As to the "how" that you're asking? Good question. But we don't really have the answer to that for physical causation, when it comes right down to it. . . . I don't know that we can figure out more about thoughts causing thoughts than we currently know. — Patterner

This theme has cropped up early and often on the thread: Our conceptual understanding of an apparently local, tractable problem like "How does one thought cause another?" immediately draws us into a theoretical morass about causality and consciousness, with so many empty places on the map that it's hard to know what more to say. In that spirit, your insistence on (what seems) the undeniable causal connection between the thought of "7 + 5" and the thought of "12" is salutary. This much, at least, we know, phenomenologically -- this is certainly how it appears. Or if this isn't true, I'd say the burden of proof is on the denier to say why not, even in the absence of a good explanation for it.

This much, at least, we know, phenomenologically -- this is certainly how it appears. Or if this isn't true, I'd say the burden of proof is on the denier to say why not, even in the absence of a good explanation for it. — J

Yes. Things are often not how they appear. We should always keep an open mind. But the default position for anything isn't "Things are often not as they appear, so this must not be, and you need to prove it is. If you can't, then you should look for an explanation of how it is really something else."

If I understand you, the W2 thought should be seen as pre-linguistic, and this is part of why it is a W2 object. Its nature is "mentalese," not linguistic or propositional. When words enter the picture, we now have a W3 object, because language is a human construction. — J

I think that's how I presented it, but it's a simplification. There's a lot of overlap. Language that doesn't create an artifact (sound or scribbles or signing) is entirely "inside the head", so to speak. This is difficulat to parse out. The key issue here is that there is a pre-linguistic flow that is less clearly demarkated and also less repeatable than the linguistic aspect of the flow. A W2 thought will involve language, but not all of the language in your head is exhausted within the W2 framework. (Maybe it becomes clearer if you consider Wittgenstein's private language argument here.)

Maybe (not sure but maybe), there's this mentales flow that is entirely a W2 object; the linguistic level that is both a W2 and a W3 object, and then the propositional layer which is entirely a W3 object, but has to be represented in W2 to exist (as all W3 objects) - probably via the W2 part of language, which has to connect to the sublinguistic flow for meaning to occur.

Under that model it's not entirely clear what a W2 thought is. I don't think can begin to delimit a "thought" before I've got a model of what actually happens. For example, I said this:

Thinking of Ann -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing -> Production of World3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" which overlaps with ongoing World 2 thought -> Potential for recall of World3 object ("I wondered how Ann is doing.") and creation of World 2 thought similar to earlier thought. — Dawnstorm

But it's entirely possible that in some situation it's:

Thinking of Ann -> Production of World 3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing...

A particular situation might trigger a word habit, which is then associated with a thought habit. That is: I could easily imagine both word-first and concept-first situations.

Now that I've (hopefully) clarified, it should be clear that I'm not saying this:

But are you also asking whether the W3, linguistic thought "I wonder how Ann is doing" can ever be a W2 thought? That is, must it somehow be stripped of language before we can place it "in the brain" as a psychological or mental phenomenon? — J

When you think a word, you think the sign-body as well as the meaning. It depends on the person how you internally think the signbody: some people might hear it said (they literally have a word in the head), some people might just think the word purely abstractly - I don't know if that is possible; for me, thinking a word is performative - I believe I can sometimes - not always - detect micro movements of the speech aparatus (the vocal chords are probably not involved, I'm more thinking about the tongue, palate etc.)

But the meaning is doubled; the canonical meaning of the word needs to fit into the stream of what you want to say. That process would usually be automatic and unconscious, but you'll notice it when you can't think of word, or think of many words none of which fit. What I'm thinking here is that there's not necessarily a 1:1 relationship between say a word (both it's sign-body and canonical meaning) and what concept you wish to impart. But I'm not sure how to model that relationship. There's a wholistic flow that you need to partition for langauge, but there's also the pre-partitioned word-stuff that you import, so there's some sort of give and take here (and that give and take regularly crosses the borders between worlds 2 and 3). I have no model for how this works at this point.

When you think a word, you think the sign-body as well as the meaning. It depends on the person how you internally think the signbody: some people might hear it said (they literally have a word in the head), some people might just think the word purely abstractly - I don't know if that is possible; for me, thinking a word is performative - I believe I can sometimes - not always - detect micro movements of the speech aparatus (the vocal chords are probably not involved, I'm more thinking about the tongue, palate etc.) — Dawnstorm

Many years ago, I heard of a study where they injected novacaine or something into people's throats so they could not make those micro movements. The people found it extremely difficult to think.. I believe the conclusion was that we unconsciously make the movements of talking when we think, and the association is extremely strong. I know it is for me. Especially if I think of a song in my head. I've noticed many times that my throat is moving as I'm reciting it in my head. I often pay attention to my throat when I'm thinking, to try to make sure I'm not "going through the motions."

When J. M. Keynes was asked whether he thought in images or in words, he supposedly replied, "I think in thoughts." There's a lot to this. I'm often aware that I comprehend a particular thought I'm having much faster than I could have said it in words, even thinking them to myself. And looking back on such an experience, it seems to me that what I mean by "a particular thought" is not a linguistic unit at all . . . nor is it quite an image or a structure . . . it's a thought, something with a content or meaning I can understand, while the medium that may convey it is completely unclear.

That said, we can still pose the question, Is anything in the process of stringing two thoughts together an instance of causality? I don't think it matters where we draw the borders, taxonomically, between W2 and W3 thoughts, or how we conceive of that fuzzy realm of experience. If we decide that some sort of causation is indeed a factor, then we can go back and try to understand what causal powers W2 or W3 thoughts (or combinations thereof) might have. My OP was meant to highlight some of the problems with both W2 and W3 thought-causality, when the two are taken as distinct types -- but they needn't be.

Getting back to your point that Popper's World 3 isn't reliably populated with discrete "objects" -- I quite agree. Your example of "story" shows this very well. But I suppose the same could be said for good old World 1 objects. For most purposes, we may want to regard a toothbrush as a single object, but there may be occasions when we need to see it as more than one (if I'm in the bristle-making business, for instance). The division among Popper's worlds mostly holds up, and is useful; it's the addition of "object" that is problematic. But let's not get sidetracked in mereology.

You also said, in your earlier post:

As maths, a world 3 object, entailment pertains even outside of any thought. — Dawnstorm

and:

And then there's the problem that world 3 objects need to be maintained by world 2 process for them to exist. . . — Dawnstorm

Both these observations are at the heart of the causal problem. Does entailment pertain/exist even with no mind to think the constituent propositions? (If a conclusion follows/falls in a forest with no one to think it, does it display an entailment? :smile: ) Understandably, "Yes" is a tempting answer. But this raises the headache I alluded to in the OP: What sort of being do propositions have? Can they be created (thought) as W3 objects in good standing, and then persist "out there" somewhere when no one thinks them? I'll send us all back to Plato for that one.

But if it is meaningful to speak of an entailment as forcing or necessitating a conclusion, doesn't this have to happen in a mind, in conjunction with some W2 thoughts? I can just about accept mindless propositions (though see Rödl and others); but causing new ones, by virtue of entailment, without a mind to do it looks like a step too far. If there is mental causation, perhaps we require some kind of instantiation or embodiment (en-mind-ment?) of the entailing propositions in order to effect the conclusion. Someone has to think it. Ah, but is that thinking an invention or a discovery? And is it genuinely necessitated? "I was caused to conclude that Socrates is mortal!" Sounds odd, yet . . .

I'm often aware that I comprehend a particular thought I'm having much faster than I could have said it in words, even thinking them to myself. And looking back on such an experience, it seems to me that what I mean by "a particular thought" is not a linguistic unit at all . . . nor is it quite an image or a structure . . . it's a thought, something with a content or meaning I can understand, while the medium that may convey it is completely unclear. — J

That's an extremely interesting thing. I can't say I've ever had the experience. I've only ever had the opposite, sort of. Thinking I had an understanding of something, I've often come to realize I didn't when I tried to put it into words. Sitting it down forced me to consider it more thoroughly, revealing gaps.

This is a version of the reductive argument I proposed to ignore: It's the neuronal activity doing the causing, not the thoughts or the meanings themselves. On this understanding, do you think we should deny that my thought of "7 + 5" causes (or otherwise influences or leads to) the thought of "12"? Would this be better understood as loose talk, a kind of shorthand for "The neuronal activity that somehow correlates with or gives rise to the thought '7 + 5' causes the neuronal activity that . . . " etc? — J

I think we can reasonably say that the thought "7 + 5" may lead to the thought "12", or it may lead to the thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or whatever.

I won't rehearse possible stories about neural networks, since that it what you propose to ignore.

The interesting question here is whether we need to reform our use of "cause" and "causative" so as to allow legitimate talk of mental causation, or whether it's the concept itself that has to be expanded. — J

I don't think it even needs to be expanded. If we understand that thought and brain activity are actually the same things, and brain activity is understood as causative, then thought must also be causative, and we can use causative language around it.

We may need an entire comprehensive theory of consciousness before we'll understand what we now call, rather gropingly, mental causation. — J

Again, I don't see why. We don't need to understand how thought can be brain activity, only that thought is brain activity.

I think we can reasonably say that the thought "7 + 5" may lead to the thought "12", or it may lead to the thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or whatever. — Janus

Could be. But I'll bet it lead to "12" first. I'll bet nobody who read it thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or anything else before they thought "12".

Could be. But I'll bet it lead to "12" first. I'll bet nobody who read it thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or anything else before they thought "12". — Patterner

I agree that '12' would be the most common association, my point was only that it is not, by any means, the only possible association. If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem.

Thinking I had an understanding of something, I've often come to realize I didn't when I tried to put it into words. — Patterner

I've had that happen plenty of times too! Which perhaps reminds us that "to understand" is broad, and often incomplete. Math isn't my forte, so I've frequently looked at a piece of math and said to myself, Yeah, I get that, and then it turns out that there was a whole other level of implication and elegance that I'd missed. I wasn't wrong, exactly, in what I thought I understood; it was just "through a glass darkly."

If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem. — Janus

On the other hand causation is often distinguished from correlation (association?) with the idea that to qualify as causal, when X occurs Y must occur.

I think you're right. But, regardless of the specific thought "7 + 5" causes, it causes another thought. I'd say it's overwhelmingly likely that it will cause "12" or another mathematical thought than, say, "Fidel Castro". Because meaning is the key, and there's very little possibility that anyone associates "7 + 5" with Castro more than with 12 or some other mathematical idea. Even now that I've created an association between 7 + 5 and Castro, 12 is still stronger, and the next time you think 7 + 5, you'll first think "12", then you'll think "Castro", then you'll think "Patterner is an idiot."

:lol: Thanks. It occurred to me that even if we can only impute causation in cases where if X occurs Y must occur, it is only the abstract semantic content '7+5' that remains always the same, whereas each instance of thinking it would be different even if it's the same thinker each time, and more so if there are different thinkers.

When J. M. Keynes was asked whether he thought in images or in words, he supposedly replied, "I think in thoughts." There's a lot to this. I'm often aware that I comprehend a particular thought I'm having much faster than I could have said it in words, even thinking them to myself. And looking back on such an experience, it seems to me that what I mean by "a particular thought" is not a linguistic unit at all . . . nor is it quite an image or a structure . . . it's a thought, something with a content or meaning I can understand, while the medium that may convey it is completely unclear. — J

Perhaps an image worth considering, is a pulsating web of causality, with many thoughts causally interacting with each other, and those interactions occurring in what for the most part are subconscious ways? Are the thoughts Keynes thinks in things, or rather complex dynamic sequences of events?

Many years ago, I heard of a study where they injected novacaine or something into people's throats so they could not make those micro movements. The people found it extremely difficult to think.. I believe the conclusion was that we unconsciously make the movements of talking when we think, and the association is extremely strong. I know it is for me. Especially if I think of a song in my head. I've noticed many times that my throat is moving as I'm reciting it in my head. I often pay attention to my throat when I'm thinking, to try to make sure I'm not "going through the motions." — Patterner

I haven't heard of that one; thanks for bringing it up. I was vaguely aware of research, but nothing drug related.

Does entailment pertain/exist even with no mind to think the constituent propositions? — J

I'd like to highlight the difference between an entailment not being thought, and there being no mind to potentially think it. People who can work through an entailment can do so because they know how entailment works. Knowledge underlies all thought in many ways, but is passive without thought OR action.

So:

What sort of being do propositions have? Can they be created (thought) as W3 objects in good standing, and then persist "out there" somewhere when no one thinks them? I'll send us all back to Plato for that one. — J

Yes, they can "persist", but no, not, in a platonic idealist way. I think propositions are at their most stable when they're not being thought, because that means they're passively available as memory traces. It's when they activate in social situations that they change. Knowing of a proposition is passive and provides structure; thinking it is making a problem of it and potentially changing it.

But that's not the extent of it. If the knowledge of knowledgable agents across a relevant population then there's a structural conflict potential: that's when stuff gets unstable, and people try to push for more favourable knowledge or repair what they have (as it's been useful so far). The most prominent example currently, I think, is the gender discourse. The need to express certainty hints at conflict. Things that actually are certain don't even need to be thought. And that's a problem with the current gender discourse: there are people who are forced to think of gender nearly always, and people for whom the binary is so certain that they don't even understand what others are talking about, with all sorts inbetween.

For an example of shared knowledge that nearly no-one questions in daily life, look at money. (Things might be different in specialised context like the stock market. I don't know enought to even speculate.) Certain aspects of language come to mind; for example, every native speaker of English knows that English is an accusative-nominative language, which they demonstrate just by speaking. That knowledge is embedded in the praxis of speaking, though. Most people don't know that they know that; they don't know it could be different (you'd need to be either interested in linguistics, or speak a language that's ergative-absolutive, like Basque).

So finally:

But if it is meaningful to speak of an entailment as forcing or necessitating a conclusion, doesn't this have to happen in a mind, in conjunction with some W2 thoughts? — J

Yes and no. Again you need to step from the mental level to the social level. An entailment doesn't force a conclusion in any given individual's W2. There's ignorance; there's making mistakes, etc. But all these things only make sense before a social background; there has to be someone to plausibly be able to convince you that you're ignorant, wrong, etc. by demonstrating what it is like to be right. Unsuccessful demonstrations cause social unrest, and you have predictable conflict which is also part of the knowledge. Think again about the gender discourse, people on the extreme ends may not understand each other, but what they have in common is their mutual knowledge that they won't find agreement. Which makes much of the posturing performative for their own knowledge group.

There are many measures of the stability of social facts (W3 objects): for example, do we tend to trust the experts? Do we just act on knowledge without topicalising it? And so on.

Sociologists often speak of "consensus" here, but it's mostly not a conscious act of agreeing. Much of it is a tacit performance of the way things are. The less it's questioned the more stable it is (think for example toilet training). There could be a social scale of stability for W3 objects:

Things that most people agree upon, and disagreement is a form of stigma to reinforce the status quo.
Things that people take for granted that opportunities to agree or disagree rarely arise.
Things that people take for granted so much that most people don't know it could be different.

W3 objects do ultimately rely on W2 activity, but there's never really a context where a single mind's enough.

So:

If there is mental causation, perhaps we require some kind of instantiation or embodiment (en-mind-ment?) of the entailing propositions in order to effect the conclusion. Someone has to think it. — J

Rather than "Someone has to think it," think "many people have to know it," where knowledge isn't some "justified true belief", but the capability to successfully complete social situations. You can't buy something from someone who doesn't know how to sell.

One important difference between knowledge and thought is that knowledge is continually present in the background (unless forgotten) and only activates when situationally relevant. (You could, I suppose, assume that knowledge doesn't persist but comes into being again every time we need it, but that doesn't sound plausible to me.) Meanwhile thought is situated much more episodically. This is why stuff that persists in W3 must be known but can go a long time without being thought. It mustn't be forgotten, and must be passed on to the next generation of minds to persist.

Furthermore, because what one mind "knows" (in the social sense) can be wrong only because there are people who know differently, So as long as enough people know that 5+7=12, entailment will pertain. This is an iterative process; a chicken-egg situation if you will. People know what they learn, and they teach what they know. And just like with chicken and eggs the process allows for change. What one generation teaches isn't necessarily what the next generation learns, but it could be close enough that the difference only surface in concrete situations once it's too late.

There's a hierarchy of dependence from W1 to W3. You need W1 for W2 and W2 for W3, but neither W2 nor W3 is necessary for W1 to exist. Influence, however, can go the other way. W3 can influence W2 and W2 can influence W1. It's this asymmetry that makes me think the difference between causation and influence could be vital to pin down. To put it in concrete terms: I don't think "Matter causes minds," and "Money causes anxiety," use the word cause in the same way. But I can't pin down a concrete difference.

I haven't heard of that one; thanks for bringing it up. I was vaguely aware of research, but nothing drug related. — Dawnstorm

I have not been able to find anything on that particular experiment. I wonder if I'm remembering it correctly after all these years.

I wonder if those who do not think in words have these sub-vocalizations.

We don't need to understand how thought can be brain activity, only that thought is brain activity. — hypericin

I see what you mean, but when I spoke about "understanding mental causation," I intended to include the how as well as the fact of it. To me, that would provide true, complete understanding.

I agree that '12' would be the most common association, my point was only that it is not, by any means, the only possible association. If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem. — Janus

Causation is often distinguished from correlation (association?) with the idea that to qualify as causal, when X occurs Y must occur. — Janus

This highlights a problem with "cause" language in this context. Certainly "7 + 5" is not a necessary cause of "12" (assuming it's causal at all). Nor is it a sufficient cause, though, as has been argued, it's a very likely one. If we end up saying that whatever follows from the thought of "7 + 5" has been caused by that thought, doesn't this amount to saying that only a W2 thought can be causative? That is, the propositional or meaning content of the thought can lead to anything, so no causation is involved at that level.

Are the thoughts Keynes thinks in things, or rather complex dynamic sequences of events? — wonderer1

The latter, and surely Keynes would agree. Our linguistic habits tend to reify processes or events into discrete "things" or objects so we can talk about them more readily.

This highlights a problem with "cause" language in this context. Certainly "7 + 5" is not a necessary cause of "12" (assuming it's causal at all). Nor is it a sufficient cause, though, as has been argued, it's a very likely one. If we end up saying that whatever follows from the thought of "7 + 5" has been caused by that thought, doesn't this amount to saying that only a W2 thought can be causative? That is, the propositional or meaning content of the thought can lead to anything, so no causation is involved at that level. — J

I don't think that's right. The propositional or meaning content of the thought can't lead to anything. It can only lead to certain things for anyone, and the things it can lead to for you are not necessarily the same things it can lead to for me.

Compare it with a pool table. The cue ball, 8 ball, and corner pocket are in a straight line. Hit the cue straight into the 8, and the 8 goed in the pocket.

That doesn't mean every time you hit the cue ball straight into the 8, it will go into the corner pocket. The three are not always in a straight line. Sometimes there are other balls between the 8 and the pocket. Nevertheless, wherever the 8 ends up, having been hit by the cue ball is always the cause. At least having been hit by the cue ball is always a big factor in where it ends up.

Getting the thought 7 + 5 in your head is getting hit by the cue ball. Which specific thought it causes depends on the layout of the table. Meaning your past experiences with "7 + 5" specifically, your past experiences with math in general, and even non-math considerations (now to include my connecting 7 + 5 and Castro). But the thought of 7 + 5 is always the cause, or where you end up.


I have had an idea for a story for many years. People in a certain area seen to be going crazy. Many people are found talking nonsense. Strings of seemingly unconnected words. It is eventually noticed that they are all speaking the same string of seemingly unconnected words. It turns out they have all been in an extensive, recently discovered cave that contains various archaeologically interesting things. Glyphs, carvings, textures on the walls, containers of scented things. It turns out that, seeing and smelling these things in the order you encounter them while walking through the cave inevitably leads all people to a specific chain of thoughts, because the chain of stimuli acts upon things in the psyche common to all humans. (I suppose a civilization was wiped out. As people become caught in the chain of thoughts, they become incapable of breaking out of it, and stop eating.)

I don't think that's right. The propositional or meaning content of the thought can't lead to anything. — Patterner

I thought your Castro example was meant to show the opposite. Or perhaps we're debating shades of meaning, because I also agree that "certain things for anyone" is a valid way of putting it. It's just that these "certain things" are, as far as I can understand, limitless. Not random, though, which is perhaps your point.

My Castro example is demonstrating that the association can be anything. Because of my posts, If you get the thought "7 + 5", you will soon have the thought "Castro". "7 + 5" will have caused "Castro". Possibly even if you just have the thought "12" for any other reason. Obviously, the association is necessary. You now have an association.

I guess not all thoughts are caused by thoughts. If I see a cloud that I think looks like Godzilla, I wouldn't say a thought caused the thought of Godzilla. Sensory input and memory caused it.

We can make sentences that have never been thought before. Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145. I think we can be reasonably sure that's the first time that sentence was ever thought, spoken, or written. While constructing it, I intentionally discarded anything that came to me from my surroundings. I believe no part of the sentence was was inspired by anything at all. I wanted a sentence that was entirely out of the blue. So what caused the thought of a giant mushroom festival in Kathmandu in 2145?

I happened to run across this, in Peirce:

Ideas tend to spread continuously, and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. — Collected Papers, 6.202

"Affectibility" is yet another near-synonym, like "relationship" or "association" or "influence," a way of approaching the idea of "cause" without committing to it. It's also interesting that Peirce must have had propositions or other World 3 objects in mind here, since it wouldn't make much sense to suggest that my thought or your thought (qua W2 thoughts) could have this effect. What's needed is the content, the meaning, in order for the idea to "spread continuously." In fact, the very term "idea" already implies a separation from the psychologically grounded W2 thought.

In Susan Haack's essay on Peirce's "synechism," she provides this suggestion:

[Peirce believed] we should take "thought" and "mind" to refer to both the particular minds of particular organisms, and to the intelligible patterns, the Platonic Ideas, found in the formation of crystals or the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb. — in Putting Philosophy to Work, 83

Here again, the distinction between World 2 and World 3 thoughts. I wouldn't care to make an argument that there is a thought-like "intelligible pattern" to be found in aspects of Nature, as Haack thinks Peirce believed. But the idea that such patterns are outside of particular minds is the whole point of asking into whether, and how, they might be causative.

Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145. — Patterner

Yeah, saw that. It was on the internet. Why did you think you made it up? :wink:

I guess not all thoughts are caused by thoughts. — Patterner

Absolutely right. Those that are caused by previous thoughts are a special category. We can stretch the term "thought" until it snaps, but I agree with you (though I think @Dawnstorm would not) that whatever made you invent that sentence, it wasn't some previous thought standing in a causal relation. Dawnstorm might argue for a stream-of-thought, out of which the (linguistic) elements of your sentence popped up. But regardless of our terminology, you question is a good one: What caused that sentence (as a thought in your mind, that is, not in your post)? We're drawn to a World 2 explanation, aren't we? Some individual, particular elements in your mind and no other were the key links of the causal chain. But that's not quite right. The words and the grammar are available to all. But the absence of anything resembling entailment, or even rationality, is striking: no part of the sentence seems required by any other. (And of course it's ambiguous: Giant festival, or festival featuring giant mushrooms?)

Try to construct an explanation, assuming a sincere questioner asked you, "What caused you to think that sentence?" I wonder what you'd get. Would you wind up denying causality completely?

Try to construct an explanation, assuming a sincere questioner asked you, "What caused you to think that sentence?" I wonder what you'd get. Would you wind up denying causality completely? — J

I wish I could makes sense of it. What can have caused a sentence that I intentionally constructed to be unique to the world, whose parts are unrelated to each other, none of which came about because of any association that I am aware of? I'm now singing Cat Stevens' song in my head. But I wasn't before, and haven't for at least many months, so I think the sentence is the cause, and the song the effect.

We can make sentences that have never been thought before. Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145. — Patterner

We can make sentences that have no clear-cut meaning until you figure out later what they might mean. I'm not even joking. I used to write SF stories, and one of my exercises was to improvise meaningless sentences to world-build around. The only example I remember:

A couple of sinker limpets got hold of me, but then the afterwash set in.

The world I came up with was one with migrating lakes instead of rivers. (Never finished thinking this through, which is probably why I remember the sentence.)

The idea I have is that thinking words is one type of thought and thinking content another, and since they run together, you can't quite distinguish word-first content from content-first words. It is a proposition universally acknowledged, that a single sentence of good standing must be in want of a truth...

(And of course it's ambiguous: Giant festival, or festival featuring giant mushrooms?) — J

Yes, I thought of that, too. Reminds me of synthetic buffalo hides. :grin:

That's a fun exercise! And I think it's even more difficult to answer J's question regarding your sentence than my mushroom festival sentence:

Try to construct an explanation, assuming a sincere questioner asked you, "What caused you to think that sentence?" I wonder what you'd get. Would you wind up denying causality completely?
17h — J

Dawnstorm might argue for a stream-of-thought, out of which the (linguistic) elements of your sentence popped up. — J

I'm actually not ready to argue for anything yet. I'm still trying to find a way to describe what we're asking here. For example, if I were to stick with the stream metaphor, I might say that the stream isn't all there is - there's plenty of stuff that doesn't flow: the river bed, sediment, big heavy objects that cause turbulence...

My pre-occupation at that time is simply that it's hard to pin down what about the stuff that surrounds the readily-accessible sentence is thought and what isn't. And my major concern, as I think I said before (though I might have done so in a deleted response...), is that we shouldn't confuse the stability of the sentence-form with stability of sentence meaning.

Adding a 3-worlds-model on top here complicates things because now the sentence-meaning multiplies, even just from the production point of view:

A primal W2 element - what triggers the sentence productions

A W2 object triggered by the sentence - the expectation of what the W3 object is meaning to a generalised other - did I say it right?

A realigned W2 object based on using the sentence W2 object - I think I meant to say what I think others will hear.

The re-aligned W2 object is something I see people rarely pay attention to. The thing is that I suspect the re-aligned W2 object can but needn't replace the primal W2 object. The primal W2 object drives your actions while the re-aligned W2 object comes up when you need to legitimise your actions. In some cases that might lead to others seeing you as a hypocrite, while you're incapable seeing yourself as such (as your world view integrates both W2 objects as unproblematic).

Take for example grammar. It's easy to use but hard to analyse. You mention the "giant mushroom festiveal" ambiguity. Is the mushrum festival giant or are the mushrooms giant? Phrasing the ambiguity like this makes it a semantic ambiguity, but there's also a syntanctic ambiguity [giant[mushroom festival]] or [[gaint mushroom]festival], where the brackets mark constiutients ("Immediate Constituent Analysis" if you're curious). There's a different ambiguity in the whole clause, that's an obvious syntactic ambiguity, a subtle semantic ambiguity (one of emphasis probably), and rarely ever a situationally relevant ambiguity:

[[Kathmandu] [will be] [the site [of a giant mushroom festival]] [in the year 2145].] vs. [[Kathmandu] [will be] [the site of [a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145]].]

The syntactic ambiguity concerns whether "in the year 2145" is an adverbial to the clauses verb phrase, or whether it's part of the noun phrase. In either case, the festival takes place in 2145, but where in the sentence we express this changes. My hunch is that most people will have the first syntactic reading as the ad-hoc reading. But what if I replied:

A giant mushroom festival in the year 2145 is unlikely, but if it did take place Kathmandu would make for a good site.

I now copied the exact string of words, but there's now no syntactic ambiguity anymore.

If the sentence represents the thought, what about the instinctive syntactic reading of what "in the year 2145" attaches to? Is this a "thought"? Is this some background linguistic mental behaviour yet to be named, but not falling under "thought"? Is this an aspect of your model of all thought that includes linguistic aspects?

Sometimes the syntactically easier parsing is at odds with the intended syntactic perception. Take garden path sentences, where you miss the end of a unit and don't notice until the sentence either fails to parse or gives a clearly unintended reading (e.g. "The old man the boat.")

So, how many sentences can express the same thought, then?

For example: In 2145 there will be a giant mushroom festival in Kathmandu.

Same thought? The difference in formality expressed by the more conversational wording - part of the thought, or part of the thought's context?

I sort of need to answer questions like these before I can start building a model. Given that I myself have never really had cause to wonder whether thoughts can cause thoughts before reading this thread (I actually might have read similar threads in the past, but for simplicity's sake let's pretend I haven't) so I have no intuitive substratus here. I'm still trying to figure out what the topic is.