Thought beyond experience

pp. 303-326

in: Joseph Mendola, Human thought, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

Our remaining task in this part is to construct a coherently conceivable account of the realization of thoughts which are not experiences or quasi-experiences. But, for economy, we will attempt an account which is plausible as well, or at least not implausible for all we know so far. We will proceed by pulling several threads together. From Chapter Three, we have a sense of the content generation operations. From Chapter Nine, we know how infinity and normativity provide little obstacle to the concrete realization of our thought. From Chapter Ten, we have a somewhat detailed understanding of how thoughts are mediated by words, and how word-mediated thoughts are rooted in the interanimation of thoughts which are not mediated by words. From Chapter Eleven, we have a sense of how neural resources plausibly underwrite the interanimation of our thoughts. It is because experiences are primary thoughts, 1 which involve in particular contexts particular patterns of neural firing, that it is possible to develop an account, not only of quasi-experience but of our other thoughts beyond experience, which can mesh with both objectual and non-objectual accounts of experience. From Chapter Twelve, we have a sense of how quasi-experience might be realized, and a coherently conceivable if finally implausible objectual account of the realization of experience. Finally, we know from Chapter Eleven that there are only two sorts of cases which we need to treat explicitly here. Those sorts are primary thoughts, and thoughts of the mixed sort. Virtual thoughts will take up the slack. In fact, we know that even thoughts of the mixed sort are fixed by primary thoughts and their virtual components, or more exactly by primary thoughts and the kinds of resources which lead us to ascribe virtual thoughts. Still, some important instances of the mixed sort deserve special treatment here. And it will be revealing to give each of the content generation operations some explicit attention in what follows, even if thoughts with any human content might be mediated by words in roughly the manner of the essentially word-mediated contents noted in Chapter Three. Even if thoughts with contents generated by certain operations are not always realized in the particular ways we will discuss, it is useful to explicitly discuss at least one special mechanism for each.