Can you ever read your own thoughts?

Question

Or is it like the Heisenberg Uncertainity principle?
As soon as you start observing your thoughts they change? So in effect you can never really observe your present thoughts but you can remember the old ones.

Answer 1

This is a very interesting topic. It's like how you can hear yourself say something in your mind, but you don't actually hear sound. Or how you see a certain image when your eyes are open (hence, daydream). It's difficult to observe thoughts as they are happening, since the only way to actually formulate an opinion about what we are thinking is to analyze what we remember thinking. It's pretty amazing how our minds work, and what they control. We can't (more accurately, MOST of us can't) voluntarily control the rate of our heart beat, but we can voluntarily control our breathing. Yet, when we are asleep or not paying attention, our brain's nervous system takes over. It's so amazing...

I can go on about this forever! : ) I actually have never heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle but I'll look into it. (After a pause...) My thoughts are telling me to finish typing. ^_^

Answer 2

Some people have speculated that the brain is sensitive to quantum effects and thoughts may appear randomly and is subject to the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. This is just PURE speculation. There is no experimental proof that this is true. The fact is that most likely the function of the brain that leads to self awareness or sentience is an emergent effect of all the neurons working together (this means that all the quantum effects are smeared out or averaged out since there are so many particles/atoms/molecules/neurons in the brain).

Besides if it true that as soon as you start observing your thoughts they change (like the quantum states of a sub-atomic particle), how can you have any previous conscious thoughts to be remembered? I mean as soon as you become conscious and start to observe your own thoughts (this is the definition of self-awareness or sentience), they would change and you would lose track of your thoughts, and then you would never be able to stay on track on any single train of thought (which is very much necessary if you are to formulate any sensible questions on Yahoo Answers). This then would also mean that nobody is truly conscious, and therefore no real intelligent life here. (Hmmm...I guess that may the case, LOL!)

Of course you can read your own thoughts!

Answer 3

This assumes that thought takes place at the quantum level, not really a certainty at all. Memory seems to be a more likely subject for uncertainty to creep in.

Thoughts may be quite large and cellular in nature and thus well beyond the danger of quantum interference

Answer 4

i know my thoughts as i have them, see im typing this now, so there for its thought, and i am observing it at the present, if you fear you dont observe your thoughts as you have then, you might be reading to much into it, or have a case of ADD, might want to have that checked by a specialist.

Answer 5

Thoughts are not visible. When we "write down our thoughts" we are only writing down reflections of those thoughts, but not the actual thoughts themselves. In order to read, one must translate words, those reflections, from a visible medium into the mind. Therefore, no one can read any ones thoughts, including their own.

Answer 6

In order to know your own thoughts, you have to know your relationship to everything else too. This is because thoughts are rational, that is, they don't exist in isolated space time, entirely to themselves, to be observed objectively without the other portions of objective reality also being known.

Since most don't strive to know reality objectively, they also are unaware of themselves fully consciously.

"What most people call thinking is merely rearranging their prejudices." - William James

Answer 7

When I try to consider what I am thinking, my thoughts are usually "Now what am I thinking?"

edit: Maybe Godel's Incompleteness Theorems are more appropriate.

Answer 8

That is an amazing question. I would say no, in agreance with your arguement. Its similar to a perpetual motion machine......