Why thoughts happen

: the origin and function of thought

Reflexive consciousness is a necessary and sufficient condition of sense. Anything we conceive of, anything we can possibly identify, including the idea of ‘being’ and ‘time’, presupposes reflexive consciousness and has no sense without it. Moreover, sense is a relational property: it is necessarily ‘for’ something (the locus of sense-making) and ‘about’ something (the focus). The sense of ‘aboutness’ is that of a meta-language, hence thinking about anything is already a language, which, as a matter of logical necessity, cannot be private but presupposes a communication-community. Without a communication-community there could be no ‘aboutness’, therefore no abstraction, no meaning, no language, and no Self.

Communication with other beings of the same kind is an essential property of reflexive consciousness, but in reflexively relating with others we also conceptually entangle their unique point of view with our own, which destabilises Self-ideation and involuntarily triggers new thoughts to re-integrate the Self. The emergence of thought is a process whereby consciousness attempts to grasp itself, to complete Self-ideation in terms of other instances of consciousness. Original thinking is a consequence of engaging with other minds, each thinking its own thoughts. The meaning-content of thought, its object, is nevertheless insufficient to complete Self-ideation, which necessitates the next movement of thought.

Every movement of thought, insofar as it makes sense, is logically incomplete, never fully grasping that which thinks it. This is a point of systemic instability with unlimited generative potential. Any subsequent attempt to re-integrate the Self, immediately destabilises the Self, because it cannot grasp itself except only symbolically or retrospectively. The Self is not a thought that thinks itself. The I that thinks and the thought of the Self are mutually exclusive terms. When identified in thought, these terms must be separated in time, as distinct thoughts; the latter referring to the former as a different episode in a continuous but incomplete narrative.

We conceive of the Self only in narrative fragments. These fragments do not make up the whole/unity they purport to represent. This is not an error of reasoning or perception. The incompleteness of Self is an essential property of consciousness; it entangles all instances of consciousness in reflexive synthesis that sustains Self-ideation and a common world, where no instance of consciousness is self-sufficient but all consciousness is governed by the same fundamental law.

Consciousness consists in thinking about thoughts, therefore in ideation of thinking. To think of anything implies that something thinks, and that ‘something’ can be thought of as Self, but that ‘thought’ is still not that which thinks it. Self-ideation cannot be completed according to the law. This logical incompleteness manifests as the sense of time: consciousness cannot be grasped in a thought, but is unified as the narrative continuity of meta-ideation vis-a-vis other streams of meta-ideation, and each locus of the continuity is signified by a conceptual proxy embedded in the narrative: the person.

The concept of Self is thus practically reduced to a privileged ‘object’ in a common story that mediates consciousness, a mutating interface with other instances of consciousness that are also signified by an object. Consciousness does not involve literal, instantaneous self-reference, it cannot consistently conceive of itself, but identifies with an object that only nominally ‘thinks about itself’. This invalidates the Self as an idea ‘of itself’, but it does not invalidate the systemic, universal grounding that makes this inconsistency discernible and provable. Identity and non-identity ground one another absolutely. This binary grounding is intrinsic to consciousness, and consists in the sense of individuality/identity as non-contradiction. The grounding structure can be fully expressed with just one term:

1. I∧¬I → ¬(I=I) → /

2. (I∧¬I → ¬(I=I)) ≡ ¬(I∧¬I ∧ I=I)

3. I → I=I → ¬(I∧¬I)

This is the only Law.*

The law is presupposed in every instance of meaning, in all identity, in every movement of thought, and in the use of language. To deny the law is to presuppose the law. The languages used to articulate the law are logically incomplete in the sense that words do not have definitive meanings that can be proven, but even this incompleteness presupposes the law. Every theorem presupposes the law as a necessary condition of its own articulation. The law can be precisely formulated in any language, with terms that are not definitive or provable. The law is therefore complete and consistent as a meta-language that cannot be spoken, but can only be spoken about. The law is absolutely fundamental.

Our grasp of the law in intentionally engaging with emergent thoughts, influences the subsequent thoughts, thus indirectly steering Self-ideation towards effortless integrity, or else, towards disintegration.

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* The above formula can be informally expressed as follows:

1. Yes and Not, means (Yes is Yes) is Not, is nonsense.

2. (Yes and Not, means (Yes is Yes) is Not), means (Yes and Not and Yes is Yes) is Not.

3. Yes means Yes is Yes, means (Yes and Not) is Not.