Abstract

The nature and function of thoughts have been a central topic of philosophy from its ancient beginnings, yet its critical assessment was put forward in particular by the development of the philosophy of mind in the last decades: thoughts were no longer taken to be the secure basis of which we immediately know the content and its nature , but to be mental entities that require critical investigation concerning the determination of their content and nature. Thoughts are traditionally discussed in connection with reasoning, planning, and justification, but the intrinsic connection between thoughts and rationality was later challenged by psychological conceptions that dismissed rationality as a central notion for a theory of thinking