So here is a restatement of the issues in the OP, as influenced and I hope clarified by the subsequent discussion.

1) I began by saying that the question of “thought-to-thought” causation should be understood in the context of psychologism vs. logicism. I still think this is a possible approach, but most of the discussion focused on the Popperian vocabulary of World 2 and World 3 objects/processes, so I’ll stick with that.

2) The OP assumes an overly binary version of how we have to understand what a thought is. This was partly for purposes of simplification and tractability, but also partly because I hadn’t deeply considered some of the points about “streams of thought” and non-verbal thoughts that subsequently arose. I proposed that when we have the ordinary mental experience of first thinking “I wonder how Ann is doing” and then “It’s her birthday soon; I must get her a present,” we must choose between seeing these thoughts as either psychological events in my mind, or as propositions that could find expression – and possibly necessitation of some sort – in anyone’s mind. And this is fair enough, but it suggests that “thought” must come equipped with certain properties it may not have, especially linguistic expression. The problems that @Dawnstorm and others raised about this are exigent.

3) So what does the question “Can a thought cause another thought?” really ask? I now believe it’s a question about a certain kind of thought, namely a thought that has been expressed linguistically and is thus a candidate for being described in propositional, World 3 terms. But not all thoughts are like this. If we ask, “But what caused the original thought about Ann?” we are giving proper importance to this point – what “caused” (if this is even appropriate) the original thought may have been completely non-verbal, but nonetheless a thought if we allow “thought” to cover many more mind-events than the OP suggested was possible. And I’m inclined to think we should.

4) Now there’s the danger that the discussion will swerve into a terminological dispute. Let’s avoid that. I don’t much care about deriving a precise definition of what a thought is, or what are the correct ways of using the term “thought.” I’m happy to narrow my questions about mental-to-mental causation to a certain type of thought; call it a J-thought. Such a thought is one that can be given a description in either World 2 or World 3 terms – thus, it is likely linguistic, or at least a linguistic thought would be the type-specimen of a J-thought. So my initial question is now: “Can one J-thought cause another, and if so, is this by virtue of a World 2 relationship, a World 3 relationship, or some combination?” And lurking behind this question is another, broader one, which has also been raised repeatedly here: If causation isn’t a very good model of what happens when we think J-thoughts, then can we come up with a better description, something more contentful than merely “association” or “affinity”?

Happy to forge on, or of course we can let it go at this point.

It’s not that humans have to or ought to see others as similar to themselves, it’s that they tend to and are capable of seeing them that way. — T Clark

Oh, I definitely agree about the tendency and the capacity. It's just that, if I happen to be one of those lacking that tendency or capacity, we've pulled all the ethical teeth out of the argument if you can't say to me, "But here's why you ought to" (or perhaps, "Here's why you should at least behave as if you did"). Otherwise, ethical injunctions only apply to those who have the proper tendencies and capacities. But it's the very ones who don't that we'd most like to persuade, if we can.

This ought is not a choice — Joshs

Well, OK. So if I were to say to someone, "You ought to ____ [filling in your description of what you call the intrinsic striving for self-expression]," that would be pointless, since they're doing it anyway?

1. It is true that we ought to choose the better over the worse.
2. X is better than Y.
C. Thus, we ought to choose Y. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I know we've been here before, but I have to point out that this could only be true if "better than" is defined as "should be chosen" or "is worthy [?] of choice," in which case the alleged argument becomes a tautology ("We ought to choose what we ought to choose"). But if "is better than" is given an independent interpretation from "should be chosen," then the argument merely shows that the "ought" premise in needed in order to get to the "ought" conclusion. How do you justify the first premise? Why is it morally obligatory to choose the better over the worse? -- that question needs to be answered without reference, overt or covert, to what is worthy of choice; otherwise it just goes in circles.

Yet even after centuries of this, we still don't use the word "ought" in this way. "You ought to try the chicken," or "she likes you, you ought to ask here out," do not imply "you are morally obligated to eat this chicken," or "you are morally obligated to ask our friend out on a date." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course they don't. That's why they aren't moral injunctions. Whereas "You ought to help the poor" is. Is there a reason why "ought" can't have both moral and non-moral uses? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "we still don't use the word 'ought' exclusively in this way"? For why should we? -- surely the deontological ethicists weren't recommending that.

We care about others because we see them as like ourselves, which allows us to relate to them, learn from them, expand the boundaries of our sense of self. — Joshs

I agree with the thrust of your post, and I personally share the sentiment quoted above. But . . . suppose I don't? Suppose I don't see others as like myself, and am not interested in relating to them or expanding my sense of self. Are you arguing that I ought to? If not, what does this have to do with ethics and morality, with doing the right thing or pursuing the good or however one cares to phrase it?

I don't know anything at all about Popper. I only heard his name for the first time recently, in another thread, and haven't been able to make head or tail out of what you two are saying about his Worlds. — Patterner

Sorry, perhaps we should have elaborated more. Fortunately it's a pretty easy concept to grasp.

He proposes a novel form of pluralistic realism, a “Three Worlds” ontology, which, while accommodating both the world of physical states and processes (world 1) and the mental world of psychological processes (world 2), represents knowledge in its objective sense as belonging to world 3, a third, objectively real ontological category. That world is the world

'of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or theories, and mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies; paintings and sculptures.]' (1980: 144)

In short, world 3 is the world of human cultural artifacts, which are products of world 2 mental processes, usually instantiated in the physical world 1 environment. — SEP article on Popper

This schema, which at first glance seems a bit rough and simplistic, proves surprisingly useful as a way to at least get a foothold in these ontological distinctions.

So, for thoughts, we have a World 2 event -- a "psychological process" -- and, often, a World 3 event as well -- language, math, often expressed as propositions and entailments.

Perhaps the moral system of human society is itself an adaptive tool formed under evolutionary pressures to promote group survival and reproduction. In other words, morality is a cultural apparatus that "serves the fundamental purpose." — panwei

Your OP is a well-stated version of an evolutionary explanation for morality. As such, it's open to the usual objections, which I think are correct.

First, let's assume that we really could come up with the ideal "natural" or "socially adaptive" or "evolutionarily coded" description of how humans may best flourish. Conceivably, you could take this description and apply it to the species in general, saying "For the species to flourish, this is what must happen." But a species is not a moral agent; it doesn't know about terms like "ought" or "should." But individuals do, and at the individual level, the same old problem arises: Why should I, an individual, care about the flourishing of the species? For that matter, I may not care much about my own flourishing -- and if I don't, what is the argument that I ought to? What makes it right for me to do so? You need some previous moral premises (involving an ethical preference for life over death, happiness over pain) in order to make that work. Now of course, as a matter of fact, most of us do prefer happiness to pain, but not because it's ethically right to do so. It just feels better -- and that's only a moral reason if you can make the argument that feeling better is the right thing to pursue, ethically.

Second, it seems all too clear that what's been selected by evolution for human behavior isn't a reliable guide to morality anyway. You refer to "a factually given setting at the level of biological mechanism." Well, just to pick one such setting, heterosexual men are hardwired to find nubile young women/girls sexually desirable. There are obvious advantages to being able to begin reproduction as early as possible, and a 13-year-old girl will likely be strong and healthy too, suggesting healthy offspring. But most cultures now regard such a program as immoral. Why? What is the reasoning that would show us -- rightly -- that childbearing at such a young age is an immoral hardship to impose on a girl? To make such an argument, you have to weight different "natural" features of our species, and make an ethical decision about which ones to take as guides. In short, "ought" and "should" must again be introduced; there is no "specific type of 'is'" that can help us.

I understand Russell's and Pryor's interpretations. I'm still not clear on how something can be neither particular nor universal. Also, why "not universal" isn't the same as "particular" -- this is perhaps just another way of phrasing the first unclarity. "Fa v ∀xGx is not universal" . . . and yet, as you show, {Fa v ∀xGx, ¬Fa} is not particular. This is hard to understand. It makes sense using the "rows" illustration, but not conceptually or intuitively; it seems like a paradox. Probably I should wait for your "more on this later."

If causation language is biased towards world 1, then how should we model thought, if we want to focus on world 2. Does that seem like a fair description of the confusion this thread is in (or is just me overthinking things again...) — Dawnstorm

I want to hear @Patterner's response, but I'll just jump in to say that I do think it's a fair description of the confusion -- or at any rate the uncertainty -- with which I began, and which prompted me to start the thread in the first place. I don't know that anyone's responses has made it any worse, or that there would have been a clearer path to follow. I'm still working on my own restatement of the OP question. . .

The knitting analogy is a bit clunky, — Banno

No, I found it helpful.

Prior's Dilemma — Banno

A question here. If we agree, as we should, that Fa v UxGx is not universal, how does that help in addressing the second version of Prior's counterexample, the one that derives UxGx? UxGx is a universal, correct? And ¬Fa is particular. So we're getting a universal conclusion from (1) a premise that is not universal [Fa v UxGx] and (2) a premise that is particular [¬Fa]. When you speak of "sentences which are neither universal nor particular," I assume that Fa v UxGx is such a sentence. But how does its not being universal mean that we haven't derived a universal from a particular? Is the idea that both premises must be particular, in order to claim to have derived a universal from a particular?

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic is. — Dawnstorm

so far, this discussion looks to me like a solution in search of a problem. — SophistiCat

I just want to note that I understand these comments. For me, they point to two things: First, the difficulty of adapting our concepts of causality on the one hand, and the mental on the other, to even frame a sensible question. And second, as we've already noticed, the disconcerting way in which a perfectly simple (!) query -- Can a thought cause another thought? -- quickly expands into large theoretical questions, most of which we have at best tentative answer to.

Nevertheless, I'm going to try to post a reformulation of my initial OP question, in light of the very interesting discussion that's ensued. Hopefully later today.

Do we need to analyze thoughts in terms of causation? — SophistiCat

To this, I'd say no, we don't. I'm quite open to other hypotheses about the "relations," "affinities," "influences," "associations," et al. among thoughts. The only line I'd draw in the sand would be: We mustn't talk as if we already understand this issue, or as if there is no issue.

Ah, OK, much clearer, and now I understand why the 1st diagram seemed counter-intuitive. I hadn't understood that only the single, designated F was a. So of course the addition of something that is ¬F can't change anything with respect to a.

Carry on.

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?

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.

How's that? I'll look for a good analogue as well. — Banno

Pretty sure I get it, thanks. An example with English nouns and predicates would help too, I think. Or maybe this is what you mean by a good analogue. (The most counter-intuitive aspect, for me, is the very first step, in which Fa remains true even though ¬F has been added to the domain.)

Good luck with your vine. :smile:

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.

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.

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."

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 . . .

However, in the case of a normally sighted person, how do you (or they) check that the purple cow that they are imagining is indeed imagined to be purple? — Pierre-Normand

I think this is the wrong question, though it's invited by the way I framed the problem. Better to have said, "What conceivable public criterion could there be that would tell me whether you are, at this moment, imagining what you believe to be a purple cow?" The point is not the accuracy of the image -- indeed, you may have got purple all wrong, or cows -- but the inaccessibility of the 1st person experience.

Notice that nothing I've said about the public criteria the determination of the content of acts of imagination depend on impugns the notion that the person imagining them has first person authority. She's the one to be believed when she claims that the cow she imagines looks "like that" while pointing at the public sample. — Pierre-Normand

This too is not quite what I'm talking about. Imagine instead that she is silent, does no pointing, etc. The question is, Is there any public criterion that will verify whether she is, at this moment, imagining the cow? If we agree that there is not, does it follow that there is some doubt about whether she is doing so (doubt, that is, in her own mind)? I don't see how. The fact that the concepts and language for "purple cow" were and are public, and were learned in community, doesn't seem to me to have a bearing on the example.

I'll come back to the issues of public criteria for intentions, as they may apply to LLMs, later. — Pierre-Normand

Great. I'd like to hear more about that.

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.

I’m drawing on Rödl’s Kantian distinction between knowledge from receptivity and knowledge from spontaneity. Empirical knowledge is receptive: we find facts by observation. But avowals like "I believe…" or "I intend…" are paradigms of spontaneous knowledge. We settle what to believe or do, and in settling it we know it not by peeking at a private inner state but by making up our mind (with optional episodes of theoretical of practical deliberation). — Pierre-Normand

"I believe" and "I intend" are convenient examples to support this position, because they have no "content" apart from a kind of imprimatur on decision or action. But most mental life will not fit such an example. When I imagine a purple cow, I am, precisely, peeking at a private inner state to discover this. A (mental) purple cow is not a belief or an intention. It is an image of a purple cow. I've never understood how the Wittgensteinian public-criteria position can address this. What conceivable public criterion could there be that would tell me whether you are, at this moment, imagining a purple cow? (assuming you remain silent about it).

It's not causation. It's memory retrieval. — L'éléphant

Could you expand on this? I have Thought A and then retrieve a memory so as to have Thought B? Why that particular memory?

Causation is physical. — L'éléphant

We can stipulate that, certainly. Do you think there's an argument for why it must be the case, or does it represent a kind of bedrock commitment to how to understand the concept?

From a phenomenological perspective associations would not seem to be rigid or precise. — Janus

Agreed. The term is vague for the very reason that it can cover so many varieties.

As to whether they are causal, if all our thoughts are preceded by neural activity, then the activation of one network which we might be conscious of as an association would presumably have a causal relationship with the neural network which it is experienced by us as being associated with. — Janus

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?

I prefer: mental events supervene on physical events because they are two perspectives on the same thing. — hypericin

Good, though of course "perspectives" needs a lot of filling in.

Both are equally causative because both refer to the same reality. — hypericin

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. "Equally causative" could be understood either way.

I think what you're describing is close to the truth, but as you say:

How the very same thing can be framed as a brain event or a mental event is just the hard problem. — hypericin

Which leads back to my observation that we probably can't pick and choose different threads of this tangled web and claim to understand them while remaining ignorant about the others. We may need an entire comprehensive theory of consciousness before we'll understand what we now call, rather gropingly, mental causation. But we also need good philosophical analysis of the current concepts, so maybe we can do something useful in the interim.

Gee, coming attractions! Thanks. :smile:

Maybe I'm not explaining it well. I guess it hinges on two different senses of "necessary." If I say "The squirrel is in the tree, therefore it must be the case that the squirrel is in the tree," surely that's wrong? It happens to be the case, and now that it is the case, it can't not be the case, but we want necessity to capture something else, don't we? Something more like "The squirrel is in the tree, and it is, and was, necessary that the squirrel be in the tree" -- which I take to be the same idea as "it must be the case that . . ." Neither of these formulations are true, or so it seems to me. That's all I meant.

there is a difference between the modal instance and the temporal instance. They are not the same. — Banno

True. But the alleged modal counter-example has to make use of a qualifier or caveat about time, doesn't it? "Because p, it is necessarily the case that p", expanded, means "It is necessarily the case now that p". Otherwise, the modal necessity is very weak; this is the "fishy" aspect of saying of absolutely anything that obtains, that it therefore must do so.

I'll watch for your post on the proof strategy.

Yes. It's hard to deny -- and why would we want to? -- that those of us who thought "12" did so because we previously thought "7 + 5". Now, as @Dawnstorm points out, for this to work we require some mental paraphernalia: recognition of numeral symbols, the concept of addition, and probably a familiarity with what to expect, at the level of writing, when two numbers are shown as joined by the addition symbol. But this only shows that the causation involved here isn't necessary or sufficient for everyone. And, as I wrote above, we needn't even insist on the term "cause". All that matters is that we can say, "If you had not shown me '7 + 5', I would not have thought '12'." That's the cause-like relation I want to explore.

So why is any of this a problem? Isn't your straightforward description adequate?

Here's how I would put the problem: We don't know how mental events can cause anything. We don't know if this happens by virtue of what they mean -- which I think is your suggestion -- or because of some other property. We like to conceive of an entire world of meanings "in our heads": thoughts and images and memories all influencing and generating each other. What I'm calling the logical or propositional version of this would endow the meanings/contents/propositional content of thought with causal power. The psychological version, in contrast, would call this hopelessly mysterious, and insist that the causal relations must lie elsewhere -- @Dawnstorm's "stream of thought", perhaps. And this is to ignore the physical-reduction model (as I promised I would, since I think it's wrong) which says that only brain events can cause other brain events, period, end of story -- the "meanings" are free riders of some sort.

If I'm right that you see a clear explanatory connection between Thought A ("7 + 5") and Thought B ("12"), can you say more about the causation involved? How does A cause B? Where does such a relation occur?

A fascinating response. I appreciate your spending the time on it.

There's a lot to reply to, but let me start with the important point you raise about where to place language in our model of thought. 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. So:

Thinking of Ann -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing -> Production of World3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" — Dawnstorm

Next, this W3 linguistic object may (though it needn't) "exert an influence" on the stream-of-Ann thoughts (which, to repeat, are understood as W2 objects) so as to generate a W2 thought about Ann's birthday, which gives rise to the W3 proposition "It's her birthday soon". You ask, sensibly:

there could be some causal connection ([but] how do we differentiate between cause, influence and trigger, for starters). — Dawnstorm

I can't decide if this matters. In my OP I tried to use phrases such as "cause-like" or "influence" in addition to "cause," to show that I wasn't committed to a strict view of what a cause must be, in this context. Suppose we accept the premise -- "there could be some causal connection" -- and take it as written that we're including a whole family of verbs like "trigger," "influence," "give rise to," "generate" etc. The important point seems to be that a counter-factual explanation can be offered using any of them.

You also raise this problem:

Is the thought "I wonder [how] Ann is doing" viewed as a type that anyone can have? Is it the thought that's in your brain? Is it the World 3 words and its associated proposition? — Dawnstorm

In raising this, are you asking whether linguistic expressions using indexicals can be shared types? That's a sub-problem, and an interesting one; I'm not sure. 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? I wouldn't say so, but your model may insist on it. I'd stay closer to our common way of speaking: When I say, "This morning, I thought about how Ann is doing", I'm saying both that I had the mentalese, W2 experience we're both trying to pin down, and that I formed the thought into words. In doing so, it remained a thought, thought it's now arguably crossed over into the human-made world of linguistic artifacts.

Actually, let me stop right here and ask whether I'm understanding you. I don't want to maunder on if I haven't grasped your basic points. (And I'll come back to your issues about how fixed a W3 object must be, and whether entailment can be fitted comfortably into this scheme.)

I get it. And, in reverse, all the muddle-making issues about physical cause show up when we try to understand mental causation! The "OP format" on TPF probably just isn't expansive enough to do rigorous work on this, but each of us is trying, in our own ways, to find a tractable problem. We'll see how it goes . . .

I suppose it can be argued that your initial thought about Ann did not cause your second thought about her. It can also be argued that it did, but I think there's a much stronger argument that the thought "7 + 5" caused the thought 12 — Patterner

Great. That's exactly what I'd like to hear about: Can we give a sense of causality to entailment or logical equivalence?

I've read the first section of Russell's paper. Do you find the putative counter-examples persuasive? They seem fishy to me, but I don't know how to give them a strictly logical refutation. Presumably Russell will go on to do this. In particular -- and this has come up in several previous threads on TPF -- we have the idea that, because p, it is necessarily the case that p. It evidently requires a temporal qualifier, though: It is necessarily the case now that p. P was not necessary until it became actual. Furthermore -- and this is the part I'm really dubious about -- it invokes an idea of necessity that seems at odds with how we think about necessity overall. I'm not saying that "Because p, therefore not not-p" is wrong. That is indeed a kind of necessity. But this "necessity of actuality," to coin a phrase, doesn't address the questions about what constitutes non-temporal, definitional or lawlike necessity. It's more of a weak sister, a glancing acknowledgment that yes, once something happens, it can't unhappen. Do we need to worry about this as a counter-example to the thesis that "you can't get claims about how the world must be from the claims that merely state how it is"?

If you later come across one of those details in other circumstances they will cause a connection to the other event. — Sir2u

This is the key (problematic) statement. What sort of causality is involved here? Do you mean "cause" at the level of neuronal activity? Or does one idea cause the other? If so, how? Or -- if this were a matter of strict entailment -- does the first idea necessitate the other?

Looking at it in terms of semantics, I'd say the connections between thoughts is associative. There are many common, that is communally shared, associations between ideas. — Janus

I have no problem with that but, like talk of "relationships", are we really saying much when we say that connections between thoughts are associative? What we want to know is the nature(s) of those associations. And my question here is, specifically, can these associations include causal connections?

Looking at it from a physical perspective, the semantic relations could be physically instantiated as interconnections between neural networks. — Janus

Something like that, yes. In the OP I tried to sidestep the question of mind/brain, since it's so complicated and contentious. But it's like a fly that won't go away. Might it be the case that there is no tractable way to understand non-physical causation (if it exists) until we understand how a brain can be a mind? Could be. (Even phrasing it this way becomes controversial, of course.)

So what made you think of Ann (W2) in the first place? — Sir2u

It might be any number of things -- a picture, a scent, a dream, Proust's cookie, or, of course, a previous thought. I'm not suggesting that only a previous thought can cause a current thought. The OP is asking into what might be going on when such a situation does appear to occur.

And then there's "unheard thoughts" . . . see below.

That is I was automatically seeing "thinking of Ann" as a background process that instatiates as both A and B. Wondering how Ann is doing and her birthday are two different elements you could connect with Ann. — Dawnstorm

Ah, I see. No, that wasn't the situation I was presenting. To be more specific: Something brings the thought of Ann to mind (see above). The "thought of Ann" might be a mental image, or her name, a memory associated with her -- I can only call upon your agreement here that something happens to which we refer when we say "All at once I thought of Ann and [now the words enter] wondered how she was doing". So this is thought A. And this, in turn, begins the process of reminding or causing which produces thought B -- I must get her a birthday present.

I can't easily pin down a single thought. . . . So if you'd be excluding "unheard thoughts", I probably have little to contribute. — Dawnstorm

It does sound as if our mental processes are quite different, but I hope you'll stay on the thread anyway. The issue you're raising about "unheard" or background thoughts is definitely germane. I'm quite sure that some such thing goes on, just as you say (it may be part of what Nietzsche had in mind); I only hesitate to call them thoughts, preferring to reserve that term for what presents itself to awareness. But I'm happy to consider a different, broader categorization. Would you say that, in your "stream-of-Ann" thoughts, there is an element of causation that produces A, B, C, et al.? And can the surface-level thought A indeed cause thought B to rise up as well? Or is causality altogether the wrong way to think about this process?

Do all thoughts have or need a cause? — Sir2u

Good question. But do you mean "thoughts" understood as my W2 thoughts, or thoughts as propositions?

But first of all exactly what is a thought? Is it that voice we hear in our head, or do we have unheard thoughts as well? — Sir2u

I'm suggesting that "thought" can be understood in at least two ways. The "voice in the head" version would be what I'm calling a W2 thought. Unheard thoughts? I think not, for purposes of this discussion. (I'm assuming you mean "unheard" metaphorically, so it translates to "thoughts I'm not aware of having.")

Thoughts are like actions. They're a continuous process. — Copernicus

I agree, they are. So, as with actions, we tend to divide them up into identifiable segments, while allowing that the process is continuous. We can ask, How does thought A lead to/cause/remind us of thought B, in the same way that we can ask, How does my action of chewing a mouthful of food lead to/cause me to have a drink? There are still causal questions involved, or at least there may be.

Very interesting. I'll read Russell's paper.

I think you're onto something here. There's a particular type of thinking that is philosophical, though it's hard to state clearly. I would emphasize philosophy as questioning. We ask difficult questions and discover, to our dismay, that we may have to live with many of those questions, rather than claim definitive answers. What could be the purpose of such an activity? At the risk of sounding mystical, I would say that the "love of wisdom" enters at this point. Is true wisdom the ability to propound a series of answers to hard questions? Perhaps, rather, it's the realization of limits, a simultaneous embracing of rational inquiry and a willingness to know when to stop, and seek other means. Other means? Kindness, generosity, creativity, and courage are avenues of knowledge and self-transformation, in my experience.

Welcome to phil! I agree with all the advice about reading histories of philosophy, but here's a personal recommendation: Most phil is written in a more or less didactic style. You'll find premises, arguments, refutations . . . and all that is absolutely necessary for critical thinking. But also make time for three philosophers, great ones, who didn't write that way at all: Plato, Kierkegaard, and late Wittgenstein. If you read around in these three, you'll have your eyes opened to an entirely different sense of what "writing philosophy" can be.

Start by finding some question you really want answered. Then start reading around that. Make notes every time some fact or thought strikes you as somehow feeling key to the question you have in mind, you are just not quite sure how. Then as you start to accumulate a decent collection of these snippets – stumbled across all most randomly as you sample widely – begin to sort the collection into its emerging patterns. — apokrisis

I think this is excellent advice. I would add: When you encounter a point of view that seems, on first reading, just nonsense, immediately stop and try to enter that "nonsensical" point of view. Why would this (presumably respected and published) philosopher write such a thing? What could they be thinking, meaning? Don't move on until you feel you've made progress in understanding this alien way of thinking. I believe the single biggest error that newbie/amateur philosophers make is to fail to read generously and curiously. This leads to the kind of autodidacticism you've been warned about, and reinforces our natural unfortunate tendency to be dismissive of people we disagree with, without actually understanding how or why the disagreement comes about.

. . . The second is monism, which holds that mind and matter are not two separate kinds of things at all, but rather that consciousness is a particular organization or pattern within the physical, not something over and above it. — tom111

Is there any reason why we couldn't equally well say, "The physical is a particular organization within consciousness, not something over and above [or beneath] it"? Monism is describable either way, it seems to me, without requiring giving explanatory priority to a physical substrate.

@Banno@Janus@Count Timothy von Icarus @Ludwig V @Sam26
Thanks, and coincidentally, I also have to be offline for 2 weeks, as I'm going out of the country. Appreciate the conversation and look forward to chatting with everyone when I get back.