There is mechanical associative thought and conscious thought. Dostoyevsky describes mechanical thought:

“Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

Plato refers to conscious thought which begins with forms. It is the process of immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles. Can the philosopher become capable of more than babble and pouring from the empty into the void? Can the philosopher stand apart from mechanical thought so as to invite conscious thought to respond to the deeper questions or the aim of philosophy as the need for meaning? — Nikolas

As to Dostoyevsky, What I am defending is rather up his alley, for what it means to Put distance" between oneself and thought is to deny the priveleged place of reason in defined what it is to be human. It is an antirationalist position. Where the underground man says, am I a piano key? here, the answer is no, for the rationality that would lay claim to choice, to meaning (remember Kierkegaard who mused that Hegel had forgotten that we actually exist!), is denied, and what takes its place? Freedom. the freedom to deny the dictates of reason.

Plato: the mechanical thought, as you put it, has an inevitable place, certainly, but keep in mind that thought has no content. It is merely the form of meaningful utterance, so while a person is bound to rationality for the very thinking itself, rationality is bound to nothing save the power of the tautology and the contradiction. Outside of this, the thought that would claim me is always subject to second guessing regarding content. Reason does not tell us to be good, healthy; as Hume put it, reason would just as soon annihilate the human race.

But Heidegger would never say that the ‘I’ stands apart from the thought , and neither would Husserl, so your transcendental ego is not the ego of phenomenology but of Kant. — Joshs

But the question does bring the structural feature of dasein, freedom. The hammer is ready to hand, but when the head flies off the hammer, the nail is missed, something goes awry, the ready to hand yields to an openness as to what to do. This is freedom, the vacancy of rote behavior.
I use Heidegger to make my point, which is not Heidegger's, for I think the question really IS the outset ofreligious piety. The question is what makes the space that is the liberation from dasein possible. Not Kant. Kierkegaard.

The hammer is ready to hand, but when the head flies off the hammer, the nail is missed, something goes awry, the ready to hand yields to an openness as to what to do. — Constance

But even during the breakdown of the hammering, the being drawn to the broken hammer still belongs to and gets its sense from the totality of relevance of the pragmatic activity of hammering. So this openness is constrained by the larger purposes of which it is a part. And the successful and uncomplicated hammering activity itself is not devoid of freedom of decision. It is a more primordial engagement with things in the form of taking care of them. This engagement with the work rather than staring at the broken hammer represents a greater openness to the world via our pragmatic engagement with it.

But even during the breakdown of the hammering, the being drawn to the broken hammer still belongs to and gets its sense from the totality of relevance of the pragmatic activity of hammering. So this openness is constrained by the larger purposes of which it is a part. And the successful and uncomplicated hammering activity itself is not devoid of freedom of decision. It is a more primordial engagement with things in the form of taking care of them. This engagement with the work rather than staring at the broken hammer represents a greater openness to the world via our pragmatic engagement with it. — Joshs

But it is not pragmatic engagement all the way down. Sure, when you turn the key and the car doesn't start, you don't have an existential crisis, but turn quickly to alternatives that hover near by. But the problem of one's whole Being has no ready to hand. When there is distance between the intending agent and the world qua world, one stands apart from all possibilities, and they are suspended.
In a letter to Rudolf Otto, Husserl said his epoche had a profound effect on many of his students' religious thinking. He himself was so moved.

First, the term 'thought' is rather vague, isn't it? I'm not asking for a definition of 'thought', but a distinction can be made between the habitual flow of thought, the 'inner voice' which accompanies all our waking moments, and the kind of thought that characterises the attainment of insight or the pursuit of rigorous principles in mathematics, or engagement in a creative act, for example. 'Thought' exists on a lot of levels from the transitory to the foundational so using it as a general term is not sufficiently precise, in my view. — Wayfarer

I put thought in the front seat because thought is a reflection of the structure of experience, and generally it has been believed that while incidental matters come and go, thought sustains (going back to Parmenides). However, I don't think thought is the be all and end all. It is essential, for the present is structured by thought--no logic, then no human experience to talk about the weather or say hello (but I further believe that animals possess a proto-rationality. Our conditional proposition, say, is grounded in experience in a very primitive way, which is anticipation, and they clearly anticipate, and they negate, the grass being greener here than there, and so forth).

But of course, you're right about thought being far more tan the simple term suggests. It is a, if you will, thought experiment of mine in which I think, then observe my thoughts as I do so. This act of reflection has a qualitative distinction to it, apart from the usual kinds of reflection that come up when you're looking for your keys. Looking for keys is a disengagement from what you want to actually do, and is "removed" from this. It is an openness that was supposed to be a closed, routine affair. But to observe the looking, to stand apart from all possible modes of Being by retreating from Being altogether, and not encountering the world as a problem to be solved, but to simply stand apart from the totality of all possible engagement, this is an extraordinary event.

As for the structure 'dominating in describing the world' - I agree that the mind interprets experience according to the structured processes of apperception that are built up by the process of socialisation, education, and so on. That we can't step outside that structure and see 'the world as it is' in another way (although the significance of the term 'ecstacy' might be noted, as it means precisely ex- stasis, outside the normal state.) However, I think that realising that the 'structure of the mind' does this, is extremely important, in fact it's the very first step in philosophy proper (as for example in the opening paragraph of World as Will and Representation.) Few attain it. — Wayfarer

Well, I think you're quite right about that. The question that follows on this is, what IS it that one is doing and what is it that one encounters? In order to continue to be the agency called "myself" there must be something of that apperceiving event that is essential, surviving the apophatic process of elimination. The closer one gets to the "purity" of the present, the reductive finality (I am using Husserl's jargon. See his phenomenological reduction) the more revelatory. It is really because of the this that I take up the issue at all. If the reduction (again, Husserl's epoche) simply yielded more boring reality, a reduced form of the Same (this idea is played out in Levinas. See his Totality and Infinity), then it would dissolve into nihilism.
But this is not what happens. It is an uncanny event such that, as Levinas puts it, the idea is exceeded by the ideatum, the passion is not confined to the totality of that of which one can be passionate about. Transcendence is not an abstraction. It is embedded in existence, that is, us. We usually consider eternity to be simply beyond all things, and give it little attention, but it is actually deeply existential. Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety is an extraordinary read.

As for 'thought thinking about itself', in one way that is true - I'm doing it now, writing this post. But in another way, it cannot be true. There is a saying from the Upaniṣads, 'the eye can see another, but cannot see itself, the hand can grasp another, but cannot grasp itself.' That is an analogy for the impossibility of the mind making an object of itself, which it can't do, for just that reason. Knowledge, generally, presumes that separation of knower and known - but in the case of the question 'who or what is the knower', we're not outside of or separate from the object, or, put another way, object and subject are the same. The response to which ought to be something very like the Husserlian Epoché. — Wayfarer

Apophatic theology, it is called in the West. Post Husserlians, the post modern French philosophers, give very useful analyses of the only logical meaning of the epoche: it is a drive for givenness, the givenness of the world in thepresent (Jean Luc Marion, Janicaud, Michel Henry). And I thought Eugen Fink's Sixth Meditation a penetrating attempt to describe the foundations of phenomenological production. I find these philosophers, and others, helpful because in elaborating, in building systems of thought about the epoche, there is a tearing down of the totality that spontaneously rules our thinking. Heidegger is very helpful, not because I agree with everything he said, but because his Kierkegaardian influences give his Being and Time an openess to exploring that critical moment when a person stands before the world and the question of Being looms large. And here, one stands at a distance to all claims of knowing, to, I am claiming here, the thoughtful ego itself.

You're hammering and thinking about hammering as you hammer. We're quite capable of doing both if we want to, and without distinguishing ourselves from our thinking or our hammering. — Ciceronianus the White

But I think you have in mind some kind of simple multitasking event, and no significant distinction to be made doing two different things. I would invite you think of a thoughtful engagement in the world as a world making event. Hard to take this seriously if you haven't taken up Kant Critique of Pure Reason. He defended transcendental idealism. The hammering is not an empirical observer's hammering, as if it were an object in motion, there when all perceiving agencies were absent. Rather, the hammering is an event brought into being by our meaning making, it is an event in experience, not an event out there entirely beyond our perception. To perceive is not a passive process, but constructive one.
Once this is understood, then the structures of consciousness become an ontology. We make Being by our presence, and Being is conceived as thought itself, along with, of course, the full body of experience.

So when "I" stand apart from thought, it can be seen as a schism in ontology.

To perceive is not a passive process, but constructive one. — Constance

What does perception construct?

Hard to take this seriously if you haven't taken up Kant Critique of Pure Reason. — Constance

Again? Last time you claimed I couldn't understand you unless I had read Being and Time if I recall correctly. Now I must be admitted into the mysteries of Kant before I can grasp what you say. I admit I find the ancient pagan mystery cults and their influence on and interaction with early Christianity and Gnosticism fascinating, but am surprised to find a similar reliance on rites of initiation on the one hand, and claims of exclusivity on the other, in this context.

Again? Last time you claimed I couldn't understand you unless I had read Being and Time if I recall correctly. Now I must be admitted into the mysteries of Kant before I can grasp what you say. I admit I find the ancient pagan mystery cults and their influence on and interaction with early Christianity and Gnosticism fascinating, but am surprised to find a similar reliance on rites of initiation on the one hand, and claims of exclusivity on the other, in this context. — Ciceronianus the White

Sorry about that. If you find pagan mystery cults and gnosticism fascinating, then we should be agreeing a lot more. You see, I find that, for me, the only way to consummate this kind of, well, affirmation of threshold values, intimations from something that is not found in the totality of regular thinking, is to tear down the language and general assimilative processes that continue to insist the world is as is described by big consensus that is all pervasive in our culture. Gnostic intimations are fascinating, but only from afar are they usually realized. The question is, how does this make progress deeper into the understanding? Kant and the tradition of phenomenology (and not the positivism that also has its grounding in Kant) challenges common sense, and overwhelms it when it comes to ontology. Once the dramatic move (dramatic for me) is made toward transcendental idealism, marginalized thinking that can be given its due. Kant opened two doors. One was extablishing the delimitation of meaningful utterances to what is either tautology or empirical.. The other is that while we live and think within this delimitation, there is this nebulous matter of the "outside" of this which at once impossible to conceive, yet an imposing presence in ways that Kant doesn't really take up, but post Kantian thinking makes a huge deal our of: the transcendence that somehow is present in a way that is not merely an abstraction. Kant was close to this, but then, as Kierkegaard said, we cannot forget that we actually exist.
And this moves on into an extraordinary body of literature that ends up with deconstruction (which I need to read more about). Deconstruction seems to be the final nail in the coffin of the assumptions about knowledge and the world.

What does perception construct? — Mww

What doesn't it construct? I mean, the moment you say what this could be, there is a trace to a perceptual event that has to be there, the absence of which would make for nonsense. Then, how does perception construct an owl, e.g.? Do you really think when a perceptual system vacates the presence of the owl, the owl is still there?

But it is not pragmatic engagement all the way down. Sure, when you turn the key and the car doesn't start, you don't have an existential crisis, but turn quickly to alternatives that hover near by. But the problem of one's whole Being has no ready to hand. When there is distance between the intending agent and the world qua world, one stands apart from all possibilities, and they are suspended. — Constance

But there is no “problem of one’s whole being” as something outside of heedful circumspective relationality with one’s world for Heidegger , or a ‘whole being’ outside of noetic-noematic activity for Husserl. This only becomes a problem when you create an artificial “distance between the intending agent and the world qua world”. Only then does it appear that you “stand apart from all possibilities”, rather than always BEING IN particular possibilities.

Ok. Just wondering from whom this philosophy originated, for it certainly isn’t Kantian, in which perception does not construct anything at all. And you mentioned the CPR, so.....just connecting possible dots here.

Those initiated into the ancient mysteries took their oaths of secrecy very seriously. That secrecy together with the intolerance of "triumphant" Christianity has made it very difficult to understand what the mysteries were and what they meant to their initiates, but it's clear their impact was profound, even on philosophers of the time. We know little of the Roman cult of Mithras beyond what can be inferred from archaeology, making it even more difficult to understand than the cults of Isis or of Magna Mater. Certain of their rituals took place in public; those of Mithras were secret except to members of the cult as all took place in the Mithraeum. I just read a book where the authors proposed that the reliefs of Mithras and the Bull that are found in all places where Mithras was worshiped (the tauroctony) actually depict a mind-altering mushroom used in the rituals. I'd find it unsurprising if some such substance was used, but why it would be depicted in the form of the god, the bull, Helios, Luna and the torchbearers which are shown in relief baffles me.

The mysteries are lost to us, but I think it likely that what they were and what they meant, and did, to their initiates cannot be described in any case through use of language. They'd have to be experienced, and by a believer.

Philosophy isn't religion, nor is it art, or so I think. We shouldn't look to philosophy or philosophers for any deep insights into life or the world or ourselves, because philosophy can only be expressed through language, and there are limitations on the power of language to explain. Philosophy is supposed to explain, not evoke or inspire. When we look to philosophy as we look to religion or art, we read into it and the language used by philosophers far more than that language can reasonably be construed to mean.

My opinion for what it's worth.

Free will is not a thing, — Mww

Most people would disagree with you. That's why there is a new "Is there free will" thread every week. As if it matters.

Ok. Just wondering from whom this philosophy originated, for it certainly isn’t Kantian, in which perception does not construct anything at all. And you mentioned the CPR, so.....just connecting possible dots here. — Mww

Tell me how in Kant the perceptual act does not construct anything at all.

Tearing down of the totality that spontaneously rules our thinking — Constance

That would be ego, and conditioned thought, and discursive reasoning, in my reading.

Sorry, but the burden isn’t on me. The assertion is yours, and I’m interested in how you arrived at it.

Sometimes see three or four of ‘em, all lined up one after the other, same things being said by the same people, as if repetition makes the case.

Maybe some of them are right....dunno.

But there is no “problem of one’s whole being” as something outside of heedful circumspective relationality with one’s world for Heidegger , or a ‘whole being’ outside of noetic-noematic activity for Husserl. This only becomes a problem when you create an artificial “distance between the intending agent and the world qua world”. Only then does it appear that you “stand apart from all possibilities”, rather than always BEING IN particular possibilities. — Joshs

I take this issue the way Jean Luc Marion does: Husserl's reduction is incomplete, but it has a trajectory, which is toward givenness, and givenness issues forth in a negative correlation to reduction: the more one dismisses presuppositions that, to use Levinas' term, keep the moment pinned to the "same" that is, the totality of knowledge claims, the more what is given simply, or purely, is manifest.
Yes, I'm afraid I do believe there is something transcendental about our being here. Wittgenstein insisted such things are nonsense, but then, he wrote, "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics." This, in 1929, the same year of his Lecture on Ethics, in which put ethics in the nonsense bin. What was he talking about? It was the "presence" of ethics as an absolute. He knew it all rested with ethics and aesthetics, and he was right, AND wrong: one could not speak what ethics is, what value is, but one can speak in its vicinity. this is what Marion does. And Eugen Fink and Michel Henry.

for it certainly isn’t Kantian — Mww

You said this. I just want to know what you mean.

What does perception construct? — Mww

In Kant's philosophy, 'perception' is one of the sources of knowledge, but it is 'the understanding' or 'judgement' which actually construes things. (Or misconstrues them.)

Never mind. Sorry I asked. First, even.

The contention is “constructs” not “construes”.

Agreed on understanding/judgement, but perception is the source of that which is empirically knowable, but it is not the source of empirical knowledge. It is possible to perceive a thing and not know what it is.

“...Our knowledge springs from two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of conceptions)....”
(CPR A50/B74)

This grants the strict passivity of human perception. We are affected by objects, which is called sensation, is supplied by specific physical apparatus, but at that point, no cognitive faculties are employed in the pursuit of knowledge. Nowadays, of course, that theory is......diminished.

Philosophy isn't religion, nor is it art, or so I think. We shouldn't look to philosophy or philosophers for any deep insights into life or the world or ourselves, because philosophy can only be expressed through language, and there are limitations on the power of language to explain. Philosophy is supposed to explain, not evoke or inspire. When we look to philosophy as we look to religion or art, we read into it and the language used by philosophers far more than that language can reasonably be construed to mean. — Ciceronianus the White

But i do take issue with this. I think philosophy is THE religion. It's the people who are either inclined or disinclined to see it this way that makes the difference. I think ancient thought and its mysteries are important not because they are right, but because stand apart from systems of understanding which trivialize what it is to be human. Philosophy can reinstate something lost, only do so intelligently. And this is being done now, and has been for a long time, but few notice because, simply put, people are put together very differently.
Philosophy and deep and inspiring? How about Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety? Or Levinas's Totality and Infinity? There really are many, but they are embedded. Kierkegaard is very off putting in his idiomatic style and his endless references. Levinas is impossible, at first, but then you ease into his language.
I mean, it isn't a welcome thought, but the best stuff, and it does get really good, is hard as hell to get familiar with.
Like Kant.

I really should add that I am by no means a master of any of this. I simply read with understanding, and I usually do passably well. I read Heidegger for the first time about four years ago. Had to know, so I read Being and Time. Simple as that.
Astounding thing to wrap your mind around.

I'm afraid I do believe there is something transcendental about our being here. Wittgenstein insisted such things are nonsense, but then, he wrote, "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics." This, in 1929, the same year of his Lecture on Ethics, in which put ethics in the nonsense bin. What was he talking about? It was the "presence" of ethics as an absolute. He knew it all rested with ethics and aesthetics, and he was right, AND wrong: one could not speak what ethics is, what value is, but one can speak in its vicinity. this is what Marion does. And Eugen Fink and Michel Henry. — Constance

I take transcendence the way that Heidegger and Husserl do, not as a divine beyond this world but as an otherness immanent in being in the world.
But I think you’re on the right track putting Wittgenstein in the company of Henry, Levinas and Marion. He was a devoutly religious person even though he did not identify with organized forms of religious practice. That is why he admired Kierkegaard and St Augustine so much.

His biographer Ray Monk wrote:

“ “To Waismann and Schlick he repeated the general lines of his lecture on ethics: ethics is an attempt to say something that cannot be said, a running up against the limits of language. 'I think it' is definitely important to put an end to all the claptrap about ethics - whether intuitive knowledge exists, whether values exist, whether the good is definable.' On the hand, it is equally important to see that something was indicated by the inclination to talk nonsense. He could imagine, he said, what Heidegger, for example, means by anxiety and being (in such statements as: 'That in the face of which one has anxiety is Being-in-the-world as such'), and he sympathized too with Kierkegaard's talk of 'this unknown something with which the Reason collides when inspired by its paradoxical passion'.
St Augustine, Heidegger, Kierkegaard - these are not names one expects to hear mentioned in conversations with the Vienna Circle - except as targets of abuse.”

I agree. You can't complain about the rent. You move in and learn how to do some things for yourself.

Philosophy isn't religion, nor is it art, or so I think. We shouldn't look to philosophy or philosophers for any deep insights into life or the world or ourselves — Ciceronianus the White

If we shouldnt look to philosophy for deep insights then we shouldnt look to religion or art either. First of all, it’s impossible to tease out where the philosophical or the religious or the artistic or the scientific begins and ends , because all these fields of cultural are helplessly entangled in each other. Secondly, shifts in religious thinking owe a great debt to the philosophical innovations of their time , as well as of previous eras. It’s hard to imagine reading Aquinas or Maimonides without noting the direct influence of Aristotle in their work, or the effect of Kant on Buber, Tillich and Niebuhr, or the influence of Levinas, Heidegger and Kierkegaard on a current generation of theologians.

Quite right.

"Saint" Augustine was a worm. He was all "I think babies committed sins thousands of years before they were born and are therefore evil. If they die before we splash water on them they burn forever in Gehenna". What a sick dud.