Primary Thoughts: Thoughts that originate as a result of sensory input. Example, “those cupcakes sure do look tasty.”
Secondary Thoughts: Thoughts that originate as a result of a primary thought or another secondary thought. Example derived from above thought, “remember that commercial where the shark thinks the women in an innertube is a cupcake?”
Conjecture: Primary and secondary thoughts are the only types of thoughts that exist.
I’ve set out to prove my conjecture but am finding it difficult. Try the following exercise: catch yourself thinking, trace the thought back to its primary thought and eventually to its sensory input. It seems to work every time, but if it fails to work does this mean the furthest thought that you can trace it back to is “random.” My most frequent “random” thoughts seem to be songs that I find myself whistling for no apparent reason.
I’ve also been able to use this to “read people’s minds.” Here’s how, if someone says or does something seemingly random in a conversation try to find the connection to what was said or what happened, you may be able to catch them a little off gaurd.
Filed under: philosophy
What about tertiary and quaternary thoughts? Perhaps you should define secondary thoughts as any of thought that is derived from another thought?
Unrelated to post, but do you actually know anyone who follows your jaiku feed? I’ve got a couple of people following me on twitter, so I use that..
Thanks Matt, I made the correction and expanded a bit on that post. I’d like to continue that post later and comment on what it might say about materialism and free will and so forth but I’ll wait ’til I’m thinking more clearly.
I like Jaiku because it serves as an “everything I’m doing on the web” feed. You can’t do that with twitter.
Am I just sending my links and updates into the void of cyberspace? Probably.