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Thought as a System

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This study concerns the role of thought and knowledge. The author rejects the notion that our thinking processes neutrally report on what is out there in an objective world. He explores the manner in which thought actively participates in forming our perceptions, our sense of meaning and our daily actions. He suggests that collective thought and knowledge have become so automated that we are in large part controlled by them, with a subsequent loss of authenticity, freedom and order.

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 1994

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About the author

David Bohm

56 books390 followers
David Joseph Bohm (December 20, 1917 – October 27, 1992) was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind.

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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
Profile Image for Neil White.
130 reviews14 followers
February 10, 2012
The late great Bohm was a student of the pioneering physicist Niels Bohr, who as brilliant as he was, was unwilling and unable to see eye to eye with Einstein on relativity vs quantum mechanics. Einstein himself was just as stubborn, and the fact that the two most brilliant minds of the 20th century couldn't even acknowledge each other in the same room profoundly affected Bohm and his ideas on communication, dialogue, and thought itself.

This was a tough read at times, no doubt about that, but ultimately I found this as challenging and rewarding as all the other Bohm books I've read in the past. Bohm is a tough read at the best of times, mostly because his concepts of things we take for granted like thought and dialogue itself are so seemingly revolutionary that by the time I've grasped what he's talking about, he's on to something else.

To put it as best I can, Bohm's idea of thought, which he expounds upon in the form of a dialogue with students over a span of three days (five sessions) is that it is a material process, involving not just the brain but the entire body, almost a self-aware reflex that's not always to be trusted. Thought, as Bohm would tell it, is responsible for a great many problems such as prejudice and other negative assumptions. Thought is what is telling us to jump the gun when we get angry at someone we think (thinking is different than the process and system of thought, mind you) has wronged us. And thought, tricky bastard that it is, isn't revealing itself in that process - this is why we take these things so personally, we feel like it's coming from us, when in fact it's not. It's problems like these that lead to collapse in communication and dialogue, which Bohm laments as one of the biggest problems of the 20th century. (I'm glad he's not alive to see Congress these days.)

I apologize if none of this makes any sense - that's my failing, not his. He goes into way way waaaaayyy more detail than I ever could here, but if the philosophical waxings of one of the most enlightened quantum physicists of the last 50 years sounds interesting, this is as good a place to start as any, although I would probably recommend his great "On Dialogue" as the best start. He expounds on the concepts presented in "OD" in more detail and laid out in a more linear fashion, whereas TAAS is very much an informal dialogue (please note that - I've seen several reviews blasting this book for not being researched and notated - did they not read that this was a three-day informal conversation?) that goes in and out among several major concepts. This is by no means light reading, but if you're looking for a good kick in the pants from modern philosophy, give this one a try.
Profile Image for Bogdan Strugari.
26 reviews3 followers
April 13, 2024
If only more People would understand David's view (and Krishnamurti also) of deflecting the ilussory Self, everyone and the whole World would be in a better place.

Highly recommend this to Anyone who wishes to understand the Structure of Thought and of the Ego, and in return to get the possibility of complete Cessation of Sorrow, Regret and Fear, and pave the road for Stillness, Calm, Understanding and Beauty.
Profile Image for Nick.
6 reviews
May 18, 2014
A good book that delves into important questions that, though deeply philosophical, have relevance to our everyday lives and relationships. Bohm has a tendency to be a bit wordy, and the dialogue-like format of the book doesn't help at all...still, the content is there and is worth getting at, stylistic problems aside. Fair warning, however; those looking for a rigorous scientific discussion will be disappointed. Although he is an accomplished Physicist, Bohm's approach to these problems is based on careful examination of one's own experiences and is purposely vague.

In the book, Bohm discusses how disorder/violence at both the international and interpersonal scale ultimately have their roots in 'incoherent' thought. He spends much of the book discussing what sort of patterns in thought lead to this disorder, and what steps might be taken to surmount it, or at least become more aware of it.

Overall, this is definitely worth the time for anyone interested in philosophy of the mind, large-scale social problems, or metaphysics.
Profile Image for Dolf van der Haven.
Author 11 books15 followers
September 8, 2019
David Bohm has a complicated way to explain things. His use of the word "thought" had me confused for half the book, until I realised he meant "conditioning" or (psychological) "imprints". Then, things became clearer, but his way of thinking is so particular (him being so strongly influenced by Jiddhu Krishnamurti doesn't help with clarity either), that I had to constantly try and relate his concepts to everything I read about (evolutionary) psychology, spirituality, therapy, and other subjects that are more mainstream.
That said, Bohm's insights are powerful food for thought and eventually seem to greatly match my own model of the world. This I realised around page 172 of the book, after which the going was less tough...
Profile Image for Huong Pham.
145 reviews40 followers
October 6, 2020
Cuốn sách nằm trong tủ sách tinh hoa nhưng với mình có chút lan man. Có những ý tưởng nhìn nhận tư duy như một hệ thống, tránh những bẫy tư duy tự tạo ra.
Profile Image for Arianne X.
Author 4 books35 followers
January 2, 2023
Thought is Not a System

In this book, Bohm points out that thought is the tool by which we solve every kind of human problem. However, he also maintains that thought is the source of the very problems that thought is recruited to solve. To say that this an irony and that Bohm acknowledged this irony is too understate the problem with Bohm’s approach which is a priori and based on flawed logical grounds. Bohm asks that we do not to get stuck in well-worn patterns of thought and analysis but by taking on thought as a system we become just that, get stuck in thought - as a system as our new pattern of thought and analysis. That is, we must take on Bohm’s system so as not to get stuck in a system. Bohm's most compelling proposal is in his notion of the proprioception of thought which suggests a state of consciousness that is beyond conscious thought but this becomes self-refuting. Bohm is suggesting a state of consciousness beyond consciousness by which we become aware of this state conscious which is beyond consciousness. This is self-refuting, how can we use conscious to get beyond consciousness? We are better served, and history has shown, that we are better off when we streamline our ontology, not complicate it with additional entitles and systems.

Bohm maintains that thought is a system, but to say that the problem is thought is a mistake. Using thought (as the tool) to analyze or critique thought (the cause of the problem) is recursive and self-reflexive. That is, one must engage in thought to claim that thought is the problem or to make any claims about thought. An essential consequence of thinking as such, of the existence in the human brain, is Bohm's thought as a system. This is to deduce an existential proposition from a tautology which is logically impossible. Such claims are known as analytic tautologies. They tell us exactly nothing about the world and existence.

To quote from Bohm, “You may say "I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts to bear on this problem". But "my" thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar fault. Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn’t notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates” Given this, how did David Bohm use thought to get outside of the all-encompassing system of thought to see the problem of thought as a system? Bohm falls prey to his own fallacy, viz., the fixed assumption that thought is (must be) a system. There is another fallacy at work here, that of equivocation between thought as the subject and thought as the predicate. In Bohm’s approach, thought keeps moving between being the subject of the analysis and being the tool of the analysis and even does double duty as both the tool and subject simultaneously. This is double talk and equivocation. Thought moves from the thing (subject) to a property of the thing (predicate). This is a deceptive logical move similar to one that Anselm made in the ontological argument as exposed by Kant.

I quote further, “Now, I say that this system has a fault in it — a 'systematic fault'. It is not a fault here, there or here, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It is everywhere and nowhere.�� Did he really say, everywhere and nowhere? This statement is incoherent. No predicate can be simultaneously attributed and denied to a subject otherwise we lose our ability to think properly at all as when he claims that a systematic flaw is everywhere and nowhere. We understand words such as cause, process and system when they are applied to the physical world. We can have no idea of what these mean when applied to in-material structures such as thought or thought as a system. This apparent confusion in the Bohm quote above is a category error.

Thought is the apparatus by which we organize our experience of existence, it does not have a separate existence apart from us that can be analyzed. Thought is not extant in the world independent of our thinking. This is the tautology (thinking about thought) thought is not something out there in the world to be grasped at and analyzed. Thought is not a system that yields truth in an absolute, objective and systematic manner. To build a system from thought is to claim too much. We cannot think about thought in a pure sense without there being something in it. Thought must be about something; it must have content.It cannot be isolated as a substance. Nor is there any universal thought, it is always relative to the thinker. Thought is not an observable, there is no substance or system of thought, it is not an inner mysterious process that lies behind our acts, there is no metaphysical arena of thought, there are internal mental states of thought but this does not create a system of thought. Thought as a system is simply the creation of a metaphysical system that generates problems that it cannot resolve.

To focus on thought as the problem is to use language to disguise the chase for an illusionary line of reasoning down the rabbit hole in the search for new propositions about the world and existence. These analytic propositions have no factual content in the world. There is nothing that can be said or claimed about thought by thought that can be empirically tested. Thought as a system cannot be shown to be logically true or empirically verified. From tautology flows only more tautologies, not existential propositions. I will admit that It is very difficult to speak about thought without language. We cannot have language without thought and we cannot have thought without language. All the same, this pursuit is a philosophical dead-end.

A further error in thinking of thought as a system is that it creates a phenomenological fallacy. Simply stated, phenomenology is the study of the structures of consciousness as experienced from a first-person point of view, it is about of the character of our experience. The mistaken assumption is that one's introspective observations or experiences must comport to something external; that they comprise a ‘system’ which in this case turns out to be some sort of new mysterious metaphysical system. The phenomenological fallacy is to think that there must be some thing or system that corresponds to the experience of our thoughts. There is no system as such, it is a sort of phantom after-image of our experience of thought. First person subjective experiences are not additive. Thought is a brain process, nothing more. The brain is empirically verifiable and can this be shown to exist; the conclusion of a system is an irrelevant conclusion.

Bohm’s system does not reside in physical space but the brain does, so the system does not exist but the brain does. There is no such thing as thought as a system, there just seems to be an experience of a system based on the experience of thought. The phenomenological fallacy is in thinking that something must exist such as the system to correspond to the experience of thought. There is no need to posit the existence of an extraneous entity such as an extra system. This is needless complexity. There is thought which is reducible to the brain, nothing more.

I agree that our awareness of the world is filtered through our perceptual apparatus and colored by our expectations. In this sense, assuming we accept the existence of a world external to our perceptions, we can never fully know that external world as is truly exists. As the ‘things in themselves’ as Immanuel Kant put it; this is nothing new. But from here, it does not follow that thought is analyzable as a recursive system. From Bohm’s approach, it would follow that we can overcome our perceptual apparatus with our perceptual apparatus. This is not ironic, it is just incoherent.

After all this, I must wonder, is Bohm trying to impose order on chaos? A system implies order. Is he trying to avoid, and thus rescue us from, the only true metaphysics, that of the chaos and the accompanying nightmare of existence; a paradox and horror in which everything we believe is uncertain at best and most likely false. Bohm was an award-winning physicist and an expert in quantum mechanics. Perhaps he knows something we do not. Or, what is most likely going on here in my opinion is a metaphysics of personality so to speak. Bohm’s thought as a system reflects his subjective experience of existence, the nuance of his psychology and the distinction of his personality, not actualities about existence. Or, what is most likely going on here in my opinion is a metaphysics of personality so to speak. Bohm’s thought as a system reflects his subjective experience of existence, the nuance of his psychology and the distinction of his personality, not actualities about existence. For Bohm, the world of thought is much more real than the physical world, he seems to regard it alone as real, the real world so to speak.
Profile Image for Torben Rasmussen.
102 reviews6 followers
August 23, 2012
Bohm has an interesting thesis concerning the nature of thought and thinking. Unfortunately the format of writing a transcript of a 2 day session with Bohm and an anonymous group of questioneers is very and many good point are lost. Alse beware that this in essense a philosophical work and though the author seem aware of the science behind his statement, there is little actual demonstration of it.
Profile Image for Kyle.
31 reviews8 followers
Read
August 21, 2017
Whoa! Trippy physics from the 90's trying hard to define thought less like a series of unfortunate events and more like a series of happenings, happening ALL AT ONCE and some of them haven't even happened yet!

I loved it. But, I'm a dirty hippie.

If you are interested in ideas surrounding instinct and memory, check it out.
59 reviews1 follower
March 13, 2019
this is very good book and it quite compact and was written in form of 2 days talk of Bohm and his colleges. There a some points very interesting that i've learnt

- thought are dependent of feeling and this is how your reaction is bad if you're angry, or you are in the bad "mood"
- you are always thinking that you should behave as your thought, that's not true, you can decide how to deal with it if you're understanding that thought should not define what and how you interact with "things" or your life.
- be optimistic does not always help, because the pessimistic thought is still there, it is suppressed behind the current situation and can comeback any time. Being optimistic is also endorphin addicted and won't be the best solution from time to time! May be not too optimistic nor pessimistic but neutral?
- your thought is a kind of chemical reaction or more specific, it's a reflection. So it's important to understand and recognize it and you can control it from time to time!

and something about meaning of time related to thought, we should consider to treat thought independent with time.

This book is not a book to read once, but it's worth to try even you can't understand all of this at the first time!
Profile Image for Nice Sene.
1 review
Want to read
February 28, 2023
Para Bohm, o pensamento e seu processo é indissolúvel do mundo físico, da matéria ou do ambiente. Os dois são aspectos diferentes para uma mesma base. Não faz sentido para ele, fazer uma distinção entre pensamento e coisa-"realidade". Para ele, a matéria e a consciência possuem o mesmo fundamento ou base, que seria a totalidade. De tal forma que eles se interpenetram, desdobram e fluem em um movimento em espiral. Logo, o pensamento é um processo real assim como o mundo físico, a ilusão seria separar esses aspectos como se eles existissem de modo independente um do outro, quando na verdade eles são a mesma coisa, para essa totalidade ou base fundamental não analisável. Bem como é uma ilusão, para ele, fazer uma distinção entre o observador e o observado, ou entre conteúdo do pensamento e seu processo, bem como entre experiência e conhecimento. Todos esses aspectos devem desaparecer juntos.
Profile Image for #DÏ4B7Ø.
217 reviews
Shelved as 'act47-org'
February 9, 2024
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Profile Image for Ba Thu.
3 reviews
September 28, 2021
I have read the translated version in Vietnamese. It drove me crazy because the author had not expressed the ideas clearly. Instead, the author presented all the views through the form of a meeting, a conference. So the general thoughts are interwoven according to each suggestion of conference participants. Some have been mentioned above, suddenly appeared again and dropped.
Probably, because of the roundabout translation, I could not follow the flow of the author. I will try to read it in English again and give another review later.
In the end, just only several key points I can take from the book that might help. Thinking like a system is a part of our instinct, but sometimes, it can drive us the wrong way.
4 reviews1 follower
March 18, 2021
This is one of of my favorite books of all time!
This is a book that shouldn't just be read, but should be contemplated along with the reading. The way Bohm explains his notion of Thought as a System with all its implications is brilliant and full of amazing insight every other sentence.
2 reviews
April 19, 2023
Meditative book

Participating in this Dr bhom dialogue is a wish that came true. don't feel anxious to have a dialogue in reality. We should at least have like minded youth around us. Maybe we could try it on YouTube in these modern times.
Profile Image for Siladi.
6 reviews3 followers
April 2, 2010
One of the most exciting & thought-provoking books I've read in a long time, I'm planning to re-read it again very soon. The dialogue Q&A format helped to illustrate the very abstract concepts very nicely.
Profile Image for Ilias Vdm.
38 reviews
April 14, 2023
Dit boek heeft mijn kop leeggemaakt. Nu ga ik lekker sigaretten roken en fristi drinken!
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