100 Pure Thoughts: Cultivating Purity One Thought at a Time

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The increased stress I was dealing with day-to-day sent my obsessions and compulsions from a relatively minor irritation to a constant and draining battle. Walking anywhere was challenging because I was obsessed with maintaining a sense of symmetry in my body so every step had to feel ‘right’. Inner speaking and thinking are more intimately intertwined. Inner speaking is, occasionally, a form of thinking; no independent, prior act of propositional thought is required. Footnote 8 And, conversely, some paradigmatic cases of thinking are cases of inner speaking. Varley, R. V., and M. Siegal. 2000. Evidence for cognition without grammar from causal reasoning and ‘theory of mind’ in an agrammatic aphasic patient. Current Biology 10 (12): 723–726. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0960-9822(00)00538-8. Therefore: Entertaining a thought is either an instance of inner speaking or the thought entertained does not exhibit syntactic structure or invoke lexical concepts. My aim in this paper is not to refute the LoT-hypotheses (as abler minds have tried before me) but to put forward an alternative account that tries to do without. However, it is worth noting that Fodor argued mostly abductively and that today, there are sensible alternative explanations that seem more compatible with the available empirical evidence. For example, insight into the extent to which children are statistical learners (cf., e.g., Rebuschat and Williams 2012; Romberg and Saffran 2010) and the advent of usage-based approaches to language acquisition (Tomasello 2003) go some way towards providing viable alternative explanations of how children manage to acquire language. Also, the notion that the cognitive accomplishments of various animals are best explained on the assumption that they avail themselves of an LoT (and that we share with them this rather basic element of cognitive infrastructure) has fallen somewhat out of fashion. Rather, comparative research examines whether (or to what extent) animals can learn to use symbols (Pika 2015); engage in rule-governed (Pika et al. 2018) or intentional (Townsend et al. 2017) communicative behavior; whether there is a rudimentary form of morpho-syntax (as is argued, e.g., by Collier et al. 2014 or Engesser et al. 2016; cf. Suzuki et al. 2021 for a review) in animal communications systems; to what extent animals can reason (cf. Wynne and Udell 2020 or Kaufmann et al. 2021 for an overview) and, at the more general level, how linguistic and other cognitive functions might have coevolved in the first place. To the best of my knowledge, no plausible story of how the LoT could possibly have evolved in non-human animals has been told thus far.

How to Keep Pure Thoughts — Worthy of Grace Ministries Co.

How to best define inner speech, then? Broader and narrower definitions seem possible. Some authors highlight phenomenological experience and claim that “[i]nner speech can be defined as the subjective experience of language in the absence of overt and audible articulation” (Alderson-Day and Fernyhough 2015, p. 931). And while this definition is tailor-made to capture consciously experienced episodes of inner speech, one might also define inner speaking more ‘mechanistically’ (cf. Kompa and Mueller 2020), less phenomenologically. Focusing on inner speaking (i.e., inner speech acts)—as opposed to inner reading, writing, or listening—I propose that inner speaking be defined as an inner episode that substantially engages the speech production system. It can seem impossible, but when Jesus returned to His Father in heaven, He promised to send us His Spirit, the Helper. With the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance we get strength, not only to endure in temptation, but also to totally defeat the enemy. This is the fight of faith. As long as I am fighting, I have not sinned! This is the life of an overcomer! This also means that I remain pure, and there is no condemnation for those involuntary thoughts. However, the whole Bible is a call to action: to resist the enemy, which in the New Covenant is the sin that dwells in myflesh. Being tempted is not the same as committing sin, but for it to stay that way I have to take up a battle against the lusts that become visible. Let me sum up. The claim that we think in language is as old a claim as it is hard to spell out in exact terms. I tried to spell it out by drawing on recent work on inner speech. To that end, I proposed that inner speaking be defined as a mental episode that substantially engaged the speech production system (at least up to the level of lemma representation). And while many agree that inner speech is somehow cognitively beneficial, the extent to which (and the manner in which) it is implicated in thinking is still a matter of some controversy.Note that I am not claiming that all structured thought is linguistic in nature. There might be structured thought that does not result from imposing syntactic structure on lexical items. Rules, for example, provide structure; structured thought thus only requires the application of a rule to more basic items, whatever these may be (as in a conditional—a common notion or ‘rule’ in neuropsychology; cf. Bunge and Wallis 2008). The distinction between (otherwise) structured thought and linguistically structured thought is important to keep in mind, especially if we assume an evolutionary perspective and aim to explain how complex thought might have evolved. What do your eyes see on a daily basis? What do your ears hear? What do read, listen to, and watch as you go about your day-to-day? While we may not always see the direct effects clearly, what we take in impacts us physically, mentally, and spiritually.

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Some examples of compulsions are listed below. Doing some of these things doesn't mean you have OCD. And you may have OCD but have different compulsions to those listed here. You can read our information on identifying your compulsions. Rituals Inner speaking is exclusively a way of making thoughts accessible (to whomever). There is a prior occurrent thought that is entertained independently of any inner speech act and that may then be expressed in inner speech. Footnote 7 It’s for this reason that OCD-UK have chosen to not use the term, and proactively highlight how misleading it can be. We are all creatures of habit. We have very set ways of doing things because we’ve conditioned ourselves to think, feel and behave that way through years (and sometimes decades) of practice. It’s this type of habitual thought patterns that can set the stage for an empowering and fulfilling life, or help to play a hand in our resultant downfall over time. Thoughts quite literally are things since they lay the foundation for any type of life we might decide to lead.Smortchkova, J., K. Dolega, and T. Schlicht, eds. 2020. What are Mental Representations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. To have a clean heart does not mean that the believer is absolutely sinless, but it does mean that a person has good thinking and virtuous intentions. It means, that by the grace of God, he has forsaken his old life, and is moving toward the mark of perfection in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13–15). He has repented of sins and his life is fully consecrated to God (Romans 6:14–16; 8:14–17). And he will meditate on, “The words of the LORD which are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purif Kompa, N., and J. L. Mueller. 2020. How abstract (non-embodied) linguistic representations augment cognitive control. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg. 2020.01597.

Pure thoughts: Is it even possible to keep my thoughts pure?

Emerson, M. J., and A. Miyake. 2003. The role of inner speech in task switching: a dual-task investigation. Journal of Memory and Language 48 (1): 148–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00511-9. Martinez-Manrique, F., and A. Vicente. 2015. The activity view of inner speech. Frontiers in Psychology 6 (232): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00232. But for those of us with OCD, our need for certainty can make our symptoms worse. It's very common for those of us with OCD to worry about whether we really have OCD. This is sometimes called 'meta OCD'.

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You can’t control your thoughts, but you can control your actions.” Have you ever heard someone say this before or something similar? I think many people believe that their thoughts have a will of their own and can’t be controlled, and as long as what’s in their head doesn’t come out in the open, then it’s not hurting anyone else. While this line of thinking may be true in some sense— thoughts can be hard to control, and no human can actually read your mind— this isn’t the attitude taken by our Lord concerning our thoughts. God’s Opinion on Purity Baldo, J. V., S. R. Paulraj, B. C. Curran, and N. F. Dronkers. 2015. Impaired reasoning and problem-solving in individuals with language impairment due to aphasia or language delay. Frontiers in Psychology 6: 1523. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01523. Moreover, some seem to accord inner speech a cognitive role that goes beyond that of overt speech. This would be most pronounced in cases in which inner speech is not simply used due to social etiquette (i.e., because self-directed out-loud speech is commonly frowned upon), but rather turns into an integral part of our cognitive infrastructure and becomes (part of) a cognitive mechanism in its own right. It seems to be implicated in the phonological loop, for example, as a component of working memory (Buchsbaum and D’Esposito 2019). And some argue that it is a mechanism for integrating and broadcasting information in the cognitive system (e.g., Carruthers 2002; cf. also Godfrey-Smith 2016). Also, it has been said to be implicated in cognitive control mechanisms (Granato, Borghi and Baldassare 2020; Miyake et al. 2004), and to play a role in the processing of abstract concepts (Fini et al. 2022). More generally, if we allow for unconscious inner speech (and some methods used to examine inner speech such as dual tasks studies seem to rely on such a notion; cf., e.g., Sokolov 1972; Emerson and Miyake 2003; Miyake et al. 2004; Fini et al. 2022), one might argue that inner speech thereby assumes a cognitive function of its own. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)