Thought can refer to the ideas or arrangements of ideas that result from thinking, the act of producing thoughts, or the process of producing thoughts. In spite of the fact that thought is a fundamental human activity familiar to everyone, there is no generally accepted agreement as to what thought is or how it is created. Because thought underlies many human actions and interactions, understanding its physical and metaphysical origins, processes, and effects has been a longstanding goal of many academic disciplines including artificial intelligence, biology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Thinking allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience, and to make predictions about that world. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts to accomplish those goals. Etymology and usage The word comes from Old English þoht, or geþoht, from stem of þencan "to conceive of in the mind, consider".[1] The word “thought” may mean[2],:[3] a single product of thinking or a single idea (“My first thought was ‘no.’”) the product of mental activity (“Mathematics is a large body of thought.”) the act or process of thinking (“I was frazzled from too much thought.”) the capacity to think, reason, imagine, etcetera (“All her thought was applied to her work.”) the consideration of or reflection on an idea (“The thought of death terrifies me.”) recollection or contemplation (“I thought about my childhood.”) half-formed or imperfect intention (“I had some thought of going.”) anticipation or expectation (“She had no thought of seeing him again.”) consideration, attention, care, or regard (“He took no thought of his appearance” and "I did it without thinking.") judgment, opinion, or belief (“According to his thought, honesty is the best policy.”) the ideas characteristic of a particular place, class, or time (“Greek thought”) the state of being conscious of something ("It made me think of my grandmother.") tending to believe in something, especially with less than full confidence ("I think that it will rain, but I am not sure.") Definitions may or may not require that thought take place within a human brain (see anthropomorphism), take place as part of a living biological system (see Alan Turing and Computing Machinery and Intelligence), take place only at a conscious level of awareness (see unconscious thought theory), require language, is principally or even only conceptual, abstract ("formal"), involve other concepts such as drawing analogies, interpreting, evaluating, imagining, planning, and remembering. Definitions of thought may also be derived directly or indirectly from theories of thought. ↑Jump back a section Theories “Outline of a theory of thought-processes and thinking machines” (Caianiello)[4] – thought processes and mental phenomena modeled by sets of mathematical equations Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking (Hofstadter and Sander)[5] – a theory built on analogies The Neural Theory of Language and Thought (Feldman and Lakoff)[6] – neural modeling of language and spatial relations ThoughtForms—The Structure, Power, and Limitations of Thought (Baum)[7] – a theory built on mental models Unconscious Thought Theory[8],[9] – thought that is not conscious ↑Jump back a section Philosophy Main article: Phenomenology (philosophy) Main article: Philosophy of mind “ What is most thought- provoking in these thought- provoking times, is that we are still not thinking.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 13:26:22 +0000
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