I think of this often in the sense that I wonder whether people around me can know or understand what I'm thinking about. My conclusion is that they most certainly cannot. But if we don't share thoughts with each other how can we even communicate? This is a good discussion, and I align (more or less) with Kit Fine's suggestion that "communication is not really a matter of thought identity, but thought coordination. What matters is not the intrinsic properties of two people's thoughts or the extent to which those are the same. What matters is how those thoughts are related. For instance, treating our thoughts as if they are about the same things often suffices for understanding and joint behaviour."
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