If we ask, But what caused the original thought about Ann? we are giving proper importance to this point what caused (if this is even appropriate) the original thought may have been completely non-verbal, but nonetheless a thought if we allow thought to cover many more mind-events than the OP suggested was possible. And Im inclined to think we should.
4) Now theres the danger that the discussion will swerve into a terminological dispute. Lets avoid that. I dont much care about deriving a precise definition of what a thought is, or what are the correct ways of using the term thought. Im happy to narrow my questions about mental-to-mental causation to a certain type of thought; call it a J-thought. Such a thought is one that can be given a description in either World 2 or World 3 terms thus, it is likely linguistic, or at least a linguistic thought would be the type-specimen of a J-thought. So my initial question is now: Can one J-thought cause another, and if so, is this by virtue of a World 2 relationship, a World 3 relationship, or some combination? And lurking behind this question is another, broader one, which has also been raised repeatedly here: If causation isnt a very good model of what happens when we think J-thoughts, then can we come up with a better description, something more contentful than merely association or affinity?
Happy to forge on, or of course we can let it go at this point.
Quoting JI won't be able to help you with this. I just don't get the idea well enough. Or maybe the point of it. We'll see if I catch on as you guys discuss.
Quoting JI think causation is a good model, and I think it's because of associations.
I don't see how one isolates a thought from the process of thinking. It would be like trying to isolate the stomach from digestion, and I don't see how that would get us any closer to how thoughts are caused.
Would you agree that conclusions are caused by reasons? Have you ever reached a conclusion without a reason? Would that still qualify as reasoning (thinking)?
In what sense are we using "cause" and "effect"? It seems obvious that similar causes lead to similar effects, so why wouldn't it be that some thought leads to similar thoughts. You can tell because part of the thought is shared with the other. In what way is a baseball causing a window to break different than 2+ 2 causing 4? 2+2 isn't necessarily equal to 4. 2+2 is an act of adding two groups of two. 4 is one group of four and what you get AFTER adding two groups of two. Essentially addition and subtraction are moving the goalposts of the boundaries of what we are talking about. Are we talking about two groups of two, or one group of four?
It seems more important to lay out what we mean by "cause" so even understand how it happens in the physical realm to understand how it might apply to the mental. If we admit that the mind and the world are connected causally - that the physical realm can cause changes in the mental realm (try stubbing your toe) and vice versa (think about all the holiday decorations you see at your local mall during the holiday season), then it seems to me there is no distinction between physical and mental causes, and that making this distinction (dualism) could be part of the problem.
Quoting Dawnstorm
This doesn't make any sense. How did you know that there is a relationship between the scribbles "5+7" and the scribble "12", or even what that relationship is? WHY does 5+7=12? These are just scribbles on the screen in which the relationship is not obvious with a simply observation. You have to already have learned what the relationship is. Your recognition that 5+7 and 12 mean the same thing is an effect of your prior experiences. If you had never seen those scribbles before your thoughts about them would be different.
We can talk about many separate thoughts in all that.
-My door letting in the cold
-carpenters
-The Carpenters
-Karen's death
-anorexia
Quoting Harry HinduI would agree that conclusions are caused by reasons. I think reasoning is one way a thought can cause another.
But I don't think all thoughts caused by another are the result of reasoning. Sometimes it's just an association, which means memory.
And not all thoughts are caused by other thoughts. For example, sensory input often causes thoughts.
Quoting Harry HinduMy definition might be something like:
[I]Thought B was caused by Thought A if B would not have come into existence at the time it did had A not existed first.[/I]
As for how it works, I'm thinking of this:
[I]B came into existence because of an association work A (meaning A triggered a memory); because it was the conclusion of a line of reasoning that lead from A to B; (other "mental mechanisms"?).[/I]
But did they really occur in isolation? What do you mean by isolated? It seems to me that the isolation is a mental projection onto the thinking process just as we project our categorical boundaries onto other natural processes. And each thought shares a property with the thought before it.
Quoting Patterner
We can agree that thinking and recalling are both mental processes and causally related (why would you recall something if not to think about it).
Quoting Patterner
Yes. And thoughts can be the cause of things that are not thoughts.
Quoting Patterner
Quoting Patterner
Yes, the effect always seems to retain some property of the cause.
I just ate a salad.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That wasn't well-phrased by me. If "a thought" causes another "thought" (countable: one thought, two thoughts...) and it's all "thought" an ongoing process, then we need to divvy up the stream of thought into distinct pieces each of which is "a thought".
Since I came into this thread saying that "sentences" aren't clear expressions of thoughts and thus "I wonder how Ann is doing," isn't a 1:1 expression of thought, it's up to me to say what a thought is and how it's related to its sentence. I tried in this thread, but... it's hard.
I'm not trying to say "thinking over here" and "thoughts over there"; I'm asking something like how many thoughts are there in a given stream of consciousness and do we have a reliable method to tell where one thought ends and a new one begins. This is not a question of "what is going on?"; this is a question of which tools are best for looking at what's going. The theory that leads to a theoretical definition that we can then operationalise so we can look at what's really going on.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't know how to approach this question. We might call a particular stretch of thought "a conclusion", but it might just be a subconscious decision which in turn caused us to look for ex-post rationilastions. In other words, I think that sometimes (and if I'm pessimistic, most of the time) we think of our causes the wrong way round.
Why do I think this? Am I right? How would I tell the difference? (I actually second-guess myself like that all the time.)
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's part of the point of the thread, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know, but it's an interesting question. (I think there's a difference.)
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's part of the opening post, too. I focused on "thought" out of personal necessity: it's the thing that's the most unclear to me, so if I can't figure that particular topic out I have little to contribute.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yeah, we don't seem to be on the same page. Maybe not even in the same book.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Obviously. I'm not sure what to make of this whole paragraph. We're talking past each other.
You were the one that used the word, "isolation" and I was simply trying to get at your meaning of your use of it.
I don't know - that whole block of text might be considered one thought and you only divide it up depending on what your present goal is. If I were more interested to know where you got the salad then that would be the part that would be relevant to me, and it is my goal that isolates a cause from its effects - as if the world is an analog signal and our brain converts it to a digital signal that allows goal-directed behavior (in QM this would be like picking out the particle from the probability wave distribution).
Look a little deeper and you might find that the boundaries of any thought or process are determined by the present goal in the mind. The boundaries are what make some thought relevant and all the rest irrelevant to the goal, but that does not mean that those other thoughts or processes would not be relevant to some other goal if you had it.
Quoting Dawnstorm
The point is that you have a reason to second-guess yourself, and I'd be willing to bet its the same reason I do the same, that we have been wrong in the past. Don't worry. This is healthy behavior, unlike many others on this forum that think they know everything and that it is their feelings, or some authority, that determines truth rather than logic.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Then maybe you should lay out how you came to know what the following scribbles mean: "5+7=" Why would you every return the scribble, "12" when there is nothing inherent in the scribbles themselves as to what they mean or why there is even a relationship between 5+7 and 12.
Think of an alien arriving on Earth after humans have gone extinct and they see a marble tablet with the scribbles, 5+7 = 12. What about the scribbles would allow the alien to know what they mean? Wouldn't they need to get more information (something like a Rosetta Stone) to determine its meaning? In other words, you had to have learned what the relationship of the scribbles 5+7 were to be able to consistently return 12 as an answer. You must be following some rule. Where and how did you obtain this rule?
Well, now you're talking about different minds, not thoughts in the same mind. So yes, I would consider thoughts in different heads different thoughts, but this could just be an outcome of my goal to treat each person as an individual. Are we all separate individuals, or are we only individuals and part of a group when it suits some goal?
I'm not following. In whose mind are my father ordering a chef salad in a restaurant and my wife's boss's desire to get her to eat at their monthly meetings [I]not[/I] easily identifiable as different thoughts?
That is my point - that it is only in some mind that they are identifiable as different thoughts. The world independent of thoughts does not make any distinctions. It is just a wave of probability, according to some interpretations of QM. Think about our minds as stretching all causal relations into what we refer to as the medium of space-time.
Im not suggesting that thoughts obey quantum mechanics necessarily, but that theres an analogous structure: just as a quantum wavefunction represents a range of possible outcomes until measured, our experiential field contains a continuous flow of potential meanings or thoughts. Its our focus, intention, or interpretive stance that collapses that field into discrete thoughts or objects. The divisions are in the act of observation, not in the underlying reality.
Yes, this is practically all stuff I took for granted when making my posts. I have no issues with anything you said in this post. Each and every post I made should be based on this. So what went wrong? Why are you trying to lead me to things I think are basic? Where's the misunderstanding? What's the problem? I don't know how to reply. I'm confused.
(I don't remember the details of when and where I learned about "5+7=12"; likely in or shortly before elementary school?)
Philosophy tends to do that - leading you to question things you took for granted only to find out the reason you take it for granted is because the issue was already solved long ago and you "taking it for granted" is you having relegated the process to unconscious thinking, and later in life you participate in runaway philosophical skepticism to bring it back to conscious processing - Why do I believe 5+7 = 12?. What proof is there that 5+7 is 12? You end up discovering that these are actually silly questions precisely because you are trying to solve a problem that was already solved in your grade-school years.
Are there ideas that we hold, or take for granted, that should be questioned? Sure, but not every idea.
Yes, but still divided up in your mind depending on your present intention (goal in the mind). As I said before, "Its our focus, intention, or interpretive stance that collapses that field into discrete thoughts or objects." So it isn't just our thoughts that we divvy up - it is the entire world including the people within it.
Do you think I was questioning that 5+7 is 12 in this thread?
[I]There once was a woman named Bree
Who went for a swim in the sea.
But a man in a punt
Stuck an oar in her eye
And now she's blind, you see[/I]
I wonder if anyone got a certain thought in their mind. A thought that has nothing to do with that limerick, but which I, nevertheless, intended you to think.
If it worked, was it because certain thoughts I put in your mind caused it?
I don't know. It was a question, not a statement.
I said there is nothing inherent in the scribbles that explains why 12 would come after the = sign in this string of scribbles. Why write the scribble "12" after the "="? What makes that correct, and how did you come to know what scribbles comes after the "="?
It may seem like it is inherent but that is because you already learned it and relegated the process to unconscious parts of the brain.
This can be said about language in general as well. When you look at a language you don't understand it looks scribbles. When hearing a language you cannot speak, you can't even distinguish one word from another - its just noise.
When you learn the rules of the language sufficiently enough to use it consistently the scribbles become words and you can pick out the words when you hear the language spoken. The meaning appears to be inherent in the scribbles, but that is an illusion created by your brain as it creates shortcuts to how it thinks.
So in order for you to explain to me how you know that 5 + 7 is equal to 12, you have to go back to grade school in your mind and try to remember the process of learning what the scribbles mean. If you can't then just ask a teacher how they teach students through memorization and repetition.
We can't perceive the entire world. We only perceive our local environment and infer that the rest of the world/universe follows the same laws.
Quoting Patterner
The thought I had upon reading it was, "what is your point"? I don't know if I would say that you put that thought in my mind. I'd rather say that you caused that thought in my mind, but so did I when I chose to read your post. You might say that the Philosophy Forum is also a cause as all these processes are necessary for me to have a thought about your post.
It's all causal where language acts as a causal stimulus that interacts with a receivers prior cognitive state. I'm trying to point out that our linguistic distinctions (I said it, you thought it) are heuristic segmentations of an ongoing causal web. We highlight some nodes (like speaking or thinking) for convenience, but theyre not ontologically distinct.
Is causation in communication primarily semantic (about meaning structures) or physical (about brain states and sensory processes)? Or is putting a thought in someones mind just a shorthand for a layered causal process that includes both?
Even if I were to ask a teacher how they typically teach that wouldn't really help me remember. Might even encourage false memories. But is it necessary to go that far back? Simple addition is part of my daily life. I work among other things with cash. Any combination of X + Y where X and Y are below 10 come up daily. It's constantly being reinforced. I need number words only for the last operator. So if I've got a column adding 15 + 27 + 13, I'd look at 5 and 7 and think only 12 but not 5 and 7, presumably because they're visually present. Then it's 12 + 3 = 15, and 15 overrides 12, and then I write down 5, and think "1" because that carries over and then it's basically "2", "4", "5" and I write down "5" and then the result is 55. That's only if I've written it down in a column, though. If I were to read these numbers in a line, I'm less organised. For example, I just stared at what I've written, and noticed that 3 + 7 = 10, so adding 27 + 13 up to 40 comes first and then adding another 15, and I get 55, too, but because the process is more ad-hoc I tend to be less secure about the result and keep a "surveillance stream" open, which requires more concentration and leaves me more vulnerable to distraction. And I could be wrong about anything I just said, since when I'm doing addition I'm not running a self-observance stream, and when I'm running a self-observance stream that might influence (through preconceptions) what I actually do. The further back I go the less reliable what I come up with is going to be. Childhood? It's just gone.
Ask a teacher how they teach? What for?
Quoting J
Take this sequence of events (arbitratily conceptualised as single events on the fly, no thought at all given to detail-level): Event 1 = I drop a vase, Event 2 = it falls to the ground.
Event 1 is the cause of event 2. I cannot imagine a sequence in which event 2 causes event 1. (You'd need to go into semantics to make this work: you could, for example, interpret the vase being heavy as the initial step of falling; for our purposes, I'd consider this a stretch.)
Now, if your two events are: Even 1 = "I wonder how Ann is doing? I haven't seen her in a while." and Event 2 = "Oh, it's Ann's birthday soon," then we don't have the same relationship. The propositions we attach to the mental events are exchangable. Event 1 could have been event 2 and vice versa, and the chain of causation wouldn't change. Now there are discourse markers here: "Oh," suggests its a follow-up thought. But that's not part of the propositional content. Compare:
Event 1 = "Hm, isn't it Ann's birthday soon? I wonder what I should get her." Event 2 = "How's she doing anyway. Haven't seen her in a while."
Different discourse markers, but the same propositional contents. There's a flow that's relevant, but the sequencing is part of you moving through your real life.
If we then take a look at entailment, we see no connection between the events: thinking "It's Ann's Birthday soon," does in no way entail having thought "How is Ann doing?" first. Either of these can come first.
If I'm holding a vase, I need to let go for it to fall. If I was holding the vase, and it is now falling, that logically entails that I let go. (Well, in logical space. Somene might have sliced of both my hands at the wrist, so that I technically didn't let go and hands are falling together with the vase...) But I think you get the drift.
In terms of entailment, though, we can say that both thinking "How's Ann doing," and "It's Ann's birthday soon," entail the more general process of thinking of Ann. What we could then say is if either thought came first, the second has an easier time coming, too. This is the rough area I'd poke around for a cause, if this makes sense. But not while disregarding context.
Maybe I'm thinking "How's Ann doing," then I'm walking past a calendar (or some sort of public digital clock that displays the date), and taken together these two events lead to "Oh, it's Ann's birthday soon." Maybe walking past that calendar would have been suffictient to trigger "It's Ann's birthday," and then something latent in your stream of consciousness triggers "How's she doing?". Physical causation seems less context dependent (though it's context dependent, too: if I let go of a vase in space it drifts instead of falling).
Just rambling to clean the cobwebs in my head really.
So you're saying you were born with the knowledge that 5+7=12?
Maybe I should rephrase the question. How did you learn addition - what it was, why you needed on a daily basis? How did you learn what the scribbles refer to? 5 what? 7 what? 12 what? How did you know what the relationship between + and = are, or what they do or mean? If you were to go to school on an extraterrestrial planet wouldn't you need to know the symbols they use to represent quantities and mathematical expressions? Do you remember anything you learned in grade school?
As for a cause- that may be different. Hitting a billiard ball causing another billiard ball to move is quite reliable, but to argue that, say, thinking about climate change leads to depression reliably, while true, is vastly more complex. There are many more variables as to what constitutes depression than the regularity in which a ball causes another ball to move.
Of course, I think there are instances in which we enter trains of thought which are real and causal, otherwise I don't know how we could think rationally.
People vary wildly, but that they also find themselves in circumstances in which a pattern of thought arises for each person looks accurate to me.
There's also plenty of random thinking too. And maybe here we don't find connective causes.
Hi J. The topic has been one of historical interest for myself. Has the thread met your expectations, assuming you had any?
Seems that it may be the case that causal language isn't equipped for describing the evolution of thought. The very notion of "thought" is problematic in many ways. In layman's terms, sure it is beyond doubt that thoughts can cause other thoughts.
Thanks for asking. Yes, in great part, it has met my expectations. I was hoping to learn a few new things about this problem, and I have. Probably the most important takeaway, which I've already referred to, is this: Mental causation has to be placed in a larger theoretical framework before posing even apparently simple questions about it. To ask, "Can a thought cause another thought?" is to ask something an intelligent 12-year-old can understand, and relate to their own experience. But the two apparently ordinary terms being used -- "thought" and "cause" -- aren't situated in any one philosophical framework. They invite combinations of construals and relations that immediately plunge us into murky water. As you say, "The very notion of 'thought' is problematic in many ways," some of which I hopefully discussed in this thread. I do think that the Popperian clarification of "thought" into World 2 and World 3 uses is helpful, though as we saw, it opens the door to extremely hard questions about the properties and powers of propositions.
If I had an unmet expectation -- or wish, really! -- it was that somehow we'd come up with a plausible explanation of the unpopular view that inferential reasoning is in fact causative. Probably a bridge too far, though we may have relied too much on ordinary language's verdicts on how "cause" may be used.
What are your thoughts?
Quoting J
When a young child touches fire, they immediately infer that touching the fire is what caused the pain. The effect/affect is that they form the belief that touching fire causes pain. They are right. That can all be done by a languageless human.
Yes, I agree. The kind of inferential reasoning I had in mind is a little different. Let's say you start from premises A, B, C, ...n, and from these premises you can logically infer certain conclusions. The question would be, are you caused to do so by the premises? Is entailment an effect with a cause, in other words?
I would hesitate at that. I'm not a huge fan of the so called 'logical rules of entailment', because they do not preserve truth(as a result of allowing a change in meaning).
Setting that aside, and addressing the question above directly, entailment are 'logical rules', which could only be said to 'cause'(scarequotes intentional) someone to infer certain conclusions, if they know and follow the rules. I think that's what you're getting at.
Gettier comes to mind. Funny, I'm also discussing the paper with Banno in his Russell thread.
I made a point to mention the lack of need for a language speaker because it seemed germane to the commonly held belief that propositions are equivalent to belief. That point's probably too tangential, but it's true and has a very broad scope of far-reaching consequences which place many a common understanding and/or position under overwhelming direct scrutiny.
Sure. "Knowing the rules" is a background condition, just like "all things being equal at room temperature and normal gravity etc." is a background condition for many statements of physical causation. My questions was/is, Given that the mind in question does know the rules, do they actually have a choice about following them? (This is similar to the perennial question in epistemology about whether I can choose what to believe, given a set of facts.) (And yes, the links with JTB issues are obvious as well.)
I'd like to understand this thought better. I think you're saying that I can have a belief without also having a propositional expression or equivalent of that belief? Thus, a non-linguistic animal can form a belief about, say, pain and fire, without entertaining any propositions about it?
If I've got that right, I don't think it's tangential at all. It raises the extremely interesting question of what to do with beliefs, in the taxonomy of Worlds 2 and 3. If we're going to use causal language, as I'm suggesting we might do, what causes a bear to believe that fire will cause pain, and how does that belief in turn cause whatever mental process results in the bear's steering clear of smoke? Is all this happening in the world of psychological events, local to the bear, and explainable in terms of brain processes? Or is there a shadow, so to speak, of propositional content, such that the bear might be said to conclude that smoke is to be avoided?
I think we can get some insight by consulting our own mental behavior when beliefs arise, but I'll stop here.
My own objections to Gettier's Case I and II, as well as the cottage industry cases, serve as prima facie evidence that one can know the rules and not follow them.
Did I have a choice in the matter? I don't think so.
The summary above points towards the general thrust. Not all belief is propositional in content.
Quoting J
There's a lot packed up in there. The taxonomy of beliefs is an interesting subject matter, to me, all by itself. I reject the idea that language less animals' belief(s) have propositional content.
Feeling pain after touching fire causes an animal to infer/conclude that touching fire caused the pain, which in turn forms the belief that touching fire causes pain. That belief will then affect thoughts and effect behaviors, causing the animal to avoid fire.
I agree. I chose the expression "shadow of propositional content" to try to express something closer to what's going on.
Quoting creativesoul
But if we agree that this does not occur in the space of propositions, then what do you mean by "infer" or "conclude"? What is a nonlinguistic conclusion?
That's the problem I want to home in on. If it's only a matter of one neuron-firing pattern causing another, then we shouldn't call it inference or conclusion at all.
A non-linguistic inference/conclusion is one that is arrived at via a language less creature. In this example, the creature recognizes/attributes causality; recognizes and/or attributes a causal relationship between their own behaviour and the subsequent pain.
Well, yes, it would be. But I'm trying to puzzle out whether that's a category mistake. You may well be onto something, but help me understand: What is a conclusion that is not put into words? Do you mean a behavior? Probably not, so it must be some mental event that is the equivalent of a conclusion we would express in language. Can you say more about what that would be, phenomenologically? Taking the bear's point of view, so to speak. :smile:
Quoting creativesoul
So you wouldn't allow that there could be a "thought" in the World 3 sense. All propositions must appear as items in the physical world? Interesting.
Quoting creativesoul
I reject phenomenology.
Propositions are existentially dependent upon language. Where there has never been language, there could have never been propositions. I'm not sure if I rightly understand what the W3 sense is.
Given the direction of our discussion, it's worth saying that the linguistic/nonlinguistic dichotomy is incapable of taking proper account of language less thought and belief, particularly in terms of the content thereof.
OK.
Quoting creativesoul
Popper agrees that all W3 objects, such as propositions, are human-made. The reason he puts them in a separate "world" (and of course that is metaphorical) is that propositions have the peculiar property of being true or false (for example) regardless of whether anyone asserts them -- at least, that's the usual construal, though Kimhi and Rödl are both raising questions about that. So in that sense they don't seem to depend on being instantiated in particular minds.
Quoting creativesoul
Say more about that? Do you mean, the dichotomy is too rigid?
The theory laden nature of these discussions you mentioned as necessary in the OP is showing up here.
What does an unarticulated proposition consist of?
Sort of. The content of a language less creature's thought and belief can include/consist of stuff that is existentially dependent upon language.
OK, but I still wish I understood what the "stuff" was.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting J
I would ask that question to anyone claiming that there is such thing as an unarticulated proposition. By my lights, it exposes an emaciated ontological framework.
If propositions are existentially dependent upon language use(being proposed), and language use is existentially dependent upon shared meaning, then it only follows that propositions are existentially dependent upon shared meaning. If the capability of being true/false requires saying something meaningful about the world(which is usually held by such positions), and saying something meaningful about the world is language use, then it only follows that in order for a proposition to be capable of being true or false, they must say something meaningful about the world via language use.
There is no such thing as an unarticulated proposition.
Quoting J
A cat can think/believe that a mouse is on the mat. The content of the cat's thought/belief includes the mouse(which is not existentially dependent upon language) and the mat(which is). Both are elemental constituents of the cat's thought/belief. The cat is a language less animal capable of forming thought/belief consisting of elemental constituents that are themselves existentially dependent upon language.
But you're just re-asserting all this. I'm asking why you believe it's true, and what such thoughts or beliefs consist of, if not words? Does the cat perhaps think in images? Can she believe using images? I'm not trying to be difficult, or imply that there are no good answers to my questions, but we need a lot more clarity on what's being proposed. What is the "stuff" that allows this account to go forward?
Quoting creativesoul
But at this very moment (or so goes the usual story) there are propositions about all sorts of things, which are either true or false, yet unarticulated. Your objections are very much in line with Rödl's concerns. He's a tough read, but Self-Consciousness and Objectivity has a lot to recommend it. There was also a long thread jumping off from his re-evaluation of what a proposition is; I believe it's the thread called "p and 'I think p'".
Yup. I'm aware of this dogma. So much the worse for convention. In what sensible way can an unarticulated proposition be said to exist?
What does a proposition consist of?
What does an unarticulated proposition consist of?
Interesting reply given the context.
What are you wanting to know? :brow:
Are you looking for an ontological basis or terminological framework upon which to build an 'updated' conception/understanding of thought/belief... human thought/belief notwithstanding?
All thought and belief reduce to correlations drawn between different things.
Yeah. I read that thread, and followed it fairly closely. It was an interesting thread.
As above: Quoting J
Quoting creativesoul
But what is a correlation? In what mental process does it happen? If animals can do it, then a correlation doesn't use words. What correlates with what? -- again, perhaps you're thinking of images and sensations. OK, is holding two images in some relation the same thing as having a belief about them?
It sounds to me, if I can say this without giving offense, that you've grown used to your own views in this area (and that happens to us all, of course) and you may not realize how un-obvious they are without further explanation. It's a topic that interests me, and I'm genuinely curious to see if we can put together a picture of how non-linguistic creatures may or may not engage in a rudimentary form of reasoning. But you have re-interrogate each of the terms you're using and try to say exactly what they mean. Perhaps start with "non-linguistic belief"? That's the one I find most puzzling.
No offense taken. No worries. I'm very well aware of how unorthodox my views are. I've been working out the kinks for nearly two decades. Further explanation is to be expected. I welcome shouldering any burden they may require. I welcome germane questions about my claims, and any inevitable logical consequences thereof. However, I'm not shouldering any burdens borne of words and claims I've not made.
I'm also quite short on time nowadays. The only reason I've been on here as frequently as I have the past few days was due to being in a state of recovery time limiting my own physical abilities.
You, me, and so many more. There's a ton of work necessary to reach that goal. "Thesis worthy" doesn't even begin to appropriately describe the endeavor.
First of all, I do not talk in terms of "non-linguistic belief" for reasons already explained.
I have no burden regarding that terminological use. You first invoked it. I rejected it.
A correlation is a relationship and/or association that is attributed/recognized/inferred/drawn between different things by a creature so capable. In our example, the creature touching the fire associated/correlated their own behaviour(touching the fire) with/to the subsequent pain, hence attributing/recognizing a causal relationship between the behaviour and pain.
Quoting creativesoul
But you said:
Quoting creativesoul
So if a language-less animal has a belief -- moreover, a belief without propositional content -- isn't it by definition a non-linguistic belief? I'm confused.
The confusion is understandable. The position I argue for/from is quite unusual/unconventional in some ways and includes subtle details that are crucial for understanding.
To the question: What counts as "by definition" depends upon taxonomy/terminological framework. As we both know, this particular subject matter, is extremely nuanced(theory laden).
If there is such a thing as language less thought and/or belief, and evolutionary theory is given a modicum of credence/applicability here, then it only follows that we're attempting to set out/discover/understand that which existed in its entirety(in some form or another) prior to our accounting practices. Thus, our definitions thereof are quite capable of being wrong, particularly regarding the elemental constituents therein/thereof.
On my view, if a language less creature has a thought and/or belief, then that thought and/or belief is - by definition - language less belief, i.e. the thought and/or belief of a language less creature. One aspect of such belief is that they cannot include language use as part of their content. That is one of the defining features. In other words, and circling back to what I've been setting out, language less belief are correlations drawn between different things, but language use is never one of the things(or "stuff") the creature draws correlations between.
However, and this is the subtlety, because language less belief can include(consist of) some things that are existentially dependent upon language(like mats, tables, cars, etc.) and all things that are existentially dependent upon language could sensibly/rightly be called "linguistic" things, the linguistic/nonlinguistic dichotomy is found sorely lacking in its ability to further draw and maintain the distinction between the belief of language users and the belief of language less creatures, particularly when it comes to the content of those.
When we call language less belief "nonlinguistic belief", and then we take further account of the content therein, we will inevitably arrive at the incoherent conclusion that nonlinguistic belief has linguistic content. That serves as ground to reject the dichotomy as a means to draw and maintain the distinction between language users' and language less creatures' thought and/or belief.
That's about as plain as I'm able to put it. Hope that helps.
To be fair, the above words are mine, and they're misleading at best, and downright false at worst. I have now explained it, so. My apologies for what's directly above. Brief mentions are not explanations.
Yes, a bit clearer. One thing first, though: Is the reason that "some things are existentially dependent upon language (like mats, tables, cars, etc.)" because those objects are human artifacts? Or could you just as well have included trees or sunlight? If it's the human-made aspect that makes the difference, how would a language-less animal know about it or be aware of it? In any case, I'm a little puzzled about why a mat, e.g., would depend on language for its existence. If I make an object but don't give it a name, does it exist in some lesser way? Probably I'm just not seeing what you're getting at.
Quoting creativesoul
I appreciate your willingness to re-examine and self-correct. A good model for all of us.
Probably, unless there are human artifacts which are somehow not existentially dependent upon language. It's the existential dependency upon language that matters.
Quoting J
They wouldn't, but the language less creatures' awareness(or lack thereof) regarding what their own belief consists of is irrelevant.
Quoting J
I suppose I'm claiming that the technology involved in textiles is impossible without shared meaning. I haven't tried to prove it, but I'm okay with that. There may be arguments for it, if need be. I don't see the need, because there's no good reason to doubt it, and I cannot imagine a sound argument against the idea. Of course, I may be mistaken and given that none of us are capable of knowingly believing a falsehood or knowingly holding false belief, it would take another to point it out, should there be a mistake with claiming that textile technology is existentially dependent upon language and mats are existentially dependent upon textile technology.
This notion of existential dependency is not to be confused/conflated with subsistence. It's better understood as initial emergence requirements.
Quoting J
It's not whether or not the candidate under consideration has been named that matters. We name things that are not existentially dependent upon language, and some unnamed things are existentially dependent language.
I was making the case for rejecting the linguistic/nonlinguistic dichotomy as a means for taking account of thought and belief. And now I've just went through a process I tried to avoid earlier by mentioning the rejection. It's a bit disheartening that you say what you said at the end.
Sigh.
Ah. Good practice for those who do pay attention to the answer after asking for more details, I suppose. Not everyone follows the answers to their own questions, or the direction that those questions move the discussion.
OK, this seems important. I hadn't seen the distinction you want to make between subsistence and what you're calling existential dependency.
Quoting creativesoul
So the idea is that some objects can't come into existence without a language-using community. That makes sense.
The challenge here would be: But natural objects also "come into existence" as a result of language use. For this challenge to bear weight, I think we have to deny the familiar skepticism which says that every single thing out there is somehow created by our identifications of it. No; there are natural kinds, and it seems silly to maintain that sunlight, for instance, is an arbitrary designation that humans make. But nonetheless, a significant amount of what we designate by language is artificial and/or arbitrary, and "created" by us in the sense that we choose what counts as an "object" or a "thing" or an "event." (This is not "subsistence creation," to observe your distinction. We don't somehow bring into being the raw materials of our physical world.) Is a sand dune a natural object? Yes and no. The human intention to see it as a dune -- because we have uses for which the term "sand dune" is needed -- can't be ignored.
Now does any of this matter for your schema? I'll go back to your initial reply:
Quoting creativesoul
Does it matter if we include some non-artifactual objects in the list of things that are existentially dependent upon language? I don't think so. We can add sand dunes and the like without changing your schema.
Now, let's say we do reject the dichotomy between linguistic and non-linguistic things, on the grounds that it is "lacking in its ability to further draw and maintain the distinction between the belief of language users and the belief of language less creatures."
That's the point I want to return to. How does the question of whether a belief concerns a) something that is existentially dependent on language, or b) something that is not so dependent, affect whether a non-linguistic animal can be said to have linguistic beliefs or not? Do you simply mean that we ought to extend the normal meaning of "linguistic belief" so that it can also mean "A belief about something that is existentially dependent on language"?
Quoting creativesoul
Sorry, but don't be disheartened. Philosophical ideas always need repeated unpacking, in my experience.