What is a thought?

[billg]

Well, I refute it.

 

What exactly IS a thought? My understanding is a biological one. A thought, to me, can be thought of as action in the nervous system which may or may not influence ones subsequent behaviour. The point here is the thought is in fact an ACTION – it is not a lump of matter, or a unit of energy, it is a collection of many individual, functional exchanges of energy that act to make some kind of mathematical transformation to the incoming information. It’s not a passive process – our heads don’t just drift over a thought, they DO a thought, it requires work and the energy needs to be carefully ordered – it can’t just be released willy nilly, or it won’t set up a specific pathways of nervous interaction which encode the thought.

 

A thought exists in the brain then, but does it exist only in the brain? Can’t we transmit thoughts? Well yes, but not directly. We don’t take a carbon copy of our brain and implant it in the next human. When a human expresses a thought through language, we aren’t seeing a carbon copy of that thought. Rather, the pattern of neural activity is being manipulated by particular parts of the brain into a pattern of muscle activation in our throat and mouth which produces the desired sound, speech. Then another person must hear this, and use analogous parts of their brain to extract the meaningful content, which it does by comparing it against the vast store of information that exists within the structure of the brain. The thought does not exist in the sound – the sound of speech is just vibrations, and has no meaning without the context of the brain. The speech is not ACTIVE like a thought, it’s passively moving through the environment.

 

As well as indirectly communicated a thought through speech, two people may of course have the same kind of input, i.e. both look at Mars one night, and independently perform the same mental calculation or “thought” that it is lifeless, and then independently express that idea in words. The thought is not being directly moved between minds in any case – it is being generated spontaneously in each person as a result of the real, salient, physical stimuli of light and/or sound, which again, are not carbon copies of a thought or of an object like a planet – they are merely passive information that only become meaningful when our brains perform an active thought on them.

 

So a thought does not exist independently of the brain.

[hallenrm]

Well, I refute it.

What exactly IS a thought? My understanding is a biological one

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That indeed is a limitation for your thought processes, you need to expand its horizons with your own experiences, and not limit it to the text book knowledge! :phones:

 

thought is in fact an ACTION – it is not a lump of matter, or a unit of energy, it is a collection of many individual, functional exchanges of energy that act to make some kind of mathematical transformation to the incoming information. It’s not a passive process – our heads don’t just drift over a thought, they DO a thought, it requires work and the energy needs to be carefully ordered – it can’t just be released willy nilly, or it won’t set up a specific pathways of nervous interaction which encode the thought.

 

Well, here you are demonstrating your own thought processes, think deeper for a moment, and realize that none of these words emanate from conventional science paradigms.

 

For example, you have used the word energy several times, can you say which form of energy, as it is normally understood in science, is your argument based?

 

The thought is not being directly moved between minds in any case – it is being generated spontaneously in each person as a result of the real, salient, physical stimuli of light and/or sound, which again, are not carbon copies of a thought or of an object like a planet – they are merely passive information that only become meaningful when our brains perform an active thought on them.

 

So a thought does not exist independently of the brain.

 

That again is an hypothesis, an independent thought! :)

[billg]

For example, you have used the word energy several times, can you say which form of energy, as it is normally understood in science, is your argument based?

 

Yeah you got me - I wasn't really being that careful with my wording or anything, just trying to explain the idea. I used the word energy to mean different things. You get the gist of what I'm trying to say though, right?

[IDMclean]

Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes in the English language include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination.

 

Thinking involves manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions. Thinking is a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of cognitive psychology.

 

A pattern is a form, template, or model (or, more abstractly, a set of rules) which can be used to make or to generate things or parts of a thing, especially if the things that are generated have enough in common for the underlying pattern to be inferred or discerned, in which case the things are said to exhibit the pattern. Pattern matching is the act of checking for the presence of the constituents of a pattern. The detection of underlying patterns is called pattern recognition. The question of how patterns arise naturally is dealt with by the scientific field of pattern formation.

 

Some patterns (for example, many visual patterns) may be directly observable through the senses.

 

Some patterns are named. Simple decorative examples are stripes and zigzags. Further examples include the regular tiling of a plane, echoes, and balanced binary branching.

 

The simplest patterns are based on repetition/periodicity: several copies of a single template are combined without modification. For example, in aviation, a "holding pattern" is a flight path which can be repeated until the aircraft has been granted clearance for landing.

 

Pattern recognition is more complex when templates are used to generate variants. For example, in English, sentences often follow the "N-VP" (noun - verb phrase) pattern, but some knowledge of the English language is required to detect the pattern. Pattern recognition is studied in many fields, including psychology, ethology, and Computer Science.

 

In addition to static patterns, there may be patterns of movement such as oscillation

 

It would seem to me that thought and pattern are possibly one in the same.

 

I would ask, that we can have thoughts at different places (difference of position of energy patterns), why is it that a thought must be internal, if we can have the same thought in different places. The conditions that bring us to having that same thought maybe vastly different, but the result would seem none the less the same, as is often the basic process.

 

It would then seem to me that thoughts, ideas, expressions, or whatever you wish to call them cannot be unique, internal, nor external. Strictly speaking, as they are patterns that arise regardless of space-time orientation.

 

Now true they may have higher concentration in areas of high complexity (humans, animals, insects) as opposed to bodies of lower complexity (rocks).

 

Now I realize I've negelected something rather important, and that is are we talking about the patterns of thought, or the thoughts themselves? That is are we talking about the definition or the expression?

[Eilizsia]

:esmoking:

I have been using the word "thought" very often in my postings here.

 

But, I wonder what this word means to the readers!

 

So, here are some thoughts on thought;) .

 

But wait, will you let me know, what do you gather when you read this word

 

Thought

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A Thought is another reason for: Searching for

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Reason

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and Meaning

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Thought=Memory=Thought=Idea:lightbulb

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=Memory=Thought=Ideal:rainbow: =Memory=Thought=Goal:thumbs_up =Memory=Thought=Perpose:ebohoo: [/font].

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Thought is also a way to define Living.....A Single Letter of the Alpha<Omego>bet is a Thought from a Memory. Did You have a Thought of a Single Letter Yet.

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Conclusion

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A Thought is a Memory

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coming into our consiousness because of our

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.Thinking..

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........Eilizsia.....:esmoking:

[codyreign]

A thought - It does not exist unless you "think" it does.

- You do not create them, thats just another "thought"

- Thoughts are reference to reality, but never touch it. For example, it doesn't matter how much you "Think" about the computer screen, The thought will never be close to the computer screen.

-The one you claim to be the "thinker" the self, cannot be noticed anyplace other than "thought". There for you "think" your "thinking", but really the "thought" has seduced who you really are into believing you created it so that it could be animated.

[Rade]

Here is a definition and my thoughts about "thought":

 

A thought is a purposefully directed process of cognition.

 

Because it is purposeful it does not "just" happen, some effort (thinking) is required

Because it is directed it has goal(s)--related to defining the identity of reality and discovering causal connections between different aspects of reality

Because it is cognitive it is a function of both perception and recall of memory within the brain.

 

Imo, a "thought" occurs within a "moment", thus it is outside of spacetime. A thought occurs when the future is transformed into the past within a moment. You see a "lion" as you walk into a room, a thought of the lion occurs within a moment as the future (no lion) is transformed into the past (lion in memory). The duration of the lion thought moment (a purposefully directed process of cognition) is Planck time.

 

There are fundamentally two types of thoughts: (1) those initially obtained during perception, when a new aspect of reality (the future) comes into mental focus (purposefully) within a moment (the identity of the reality is defined) and is transformed into the past where it is stored as memory, (2) when past thoughts stored as memory again come into focus within a moment (purposefully) and are combined with other thoughts (a process called concept formation).

 

Mental events produced randomly from memory (outside free will) that come into focus in a moment (a light turning on event :eek_big:) are not "thoughts" and are outside the process of thinking [some other name needed to define them--?--no such word appears in dictionary that I can find], however, once these [non-thought] events are purposefully identified they can be transformed into thoughts via thinking and can be used to form new thoughts (many acts of creativity come about this way, the transformation of non-thoughts into thoughts). Thus, creativity has both a thinking and non-thinking aspect, it is the dialectic that emerges from the two processes.

 

OK, fire away, but be thoughtful.

[2tall]

However, if you limit it to humans, something more like "Ahhhh....cozy in here it is..." Complete with the mother's heart beat massaging our developing body.

 

 

4 years old or not, this post just answered a huge question of mine.

 

The way I see it, humans think in conversation, either 1st person or 3rd person. When I came to that conclusion, I began to wonder how thoughts worked before humans knew how to talk. That particular post led me to believe that since a baby can't think the words "ahh cozy in here" the only thing he can do is feel the warming sense of coziness. So if you have to feel before you think, is it a possibility that emotions and thoughts are one in the same?

[Vox]

I have been using the word "thought" very often in my postings here.

 

But, I wonder what this word means to the readers!

 

So, here are some thoughts on thought;) .

 

But wait, will you let me know, what do you gather when you read this word

 

Thought

 

2 fold... firstly it was existing/developing because it was a good tool like hand or fingernail.

 

Now it is more or less creating life of its own within the mind.. it has created the "I" and transforming from tool to master..

[clapstyx]

"what do you think was man's first thought?"

My first thought occurred one evening at a party when I was 9 months. I had been christened earlier in the day. My uncle and my father were in a discussion and I distinctly remember that they were both wrong and that I knew what the actual truth was. My next thought was "I dont remember anything prior to this" like it was my first day of consciousness. Its stayed in my memory because I thought about it quite a bit in the ensuing days and often since then. So I suppose my suggestion is that mans first thoughts could be similar, an exclamation of suddenly having moved to a higher level of consciousness.

[Vox]

... My next thought was "I dont remember anything prior to this" like it was my first day of consciousness. Its stayed in my memory because I thought about it quite a bit in the ensuing days and often since then. So I suppose my suggestion is that mans first thoughts could be similar, an exclamation of suddenly having moved to a higher level of consciousness.

 

This is nice example, but if you would take out the possibility to not to think /compare what was before your first thought.. you could compare to nothing and that is also comparison and contrast when we could say that the I / thinker is born in mind..but if you could not compare to any past of future things in you mind..how would you know that you are actually thinking anything? you would not have any contrast to compare thoughts? And therefore not knowing/remembering that you think...Bigger question is what state you have been as a being before you could think yourself to think?

You have defenitely being observing/aware before your thinking emerged..but not thinking as we know it...so baby is in its purest being, aware but not capable of thinking and not aware of itself as "I"?

Edited August 11, 2010 by Vox

[clapstyx]

Vox are you aware when you are in a period of realisational advance and when you are not ? Perhaps I wasnt forming memory until I began to become more fully self aware. Perhaps I was purely observational until there was a trigger to create a deeper sequence of thought? I do believe that its possible to change the state of consciousness from one of non thinking to one where we advance towards that depth which we set as being the most optimally desireable degree as a target of consciousness expansion. The mere process of defining how conscious we ultimately wish to become creates a thought process and creates a directional objective for the mind to advance towards. Its like if one says to themself "I want to realise how to create a consciousness supernova" well naturally as time goes by one recognises opportunities for the advancement of the completion of the concept because you assess what you observe with relevency to that objective. If you have multiple objectives of things that you wish to realise then you create multi tangents and a realisation in relation to one objective say "saving the planet" often advances thinking on one or more of the other tangents. When there are multiple people making cognitive advances and realisations then they trigger the same in others and it creates a kind of symbiotic equation. It solves the static state of consciousness which I think of as collective writers block. On this planet we dont want to get to the point where nobody is triggering deeper thought.

 

So in answer to what is (new) thought it is perhaps true that it cant be explained until all subconscious thinking becomes conscious thinking. So if that is the case then if we create a goal in reference to that it should be ultimately resolvable if the satisfaction of the goal equates to the depth of consciousness neccessary to observe the origins of a new thought.

 

Of course then you would have to have a new thought so that you could observe the origins of its formulation which would then lead , I suppose, to the question of what creates thought and I feel it is the pursuit of higher resolve.

 

If I can be a bit funny if we reach the point where we can observe the creation of a new thought and can create it at will and the experience is a pleasant one well then probably there would be a consciousness supernova because you would have new thought all over the place creating new thought.