This is Mind Bites, a series for philosophy bites with me David Edmonds.

And me Nigel Woberton.

What makes humans different cognitively from other animals? Keith Frankish says that one crucial difference,

perhaps the crucial difference, lies in what he calls conscious thought.

Keith Frankish, welcome to Mind Bites. Hello, thank you for inviting me. The topic we're going to focus on is conscious thought. What do you mean by conscious thought? Well that's a very big question. The nature of conscious thought is

perhaps one of the most important and most complicated issues in philosophy of

mind. But perhaps I could begin with an example. Suppose I'm driving to work and I'm following my

normal route listening to the radio perhaps, daydreaming, and suddenly it occurs to

me that roadworks are due to start today and that I won't be able to take my normal route into work.

When that happens, my behavior changes.

I look out for the next turning, follow a different route into work.

And that event, the occurrence of this thought

that Roadworks are going to start today, that is what I would call a conscious

thought. I think it's a distinctive kind of mental event and our ability to have these conscious

thoughts is a very important fact about us as humans. I think it's the source of

many of the distinctive features of human cognition and of human culture.

Our ability to have conscious thoughts is the distinctive feature of the human mind.

Just to get this clear, when I see the red light when I'm driving,

when I'm not really reflecting on it and I just stop the car,

that's not so much a conscious thought, that's just a thought.

But when I think about the roadblock ahead and that changes my behavior, that's

a conscious thought.

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