Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!oliveb!sun!cognito!randolph
From: randolph%cognito@Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Animal Thought (was Re: language, thought, and culture)
Message-ID: <45257@sun.uucp>
Date: 13 Mar 88 03:17:50 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2894@pbhyf.UUCP> <929@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
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Keywords: thought modalities
Summary: consciousness and control

In response to an article of mine, Cliff Joslyn
(vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu) writes:

  These are all examples of "unconscious thought", i.e., these things just
  "happen" to you, these representations "appear" in your mind, sometimes we
  know why, sometimes not.  *IS THIS THINKING?* If so, then what is the
  difference between thinking and complex reflex?

I've the strong impression that "thought" for you has at least the following
two properties:

  1. Conscious control
  2. Uniquely human behavior

You seem to presuppose that I use the same two criteria; my arguments must
sound like so much noise to you.  If you choose to use these criteria, fine.
I wouldn't want to control :-) your thinking.

Yet these two criteria leave out so much behavior that they seem to me
limiting.  Nor is it well understood behavior.  Clinical psychology is
largely the long slow study of methods of changing unconscious behavior; an
artificial intelligence researcher would be delighted to be able to produce
the behaviors you disparage as "unconscious".

__Randolph Fritz
randolph@sun.com
sun!randolph