What are thoughts?
Offline Greetings! I've been in this forum for about 3 days now, and i've got to say that i've learned alot of very, very interesting theories and ideas here.
Lately, i've been learning from posts of deludedgod and todangst about axioms and how its formed in the brain by chemical reactions and are therefore material.
The definition above, though satisfactory, leaves me with a question hanging. Its been nagging me for quite a while now, and i couldn't place it or articulate it until now. Here goes:
The definition of thoughts being material (electric impulses in the brain) serves to define it only at the point of its creation.
I just realized, i want to be able to define it at the point after its creation.
So to illustrate, when i decide to write a thank you note to a friend for a gift, thoughts are created as follows:
1) Brain fires up, creates thoughts. (material)
2) I write my thoughts down on a hallmark card (material)
3) card is mailed to my friend (??????)
4) friend reads card, understands my message/thought (material)
Or another way of illustrating my story is below:
ME LETTER IN TRANSIT MY FRIEND
Brain | No Brain | Brain
electrical impulses | no electrical impulses |elec. imp.
| | | | |
material |???????????????? | material
thoughts ---------------------------------------------------
At certain points in time (when there is a brain), thoughts are material because of the electrical impulses it generates. But at other points (when there is no brain) no electrical impulses are generated at all, which is why i put a question mark on it.
True, the thoughts or symbols on the hallmark card are useless and meaningless without a brain to interpret it, but it still exhists even when there is no brain. Proof of such is when a brain is again introduced, the symbols on the card elicit the same electrical reactions in the brain.
What i therefore need to know is how to define thoughts in a material way when the brain is not present. The thoughts are still there. Albeit in a different form, since no electrical impulses can be detected it at that point. If i say that the thoughts are the card, it doesn't really sound satisfactory as an explanation. (to me)
Can anyone help me here?
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This is a re-post from the previous thread. What you are asking is impossible, because they are not thougghts on the paper. They are representations of what somebody was thinking. Not only what they were thinking, but what they decided to filter out and put on paper.
1. The words on the paper are not thoughts. They are words written on a peice of paper. Nothing more or less, just words on paper.
2. The thought to write it down exists in my brain and only in my brain.
3. The paper with wrods is not a thought. It is paper with words. My previous posts do still exist. They are now posts, not my thoughts.
4. They are representations of thoughts in my brain. Representation are the words on the paper, not my thoughts. My thoughts only exist in my brain.
5. When somebody else reads those representations, they have thoughts about what I might have been thinking. They assume what I was thinking based on what they think those words represent. Hopefully, we have both learned the same form of represenation, English. If it was written in French, I would have no clue what to think about their thinking.
"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."
Or let us say that after i wrote down my thoughts on the hallmark card and eventually forget about it, are the thoughts i wrote on the card no longer thoughts? If not, then what is it? How do we define it?
What is that thing that i wrote on the card that was once a thought but no longer a thought?
Btw, if i asked or said anything logically wrong then please inform me that i may try to rephrase it for you.
If you have a thought, don't write it down, and forget about it, is it still a thought?
"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."
Ok! Now we are going somewhere here.
So now that my thoughts have become written words, how do we define words in a materialistic way?
Graphite or ink on paper.
"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."
Oh, and i decided to post the thread here in the hope that deludedgod or todangst would see it, since i really want to know their input of this. That's because it was through them that i learned of axioms, information and data in the first place and i'm hoping that they could help me find the answer to my question related to that.
Words are representations of ideas that exist within the brain!
The words I write now are the result of brain activity which turns into motor activity and gets represented on a computer screen.
"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."
what you described was the medium from which the words were written. You see, words (or the thing previously know as thought), no matter what medium you use it on, remain the same. What i mean by the same is whether i use graphite, or ink, or crayons or watercolor or paint it gives the same interpretation to the brain.
In other words, or that thing previously known as thought (to be more precise because thoughts are not only words but can be numbers as well) is independent of the medium on which it was written. For example, if i write "hello" using ink, would it convey a different meaning if i used graphite?
So i don't need the definition of its medium.
I need you to define "words". (or that thing.... you get my drift)
I'm sorry rationalschema. It seems we will not go anywhere if i continue this. Its obvious to anyone who would read our posts that we do not think on the same page which may eventually end up frustrating both of us which i really do not wish to happen.
So i will no longer continue this exchange, but i will still read this thread, hoping that someone might answer my question to my satisfaction.
Take care.
words are the medium. Refer to my previous posts as words being represenations of thoughts in are brain. No matter how you try to twist and look at it, it is all materical. Everything you talk about is conjured up by your brain.
"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."
Hmmm, this is odd, Jorge. You asked for help from "anyone," and then when deludedgod and todangst didn't reply you rejected the attempts by others to help. Did you not really intend to ask for anyone's help?
And anyway I think todangst already answered this question in his essay on this topic:
Or, in short, there are no thoughts where a brain is not present. The error in your diagram is in drawing the dashed line all the way through the transaction. The thoughts are in the brain of the author, and in the reader, but not in the greeting card (which is a representation of a thought, but is not itself a thought).
This is the same thing that rationalschema also said, but in different words.
So clearly your question has been answered several times by several people. Is it that the answer does not make sense to you that you need assitance with?
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
hmmm... Its like this. I'm hoping for someone to give me a satisfactory answer, and those two so far have done so in the past. So far, no one has been able to anwer my questions adequately, therefore, it would be natural for me to look for those two. But i'm still open to suggestions from anyone else willing to help me.
Please note what you said, it is a representation of a thought.
So in other words, though it is not a thought itself, it carries a thought that only the brain can "see".
Btw, this is a double-post, with a lot of related questions answered and expressed in this link:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/atheist_vs_theist/7748?page=1#comment-79988
so to avoid confusion and endless repetition of the same topic, would anyone willing to reply, first read the link from the beginning til the end of the posts and then post your comments there?
Thank you!
Its because your question doesn't make sense the way you worded it. It is similar to asking for the essence of "greenness" without appealing to the concept of color. A thought cannot exist without a brain. Thoughts are algorithmic processes of the brain...symbol manipulation (give a specific model of the brain, which I subscribe to). Hence, a thought T, can be described in full detail merely in virtue of electro-chemical processes combined with the connection of the millions of neurons.
Perhaps what you mean, is that the language used to express a thought still exists, even though no humans exist. Hence, if I write a litter, the physical composition of the letter and ink...and even the form of the ink scratches still exists, regardless of any perception. This is uncontroversal. It isn't the thought itself on the paper, but a complex organization of symbols organized into morphemes (smallest linguistic unit that changes the meaning of a word), then into words, then into syntax and so forth. The language merely expresses an idea...it is not the idea itself.
It should be noted further, that without human beings assigning meaning to a given symbol, it would have no meaning. Hence, there is nothing intrinsic in the meaning of "heat" that makes it mean "is molecular motion." Heat is simply a symbol used to represent an idea...this is so we express the same ideas to people...this is obvious. But without humans to interpret the symbols, language would not exist. Without english speakers, english wouldn't exist. This is the fate of many languages everyday. About everyday the last member of a linguistic community dies without passing on the language. When this happens, the symbols of the language cease to have any meaning...they become empty symbols (unless it is resurected like latin).
Thats what language is. A complex system that can express an infinite number thoughts (this is a very simplified definition).
Of course "thought" is itself a thought, in the same way that "word" is itself a world, and in the way that A = A. Where would you get this idea? Now, a thought about a thought, is indeed a thought, but it is a second order thought. A thought is about everything besides a thought. A thought about a thought, is a second order thought. And a third order thought is a thought about a thought about a thought, and so on.
"In the high school halls, in the shopping malls, conform or be cast out" ~ Rush, from Subdivisions