This is from a discussion on facebook, but sufficiently difficult for me to phrase properly that it seems worth repeating in a format I am more likely to find later. My mother wrote:

“And yes, I think I did get away, and even dream a while, if you count staring up at the sky when I should have been doing something useful.”

I’m not familiar with staring up at the sky when I should have been doing something useful, though occasionally I think I was staring up at the sky when I should have been doing something useful.

I consider believing that one should not do [x] to be a state of consciousness incompatible with doing [x]. When we might say that we did [x] even though we knew we shouldn’t, I think we now believe we should not do [x], but there are three possibilities for our state at the time: 1) our beliefs were inconsistent with our current beliefs; 2) we alternated between two states, in one of which we were conscious of doing [x] and in one of which we believed we should not do [x]; 3) we were not conscious of believing we should not do [x], although we would have believed we should not do [x] if something had brought the question to mind.

We might add the possibility that we do not currently believe we should not have done [x], but at the time we either: alternated between two states, in one of which we were conscious of doing [x] and in one of which we believed we should not do [x]; were not conscious of believing we should not do [x], although we would have believed we should not do [x] if something had brought the question to mind. Further complications along this and various other lines can of course be added indefinitely, at the risk of creating a haze in which neither contituent parts nor relationships can be grasped.