Mental images are representations of concepts, ideas, places, or objects within a mind, whether still or in motion. This category is where a great deal of thought can reside. I can perceive images and sequences of images in my mind that have nothing to do with what my eyes are perceiving if open, whether those images or sequences are recollections of past events or things which my imagination has conjured up. These images can be perceived while I sleep in the form of dreams, while I am actively looking at something, or while I am awake with my eyes closed.
Another type of thinking is what I call "mental audio". I may listen to an inner voice, perhaps even having a conversation with myself completely inside my mind, or I might imagine music and rhythms, whether recalled or invented by me at that moment. I do not hear an external voice with my ears when experiencing the presence of this inner voice which I can invite or dismiss at will, nor do I hear actual music from external stimuli when I imagine it. These events are purely mental activities, involving nothing from my sense of hearing. I can also formulate ideas by using my inner voice to speak to myself and not by using mental images, although both can certainly appear together.
Attitudes, though they can exist independently of mental images and audio, are activities of the mind and thus qualify as thoughts. Included in this category would be emotions and mental states of frustration, concentration, indifference, love, excitement, and so forth--all things that have to do with my disposition towards an object or person or thought beyond me just perceiving or imagining it. My will also has more to do with this category than any of the other three. Since my will has to do with what I desire and what I desire has to do with my attitudes, my will represents a significant member of this category of thought.
Sensory perceptions also qualify as types of thought, although they differ from the contents of the previous categories in that they pertain to the senses as well as the mind. Mental images and mental audio could exist in a mind even if that mind did not inhabit any body at all. Nothing about them requires that I have a body to experience them. But without the senses housed in my physical body, I could not have sensory perceptions pertaining to things like temperature, touch, hearing, balance, or pain [1], although the sense of sight in particular could be replicated to some degree on a wholly mental level (due to the similarity between mental images and images viewed through the sense of sight). Even so, apart from my consciousness I would be unable to perceive this information from my senses; both physical senses and a mind with consciousness are required to experience sensory perceptions with the exception of sight. An entire branch of psychology called psychophysics addresses the differences and connections between physical objects and mental events. Stimuli in the external world are not the same as the perceptions of them experienced through the consciousness of the the mind. Thus, sensory perception is a type of thought (by the broader definition of thought used for the purpose of this post) because it cannot exist without the mind, and it can be experienced simultaneously alongside both mental images and an inner voice.
Since reasoning (in this case I mean active use of reasoning as opposed to immediate awareness of basic logical laws) can involve mental imagery or one's inner voice in the process, at first I was not going to separately treat reasoning. But, although reasoning definitely can and does overlap with the other categories defined and described here, it is possible to reason without using mental imagery or without at least intentionally using one's inner voice. Thus, it can stand on its own.
All of my conscious thoughts represent something from one of these five categories of mental images, mental audio, attitudes, sensory perceptions, or reasoning. There is no thought I can consciously experience that does not belong to one of these five types in some way. Thinking is an activity I am almost constantly engaged in on a conscious level, with some period of sleep being the only times I do not recall having conscious thoughts. I am, as Descartes would say, a "thinking thing," thought and consciousness the defining features of my mind.
[1]. Humans have more senses than just the traditionally mentioned five:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/more-than-five-senses.html
No comments:
Post a Comment