Concept
Thought
Overview
mental activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Thought is discussed.
Such perception, moreover, is strictly teleological, since it arises from an experienced need and functions to fulfil the purpose indicated by this need. The cognitional content is, indeed, carried by affectional and intentional contexts. Then we have perception as scientific observation.
John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Why, by a preliminary activity of thought which objectifies the impression. Blue as a mere sensuous irritation or feeling is given a quality, the meaning "blue"--blueness; the sense impression is objectified; it is presented "no longer as a condition which we undergo, but as a something which…
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
20.] If we take our _prima facie_ impression of thought, we find on examination first (a) that, in its usual subjective acceptation, thought is one out of many activities or faculties of the mind, co-ordinate with such others as sensation, perception, imagination, desire, volition, and the like. The product of this activity, the form or character peculiar to thought, is the UNIVERSAL, or, in general, the abstract.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Unexhaustiveness is an essential character of our knowledge of nature. Also nature does not exhaust the matter for thought, namely there are thoughts which would not occur in any homogeneous thinking about nature. The question as to whether sense-perception involves thought is largely verbal. If sense-perception involves a cognition of individuality abstracted from the actual position of the entity as a factor in…
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
Everyone will recognize this to be true, so long as the existence of _something_ corresponding to the term 'personal mind' is all that is insisted on, without any particular view of its nature being implied. On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is not 'feelings and thoughts exist,' but 'I think' and 'I feel.'[216]…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Thought
- Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg
- Ludwig Büchner
- Nicolas Malebranche
- René Descartes
- Zeno of Citium
- Patricia Churchland
- Peter Hacker
- Strato of Lampsacus
- Speusippus
- Language of thought hypothesis
- David Hume
- Maine de Biran
- Walter J. Ong
- François Recanati
Related ideas
- Analogy
- Emotion
- Exclusive or
- Cognition
- Mind–body problem
- Principle of sufficient reason
- Artificial intelligence
- Informal logic
- Problem solving
- John Searle
- John Dewey
- Judgement
- Idea
- Feeling
- Informal fallacy
- Counterfactual thinking
- Law of excluded middle
- Positive psychology
- Sociology
- Axiomatic system
- Mental event
- Metaphysics
- Modus ponens
- Information
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Epiphenomenalism.