Philosophy Now Forum

What makes a thought deep?

Jaded Sage wrote:What makes a thought deep?

Wisdom and intellect.

So all those in which wisdom and intellect are made of use are deep thoughts and there are no deep thoughts that are not made from wisdom and intellect? Is there one that is more important than the other? Is there a difference between a deep thought and a wise or intellectual thought?

Is a deep thought a complicated one ?

Some Japanese aphoristic poems called hai-ku can be called deep perhaps, because the sense is not obvious at first and requires some reflexion.

Yeah, I see no reason to think that a deep thought must be complicated. So then a deep thought is one that requires a lot of thought to fully understand?

Jaded Sage wrote:So all those in which wisdom and intellect are made of use are deep thoughts and there are no deep thoughts that are not made from wisdom and intellect? Is there one that is more important than the other? Is there a difference between a deep thought and a wise or intellectual thought?

Maybe you should read up on intelligences, cognitive abilities, psychology, etc, you are glaringly ignorant.

Do you mean something like this?



This makes me think that I've used this phrase completely intuitively before and have never stopped to think deeply about this. Very good that you bring this up.

What are some of the conditions that are required for a thought to be deep? What are potential ways to interpret depth?

* Deep as a synonym for valuable, serious, or intense
* Complex to understand
* Satisfies quest for wisdom
* Thorough and well thought

Any other ideas for what it might mean?

The opposite of "deep" is "shallow" and "flat".

A shallow thought could be perhaps:

"I like ice-cream and therefore it´s good."

Or:

"My mother refused to buy me a third ice-cream and therefore she is bad."


I wonder if we could deepen little Johnny´s thoughts a little bit.

What has just occurred to me: being deep is a matter of degree. It is not an absolute.

Risto wrote: * Deep as a synonym for valuable, serious, or intense
* Complex to understand
* Satisfies quest for wisdom
* Thorough and well thought

This seems like a good start.

I've also gotten these two descriptions:
* It's what we stop and give a lot of time and thought to.
* When other people don't understand what you are thinking.


Are we prepared to say these are all often conditions of being a deep thought? I also wonder if subject matter matters.

What do we mean by complex to understand? I think I'm in agreement that a deep thought need not be complicated. And surely not all complicated thoughts are deep.

Another possible option is that it indicates the level of thinking. There are science and systems thinking as opposed to normal/regular thinking. Truly deep thoughts could perhaps be thought only scientifically and/or systematically.

I also wonder if subject matter matters.

What do we mean by complex to understand? I think I'm in agreement that a deep thought need not be complicated. And surely not all complicated thoughts are deep.

I don't know if subject matters. The subject "What did you eat for lunch?" probably doesn't bring up very deep thoughts in the beginning. However, conversation could go on and continue with nutritional science and discuss things like mindful eating, macronutrient distribution, or energy balance, which are complex, valuable, our quests for wisdom, and potentially thorough.

The general subject remained the same, nutrition, the perspective or area of interest changed. Potentially every conversation could become one where deep thoughts occur.

Complex could mean that it has various alternative explanations, contexts, and part and that it is difficult to find out the right answer to a question. A scientific theory could be very complicated to a novice but very simple to an expert, does it then make it complicated or simple?

We're gonna need some examples.

Is "What is the meaning of life?" a deep question/thought?

And if so, how does it differ from "I like tacos." which is presumably not a deep thought?

The difference between them I would say comes from the conditions brought up earlier in the thread. The question is, is there anything to add or take away?

So far I've gathered these:

* Valuable, serious, or intense
* Complex to understand
* Satisfies quest for wisdom
* Thorough and well thought
* Requires higher level thinking

So philosophers would say a thought is deep if and only if certain conditions are met. What are those conditions?

Jaded Sage wrote:We're gonna need some examples.

Is "What is the meaning of life?" a deep question/thought?

And if so, how does it differ from "I like tacos." which is presumably not a deep thought?

`Actually the thinker and the context is utterly important.
"The Meaning of Life", could just be a moron reading out the title of a DVD from a shelf.
And
"I like Tacos" could be a man on his knees with a gun at his head, held there by Al Capone, working out the correct answer as if he answers wrong he dies.

How about the question rather than a statement (I suppose my question is really about depth itself). I assume we agree "What is the meaning of life?" is a deep question. In your opinion, which of the conditions you've listed does it satisfy? Also, could you please go into a little more... depth ...about what you mean by each of them (lol)? Just a sentence or two would be appreciated.