Colin asked:

What am I thinking?

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What are you thinking now reading this response to your question 'What am I thinking?'? What are
you thinking as I type this response to your question 'What am I thinking?'? What were you thinking
when you sent this question to ask a philosopher?

If I say, 'Don't think about a red monkey,' it's a good bet that you have a thought about a red monkey.
Similarly if I ask what are you thinking now, it's a good bet that you are thinking, 'what am I thinking?'
but what is the thought 'what am I thinking'?

Right now I am thinking about what to type, that's the most immediate, the most pressing thought, yet
the radio is playing and I'm singing along to the song, the window is open and I can hear the cars
pass, I'm thinking about a play I want to see and if I can get a discount on the tickets. The point is that
I am thinking about loads of things, I don't think this is unusual, you are probably doing the same, our
thinking is a rag-bag of jumble. Perhaps a more appropriate question would be what am I attending
to?

Attention is an interesting phenomena, but one I will not touch on here.

Yet it's still undetermined as to the temporal framework we are working with, if I say red monkey
again you will think about a red monkey, is this the same red monkey thought, are you remembering
the previous red monkey (you probably are now that I've mentioned it, but again is this the same red
monkey or a new thought?).

Philosophers make a distinction between types and token thoughts, so for example there is a new
model (type) of car, but many particular cases (tokens) of that car. Similarly with thoughts red monkey
is a type of thought, and each instance we think it, is a token of that thought, so that it is possible for
example for two minds to think the same thing. But I have a suspicion this is not correct, it is probably
okay for dealing with the question how can two minds think the same thought, and for cases like red
monkeys, but my suspicion is that the thought 'what am I thinking' escapes the type/ token distinction.

Let's go back to the three original questions, even if what you are now thinking is has same form as
what you were thinking when you wrote your question, namely, 'what am I thinking' this is not the
same thought now as then, it's a different 'what am I thinking'.

Why, because your asking now 'what am I thinking' changes each time you ask it.

This is the reason it escapes the type/ token distinction, it is essentially indexical, and self-referential.

Even if you can remember what you were thinking when you wrote 'what am I thinking' would you be
thinking now what you thought then, no, because it is remembrance, it will have a different temporal
structure, a different feel and therefore a different content, it will not be the same thought, similarly
thinking now 'what am I thinking will be different in the future from thinking it now.

Time and thinking are tightly connected, I'm sure I've had that thought before.

Brian Tee