Thought

Thinking is something that minds do and a mind can do it off-line, without getting direct feedback from «external reality» beyond the mind. E.g. armchair philosophy or pondering a mathematical problem count as thinking.

• One might say that thinking is some activity that a mind does with thoughts.
  • This begs the question: "What is a mind in addition to its thoughts?". Is the overarching assessor/controller doing things with thoughts a mind itself? It falls into the homunculus problem.
• Alternatively, one might say that thinking is some pattern of activity emerging from interactions of thoughts (or more weakly, mental elements), similary to how the group behavior of ants¹ emerges from the (local?) interactions between individual ants.
  • This invokes thoughts to define thinking which leaves us with a question what are thoughts from whose interactions thinking emerges. To avoid vicious recursion, we might replace thoughts with a broader notion of mental element, in which case thoughts are mental elements that are currently active.
    • Still, what is a mental element?

What are thoughts? A case-by-case analysis

When is an element involved in thinking (not) a thought?

• If a concept or episode is "only" stored in my long-term memory, I generally don't consider it a thought. If a concept or episode is currently present in [short-term/working memory]/[global workspace]/awareness,² I may or may not be inclined to call consider it a thought.
  • When I'm «willfully» recalling an event, I am inclined not to call it a "thought".
  • When an event [occurs to me]/[gets recalled] non-willfully, I am more inclined to call it a "thought".
  • This suggests that thoughts are characterized by a degree of apparent autonomy.
• A thought need not be novel, e.g. "I have a recurring thought about X.".
  • If a specific isolated concept/element keeps popping back into my awareness, it feels to me like a borderline case of a thought.
    • However, it also seems to me that if something keeps popping back into my awareness, it's usually not a specific isolated concept/element, but rather a common theme behind those things, e.g. I keep thinking about some specific X but each thought about X is somewhat different and novel.

How do we talk about thoughts? People sometimes say things that seem to imply or point at a somewhat narrower/stronger notion of thought.

• "Don't just do! Think first!"
  • ~"The chance that thinking more about the problem will make you find better actions is sufficiently high for you to think more rather than taking the best action that you can currently think of."
• "He didn't think."
  • ~"He didn't stop himself to think more before acting." (Not necessarily implying that he should have stopped to think.)
• "I have a thought." / "A thought has just occurred to me."
  • We don't say this when we want to offer a relevant concept or a concrete recalled piece of information.
  • ~"A novel representational element just entered my awareness." (?)
• "I have so many thoughts."
  • ~"So many novel representational elements just entered my awareness" (?)

Here's an idea:

• Changes: When some new «representation» pops into my awareness, I call it a thought. The more it gets accommodated in my awareness (starts being taken for granted, becomes a part of the status quo), the less inclined I am to call it a "thought".³
• Autonomous: Willful changes in representational contents of one's awareness are not thoughts. Changes that happen "on their own" are thoughts.
• Representational: When my mood, emotion, or attitude towards something changes, I don't call this change a thought.
• Contents of awareness: Whatever is happening "below the surface of my awareness" doesn't count as thought.

Some (maybe all) of these are fuzzy notions. How much does some piece of the representational content of my awareness need to change to cound as Change™? How autonomous does it have to be? Can I have some small amount of control over it?⁴ How sharp are the boundaries between representational and non-representational content and between what awareness and unawareness?

The verb "to think" then acquires a meaning of "to work to induce more novel changes in the representational contents of one's awareness". Thoughts are autonomous but by focusing I can bias their production in the direction I want.

• "Think more!" → "Try inducing more changes in the representational contents of your awareness, because this has a sufficiently good chance of producing better actions/plans/ideas."

I have a vague feeling that this definition might turn out too weak and that we have some choice whether to take a change as a thought or not, although perhaps this is because we have some choice about the fuzzy/indefinite/imprecise boundaries of the four notions/categories I used to define thoughts.