Mid-afternoon. You are waiting for Carol on
the south lot at Macy's. You went in to see the Dyson sweepers but they were
hardly on sale. Carol had her hair done earlier while you watched the second
episode of the second season of "The Man from High Castle". You told
Carol you would watch the two episodes again if she wants to watch; you are
fully back into the characters and plot. This was during a quick lunch at Penn
Station before coming to Macy's. - Amorella
1548 hours. I'm going to check out the Dyson store in Columbus since we
are going to be up there tomorrow and Thursday in the AM.
You were home before five after looking at
the cordless Dysons at Macy's. The Dyson Store in Columbus has a brand new
model V8 'Animal' model rather than their old version for five hundred while
Macy's Dyson was an older V6 'Animal' which was selling at four hundred and
ninety-nine dollars. You will stop tomorrow or Thursday morning at the Columbus
store; Cincinnati does not have one. Meanwhile, the old Kenmore does work
though it makes a clanking noise it did not make earlier. To make up for the
wasted trip to Kenwood you each had a kids' cup at Graeter's on
Mason-Montgomery Road. - Amorella
1733 hours. Retirement is good. It will be fun to see Owen and Brennan
receiving their awards tomorrow.
1757
hours. I was just re-reading yesterday's post and it hit me that I consider
thoughts more real than perhaps most people. I am curious why I think like
this; it is odd, on the face of it, that I would think such a thing. First, I
need a definition; this may be where the fault in logic lies. I choose
Wikipedia rather than a simple definition, though I will show the simple
definition first.
** **
thought 1 noun1
an idea or opinion
produced by thinking or occurring suddenly in the mind:
Maggie had a
sudden thought |
I asked him if he
had any thoughts on how it had happened |
Mrs. Oliver's
first thought was to get help.•
(one's thoughts) one's
mind or attention: he's very much in our thoughts and prayers.•
an act of
considering or remembering someone or something: she
hadn't given a thought to Max for some time.•
(usually thought of) an
intention, hope, or idea of doing or receiving something: he had given up all thoughts of making Manhattan
his home.2 the action or process of thinking: Sophie sat deep in thought.•
the formation of
opinions, especially as a philosophy or system of ideas, or the opinions so
formed: the freedom of thought and action | the traditions of Western thought.•
careful
consideration or attention: I haven't given it much thought.•
concern for
another's well-being or convenience: he
is carrying on the life of a single man, with no thought for me.
Selected
and edited from the Oxford/American Dictionary software.
** **
** **
Thought
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thought refers to ideas or
arrangements of ideas that are the result of the process of thinking. Though
thinking is an activity considered essential to humanity, there is no general
consensus as to how we define or understand it.
Because
thought underlies many human actions and interactions, understanding its
physical and metaphysical origins, processes, and effects has been a
longstanding goal of many academic disciplines including linguistics,
psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, artificial intelligence, biology,
sociology and cognitive science.
Thinking
allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience, and to make
predictions about that world. It is therefore helpful to an organism with
needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts to accomplish
those goals.
Etymology and usage
The word thought comes from Old English þoht, or geþoht,
from stem of þencan "to conceive of in the mind, consider".
The word "thought" may mean:
a single product of thinking or a single idea ("My first
thought was ‘no.’")
the product of mental activity ("Mathematics is a large
body of thought.")
the act or system of thinking ("I was frazzled from too
much thought.")
the capacity to think, reason, imagine, and so on ("All her
thought was applied to her work.")
the consideration of or reflection on an idea ("The thought
of death terrifies me.")
recollection or contemplation ("I thought about my
childhood.")
half-formed or imperfect intention ("I had some thought of
going.")
anticipation or expectation ("She had no thought of seeing
him again.")
consideration, attention, care, or regard ("He took no
thought of his appearance" and "I did it without thinking.")
judgment, opinion, or belief ("According to his thought,
honesty is the best policy.")
the ideas characteristic of a particular place, class, or time
("Greek thought")
the state of being conscious of something ("It made me
think of my grandmother.")
tending to believe in something, especially with less than full
confidence ("I think that it will rain, but I am not sure.")
Definitions may or may not require that thought
take place within a human brain,
take place as part of a living biological system,
take place only at a conscious level of awareness,
require language,
is principally or even only conceptual, abstract
("formal"),
involve other concepts such as drawing analogies, interpreting,
evaluating, imagining, planning, and remembering.
Definitions
of thought may also be derived directly or indirectly from theories of thought.
Theories
·
"Outline of a
theory of thought-processes and thinking machines" (Caianiello) – thought processes and mental
phenomena modeled by sets of mathematical equations
·
·
Surfaces and Essences:
Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking (Hofstadter and Sander) – a theory built on analogies
·
·
The Neural Theory of
Language and Thought (Feldman and Lakoff)[ – neural
modeling of language and spatial relations
·
·
Thought Forms—The
Structure, Power, and Limitations of Thought (Baum – a theory built on mental models
·
·
Unconscious Thought Theory –
thought that is not conscious
·
·
Linguistics theories
- The Stuff of Thought (Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky) – The linguistic and cognitive theory
that thought is based on syntactic and linguistic recursion processes
Philosophy
What is most thought-provoking in these thought-provoking times,
is that we are still not thinking.
— Martin Heidegger
The phenomenology movement in philosophy saw a radical change in
the way in which we understand thought.
Martin Heidegger's phenomenological analyses of the existential structure
of man in Being and Time cast new
light on the issue of thinking, unsettling traditional cognitive or rational
interpretations of man which affect the way we understand thought.
The notion of the fundamental role of non-cognitive
understanding in rendering possible thematic consciousness informed the
discussion surrounding Artificial Intelligence during the 1970s and 1980s.
Phenomenology, however, is not the only approach to thinking in
modern Western philosophy.
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the
nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties,
consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the
brain. The mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is
commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind, although there are
other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation
to the physical body
The mind-body problem
The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the
relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states
or processes. The main aim of philosophers working in this area is to determine
the nature of the mind and mental states/processes, and how—or even if—minds
are affected by and can affect the body.
Human perceptual experiences depend on stimuli which arrive at
one's various sensory organs from the external world and these stimuli cause
changes in one's mental state, ultimately causing one to feel a sensation,
which may be pleasant or unpleasant. Someone's desire for a slice of pizza, for
example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific
manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The
question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise
out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing but electrochemical
properties. A related problem is to explain how someone's propositional
attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires) can cause that individual's neurons to
fire and his muscles to contract in exactly the correct manner. These comprise
some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of
mind from at least the time of Rene Descartes.
Functionalism vs. embodiment
The above reflects a classical, functional description of how we
work as cognitive, thinking systems. However the apparently irresolvable
mind-body problem is said to be overcome, and bypassed, by the embodied
cognition approach, with its roots in the work of Heidegger, Piaget, Vygotsky,
Merleau-Ponty and the pragmatist John Dewey.
This approach states that the classical approach of separating
the mind and analysing its processes is misguided: instead, we should see that
the mind, actions of an embodied agent, and the environment it perceives and
envisions, are all parts of a whole which determine each other. Therefore,
functional analysis of the mind alone will always leave us with the mind-body
problem which cannot be solved.[17]
Biology
A neuron (also known as a neurone or nerve cell) is an excitable
cell in the nervous system that processes and transmits information by
electrochemical signaling. Neurons are the core components of the brain, the
vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord, and the peripheral
nerves. A number of specialized types of neurons exist: sensory neurons respond
to touch, sound, light and numerous other stimuli affecting cells of the
sensory organs that then send signals to the spinal cord and brain. Motor
neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle
contractions and affect glands. Interneurons connect neurons to other neurons
within the brain and spinal cord. Neurons respond to stimuli, and communicate
the presence of stimuli to the central nervous system, which processes that
information and sends responses to other parts of the body for action. Neurons
do not go through mitosis, and usually cannot be replaced after being
destroyed, although astrocytes have been observed to turn into neurons as they
are sometimes pluripotent.
Psychology
Psychologists have concentrated on thinking as an intellectual
exertion aimed at finding an answer to a question or the solution of a
practical problem. Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that
investigates internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language.
The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism which
is interested in how people mentally represent information processing. It had
its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler,
and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who provided a theory of
stages/phases that describe children's cognitive development.
Cognitive psychologists use psychophysical and experimental
approaches to understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves
with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response. They
study various aspects of thinking, including the psychology of reasoning, and
how people make decisions and choices, solve problems, as well as engage in
creative discovery and imaginative thought. Cognitive theory contends that
solutions to problems take the form of algorithms—rules that are not
necessarily understood but promise a solution, or heuristics—rules that are
understood but that do not always guarantee solutions. Cognitive science differs
from cognitive psychology in that algorithms that are intended to simulate
human behavior are implemented or implementable on a computer. In other
instances, solutions may be found through insight, a sudden awareness of
relationships.
In developmental psychology, Jean Piaget was a pioneer in the
study of the development of thought from birth to maturity. In his theory of
cognitive development, thought is based on actions on the environment. That is,
Piaget suggests that the environment is understood through assimilations of
objects in the available schemes of action and these accommodate to the objects
to the extent that the available schemes fall short of the demands. As a result
of this interplay between assimilation and accommodation, thought develops
through a sequence of stages that differ qualitatively from each other in mode
of representation and complexity of inference and understanding. That is,
thought evolves from being based on perceptions and actions at the sensorimotor
stage in the first two years of life to internal representations in early
childhood. Subsequently, representations are gradually organized into logical
structures which first operate on the concrete properties of the reality, in
the stage of concrete operations, and then operate on abstract principles that
organize concrete properties, in the stage of formal operations. In recent
years, the Piagetian conception of thought was integrated with information
processing conceptions. Thus, thought is considered as the result of mechanisms
that are responsible for the representation and processing of information. In
this conception, speed of processing, cognitive control, and working memory are
the main functions underlying thought. In the neo-Piagetian theories of
cognitive development, the development of thought is considered to come from
increasing speed of processing, enhanced cognitive control, and increasing
working memory.
Positive psychology emphasizes the positive aspects of human
psychology as equally important as the focus on mood disorders and other
negative symptoms. In Character Strengths
and Virtues, Peterson and Seligman list a series of positive
characteristics. One person is not expected to have every strength, nor are
they meant to fully capsulate that characteristic entirely. The list encourages
positive thought that builds on a person's strengths, rather than how to
"fix" their "symptoms".
Psychoanalysis
"Id", "ego", and "super-ego" are
the three parts of the "psychic apparatus" defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of
the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose
activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model, the
uncoordinated instinctual trends are the "id"; the organized
realistic part of the psyche is the "ego," and the critical and
moralizing function the "super-ego."
The unconscious was considered by Freud throughout the evolution
of his psychoanalytic theory a sentient force of will influenced by human
desire and yet operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud,
the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic
drives. While past thoughts and reminiscences may be concealed from immediate
consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the
realm of the unconscious.
For psychoanalysis, the unconscious does not include all that is
not conscious, rather only what is actively repressed from conscious thought or
what the person is averse to knowing consciously. In a sense this view places
the self in relationship to their unconscious as an adversary, warring with
itself to keep what is unconscious hidden. If a person feels pain, all he can
think of is alleviating the pain. Any of his desires, to get rid of pain or
enjoy something, command the mind what to do. For Freud, the unconscious was a
repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic
memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of
psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be
solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that
can only be recognized by its effects—it expresses itself in the symptom.
Sociology
Social psychology is the study of how people and groups
interact. Scholars in this interdisciplinary area are typically either
psychologists or sociologists, though all social psychologists employ both the
individual and the group as their units of analysis.
Despite their similarity, psychological and sociological
researchers tend to differ in their goals, approaches, methods, and
terminology. They also favor separate academic journals and professional
societies. The greatest period of collaboration between sociologists and
psychologists was during the years immediately following World War II. Although
there has been increasing isolation and specialization in recent years, some
degree of overlap and influence remains between the two disciplines.
The collective unconscious, sometimes known as collective
subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carol Jung. It is a
part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humanity, in
an interconnected system that is the product of all common experiences and
contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality. While Freud did not
distinguish between an "individual psychology" and a "collective
psychology," Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the
personal subconscious particular to each human being. The collective
unconscious is also known as "a reservoir of the experiences of our
species."
In
the "Definitions" chapter of Jung's seminal work Psychological
Types, under the definition of "collective" Jung references representations
collectives, a term coined by Lucien Levy-Bruhl in his 1910 book How
Natives Think. Jung says this is what he describes as the collective
unconscious. Freud, on the other hand, did not accept the idea of a collective
unconscious
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
** **
Post, orndorff. - Amorella
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