But maybe there is a real strength in approaching so much in life, as in life in the broadest sense, from a naive perspective. Especially the inner world of thoughts, feelings, moods, consciousness and within that inner world, the deep crevices of the unconscious mind.

This is truly fascinating, even before one starts to muse on the silken threads that link the unconsciousness mind to the conscious.

In other words, it seems to me that the only chance of really embracing the magic and mystery of the world within us, is to approach it as a naive participant!

Perhaps you or Old Geezer could work out what I’m trying to say and explain it to me.

Good point about the bacteria. Now some are coming out and calling them an organ like any other organ…
PA

We are finding out that we (us human beings, that is) are merely gift wrapping for the skillions of bacteria that inhabit our innards and who (assuming that they can be called a who) process our food and supply all the necessary enzymes that make us even think about thinking.

So, credit where credit is due.

Interestingly, came across this a short while ago http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-ghost-in-the-machine-unraveling-the-mystery-of-consciousness

Anyway, if I don’t think about having a shower and getting dressed then the mood around here will deteriorate!

Wittgenstein thought Descartes’ slogan was pointless. And I agree. Why not:”I am, therefore I think” or “I think I am, therefore I think.”? Anybody waking up from total exhaustion has first the sensation of existing (“I am!”, or: “I seem to be!”) , well before they start thinking anything remotely organized, or logical. That could certainly be proven by e-m brain studies, BTW.

Somebody in very deep coma demonstrably exists, while often not being in thought, deep or not.

Actually anybody familiar with heavy exercise knows they can reach points where he or she is, but do not too well what anything, including themselves, is all about. They are, but they don’t really think. So being precedes thinking, elaborated or not. When I run uphill at 3,000 meters for more than fiften minutes, it tends to do this to me, for example.

It’s amazing Descartes, an army captain, could make such a mistake (make no mistake, as Descartes founded analytic geometry, he was a genius, maybe even more than Newton, or anybody else. But he made lots of mistakes; here the real mistake is to make too much of his anti-church agenda, now quaint, having succeeded fully…)

My point was that Moods provide the context. How does a baby learn the meaning of words? Not from a dictionary, but from emotions. Emotions come first, they provide the semantics of the world, for any growing human mind. I should go back in the essay and point that out, so thank you Paul!

All humans think. Simply some refuse to do it creatively, or have been conditioned, by a special mood, to avoid all and any creative thinking.
And I agree that moods, paying attention to moods, considerably complicates the analysis of thinking, as I tried to show, for example with my two pence psychoanalysis of Socrates’ pathetic little logic… Living, worldwide, among various savages, such as those of Silicon Valley, has taught me that moods dominate logic. Maybe not locally, but certainly, globally.
PA

But in the familiar (to me) English, surely all you are saying is that famous phrase, “I think, therefore I am”?

Ergo, writing so extensively about moods is complicating something basic to man. Some humans think and some don’t!

Just my two-pennies worth!