OK, fair enough.

It is only yours for as long as you actually hold it to be true
Once it is discarded then it ceases to be a thought anymore

surreptitious57 wrote: When you no longer hold a particular thought to be true is it still your own

The thought that something is no longer true is my chemistry so to speak. I suppose some past thought/belief that is no longer held could considered a par with a bowel movement. Feel free to attack my past bowel movements.

surreptitious57 wrote:Are all of the thoughts you once had that you no longer have also still yours

If past thoughts I no longer have are brain chemistries I no longer have then are they still mine? No. So what?

surreptitious57 wrote:No they are not so unlike your brain which is always present your thoughts are more transitionary by comparison

?

surreptitious57 wrote:You will always have them as long as you have a functioning prefrontal cortex but they wont always be the same

OK ... so you think it is not OK to attack me (my body), transitory on a decade scale, but it is OK to mercilessly attack my brain chemistry which might be transitory at shorter scale? Interestingly, based on radio nuclide studies the composition of my brain is more stable than the rest of my body.

surreptitious57 wrote:It is only yours for as long as you actually hold it to be true

OK, I'm confused. Not all thoughts hold a truth value.

Once it is discarded then it ceases to be a thought anymore

I don't think we actively discard our thoughts. In fact, does the same thought exist for more than a fraction of a second? All sorts of thoughts pop into our heads all the time.

7 Slots + or - 2 in short-term memory IIRC...

The truth value of a thought is not what is actually important rather the fact that one holds it to be true
Many thoughts are unfalsifiable or subjectively or trivially true so we are not talking objective truth here

surreptitious57 wrote:The truth value of a thought is not what is actually important rather the fact that one holds it to be true
Many thoughts are unfalsifiable or subjectively or trivially true so we are not talking objective truth here

I thin that misses the point. Not all thoughts are things you hold to be true. They can be images, sentences or just random shit that pops into your head, like 'what if I were to push surr under a bus?'

When having a nightmare, one might believe it true to be swimming alongside 100 foot long 10 ton river monsters. True story.

I can hold the thought that the Earth is flat for as long as I want and simultaneously know it's not true.

Also, optical illusions.

Yes.

romansh wrote:
so you think it is not OK to attack me ( my body ) transitory on a decade scale but it is OK to mercilessly attack my brain chemistry which might be transitory at shorter scale ? Interestingly based on radio nuclide studies the composition of my brain is more stable than the rest of my body

I dont actually see it as attacking brain chemistry rather flaws in reasoning and logic
Your brain may be more stable than the rest of your body but you still have free will

surreptitious57 wrote:
I dont actually see it as attacking brain chemistry rather flaws in reasoning and logic

And this was my point Surr. While reasoning and logic are reasonable place holders for certain types of brain chemistry, they are nonetheless brain chemistry (so to speak). They are not some dualistic form of logic and reasoning spirits.

surreptitious57 wrote:Your brain may be more stable than the rest of your body but you still have free will

Free will? You will have to defend the assertion that my chemistry that forms my will, is somehow independent of cause, preferably on the appropriate thread.

Don't think of a crocodile sur...

Bit different, KIR. Surr is talking about discarding thoughts you have, not preventing yourself from having them to begin with.

With all due respect fal, tell that to anybody with a mental health problem such as phobia; anxiety; bipolar; depression etc

surreptitious57 wrote:
By free will I simply mean that you can discard old thoughts and adopt new ones if you so wish

It is not so much I can discard old thoughts and adopt new ones … it is more that I will.

Even so, if we have a materialist or even a physicalist mind set … our thoughts are writ large in our brain chemistry and not somehow separate from our body. So all I am suggesting is when we attack a thought (mercilessly) we bear in mind we are attacking that person as well. I am not saying we should not attack the thought/person, just to let go of the implicit dualism.

You might run the risk of getting sectioned for self-harm if attacking one's own thoughts mercilessly then/sarcasm.

Also focussing on ones own thoughts is prone to strengthen the memory traces IMO regardless of objective and so would, in fact, be counterproductive if eliminating those thoughts were the goal.

Keep It Real wrote:With all due respect fal, tell that to anybody with a mental health problem such as phobia; anxiety; bipolar; depression etc

With all due respect, KIR, this doesn't address your misapprehension.

Keep It Real wrote:You might run the risk of getting sectioned for self-harm if attacking one's own thoughts mercilessly then/sarcasm.

Yes I suspect this is behind the Christian mantra of forgiveness. Forgive others as we do ourselves … the self harm.

But a clearer path forward (IMO) is to realize, there is nothing that needs forgiveness. But this is beginning to stray into the free will thread.