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Posted by dorayme on 06/11/50 12:01
In article <slrnfpr3r1.v8o.spamspam@bowser.marioworld>,
Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> wrote:
> On 2008-01-27, dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> > In article <slrnfppuo1.jto.spamspam@bowser.marioworld>,
> > Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> wrote:
> >
> > (But, btw anyway, <g> surely your list has an odd man out! The
> > last two are logical impossibilities (depending on what you quite
> > mean by the last), whereas a thought below the conscious is quite
> > well known and is indeed the contrast needed for the very notion
> > of some being conscious)
>
> I didn't mean it that way. I would have thought that literally speaking
> an unconscious thought was logically impossible.
>
> But it depends on what you mean by thought.
OK, a point then about how it is best to speak (as usual, imo):
Literally speaking it is far better and more accurate to suppose
that much thought goes on below consciousness. It is natural to
talk of thinking processes going on that we are not conscious of.
I do see that you might be thinking of the actual word "thought"
and seeing an oddity of supposing "a thought" to not be
conscious.
But if we were to really go with this intuition and reject the
form of tlk because we fancied (without any real surety btw) that
there were identifiable such objects as conscious thoughts then
it would hamper our ability to describe particular brilliancies
that people come up with in their sleep or background brain
activities.
It is quite commonly known now how intense (conscious) thinking
about a problem can hit a brick wall, that sleeping overnight on
the problem or simply leaving it and thinking consciously about
other things, can do the trick. And a natural description of some
of these processes can involve the use of such expressions as "He
had these five seemingly incompatible thoughts swimming about in
his brain and processes of which he was not conscious worked
quietly in the background to synthesis them and this was the
result..." or some such phrasing.
--
dorayme
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