I think thought trains are really interesting things. Some day we should be able to capture our thoughts in a mathematical langauge. I think with increased influence of logic on language, it would immensely help such analyses. We would be closer to understand our language in a way that it maps to the mental images that it attempts to represent.
Once we have a reasonably accurate representation of the sequence of our thoughts, we can define the macroscopic properties that would signify an overall idea, a belief or even a certain philosophy. I have conducted some experiments, and I think the only care that needs to be taken is in the interpretation of results. Any claim on results needs to be logically specified as well. This might be tricky, because the observations themselves are seldom logically defined. That is one thing we need to improve with our language(s).