I mean, I could model myself as just the subset, and treat the thoughts thought by the brain in which I reside as belonging to someone else, or to noone at all.
I’m not sure the grandparent clarified the argument then.
Does it mean anything to declare that certain thoughts are “part of you”, apart from your endorsement of those thoughts? In what way is modeling a thought as “your own” different from modeling it as “someone else’s”? One should model what’s possible about one’s whole psychology, and in characterizing that activity I don’t understand in what way “modeling as myself” is distinct from just “modeling”.
You say that you consider more than those thoughts that are endorsed as “part of you”. I don’t understand what this is intended to mean, what is the difference between drawing the boundary of the concept “part of me” in one way vs. the other, and what would it mean to retrain yourself to change this boundary. I expect the valid use of the concept of “part of me” derives mostly from the concept of endorsement, and I’m not sure what the useful distinction might be (there are actual distinctions in connotations, the question is whether they have any role to play).
(I guess I am asking to taboo the concept of ownership, as applied to thinking.)
I guess I am asking to taboo the concept of ownership, as applied to thinking.
Well… OK.
This is tricky to do in abstract terms without becoming entirely meaningless, so let’s take a step back here and see if a more concrete example helps establish a shared useful framework.
In that vein: what does it mean to say that these fingers I’m typing with are mine, rather than to say they aren’t mine?
Well of course there are lots of ways I own my fingers, but in the sense I think we mean here: roughly speaking, it means that when I form impulses to perform certain tasks with my fingers, those are the fingers that perform the tasks, not some other fingers. When those fingers interact with the external world, my mind receives tactile input, not some other mind. And various other facts along those lines. More broadly, it means that these fingers interact with my intentions and my perceptions in various specific ways.
If that stopped being true, I might still refer to them as my fingers, but I wouldn’t mean quite the same thing by doing so. And if it started being true of other fingers that it currently isn’t true of (e.g., fingers on a prosthetic arm connected to my nervous system) I would probably start referring to those fingers as mine in the same sense. (And if it started being true of arbitrary fingers in unpredictable ways, I would probably eventually discard the concept as useless… no fingers would be especially mine, and all fingers might be mine, and it would just be a silly thing to talk about.)
All of which is so banal as to not be worth saying, but perhaps dropping down to the incredibly banal is a useful place to start, since we seem to be missing each other when we get too abstract.
So, OK, does that align with your understanding of ownership as it applies to fingers in this context? (Of course, it is possible to own fingers in many other ways, but that’s what I usually mean when I talk about my fingers.)
Assuming it does… I would say that when I describe certain thoughts as mine, I mean something similar. When I experience the physical symptoms of anxiety, those are the associated anxious thoughts I experience—not anxious thoughts in some other brain. When I form the desire to remember my grandmother’s first name, the subsequent thought of my grandmother’s first name is my thought, not someone else’s. And so forth.
And, much as with fingers, this seems utterly banal and uninteresting. They are my fingers/thoughts, which labels a certain way of interacting causally with those fingers/thoughts as opposed to other fingers/thoughts.
Is that thing which I just described what you understand “my thought” to denote? Is it something you expect derives from the concept of endorsement? If so, can you explain how it does so in your view?
I’m not sure the grandparent clarified the argument then.
Does it mean anything to declare that certain thoughts are “part of you”, apart from your endorsement of those thoughts? In what way is modeling a thought as “your own” different from modeling it as “someone else’s”? One should model what’s possible about one’s whole psychology, and in characterizing that activity I don’t understand in what way “modeling as myself” is distinct from just “modeling”.
You say that you consider more than those thoughts that are endorsed as “part of you”. I don’t understand what this is intended to mean, what is the difference between drawing the boundary of the concept “part of me” in one way vs. the other, and what would it mean to retrain yourself to change this boundary. I expect the valid use of the concept of “part of me” derives mostly from the concept of endorsement, and I’m not sure what the useful distinction might be (there are actual distinctions in connotations, the question is whether they have any role to play).
(I guess I am asking to taboo the concept of ownership, as applied to thinking.)
Well… OK.
This is tricky to do in abstract terms without becoming entirely meaningless, so let’s take a step back here and see if a more concrete example helps establish a shared useful framework.
In that vein: what does it mean to say that these fingers I’m typing with are mine, rather than to say they aren’t mine?
Well of course there are lots of ways I own my fingers, but in the sense I think we mean here: roughly speaking, it means that when I form impulses to perform certain tasks with my fingers, those are the fingers that perform the tasks, not some other fingers. When those fingers interact with the external world, my mind receives tactile input, not some other mind. And various other facts along those lines. More broadly, it means that these fingers interact with my intentions and my perceptions in various specific ways.
If that stopped being true, I might still refer to them as my fingers, but I wouldn’t mean quite the same thing by doing so. And if it started being true of other fingers that it currently isn’t true of (e.g., fingers on a prosthetic arm connected to my nervous system) I would probably start referring to those fingers as mine in the same sense. (And if it started being true of arbitrary fingers in unpredictable ways, I would probably eventually discard the concept as useless… no fingers would be especially mine, and all fingers might be mine, and it would just be a silly thing to talk about.)
All of which is so banal as to not be worth saying, but perhaps dropping down to the incredibly banal is a useful place to start, since we seem to be missing each other when we get too abstract.
So, OK, does that align with your understanding of ownership as it applies to fingers in this context? (Of course, it is possible to own fingers in many other ways, but that’s what I usually mean when I talk about my fingers.)
Assuming it does… I would say that when I describe certain thoughts as mine, I mean something similar. When I experience the physical symptoms of anxiety, those are the associated anxious thoughts I experience—not anxious thoughts in some other brain. When I form the desire to remember my grandmother’s first name, the subsequent thought of my grandmother’s first name is my thought, not someone else’s. And so forth.
And, much as with fingers, this seems utterly banal and uninteresting. They are my fingers/thoughts, which labels a certain way of interacting causally with those fingers/thoughts as opposed to other fingers/thoughts.
Is that thing which I just described what you understand “my thought” to denote?
Is it something you expect derives from the concept of endorsement?
If so, can you explain how it does so in your view?