Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Tim van Gelder on Conscious and Unconscious Thought

I belatedly discovered Tim van Gelder's wonderful post on a question that bears directly on the question of the relationship between "tacit inference and "explicit inference": Better thinking is not conscious, and not unconscious (Nov. 30, 2006)

3 comments:

Priit Parmakson said...

In many contexts, the truth value of the idea is not of absolute importance. In particular for ideas that have to be implemented to make them real (planning tasks, design tasks).

Commitment to the idea is one important characteristic. Maybe ideas that emerge through (partially) unconscious thinking are stronger in this respect.

Maybe unconscious thinking produces ideas that are STRUCTURALLY different from consciously produced thoughts?

Anonymous said...

If the best thoughts come in sleep, would not the Cartesian "Cogito, ergo sum" be in need of certain re-statement=

Unknown said...

We do much tacit inferential thinking while we're awake. For example, the brain of a player in a game makes complex calculations about the probable trajectory of the ball that another player has just kicked. (Of course, matters such as the workings of the retina also participate.)

Our brains are working while we're asleep but I know far too little about the brain, sleep, etc., to have a feel for the role of neural processes etc. during sleep to guess how they contribute to the drawing of inferences while we're awake. (It seems clear neural processes during sleep do play a role. I just don't know what they are.)