Well, I think thought is a unconscious activity because we cannot consciously and collectively deal with all knowledge we accumulated and memorized in unconscious mind in order to create new thought.

Each sentence you write is one thought. So i guess you are conscious of your thoughts.

Each sentence you write is one thought. So i guess you are conscious of your thoughts. — Purple Pond

That is no true. Sometimes an answer to a question just pop into our conscious mind when you are thinking of something else. Moreover, thought as I argued required the collective knowledge of all thing we gathered during our life. It is not possible to collectively be aware of everything.

Sometimes an answer to a question just pop into our conscious mind when you are thinking of something else — bahman

But your still conscious of the answer when it pops into your head.

Moreover, thought as I argued required the collective knowledge of all thing we gathered during our life. It is not possible to collectively be aware of everything. — bahman

I'm not denying all the unconscious activity that goes on in order to produce a a thought. However, the result of all the unconscious activity is the conscious thought.

Can be both!! No, again I don't agree to the main idea of your discussion, Bahman..
You think it's unconscious!? That's all? Prove it with scientific data if there's any, plz.

A thought may pop out of nowhere (you start thinking about a certain song in a library, where did that thought come from? Maybe you heard a little girl sing that song without realizing it), but when it is there it is a conscious activity because you are aware of it can remember it, write it down, discuss it, etc...

@bahman Although I agree you cannot "deal with all knowledge we accumulated and memorized in unconscious mind" , when we think we focus on a particular information. We don't need to be aware of the entire content of our mind to create a thought. It usually comes from stimuli, and from the first thought comes a second thought related in some way to the first one, and so on.

I'm not denying all the unconscious activity that goes on in order to produce a a thought. However, the result of all the unconscious activity is the conscious thought.

I don't think this is totally clear. Sure we may experience Freudian slips where bits of our unconscious bubble up to the surface, but in general I think the unconscious is not ordered, at least not on a logical basis. Its activity seems to have more to do with our own idiosyncratic structuring (metaphoric and associative) of conscious activities, memories, beliefs the whole gamut of mental activity. The structuring here is not direct or straight forward. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar sometimes it is not.

Extraneous thoughts spring from our imagination, which is dynamic and always working. The unconscious contributes to what we imagine, but we don't realize its contribution normally. It nudge us, pushes us or compel us to think and act in certain ways.

Most time this is beneficial it opens up un-apparent connections, other times it may be harmful, which is why people seek therapy. to understand why they do what they do.

Can be both!! No, again I don't agree to the main idea of your discussion, Bahman.
You think it's unconscious!? That's all? Prove it with scientific data if there's any, plz. — phrzn

According to scientific research it is both. You can read more about it in here.

I however don't agree with them. To me imagination is duty of conscious mind whereas constructing a thought which can be verbalized through a sentence is unconscious. It is simple to understand that. We are either talking about a known idea or one of us is unaware of an idea. We could simply construct a sentence and convey the idea which we have in our mind in the first case. In the second case the content of sentence should be understandable for the second person so we need to imagine whether the sentence can convey the content of our mind. That is where conscious mind comes to play, imagination.

Although I agree you cannot "deal with all knowledge we accumulated and memorized in unconscious mind" , when we think we focus on a particular information. We don't need to be aware of the entire content of our mind to create a thought. It usually comes from stimuli, and from the first thought comes a second thought related in some way to the first one, and so on. — Abaoaqu

I think we could both agree on the fact that we need a context when we think and discuss a problem. The context can be defined clearly and that is the duty of subconscious mind since you need a structure which is comprehensible for both party, which can be performed by using language. The solution to a problem is either in the related to unconscious activity or conscious activity. In first case, the content of our unconscious mind should be large enough to allow us to produce a solution unconsciously otherwise we are talking about something non-existence to our experience. That is where conscious mind and imagination comes to play.

I don't think this is totally clear. Sure we may experience Freudian slips where bits of our unconscious bubble up to the surface, but in general I think the unconscious is not ordered, at least not on a logical basis. Its activity seems to have more to do with our own idiosyncratic structuring (metaphoric and associative) of conscious activities, memories, beliefs the whole gamut of mental activity. The structuring here is not direct or straight forward. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar sometimes it is not.

Extraneous thoughts spring from our imagination, which is dynamic and always working. The unconscious contributes to what we imagine, but we don't realize its contribution normally. It nudge us, pushes us or compel us to think and act in certain ways.

Most time this is beneficial it opens up un-apparent connections, other times it may be harmful, which is why people seek therapy. to understand why they do what they do. — Cavacava

So you are thinking that imagination is a conscious activity whereas thinking is a conscious activity?

To me imagination is duty of conscious mind — bahman

What is imagination, you think? I cannot agree with you.
"The term imagination comes from the latin verb imaginari meaning 'to picture oneself'."
--
"The conscious mind includes such things as the sensations, perceptions, memories, feeling and fantasies inside of our current awareness."
Imagination is something beyond sensation. Sometimes, just a vision comes to make you aware of something.

In the second case the content of sentence should be understandable for the second person so we need to imagine whether the sentence can convey the content of our mind. That is where conscious mind comes to play, imagination. — bahman

I don't think it's like that! What you said has been analyzed in linguistics and psycholinguistics. The communication and the transfer of the meaning between the two minds is somehow universal. We do it subconsciously.

There are different types of conscious activity, such as perception, memory, reason...I think the imagination is like a dynamic work space where can take images, match them to memories or morph them into other images, also synthesis takes place in the imagination.

The following from 2013 Dartmouth College Study

Researchers measured the participants' brain activity with functional MRI and found a cortical and subcortical network over a large part of the brain was responsible for their imagery manipulations. The network closely resembles the "mental workspace" that scholars have theorized might be responsible for much of human conscious experience and for the flexible cognitive abilities that humans have evolved.

As others have said, this is simply a false dichotomy, an over-simplification.

To be conscious here means to be a mental act that itself is now reportable as a mental act. So it is overt at the level of attention and working memory. It is something that has been "done" and so can be repeated as an action. It has a definite form. It is some phrase just said, or some image just conjured up.

But then all such mental acts have to begin in some pre-conscious fashion. They must develop from some vaguely felt generality into some specifically articulated form. You can call this the unconscious gestation, but you can also pay attention and catch a comment or image while it is still just a vague "urge". So it is not strictly unconscious. You can be vividly conscious of some thought having just been on the tip of your tongue.

And then all mental acts, if repeated often enough, can become themselves habitual or automatic. So now they are "unconscious" in a different way as you just emit them in learnt rote fashion without need of gestation or attention. You don't have to make an effort to produce the completed form of some familiar phrase or image. It will just flash into your mind of its own accord due to contextual cues.

So thinking lives on both sides of this supposed borderline. And so far as is possible, the brain wants to turn every mental act into a habit. It wants to be as "unconscious" as possible - as that is the only way for thought to be efficient.

But then, by definition, we need to "think through" mental acts that are to do with the novel, the dangerous, the significant. That is why we have a prefrontal cortex. That is why we have selective attention and working memory. And that is the kind of thought we think of as actually consciously thinking. We feel we can claim "I" was there as it happened.

Yet this "I" in turn is a habit of social self-regulation. Layering complexity on complexity, to introspect on the forming of mental acts - to make them the subject of a further act of self-report - is something we all learn to do because society wants us to be accountable for when our thoughts turn into behaviours. So we invent this notion of the "conscious self", this "I that was there", as part of the machinery of thought.

It is an intricate ecosystem and the attempt to make sense of it with a simplistic binary - like conscious vs unconscious - is way too crude.

like i wrote in your last post. i think it is both, i think a choice will have entered your mind subconsciously but you can rethink that idea based on the possible consequence of that decision. someones personality may be inclined to speak and act before they think but someone else may be the opposite and think before they act or say. i think that you're right to a certain extent, i think that every time you're made to make a decision a subconscious choice is made in you're head but it is definitely possible to rethink it and change the outcome of your decision.

hope you don't mind me replying to both posts, i think you have a good point and i like this topic alot.

To me imagination is duty of conscious mind
— bahman
What is imagination, you think? I cannot agree with you.
"The term imagination comes from the latin verb imaginari meaning 'to picture oneself'."
--
"The conscious mind includes such things as the sensations, perceptions, memories, feeling and fantasies inside of our current awareness."
Imagination is something beyond sensation. Sometimes, just a vision comes to make you aware of something. — phrzn

Well, can I say that imagination is one of duty of conscious mind?

In the second case the content of sentence should be understandable for the second person so we need to imagine whether the sentence can convey the content of our mind. That is where conscious mind comes to play, imagination.
— bahman
I don't think it's like that! What you said has been analyzed in linguistics and psycholinguistics. The communication and the transfer of the meaning between the two minds is somehow universal. We do it subconsciously. — phrzn

What do you mean with the universal in here? We sometimes misunderstand the message of a sentence sometimes.

thanks for the reference.

Thanks for the comment.

like i wrote in your last post. i think it is both, i think a choice will have entered your mind subconsciously but you can rethink that idea based on the possible consequence of that decision. someones personality may be inclined to speak and act before they think but someone else may be the opposite and think before they act or say. i think that you're right to a certain extent, i think that every time you're made to make a decision a subconscious choice is made in you're head but it is definitely possible to rethink it and change the outcome of your decision.

hope you don't mind me replying to both posts, i think you have a good point and i like this topic alot. — David Solman

Thank you very much for your contribution.

Mind is everywhere. It is dispersed throughout the body. The mind in the gut area is well recognized as is the mind throughout the muscular system (i.e. muscle memory). The human body had 10x more microbes than human cells, and those microbes have their own minds.

The "minds" in the body communicate with each other via the nervous system, which in itself is another form of mind. Out of habit they learn to work together, but at times they are overridden by the larger mind which we call the "I". The I creates and commands via will power (exerts energy stored in the body). This process can be overt (conscious) or maybe be developing in a less focused manner unconsciously, since the mind is dispersed and is every bit a mystery as is the life out creates. It observes itself and in doing so continues to learn more about itself.

Well, can I say that imagination is one of duty of conscious mind? — bahman

I don't think so. I think it's more probable to take place in subconscious awareness.

What do you mean with the universal in here? We sometimes misunderstand the message of a sentence sometimes. — bahman

Universal, as Chomsky noted.

I don't think so. I think it's more probable to take place in subconscious awareness. — phrzn

What is subconscious awareness? You meant subconscious mind?

You meant subconscious mind? — bahman

Yup

Mind is everywhere. It is dispersed throughout the body. The mind in the gut area is well recognized as is the mind throughout the muscular system (i.e. muscle memory). The human body had 10x more microbes than human cells, and those microbes have their own minds.

The "minds" in the body communicate with each other via the nervous system, which in itself is another form of mind. Out of habit they learn to work together, but at times they are overridden by the larger mind which we call the "I". The I creates and commands via will power (exerts energy stored in the body). This process can be overt (conscious) or maybe be developing in a less focused manner unconsciously, since the mind is dispersed and is every bit a mystery as is the life out creates. It observes itself and in doing so continues to learn more about itself. — Rich

Why there is only one "I"?

The best answer I've come up with is that the Mind had learned that that this is the best way to function with other Minds. However, psychology has observed situations where there seem to be multiple 'I's" functioning in a single body.