Abstract

Thinking sometimes seems to operate on images; but sometimes it seems to use words as its material. The 'speed of thought', the possibility of thinking about the non‐existent or what is not the case, the transparency of thought and its privacy, are not features that could be demystified by the discovery of hidden inner structures. They are, rather, muddles felt as problems. The suggestion that our sense of mystery about thinking is a pseudo‐mystery, a mere mystification consequent on having a mistaken idea of the use of words, is repulsive. Philosophical confusions typically arise when one does know how to use a word correctly, i.e. in accord with established use, but lacks a synoptic view of its use. In philosophy and psychology we talk of thought‐processes as little known and perhaps mysterious, certainly complicated, processes in the mind.