Choosing Our Thoughts and the Problem of Infinite Regression
If you feel that you can consciously choose your thoughts, I’d like your help with this example.
Let’s examine a specific thought you feel you have consciously chosen. We’ll call this thought ‘X’. If you’ve consciously chosen X, it means there was a choosing process that preceded X. If X just pops into your mind without a conscious choosing process, we’ll call that an unconscious choice.
- If X was consciously chosen then the choosing process that results in X, contains thoughts that you should be able to report. At least one of the thoughts in the choosing process also needs to be consciously chosen. We’ll call that thought X1.
- If X1 was consciously chosen it means there was a sequence of thoughts that preceded X1 and at least one of those thoughts needed to be consciously chosen. We’ll call that thought X2.
- If X2 was consciously chosen, it means there was a sequence of thoughts that preceded X2 and one of those thoughts needed to be consciously chosen.
- And so begins a process of infinite regression…
The conventional belief that we can consciously choose our thoughts seems flawed if it accepts a process of infinite regression as part of the explanation.
Is there a way to demonstrate that we can consciously choose a thought that doesn’t result in an infinite regression?