No. You don’t get it. Most people here do not agree with my definition, specifically the and nothing more part of it. Read it again. It would also be fruitful for you to read the posts I linked to… I can tell you haven’t.
Well you would be wrong, I read them.
While don’t think your definition is wrong, it is like the definition of conscious from an external point of view. It reminds me very much of the turing test although it is about intelligence.
I realize you have an issue of the subjectiveness of the experience, but it is a subjective thing because we can not get into someone else’s head. It is very much like saying art appreciating is not real. It is simply the ability of saying I like it. We may not understand how art appreciation, love or conscious arise, but that does mean they don’t exist.
“every internal statement by every member of the mind-gestalt” sounds linear to you? Why would it be, when the gestalt isn’t? Of course combinatorics is going to come into it. So is modality: “have to replicate all possible unconscious statements”. We’re talking a complex system here. The brain is definitely, undeniably non-linear - a perfect application for dynamical systems theory. What makes you think the multiple, internal-state-determined outputs of this highly complex connectionist environment are going to be linear? I take the opposite as axiomatic, in fact.
Think of me as a “compatibilist” (I don’t really deny the correctness, in a nonexclusive fashion, of the deterministic description) but while some folks’ attitude might be “determinism and free will are both ‘real’ but determinism is the larger context”, mine is more “determinism and free will are both ‘real’ but free will is the larger context”.
But if you’re a determinist (and lack consciousness to boot) you have no choice one way or the other so why bring that up? 
IMO determinism and free will are fundamentally incompatible. I have made the argument elsewhere in this thread.
You are not the first to bring up this irony (I was the first).
Yes, of course the brain is non-linear. It sounds like I misunderstood you, and moreover we are working from fundamentally different premises. It sounded to me like you were describing consciousness as the linear addition of of all conscious (“mind gestalt”) statements, which are certainly approximately linear (we can’t think more than one thing at the same time). I thought you were describing a high-level process involving high-level language exchange, but it sounds like you are making a more or less trivial statement that the human brain is a non-linear machine.
iamnotbatman, there is a long-standing board tradition that all the truly silly threads are to be started by me. Please respect that in the future.
While that is literally true, on a practical level, if you are going to use idiosyncratic definitions of words, you impede discourse. You must either specify at the onset that you mean an unusual, obscure, or self-coined meaning, or coin a new term, or accept that your auditor/reader is likely to misunderstand you or judge you to be in error.
I can make an argument that George Washington was the second president of the United States rather than the first. But if I do so, I’d better specify what I mean if I don’t want people to think I’m being silly or displaying my ignorance.
Please read the thread before making such statements. I am not at all using an idiosyncratic definition. I am arguing that the standard, accepted, usual philosophical definition is incoherent and meaningless. At the very least read the rest of the paragraph out of which you selected the quote you just responded to.
Wrong.
As usual, when someone gives an imperious response like this, they are wrong. Everything I’ve read about multitasking in neuro-psychological batteries and MRI research etc has all strongly indicated that the statement I made was correct. There are certain limited domains of exception of course, where the division of attention is either trivial or due to repeated context switching (ie linear). Here is a cite, for example.
I would have to disagree with you here. If we were talking about single processor computers I would agree with you, but as I understand it the brain functions in a totally different fashion and we can think of many things at once.
What does your cite on task completion have to do with thought?
I’m not sure this dignifies an answer. As far as I know mental task completion studies are the closest anyone has come to scientifically answering the question of whether we can think “multiple things at once”. And they are quite persuasive. The few experts with which I have touched this subject in person have clearly indicated that the prevailing position is in favor of fast context switching. If I/they are wrong, please enlighten me, rather than saying nothing more than “wrong”.
Define “thing”.
I’m a database developer, a musician who composes, and a theorist. In all three areas I have found that I quite often write/create up to a point where I’m not sure what is the best, most elegant way to proceed with the next section, and what I do is shift focus to something entirely different and while my conscious mind is occupied with that other subject matter, the “back of my mind”, call it “subconscious” or “unconscious” or whatever term suits your fancy, continues to process in a different fashion so that when I switch my focus back to the original subject matter, I find that I’ve sorted things through and have a whole new fresh take on them. It’s all taking place in my mind.
If you like using a computer analogy when discussing the human mind, I think it might make sense to consider the conscious mind to be the frontmost application, the one whose window is active and is accepting the mouse clicks and keystrokes when you type. Right now, mine is this web browser where I am typing this reply. But I’ve got my email app in the background and it still checks for email and fetches any that it finds and then spam-filters it and makes a sound if it fetches any that makes it past my spam filters. I also have Skype running in the background and it notices when my other Skype contacts log on and is prepared to accept an inbound text or telephone call. Little things like my menubar clock and weather-forecast thingie are always running in the background too. In a similar fashion, the human mind does a lot of things aside from the part that is “conscious”.
(Oh wait, I keep forgetting that the assertion on the table here is that NONE of it is conscious, it just thinks that it is :smack:)
Well whether there is a conscious mind or not, the mind seems quite capable of doing quite a few things at once. I can damn well listen to music and read a book at the same time.
I interpret similar experiences differently. How do you know that your brain processes in the fashion you suspect it does? Yes, when you take a break from a subject and then re-examine it, your brain state is different. Some things have moved from working memory to long term, some things are shuffled between the hippocampus and amygdala etc, organization takes place, etc. But none of this I am objecting to. And BTW we are really starting to stray from the central argument in this thread.
I am empathetic to your analogy, but I don’t see how its relevant to the statements I have made regarding the linearity of internal mental statements. But let’s be more precise: the brain is non-linear, that much we can agree upon (your linear computer model analogy notwithstanding). Coherent mental statements that reflect “higher thought” (another possibly ambiguous term, but let’s call it “linguistic thought”) occur linearly in the human brain. No study that I am aware of would contradict this statement (rather they support it). Furthermore, I at least don’t experience “thinking two well-formed statements” at once. Perhaps you do? If you do, are you positive you are not fast-switching between the two internal narratives?
Right. Let’s get back to the heart of this argument.
But if you try to test this assertion by asking yourself to recall elements of both what you are reading and listening to, you will falter. Try it. It’s been tested many times.
No, they are the closest anyone has come to scientifically answering the question of whether we can do multiple tasks at once. That’s not the same as thinking. You’ve already acknowledged the brain is a non-linear processor. That’s thinking, that is.
What you’re proving with your cite is that there is one stream of consciousness. I have no problem with that idea. But consciousness =/= thought.
I’m confused. You *say *you’re disagreeing, but then you agree with me.
I guess I was too sleepy. 
Either you show me a cite that gets closer, or your argument here is rather impotent. Thinking can be studied through tasks. This is basic neuro-psychology we are talking about now. If someone says “I can think A while also thinking B at the same time”, this can be tested pretty well through asking the person to perform tasked that require thinking A and B at the same time, and recording how long it takes to perform A and B separately verses together.
That’s a rather narrow and trivial definition of “thinking”, but if it means you are “right” and we can close this argument, fine.
I think I did the opposite. Please define “consciousness” and “thought”. That might get us somewhere.