The problem here will be whether the science will reliably distinguish thoughts that describe fantasies or imaginings rather than real dirty deeds done.
Perry initially (1977) distinguished "thoughts" and "senses," but later (1979) and (1980a/b) made the same distinction in terms of belief contents and belief states.
This is because one must be able to distinguish thoughts from actions.
In habitual tasks, such as taking medicine every few hours, the same PM task is performed regularly and thus it is essential that the individual is able to distinguish thoughts (i.e., thinking about taking the medicine) from actions (i.e., actually taking the medicine).
All the same, in distinguishing between thoughts possessed of consciousness and thoughts of which we are reflectively aware, Descartes opened a space for conscious thoughts that we don't notice or remember.
These show that in laboratory tests the Epoc performed "significantly better than chance", suggesting that the system could distinguish intentional thoughts from other mental activity and artefacts, such as muscle movement.
Maybe somewhat as we can distinguish between primitive sensory perception of things in our environment, and the more intellectual, conceptual operations based on them, so we can distinguish the thoughts we have about our own ('inner') mental goings-on from the ('inner') sensing of them.
Simply put, this means the ability to distinguish between thoughts and feelings and articulate the differences effectively.
These are to be distinguished from thoughts (e.g., "I feel I didn't get a fair deal") and from words colloquially used as feelings but which convey what we think we are (e.g., "inadequate"), how we think others are evaluating us (e.g., "unimportant"), or what we think others are doing to us (e.g., "misunderstood", "ignored").
A second problem is that most cognition questionnaires fail to distinguish between thoughts and symptoms.
