2005-11-12: Thought

[Robert]

Time for another chat. Let's have topic-driven chat session this time, same time, same place. Saturday, November 12th, at 3:00pm Central Standard Time (CST) or GMT-6.

The topic is ...

Thought
What were you thinking!

Basically, I'd like to discuss what exactly a thought is, how is it measured, how it comes about, what the triggers are, what controls your thinking, etc. There are a number of areas we can go with this topic.

Areas of Discussion
Some possible areas of discussion ...

1. What exactly is a thought?
2. Are thoughts a product of the brain (monism) or separate from the brain (dualism). Overlaps with the "Ghost in the Machine" discussion.
3. Could thoughts be primarily a product of your brain, but influenced by a non-physical phenomenon outside of your brain.
4. If the mind is separate from the body, could the non-physical mind plug into the physical brain perhaps via quantum tunneling at the synapsis level?
5. Are our thoughts automatic reactions from the environment impacting on our neural connections, hard-wired via environment and genetics.
6. Are thoughts an emergent phenomenon that oozes out of the billions of brain cells interacting with each other
7. Do thoughts continue beyond death?
8. How easily can our beliefs be manipulated? Are we brainwashed from our culture, religion, family, or other support groups.
9. Why don't we realize it when we have irrational thoughts.
10. What are the requirements for generating a thought?
11. Could there be an entanglement of minds at some level of reality?

That's all for now. I'll add some more thoughts to the thread and maybe update this post with some references later on.

Statistics
This will be chat session #16. In the last 2 weeks since our last chat session, membership has grown from 852 to 885 members, a gain of 33 new members. We have members representing 96 countries, a gain of 3. Also we've had 157 members active over the preceding 30 days which is up by 4 from two weeks ago.

The Usual Timezone Stuff
You can use the timezone converter to convert to your local time. Once there, enter the day and time as specified above, then select US/Central in the "From Time Zone" column and your own location in the "To Time Zone" column, then click Convert. Be sure and unclick the "Use Current Date/Time" option. This will give you the time of the chat meeting in your own local time.

Some other areas:

Texas, U.S. - Saturday, 3:00pm
California, U.S. - Saturday, 1:00pm
India - Sunday, 1:30am
London - Saturday, 9:00pm
Madrid, Spain - Saturday, 10:00pm
Melbourne, Australia - Sunday, 6:00am
New Zealand - Sunday, 8:00am
Sweden - Saturday, 10:00pm
Canada, Eastern - Saturday, 4:00pm
Pakistan - Sunday, 1:00am

Future Chat
These chat sessions are scheduled every other Saturday at 3pm (CST). They are usually moderated with a chat transcript available for later review. I'll see if I can upgrade the chat software to the latest revision before Saturday.

We'll meet in Flash Chatroom. Hope to see you there!

Regards,
--Robert

[AntonioLao]

I will at most 30 minutes late to this chat, would like to explore Hannah Arendt’s writing about ‘thought’ more information as follows

This edited excerpt is from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at

http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/arendt.htm#H7

In the first volume of Life of the Mind, by Hannah Arendt, dealing with the faculty of thinking, she is at pains to distinguish it from 'knowing'. She draws upon Kant's distinction between knowing or understanding (Verstand) and thinking or reasoning (Vernunft). Understanding yields positive knowledge - it is the quest for knowable truths. Reason or thinking, on the other hand, drives us beyond knowledge, persistently posing questions that cannot be answered from the standpoint of knowledge, but which we nonetheless cannot refrain from asking. For Arendt, thinking amounts to a quest to understand the meaning of our world, the ceaseless and restless activity of questioning that which we encounter. The value of thinking is not that it yields positive results that can be considered settled, but that it constantly returns to question again and again the meaning that we give to experiences, actions and circumstances.

[dleviwing]

Robert;
I found your post on the "now or never" thread quite intriguing an may provoke some interesting views. You can remove my NO SHOW vote; I'll be logging in for the chat.
Thanks;
Dave

[Guille]

Great supermegahyperultraplus perfect theme!

As I already stated in other threads on which we are having a lot of current discussion in the philosophy of mind forum, like, for example, "mentally weightless", cognitive science is the best area of science to look at, discuss, develop ideas, create theories....It is good also for our imagination, for it is mainlly thought experiments (at least for us, we can't get people into different situations and observe them or whatever...). I hope more turn out than what it appears, cause robert comes and goes, and when comes is 99% out, carly, is she aloud to go into the chat sessions? And maybe others...This theme really needs severla points of view, as many as possible. I'll be there for super sure.

[dipayankar]

Robert,

I get the notifications after the date of the chat. Could you please send the notifications a little earlier?

Time for another chat. Let's have topic-driven chat session this time, same time, same place. Saturday, November 12th, at 3:00pm Central Standard Time (CST) or GMT-6.

The topic is ...

Thought

What were you thinking!

Basically, I'd like to discuss what exactly a thought is, how is it measured, how it comes about, what the triggers are, what controls your thinking, etc. There are a number of areas we can go with this topic.


Areas of Discussion
Some possible areas of discussion ...

1. What exactly is a thought?
2. Are thoughts a product of the brain (monism) or separate from the brain (dualism). Overlaps with the "Ghost in the Machine" discussion.
3. Could thoughts be primarily a product of your brain, but influenced by a non-physical phenomenon outside of your brain.
4. If the mind is separate from the body, could the non-physical mind plug into the physical brain perhaps via quantum tunneling at the synapsis level?
5. Are our thoughts automatic reactions from the environment impacting on our neural connections, hard-wired via environment and genetics.
6. Are thoughts an emergent phenomenon that oozes out of the billions of brain cells interacting with each other
7. Do thoughts continue beyond death?
8. How easily can our beliefs be manipulated? Are we brainwashed from our culture, religion, family, or other support groups.
9. Why don't we realize it when we have irrational thoughts.
10. What are the requirements for generating a thought?
11. Could there be an entanglement of minds at some level of reality?

That's all for now. I'll add some more thoughts to the thread and maybe update this post with some references later on.

Statistics

This will be chat session #16. In the last 2 weeks since our last chat session, membership has grown from 852 to 885 members, a gain of 33 new members. We have members representing 96 countries, a gain of 3. Also we've had 157 members active over the preceding 30 days which is up by 4 from two weeks ago.

The Usual Timezone Stuff
You can use the timezone converter to convert to your local time. Once there, enter the day and time as specified above, then select US/Central in the "From Time Zone" column and your own location in the "To Time Zone" column, then click Convert. Be sure and unclick the "Use Current Date/Time" option. This will give you the time of the chat meeting in your own local time.



Some other areas:

Texas, U.S. - Saturday, 3:00pm

California, U.S. - Saturday, 1:00pm
India - Sunday, 1:30am
London - Saturday, 9:00pm
Madrid, Spain - Saturday, 10:00pm
Melbourne, Australia - Sunday, 6:00am
New Zealand - Sunday, 8:00am
Sweden - Saturday, 10:00pm
Canada, Eastern - Saturday, 4:00pm
Pakistan - Sunday, 1:00am

Future Chat

These chat sessions are scheduled every other Saturday at 3pm (CST). They are usually moderated with a chat transcript available for later review. I'll see if I can upgrade the chat software to the latest revision before Saturday.

We'll meet in Flash Chatroom. Hope to see you there!

Regards,
--Robert