Note the difference between saying (A) “the idea of going to the zoo is positive-valence, a.k.a. motivating”, versus (B) “I want to go to the zoo”. [...]
Note the difference between saying (A) “the idea of closing the window popped into awareness”, versus (B) “I had the idea to close the window”. Since (B) involves the homunculus as a cause of new thoughts, it’s forbidden in my framework.
I think it could be an interesting mental practice to rephrase inner speech involving “I” in this way. I have been doing this for a while now. It started toward the end of my last meditation retreat when I switched to a non-CISM (or should I say “there was a switch in the thoughts about self-representation”?). Using “I” in mental verbalization felt like a syntax error and other phrasings like you are suggesting here, felt more natural. Interestingly, it still makes sense to use “I” in conversations to refer to me (the speaker). I think that is part of why the CISM is so natural: It uses the same element in internal and external verbalizations[1].
Pondering your examples, I think I would render them differently. Instead of: “I want to go to the zoo,” it could be: “there is a desire to go to the zoo.” Though I guess if “desire to” stands for “positive-valence thought about”) it is very close to your “the idea of going to the zoo is positive-valence.”
In practice, the thoughts would be smaller, more like “there is [a sound][2],” “there is a memory of [an animal],” “there is a memory of [an episode from a zoo visit],” “there is a desire to [experience zoo impressions],” “there is a thought of [planning].” The latter gets complicated. The thought of planning could be positive valence (because plans often lead to desirable outcomes) or the planning is instrumentally useful to get the zoo impressions (which themselves may be associated with desirable sights and smells), or the planning can be aversive (because effortful), but still not strong enough to displace the desirable zoo visit.
For an experienced meditator, the fragments that can be noticed can be even smaller—or maybe more pre-cursor-like. This distinction is easier to see with a quiet mind, where, before a thought fully occupies attention, glimmers of thoughts may bubble up[3]. This is related to noticing that attention is shifting. The everyday version of that happens why you notice that you got distracted by something. The subtler form is noticing small shifts during your regular thinking (e.g., I just noticed my attention shifting to some itch, without that really interuping my writing flow). But I’m not sure how much of that is really a sense of attention vs. a retroactive interpretation of the thoughts. Maybe a more competent meditator can comment.
And now I wonder whether the phonological loop, or whatever is responsible for language-like thoughts, maybe subvocalizations, is what makes the CISM the default model.
I like the examples from 8.4.2:
I think it could be an interesting mental practice to rephrase inner speech involving “I” in this way. I have been doing this for a while now. It started toward the end of my last meditation retreat when I switched to a non-CISM (or should I say “there was a switch in the thoughts about self-representation”?). Using “I” in mental verbalization felt like a syntax error and other phrasings like you are suggesting here, felt more natural. Interestingly, it still makes sense to use “I” in conversations to refer to me (the speaker). I think that is part of why the CISM is so natural: It uses the same element in internal and external verbalizations[1].
Pondering your examples, I think I would render them differently. Instead of: “I want to go to the zoo,” it could be: “there is a desire to go to the zoo.” Though I guess if “desire to” stands for “positive-valence thought about”) it is very close to your “the idea of going to the zoo is positive-valence.”
In practice, the thoughts would be smaller, more like “there is [a sound][2],” “there is a memory of [an animal],” “there is a memory of [an episode from a zoo visit],” “there is a desire to [experience zoo impressions],” “there is a thought of [planning].” The latter gets complicated. The thought of planning could be positive valence (because plans often lead to desirable outcomes) or the planning is instrumentally useful to get the zoo impressions (which themselves may be associated with desirable sights and smells), or the planning can be aversive (because effortful), but still not strong enough to displace the desirable zoo visit.
For an experienced meditator, the fragments that can be noticed can be even smaller—or maybe more pre-cursor-like. This distinction is easier to see with a quiet mind, where, before a thought fully occupies attention, glimmers of thoughts may bubble up[3]. This is related to noticing that attention is shifting. The everyday version of that happens why you notice that you got distracted by something. The subtler form is noticing small shifts during your regular thinking (e.g., I just noticed my attention shifting to some itch, without that really interuping my writing flow). But I’m not sure how much of that is really a sense of attention vs. a retroactive interpretation of the thoughts. Maybe a more competent meditator can comment.
And now I wonder whether the phonological loop, or whatever is responsible for language-like thoughts, maybe subvocalizations, is what makes the CISM the default model.
[brackets indicate concepts that are described by words, not the words themselves]
The question is though, what part notices the noticing. Some thought of [noticing something] must be sufficiently stable and active to do so.