Missing in action: Where is the mind?

@Cyracuz,

Yes, and even "mental experience" is a mental event. Perhaps the Absolute Idealists (as opposed to the Absolute Materialists) are right. Then, again: they both need each other in order to make sense.

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@JLNobody,

Yes. They need the distinctions each camp favors for either approach to have much meaning.

Another consideration about the mind is that physically, we can only move in three dimensions. We also move in time, but we know that because our minds can move in more dimensions. We can perceive ourselves where we are standing, and then picture ourselves moving to another place. We can hold the concept of existing at different places in different times because we have a five dimensional perspective.
If we could only move freely through two dimensions, that would mean we had a three dimensional perspective. The third dimension would be like time is to us now, an axis on which we cannot move freely. So if thought was restricted from moving freely in the fourth dimension, we would have no perception of time passing at all. We wouldn't be able to remember the past or envision the future.
We can also imagine alternative outcomes of some actions. More dimensions thought can travel in while our physical forms cannot.

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@Cyracuz,

What about the thoughts that we are not aware of?

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@Procrustes,

Procrustes wrote:

What about the thoughts that we are not aware of?

no such thing... Thoughts are our consciousness, our awareness... Thought is an activity... We must first form an idea of our environment, situation, or experience and then put it into relation to all other forms... If I had to get a car through a key hole, I would have a variety of forms to comprehend, like space, and size, and car, as an object, and key hole as a limit...It is out of the necessity of doing with the goal of being that we think, and it is labor seldom thought labor because it pays so little in wages, but in the economy of life, thought saves us much energy because all that is done is done first in the mind through a change in the relation of objects in space...

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@Fido,

Fido, "No such thing"? You would do well to watch your own mental processes more closely. To deny the philosophical (epistemological) significance of "below awareness" experience is one thing, but to deny its experential existence borders on pathology.

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@Procrustes,

Perhaps we can say that they manifest as thoughts we are aware of. I do not think anyone knows the full extent of their own minds, and sometimes the things we don't know that we think, believe or just assume shape things we consciously think about without our knowing.

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@JLNobody,

By the way, in suggesting that we can be aware of "below awareness" experience, I am not making a contradiction. It's only that language makes it seem so. In playing music and painting one can feel the pressure of unconscious impulses. Meditation is another way to feel the "undercurrents" of mind. It's just that they are never as clear--in fact and by definintion--as are our conscious thoughts and experiences, but they always occur against a context of these "undercurrents." Nietzsche correctly observes that we are always thinking, even when we are not aware of it. And Freud--who was an egregious plagerist of Nietzsche--affirms that the latter knew himself better than anyone he knew.

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@JLNobody,

I think all people, perhaps the younger more often than the older, experience emotions without knowing why. The experience is not "below awareness", but the cause for it is. It is said that we only lie to those we love, which perhaps explains why we humans so frequently lie to ourselves.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Fido, "No such thing"? You would do well to watch your own mental processes more closely. To deny the philosophical (epistemological) significance of "below awareness" experience is one thing, but to deny its experential existence borders on pathology.

A thought is an action, nascent perhaps; but something we do consciously... Knowledge is judgement, and thought is how we arrange knowledge to get what we want out of life, which usually amounts to more life... Now, I know my mind jumps to conclusions without my really being aware of it... Feed it enough fact and it finds a conclusion... Is that thought??? Hardly, and until those conclusions are verified they are not thought evenif the end up being correct... I offer this conclusion for example... If thought was not something we do, then it would not need to be taught, as reason is taught... But what are we doing??? In most examples of thought we are presented with a world of effects for which insight provides a theory, a conclusion... Out of all our effects, reason must work backwards to discover a cause, and even the presumption of a cause as a conclusion is without firm foundation... To achieve the goal of life and more life we simply use reason forward, making ourselves the ultimate cause of our own existence... There work in the mind, thought leads to work in reality, but much less work to achieve our goal than without the thought... Thought is work that saves labor...

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

I think all people, perhaps the younger more often than the older, experience emotions without knowing why. The experience is not "below awareness", but the cause for it is. It is said that we only lie to those we love, which perhaps explains why we humans so frequently lie to ourselves.

Emotions and even insight based upon knowledge played with unconsciously are not thought...

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What a tangled web of thought does Fido weave. Probably me too.

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@Fido,

If by "thought" you mean "deliberate concentration", then no. But I don't believe that is the only kind of thought. I believe thoughts continue beyond my attention span. They are still in my mind, even though they're not in my mind all the time. I believe everyone, unless they are asleep or meditating or severely relaxed to apathetic boredom, has several trails of thought going on all the time. We are never thinking only just one thought.

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@JLNobody,

Yes. Me too, I think. Tangles to untangle tangles...

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@Cyracuz,

Agreed, several trails of thought at once. Smile

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

If by "thought" you mean "deliberate concentration", then no. But I don't believe that is the only kind of thought. I believe thoughts continue beyond my attention span. They are still in my mind, even though they're not in my mind all the time. I believe everyone, unless they are asleep or meditating or severely relaxed to apathetic boredom, has several trails of thought going on all the time. We are never thinking only just one thought.

while I reach a lot of conclusions by way of insight, unconsciously, and then have to find support for my theory out of what I know, thbought is something altogether different... tbought is reasoning, deliberate use of logic to prove a conclusion or to take forms and reasoning on them, sombine those forms in a new conceptual manifold

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@Fido,

O.K., your conception of "thought" is much more restricted than mine. To me it is all conceptualization, precise as well as fuzzy. For you, as I understand you now, thought is formal thought.
But even the most formal mathematical logical efforts would seem occur on conscious and unconscious levels. Was it Poincare who talked about an
'aha !" response, the sudden resolution of a problem fromf less than conscious mental sources?

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

If by "thought" you mean "deliberate concentration", then no. But I don't believe that is the only kind of thought. I believe thoughts continue beyond my attention span. They are still in my mind, even though they're not in my mind all the time. I believe everyone, unless they are asleep or meditating or severely relaxed to apathetic boredom, has several trails of thought going on all the time. We are never thinking only just one thought.

Just a thought? Wink

Thoughts within thoughts within thoughts, Smile

infinite multi-verse of mind. Very Happy

The eyes are the windows of the soul. Cool

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Yes. Me too, I think. Tangles to untangle tangles...

exactly.

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This leads me to my next question... How would you know you are hypnotized? Or better yet, would you remember any of those thoughts you had while in that state?

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@Procrustes,

Procrustes wrote:

This leads me to my next question... How would you know you are hypnotized? Or better yet, would you remember any of those thoughts you had while in that state?

You don't, Wink

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Missing in action: Where is the mind?

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