My question is in regards to plugging in a usb thumb-drive. How come I can view the contents of the drive using Dolphin before I mount the device? I cannot see the contents using the bash shell until the device is mounted.

You can't. At least not generally, and not through a general file manager like dolphin. That's the whole purpose of mounting; to make the file system and its contents available to the operating system. To bypass mounting, you'd have to have a program that reads the drive directly and have some way to parse the bits you get out of it.

One possible option, for example, would be with the mtools package. These are command-line programs that are designed for accessing FAT filesystems directly. But even these were designed for use when FAT floppy disks were the most common data medium.

That is what I thought. Not able to view the contents until the drive is mounted however I can view the contents of my usb drive using dolphin as soon as I plug it it. I checked to see if it is possibly begin mounted automatically for me once it is inserted using df but it is not.

Why do you think I am able to view the content before being mounted.

Your GUI is automatically mounting it for you. Is that what you mean?

I was wrong. I guess it is being mounted for me automatically once it is inserted. Where is this set up if I would rather mount the device myself?