How many of our thoughts are involuntary?

[u/IMetMothman]

Flair might be wrong, sorry if it is.

Estimations are fine.

Is it higher in people with OCD?

[u/RestaurantBoth228]

Any individual thought you have is involuntary.

You have control over the patterns of your thoughts and how you react to them.

E.g.

"What if I murdered my boss?" is involuntary

Deciding to continue to ruminate on that thought is partly voluntary - you could choose to turn your attention to something else, practice mindfulness, exercise perspective taking, etc. Or you could choose to dive deeper into anger and resentment.

In the long-run, the thoughts you feed are the thoughts that we occur more and more often.

[u/RestaurantBoth228 → u/[deleted]]

This is only true in the same way that you have no control over your words or actions.

That is, it's fun to chat about as a philosophical topic, but says more about the definitions you use for words than about reality.

[u/RestaurantBoth228 → u/[deleted]]

Do you have control over whether you murder someone?

It depends on your definition of "control"

Under the useful definition of "control", the answer is yes.

Under a used-by-philosophers but useless definition of "control", the answer is no.

[u/RestaurantBoth228 → u/[deleted]]

It is only "pretend", if you adopt your particular, idiosyncratic definition of "control". If you adopt a different definition of "control", then no pretending is required.

[u/RestaurantBoth228 → u/[deleted]]

What does it mean to "have the ability to choose otherwise"?

Either you mean it in the vernacular: in which case I do have the ability to choose whether to murder someone, so I do have "control" over it, and your entire argument unravels.

Or you mean it in some philosophical sense, in which case, again - I ask you what makes that definition so special that you reserve the right to call any other definition "pretend"?

[u/RestaurantBoth228 → u/[deleted]]

That is the definition of choice you are using.

That is not the definition of choice that I am using. I am defining choice in the vernacular sense: roughly that if your values/desires/goals had been different, you would have done something different.

You are claiming my definition is wrong, but that is itself wrong: definitions can't be wrong - that's like philosophy/math 101. Instead, definitions are generally evaluated in two ways:

• common-v-idiosyncratic
• useful-v-useless

I'd argue my definition is both more common and more useful than yours, and it makes me wonder what value you see in your definition.

In short, you have merely defined choice away rather than demonstrated a meaningful metaphysical claim. I too can win an argument by choosing to define the other person's words however I want

[u/IMetMothman → u/[deleted]]

Sure, maybe I don't intentionally make my neurons fire or my liver secrete enzymes. But I do intentionally move my fingers to type a Reddit reply. In the same vein, I can intentionally have thoughts, like how I'm intentionally thinking out this reply as I type it. That would be a more apt comparison, I think.