{"id":4545,"date":"2008-06-03T10:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T17:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philosophyforchildren.org\/what-are-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2008-06-03T10:19:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T17:19:00","slug":"what-are-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/what-are-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"What are thoughts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds. . . .<\/p>\n

From Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird<\/em> by Wallace Stevens
<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past six years I have taught philosophy to the same general group of children, starting in kindergarten. Each year I\u2019m amazed on the first day of philosophy when the students are invariably right back in it, as if six or so months hadn\u2019t elapsed since the last time we talked about philosophy together. What I really notice as the students have gotten older is how much more philosophically rich our conversations are becoming, and how much more they talk directly to each other instead of directing all their comments at me. They are so alive during philosophy class, passionately interested in the questions and seeming to have little fear of speaking their thoughts in the group.<\/p>\n

In fifth grade we started each session by reading a couple of pages from Harry Stottlemeir\u2019s Discovery<\/em>, a philosophical novel written by Matthew Lipman for the purpose of doing philosophy with children of around this age. The novel portrays a group of children about this age having philosophical discussions, and when I read it with students it always inspires many questions. One of my favorite discussions that we had this past year was about the nature of thinking.<\/p>\n

Do thoughts require language? Can you have thoughts without knowing you\u2019re having them? Can we control our thoughts? Do we think when we\u2019re asleep? One child asked whether dreaming can be defined as thinking when sleeping. It quickly became apparent to the children that what they thought they understood \u2013 what thinking is \u2013 was actually far more puzzling than they\u2019d expected.<\/p>\n

This led to an animated discussion about dreaming, and about whether we can know when we\u2019re dreaming and when we\u2019re not. One young boy said, \u201cIsn\u2019t it possible that everything is a dream? That there is some being on another planet or something who controls what we do, and we think we\u2019re in this class but really we\u2019re always dreaming.\u201d I told the class that this comment echoed a famous argument by the philosopher Descartes, who asked us to think about whether we can ever really know that we are not dreaming or being otherwise fooled into thinking we are doing what we seem to be doing.<\/p>\n

At this, one girl who had obviously been deep in thought about these questions, raised her hand and said, \u201cJana, can I come up to the board and draw what I\u2019m thinking? I can\u2019t express it in words, but I think I can draw what I mean.\u201d She came up and drew two pictures: one of a person lying in bed dreaming, and the other of the dream the person is having. What if, she said, this (pointing to the picture of the dream) is really happening, and this (pointing to the picture of the sleeper having the dream) isn\u2019t real at all?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought often about that moment since then. This question about the nature of thought is extremely puzzling. What is thinking? Does it require language? Can newborn babies think? I\u2019m tempted to say no, they can\u2019t, but then I wonder, so when does thinking begin? Does it coincide with the acquisition of language? If so, how is it that this young girl couldn\u2019t, as we say, put her thought into words, and so drew the expression of it instead? Is the thought there before the expression of it? Sometime I will have a thought, but I can\u2019t quite express it, it\u2019s just out of reach. Do I start thinking once I access that thought and can express it? So was this young girl having a thought, say, which she was having trouble expressing, and once she was able to draw it she was able to think about it? Is having a thought different from thinking?<\/p>\n

The drawing led the class in a different direction, to a discussion about whether something has to be able to be seen and touched to be real. Is the mental world real? Are numbers real? One child said excitedly, \u201cIt\u2019s possible we have all of it wrong!\u201d Another child responded, \u201cNo, because if we\u2019re having the dream then we<\/em> must exist, even if we can\u2019t be sure that the dream is real and what we think is real isn\u2019t.\u201d Everyone thought about this comment for a while, and we agreed to talk more about it the following week.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the blackbird.I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds. . . . From Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens Over the past six years I have taught philosophy to the same general group of children, starting in … What are thoughts?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217,219,196,195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-children","category-philosophy","category-philosophy-for-children","category-wondering-aloud"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat are thoughts? - PLATO - Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What are thoughts? - a post from PLATO - The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/what-are-thoughts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What are thoughts? 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