smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) (05/10/88)
In article <8805092354.AA05852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes: >In article <796@hydra.riacs.edu>, nienart@turing.arc.nasa.gov (john nienart) >writes: > >>Maybe its just me, but I find rather frequently that I'm thinking about >>something that I'm _sure_ I'd rather not think about (or humming a trashy >>pop song I hate, etc.). It certainly feels at these times that I don't have >>complete control over that upon which my consciousness is focussed. > >Are you saying that, at those times, you are making a deliberate, >conscious effort to turn your thoughts to something else, and this >effort fails? If so then, yes, it is just you; all the evidence I'm >familiar with points to the fact that it's always possible for a human >being to control his thoughts by a conscious effort. > There is an old joke that may serve as a valuable counterexample here: Try consciously NOT to think of an elephant for exactly the next five minutes and then think of a baby elephant as soon as those five minutes have elapsed.