Learn About Thoughts

In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, fall asleep learning about thoughts. You're probably thinking that your thoughts are too interesting and will keep you awake at night. There's some truth to that, but in the end, your thoughts will let you rest tonight. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,

Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster.

Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,

Thought.

In their most common sense,

The terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation.

Their most pragmatic forms are judging,

Reasoning,

Concept formation,

Problem solving,

And deliberation.

But other mental processes like considering an idea,

Memory,

Or imagination are also often included.

These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs,

Unlike perception.

But when understood in the widest sense,

Any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking,

Including perception and unconscious mental processes.

In a slightly different sense,

The term thought refers not to the mental processes themselves,

But to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes.

Various theories of thinking have been proposed,

Some of which aim to capture the characteristic features of thought.

Platonists hold that thinking consists in discerning and inspecting platonic forms and their interrelations.

It involves the ability to discriminate between the pure platonic forms themselves and the mere intimations found in the sensory world.

According to Aristotelianism,

To think about something is to instantiate in one's mind a universal essence of the object of thought.

These universals are abstracted from sense experience and are not understood as existing in a changeless intelligible world,

In contrast to Platonism.

Conceptualism is closely related to Aristotelianism.

It identifies thinking with mentally evoking concepts instead of instantiating essences.

Inner speech theories claim that thinking is a form of inner speech in which words are silently expressed in the thinker's mind.

According to some accounts,

This happens in a regular language like English or French.

The language of thought hypothesis,

On the other hand,

Holds that this happens in the medium of a unique mental language called mentalese.

Central to this idea is that linguistic representational systems are built up from atomic and compound representations and that this structure is also found in thought.

Associationists understand thinking as the succession of ideas or images.

They are particularly interested in the laws of association that govern how the train of thought unfolds.

Behaviorists,

By contrast,

Identify thinking with behavioral dispositions to engage in public intelligent behavior as a reaction to particular external stimuli.

Computationalism is the most recent of these theories.

It sees thinking in analogy to how computers work in terms of the storage,

Transmission,

And processing of information.

Various types of thinking are discussed in the academic literature.

A judgment is a mental operation in which a proposition is evoked and then either affirmed or denied.

Reasoning,

On the other hand,

Is the process of drawing conclusions from premises or evidence.

Both judging and reasoning depend on the possession of the relevant concepts,

Which are acquired in the process of concept formation.

In the case of problem solving,

Thinking aims at teaching a predefined goal by overcoming certain obstacles.

Deliberation is an important form of practical thought that consists in formulating possible courses of action and assessing the reasons for and against them.

This may lead to a decision by choosing the most favorable option.

Both episodic memory and imagination present objects and situations internally in an attempt to accurately reproduce what was previously experienced or as a free rearrangement,

Respectively.

Unconscious thought is thought that happens without being directly experienced.

It is sometimes positioned to explain how difficult problems are solved in cases where no conscious thought was employed.

Thought is discussed in various academic disciplines.

Phenomenology is interested in the experience of thinking.

An important question in this field concerns the experiential character of thinking and to what extent this character can be explained in terms of sensory experience.

Metaphysics is,

Among other things,

Interested in the relation between mind and matter.

This concerns a question of how thinking can fit into the material world as described by the natural sciences.

Cognitive psychology aims to understand thought as a form of information processing.

Developmental psychology,

On the other hand,

Investigates the development of thought from birth to maturity and asks which factors this development depends on.

Psychoanalysis emphasizes the role of the unconscious in mental life.

Other fields concerned with thought include linguistics,

Neuroscience,

Artificial intelligence,

Biology,

And sociology.

Various concepts and theories are closely related to the topic of thought.

The term law of thought refers to three fundamental laws of logic.

The law of contradiction,

The law of excluded middle,

And the principle of identity.

Counterfactual thinking involves mental representations of non-actual situations and events in which the thinker tries to assess what would be the case if things had been different.

Thought experiments often employ counterfactual thinking in order to illustrate theories or to test their plausibility.

Critical thinking is a form of thinking that is reasonable,

Reflective,

And focused on determining what to believe or how to act.

Positive thinking involves focusing one's attention on the positive aspects of one's situation and is intimately related to optimism.

The terms thought and thinking refer to a wide variety of psychological activities.

In their most common sense,

They are understood as conscious processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation.

This includes various different mental processes,

Like considering an idea or proposition or judging it to be true.

In this sense,

Memory and imagination are forms of thought,

But perception is not.

In a more restricted sense,

Only the most paradigmatic cases are considered thought.

These involve conscious processes that are conceptual or linguistic and sufficiently abstract,

Like judging,

Inferring,

Problem-solving,

And deliberating.

Sometimes the terms thought and thinking are understood in a very wide sense as referring to any form of mental process,

Conscious or unconscious.

In this sense,

They may be used synonymously with the term mind.

This usage is encountered,

For example,

In the Cartesian tradition,

Where minds are understood as thinking things and in the cognitive sciences.

But this sense may include the restriction that such processes have to lead to intelligent behavior to be considered thought.

A contrast sometimes found in the academic literature is that between thinking and feeling.

In this context,

Thinking is associated with a sober,

Dispassionate,

And rational approach to its topic,

While feeling involves a direct emotional engagement.

The terms thought and thinking can also be used to refer not to the mental processes themselves,

But to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes.

In this sense,

They are often synonymous with the term belief and its cognates,

And may refer to the mental states which either belong to an individual or are common among a certain group of people.

Discussions of thought in the academic literature often leave it implicit which sense of the term they have in mind.

The word thought comes from Old English taat,

Or jetat,

From the stem of tenkin,

To conceive of in the mind,

Consider.

Various theories of thinking have been proposed.

They aim to capture the characteristic features of thinking.

The theories listed here are not exclusive.

It may be possible to combine some without leading to a contradiction.

Platonism According to Platonism,

Thinking is a spiritual activity in which platonic forms and their interrelations are discerned and inspected.

This activity is understood as a form of silent inner speech in which the soul talks to itself.

Platonic forms are seen as universals that exist in a changeless realm different from the sensible world.

Examples include the forms of goodness,

Beauty,

Unity,

And sameness.

On this view,

The difficulty of thinking consists in being unable to grasp the platonic forms and to distinguish them as the original from the mere imitations found in the sensory world.

This means,

For example,

Distinguishing beauty itself from derivative images of beauty.

One problem for this view is to explain how humans can learn and think about platonic forms belonging to a different realm.

Plato himself tries to solve this problem through his theory of recollection,

According to which the soul already was in contact with the platonic forms before and is therefore able to remember what they are like.

But this explanation depends on various assumptions usually not accepted in contemporary thought.

Aristotelianism and Conceptualism Aristotelians hold that the mind is able to think about something by instantiating the essence of the object of thought.

So,

While thinking about trees,

The mind instantiates tree-ness.

This instantiation does not happen in matter as is the case for actual trees,

But in mind,

Though the universal essence instantiated in both cases is the same.

In contrast to Platonism,

These universals are not understood as platonic forms existing in a changeless intelligible world.

Instead,

They only exist to the extent that they are instantiated.

The mind learns to discriminate universals through abstraction from experience.

Conceptualism is closely related to Aristotelianism.

It states that thinking consists in mentally evoking concepts.

Some of these concepts may be an aid,

But most have to be learned through abstraction from sense experience before they can be used in thought.

It has been argued against these views that they have problems in accounting for the logical form of thought.

For example,

To think that it will either rain or snow,

It is not sufficient to instantiate the essence of rain and snow,

Or to evoke the corresponding concepts.

The reason for this is that the disjunctive relation between the rain and the snow is not captured this way.

Another problem shared by these positions is the difficulty of giving a satisfying account of how essences or concepts are learned by the mind through abstraction.

Inner speech theory.

Inner speech theories claim that thinking is a form of inner speech.

This view is sometimes termed psychological nominalism.

It states that thinking involves silently evoking words and connecting them to form mental sentences.

The knowledge of a person has of their thoughts can be explained as a form of overhearing one's own silent monologue.

Three central aspects are often ascribed to inner speech.

It is an important sense similar to hearing sounds,

It involves the use of language,

And it constitutes a motor plan that could be used for actual speech.

This connection to language is supported by the fact that thinking is often accompanied by muscle activity in the speech organs.

This activity may facilitate thinking in certain cases,

But it is not necessary for it in general.

According to some accounts,

Thinking happens not in a regular language like English or French,

But has its own type of language with the corresponding symbols and syntax.

This theory is known as the language of thought hypothesis.

Inner speech theory has a strong initial plausibility since introspection suggests that indeed many thoughts are accompanied by inner speech,

But its opponents usually contend that this is not true for all types of thinking.

It has been argued,

For example,

That forms of daydreaming constitute non-linguistic thought.

This issue is relevant to the question of whether animals have the capacity to think.

If thinking is necessarily tied to language,

Then this would suggest that there is an important gap between humans and animals,

Since only humans have a sufficiently complex language.

But the existence of non-linguistic thoughts suggests that this gap might not be that big,

And that some animals do indeed think.

Language of Thought Hypothesis There are various theories about the relation between language and thought.

One prominent version in contemporary philosophy is called the language of thought hypothesis.

It states that thinking happens in the medium of a mental language.

This language,

Often referred to as mentalese,

Is similar to regular languages in various respects.

It is composed of words that are connected to each other in syntactic ways to form sentences.

This claim does not merely rest on an intuitive analogy between language and thought.

Instead,

It provides a clear definition of the features a representational system has to embody in order to have a linguistic structure.

On the level of syntax,

The representational system has to possess two types of representations,

Atomic and compound representations.

Atomic representations are basic,

Whereas compound representations are constituted either by other compound representations or by atomic representations.

On the level of semantics,

The semantic content or the meaning of the compound representations should depend on the semantic contents of its constituents.

A representational system is linguistically structured if it fulfills these two requirements.

The language of thought hypothesis states that the same is true for thinking in general.

This would mean that the thought is composed of certain atomic representational constituents that can be combined as described above.

Apart from this abstract characterization,

No further concrete claims are made about how human thought is implemented by the brain or which other similarities to natural language it has.

The language of thought hypothesis was first introduced by Jerry Fodor.

He argues in favor of this claim by holding that it constitutes the best explanation of the characteristic feature of thinking.

One of these features is productivity.

A system of representations is productive if it can generate an infinite number of unique representations based on a low number of atomic representations.

This applies to thought since human beings are capable of entertaining an infinite number of distinct thoughts,

Even though their mental capacities are quite limited.

Other characteristic features of thinking include systematicity and inferential coherence.

Fodor argues that the language of thought hypothesis is true as it explains how thought can have these features and because there is no good alternative explanation.

Some arguments against the language of thought hypothesis are based on neural networks,

Which are able to produce intelligent behavior without depending on representational systems.

Other objections focus on the idea that some mental representations happen non-linguistically,

For example in the form of maps or images.

Computationalists have been especially interested in the language of thought hypothesis since it provides ways to close the gap between thought and the human brain and computational processes implemented by computers.

The reason for this is not that processes over representations that respect syntax and semantics,

Like inferences according to the modus ponens,

Can be implemented by physical systems using causal relations.

The same linguistic systems may be implemented through different material systems,

Like brains or computers,

And this way computers can think.

Associationism.

An important view in the empiricist tradition has been associationism,

The view that thinking consists in the succession of ideas or images.

This succession is seen as being governed by laws of association,

Which determine how the train of thought unfolds.

These laws are different from logical relations between the contents of thoughts,

Which are found in the case of drawing inferences by moving from the thought of the premises to the thought of the conclusion.

Various laws of association have been suggested.

According to the laws of similarity and contrast,

Ideas tend to evoke other ideas that are either very similar to them or their opposite.

The law of contiguity,

On the other hand,

States that if two ideas were frequently experienced together,

Then the experience of one tends to cause the experience of the other.

In this sense,

The history of an organism's experience determines which thoughts the organism has and how these thoughts unfold.

But such an association does not guarantee that the connection is meaningful or rational.

For example,

Because of the association between the terms cold and Idaho,

The thought this coffee shop is cold might lead to the thought Russia should annex Idaho.

One form of associationism is imagism.

It states that thinking involves entertaining a sequence of images,

Where earlier images conjure up later images based on the laws of association.

One problem with this view is that we can think about things that we cannot imagine.

This is especially relevant when the thought involves very complex objects or infinities,

Which is common,

For example,

In mathematical thought.

One criticism directed at associationism in general is that its claim is too far-reaching.

There is wide agreement that associative processes,

As studied by associationists,

Play some role in how thought unfolds,

But the claim that this mechanism is sufficient to understand all thought,

Or all mental processes,

Is usually not accepted.

Behaviorism.

According to behaviorism,

Thinking consists in behavioral dispositions to engage in certain publicly observable behavior as a reaction to particular external stimuli.

On this view,

Having a particular thought is the same as having a disposition to behave in a certain way.

This view is often motivated by empirical considerations.

It is very difficult to study thinking as a private mental process,

But it is much easier to study how organisms react to a certain situation with a given behavior.

In this sense,

The capacity to solve problems not through existing habits,

But through creative new approaches,

Is particularly relevant.

The term behaviorism is also sometimes used in a slightly different sense when applied to thinking to refer to a specific form of inner speech theory.

This view focuses on the idea that the relevant inner speech is a derivative form of regular outward speech.

The sense overlaps with how behaviorism is understood more commonly in philosophy of mind,

Since these inner speech acts are not observed by the researcher,

But merely inferred from the subject's intelligent behavior.

This remains true to the general behaviorist principle that behavioral evidence is required to any psychological hypothesis.

One problem for behaviorism is that the same entity often behaves differently despite being in the same situation as before.

This problem consists in the fact that the individual thoughts or mental states usually do not correspond to one particular behavior.

So,

Thinking that the pie is tasty does not automatically lead to eating the pie,

Since various other mental states may still inhibit this behavior.

For example,

The belief that it would be impolite to do so,

Or that the pie is poisoned.

Computationalism Computationalist theories of thinking often found in the cognitive sciences understand thinking as a form of information processing.

These views developed with the rise of computers in the second part of the 20th century,

When various theorists saw thinking in analogy to computer operations.

On such views,

The information may be encoded differently in the brain,

But in principle the same operations take place there as well,

Corresponding to the storage,

Transmission,

And processing of information.

But while this analogy has some intuitive attraction,

Theorists have struggled to give a more explicit explanation of what computation is.

A further problem consists in explaining the sense in which thinking is a form of computing.

The traditionally dominant view defines computation in terms of Turing machines,

Though contemporary accounts often focus on neural networks for their analogies.

A Turing machine is capable of executing any algorithm based on a few very basic principles,

Such as reading a symbol from a cell,

Writing a symbol to a cell,

And executing instructions based on the symbols read.

This way,

It is possible to perform deductive reasoning following the inference rules of formal logic,

As well as simulating many other functions of the mind,

Such as language processing,

Decision making,

And motor control.

But computationalism does not only claim that thinking is in some sense similar to computation.

Instead,

It has claimed that thinking is just a form of computation,

Or that the mind is a Turing machine.

Computationalist theories of thought are sometimes divided into functionalist and representationalist approaches.

Functionalist approaches define mental states through their causal roles,

But allow both external and internal events in their causal network.

Thought may be seen as a form of program that can be executed in the same way by many different systems,

Including humans,

Animals,

And even robots.

According to one such view,

Whether something is a thought only depends on its role in producing further internal states and verbal outputs.

Representationalism,

On the other hand,

Focuses on the representational features of mental states,

And defines thoughts as sequences of intentional mental states.

In this sense,

Computationalism is often combined with the language of thought hypothesis by interpreting these sequences as symbols whose order is governed by syntactic rules.

Various arguments have been raised against computationalism.

In one sense,

It seems trivial since almost any physical system can be described as executing computations,

And therefore as thinking.

For example,

It has been argued that the molecular movements in a regular wall can be understood as computing an algorithm since they are isomorphic to the formal structure of the program in question under the right interpretation.

This would lead to the implausible conclusion that the wall is thinking.

Another objection focuses on the idea that computationalism captures only some aspects of thought,

But is unable to account for other crucial aspects of human cognition.

TYPES OF THINKING A great variety of types of thinking are discussed in the academic literature.

A common approach divides them into those forms that aim at the creation of theoretical knowledge,

And those that aim at producing actions or correct decisions.

But there is no universally accepted taxonomy summarizing all these types.

ENTERTAINING,

JUDGING,

AND REASONING Thinking is often identified with the act of judging.

A judgment is a mental operation in which a proposition is a vote,

And then either affirmed or denied.

It involves deciding what to believe and aims at determining whether the judged proposition is true or false.

Various theories of judgment have been proposed.

A traditional dominant approach is the combination theory.

It states that judgments consist in the combination of concepts.

On this view,

To judge that all men are mortal is to combine the concepts man and mortal.

The same concepts can be combined in different ways,

Corresponding to different forms of judgment.

For example,

As some men are mortal,

Or no man is mortal.

Other theories of judgment focus more on the relation between the judged proposition and reality.

According to Franz Brentano,

A judgment is either a belief or a disbelief in the existence of some entity.

In this sense,

There are only two fundamental forms of judgment.

A exists and A does not exist.

When applied to the sentence,

All men are mortal,

The entity in question is immortal men,

Of whom it is said that they do not exist.

Important to Brentano is the distinction between the mere representation of the content of the judgment and the affirmation or the denial of the content.

The mere representation of a proposition is often referred to as entertaining a proposition.

This is the case,

For example,

When one considers a proposition but has not yet made up one's mind about whether it is true or false.

A term thinking can refer both to judging and to mere entertaining.

This difference is often explicit in the way the thought is expressed.

Thinking that usually involves a judgment,

Whereas thinking about refers to the neutral representation of a proposition without an accompanying belief.

In this case,

The proposition is merely entertained but not yet judged.

Some forms of thinking may involve the representation of objects without any propositions,

As when someone is thinking about their grandmother.

Reasoning is one of the most paradigmatic forms of thinking.

It is a process of drawing conclusions from premises or evidence.

Types of reasoning can be divided into deductive and non-deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is governed by certain rules of inference,

Which guarantee the truths of the conclusion if the premises are true.

For example,

Given the premises,

All men are mortal,

And Socrates is a man,

It follows deductively that Socrates is mortal.

Non-deductive reasoning,

Also referred to as defeasible reasoning or non-monotonic reasoning,

Is still rationally compelling,

But the truth of the conclusion is not ensured by the truth of the premises.

Induction is one form of non-deductive reasoning,

For example when one concludes that the sun will rise tomorrow based on one's experiences of all the previous days.

Other forms of non-deductive reasoning include the inference to the best explanation and analogical reasoning.

Fallacies are faulty forms of thinking that go against the norms of correct reasoning.

Formal fallacies concern faulty inferences found in deductive reasoning.

Denying the antecedent is one type of formal fallacy.

For example,

If Othello is a bachelor,

Then he is male.

Othello is not a bachelor,

Therefore Othello is not male.

Informal fallacies,

On the other hand,

Apply to all types of reasoning.

The source of their flaw is to be found in the content or the context of the argument.

This is often caused by the ambiguous or vague expressions in natural language,

As in,

Feathers are light,

What is light cannot be dark,

Therefore feathers cannot be dark.

An important aspect of fallacies is that they seem to be rationally compelling on the first look and thereby seduce people into accepting and committing them.

Whether an act of reasoning constitutes a fallacy does not depend on whether the premises are true or false,

But on their relation to the conclusion and,

In some cases,

On the context.

Concept formation.

Concepts are generally notions that constitute the fundamental building blocks of thought.

They are rules that govern how objects are sorted into different classes.

A person can only think about a proposition if they possess the concepts involved in this proposition.

For example,

The proposition,

Wombats are animals,

Involves the concepts wombats are animals,

Involves the concepts wombat and animal.

Someone who does not possess the concept wombat may still be able to read the sentence but cannot entertain the corresponding proposition.

Concept formation is a form of thinking in which new concepts are acquired.

It involves becoming familiar with the characteristic features shared by all instances of the corresponding type of entity and developing the ability to identify positive and negative cases.

The process usually corresponds to learning the meaning of the word associated with a type in question.

There are various theories concerning how concepts and concept possession are to be understood.

The use of metaphor may aid in the process of concept formation.

According to one popular view,

Concepts are to be understood in terms of abilities.

On this view,

Two central aspects characterize concept possession.

The ability to discriminate between positive and negative cases and the ability to draw inferences from this concept to related concepts.

Concept formation corresponds to acquiring these abilities.

It has been suggested that animals are also able to learn concepts to some extent due to their ability to discriminate between different types of situations and to adjust their behavior accordingly.

Problem Solving In the case of problem solving,

Thinking aims at reaching a predefined goal by overcoming certain obstacles.

This process often involves two different forms of thinking.

On the one hand,

Divergent thinking aims at coming up with as many alternative solutions as possible.

On the other hand,

Convergent thinking tries to narrow down the range of alternatives to the most promising candidates.

Some researchers identify various steps in the process of problem solving.

These steps include recognizing the problem,

Trying to understand its nature,

Identifying general criteria the solution should meet,

Deciding how these criteria should be prioritized,

Monitoring the progress,

And evaluating the results.

An important distinction concerns the type of problem that is faced.

For well-structured problems,

It is easy to determine which steps need to be taken to solve them,

But executing these steps may still be difficult.

For ill-structured problems,

On the other hand,

It is not clear what steps need to be taken,

I.

E.

There is no clear formula that would lead to success if followed correctly.

In this case,

The solution may sometimes come in a flash of insight in which the problem is suddenly seen in a new light.

Another way to categorize different forms of problem solving is by distinguishing between algorithms and heuristics.

An algorithm is a formal procedure in which each step is clearly defined.

It guarantees success if applied correctly.

The long multiplication usually taught in school is an example of an algorithm for solving the problem of multiplying big numbers.

Heuristics,

On the other hand,

Are informal procedures.

They are rough rules of thumb that tend to bring the thinker closer to the solution,

But success is not guaranteed in every case,

Even if followed correctly.

Examples of heuristics are working forward and working backward.

These approaches involve planning one step at a time,

Either starting at the beginning and moving forward,

Or starting at the end and moving backward.

So when planning a trip,

One could plan the different stages of the trip,

From origin to destiny in the chronological order of how the trip will be realized,

Or in the reverse order.

Obstacles to problem solving can arise from the thinker's failure to take certain possibilities into account by fixating on one specific course of action.

There are important differences between how novices and experts solve problems.

For example,

Experts tend to allocate more time for conceptualizing the problem and work with more complex representations,

Whereas novices tend to devote more time to executing putative solutions.

Deliberation and Decision Deliberation is an important form of practical thinking.

It aims at formulating possible courses of action and assessing their value by considering the reasons for and against them.

This involves foresight to anticipate what might happen.

Based on this foresight,

Different courses of action can be formulated in order to influence what will happen.

Decisions are an important part of deliberation.

They are about comparing alternative courses of action and choosing the most favorable one.

Decision theory is a formal model of how ideal agents would make decisions.

It is based on the idea that they should always choose the alternative with the highest expected value.

Each alternative may lead to various possible outcomes,

Each of which has a different value.

The expected value of an alternative consists in the sum of the values of each outcome associated with it,

Multiplied by the probability that this outcome occurs.

According to decision theory,

A decision is rational if the agent chooses the alternative associated with the highest expected value,

As assessed from the agent's own perspective.

Various theories emphasize the practical nature of thought,

I.

E.

That thinking is usually guided by some kind of task it aims to solve.

In this sense,

Thinking has been compared to trial and error,

Seen in animal behavior when faced with a new problem.

On this view,

The important difference is that this process happens inwardly as a form of simulation.

This process is often much more efficient since once the solution is found in thought,

Only the behavior corresponding to the found solution has to be outwardly carried out,

And not all the others.

Episodic Memory and Imagination When thinking is understood in a wide sense,

It includes both episodic memory and imagination.

In episodic memory,

Events when experienced in the past are relived.

It is a form of mental time travel in which the past experience is re-experienced.

But this does not constitute an exact copy of the original experience,

Since the episodic memory involves traditional aspects and information not present in the original experience.

This includes both a feeling of familiarity and chronological information about the past event in relation to the present.

Memory aims at representing how things actually were in the past,

In contrast to imagination,

Which represents objects without aiming to show how things actually are or were.

Because of this missing link to actuality,

More freedom is involved in most forms of imagination.

Its contents can be freely varied,

Changed,

And recombined to create new arrangements never experienced before.

Episodic memory and imagination have in common with other forms of thought that they can arise internally without any stimulation of the sensory organs.

But they are still closer to sensation than more abstract forms of thought,

Since they present sensory contents that could,

At least in principle,

Also be perceived.

Unconscious Thought Conscious thought is the paradigmatic form of thinking and is often the focus of the corresponding research.

But it has been argued that some forms of thought also happen on the unconscious level.

Unconscious thought is thought that happens in the background without being experienced.

It is therefore not observed directly.

Instead,

Its existence is usually inferred by other means.

For example,

When someone is faced with an important decision or a difficult problem,

They may not be able to solve it straight away.

But then,

At a later time,

The solution may suddenly flash before them,

Even though no conscious steps of thinking were taken towards this solution in the meantime.

In such cases,

The cognitive labor needed to arrive at a solution is often explained in terms of unconscious thoughts.

The central idea is that a cognitive transition happened,

And we need to posit unconscious thoughts to be able to explain how it happened.

It has been argued that conscious and unconscious thoughts differ not just concerning their relation to experience,

But also concerning their capacities.

According to unconscious thought theorists,

For example,

Conscious thought excels at simple problems with few variables,

But is outperformed by unconscious thought when complex problems with many variables are involved.

This is sometimes explained through the claim that the number of items one can consciously think about at the same time is rather limited,

Whereas unconscious thought lacks such limitations.

But other researchers have rejected the claim that unconscious thought is often superior to conscious thought.

Other suggestions for the difference between the two forms of thinking include that conscious thought tends to follow formal logical laws,

While unconscious thought relies more on associative processing,

And that only conscious thinking is conceptually articulated and happens through the medium of language.

Reviews

I didn’t understand almost anything 🤭 it was perfect Ben!!!🥱😴

Worked like a charm. I fell back asleep pretty quickly. 💤 🙂

I don’t want to overthink this but I think listening to you talking about thoughts put me right out! 😂

Not much to think about but definitely good sleep.

How meta: thinking about thinking to turn off my thinking so I can get to sleep 😴