Thought is essentially processual — Count Timothy von Icarus
but it seems like a mistake here to take experience as being decomposable into smaller and smaller intervals, with certain parts having to follow others in serial order — Count Timothy von Icarus
Furthermore, "someone thinks therefore something is" is a phrase, it is hard to articulate (and perhaps that is the issue) how that phrase translates to thoughts, ¿is it a single thought or 2+ thoughts one after the other? If the latter, perhaps the first "something" is not the same as the second "something".
If the former, when we say "I think" in "I think therefore I am", we can be talking about "I think therefore I am" itself, then it can be taken as self-fulfilling. — Lionino
But then Descartes states not "I think therefore I am" but "'I am, I exist,’ is necessarily true whenever… it is conceived in my mind." — Lionino
Understanding seems to occur as a sort of parallel, composite process — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the issue might be conflating the process of developing a thought into a propositional form, and the experience of self-awareness itself. For example, in the passage from Augustine above he spends a paragraph unpacking inferences made from an experience of knowing and willing that occurs in an instant. These two are divided in propositional thought, yet if a line drive is hit to us while playing baseball, our experience doesn't seem to involve first knowing that the ball has been hit, then willing our body to move to catch it. We do all of these together, seamlessly knowing, willing, and acting. Likewise, in introspection we experience and experience our own experiencing together. — Count Timothy von Icarus
the task of decomposing thoughts on the axis of time is very troublesome, and I would be interested to know if there was ever a philosopher to undertake this task. — Lionino
Beyond the possibility of a mistake, the task of decomposing thoughts on the axis of time is very troublesome, and I would be interested to know if there was ever a philosopher to undertake this task. For example, when we think "red car", does that take less time than if we were to think "the happy swimmer dove into the shallow lake"? Surely one has many more concepts than the other, but ultimately — at least for me —, both give one single mental image that can be realised at a given instant of time. So is it a single thought when we say "X therefore Y" because we are uniting these concepts or is it the thought of X followed in time by the thought of Y? I expressed this worry before in the thread:
The existence of bodies, aka res extensa, is far from certain. — Lionino
But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place[...] — Second Meditation
It's more a noetic awareness of the thing. It might be cultivated and informed by propositional knowledge, but it's opposite is ignorance or lack of awareness of a term, not falsehood as in propositional thought. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is also why I think we can get endless milage out of some of the more poetic, vague philosophers. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The goal of understanding then is a sort of contemplative grasp that can then be used in the dividing and combining of discursive thought — Count Timothy von Icarus
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