Nature of thought

As published in TAT journal, April 2011

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Nature of Thought
by Sunil Vidyarthi

What is bigger than the universe, infinity and occupies no space? Did you say God? You could be right but I don’t know Him and so can’t support your thesis. My answer is thought. Think about it. You do more of this than anything else in your lifetime. Now multiply that already an immense immeasurable abstraction by billions who live today and the billions who have died. So you get an idea of how big this is. The problem of getting an estimate of its size, shape or extent lies in the fact that we can’t measure it. We can however translate it into measurable quantities. For instance, we can write down all our thoughts or record it and then weigh the books or the hard drive. You see, it isn’t as insignificant as first thought.

We have a tendency not to believe in things that we can’t weigh, measure, see or hear. Hence feelings have little value to experimental scientists. And thoughts are closer to feelings than to rocks, rivers, heat or sound. We may not believe in God but it is hard not to believe in thought. After all it’s thought that is producing this argument. I don’t know what it actually is but I have no questions in my mind that it exists and it is here and now. It was here when I last looked and have a pretty good idea that it will be there as long as I am alive. And by the way, I am also quite sure that all of you have thoughts now and then.

What is thought?

Wikipedia says; “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 include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination.

Thinking involves the cerebral 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.”

Is thought material in nature? Not if we qualify matter as something that has a physical presence although even that has come under serious questioning. If you go all the way down into pico, nano or fenta second scale, you are likely to find all creation nothing but a bunch of vibrating strings of energy. In other words much of the Universe is really nothing but dancing energy and in that sense thought is perhaps no different, just a little smaller than the other nothing that makes up the rest of the world.

Is it energy? We could answer that only if we knew what energy was. The best I can gather from books and experts is that energy is just another form of matter and vice versa. And we just sort of concluded that matter is mainly composed of nothing. So energy must be even less than nothing and perhaps not much different from thought. So it may be fair to say that all thoughts put together will amount to nothing or pretty close to nothing, yet once transcribed could fill the entire universe.

Its Origin

Further on Wikipedia summarizes the broad theories on origin of thought. “Some philosophers say consciousness creates thinking, thinking and other brain processes do not create consciousness. Other scientists (for example Bernard Bars) think of it as a workspace. Some philosophers (for example Thomas Nagel) have said they do not have a clue as to how we are aware of our thinking.”

Despite these arguments, biologists have convinced me that thought comes from the brain, an organ that is common among most living species. Animals have also been shown to think. Extension of this logic suggests that mosquitoes and other even smaller bugs think. Can I take this argument to a generalization that precondition of thought is biological life? I have no evidence to suggest that rivers think although I don’t know much about trees and plants.

There is a problem however. Just because I have a brain does not mean I think. My brain in a jar will most certainly not think. So thought does need something else to be, make plans and propose hypotheses and communicate these findings to a third party. Wise ones tell me that something else is my essence, which I share with the rest of the universe, or I Am. I have no reason to doubt them but so far I have no reason to first hand agree with them either.

I think Thomas Nagel was on to something when he introduced the question as to how we are AWARE of our thinking? As has Rose in much of his work e.g. Psychology of Observer. I am quite unprepared and ill equipped to argue the philosophical intricacies of either of these wise theorems and observations. Yet, I do find it odd that being alive doesn’t just mean being able to think but be aware of thought, personal as well as third party.

I am aware when I am thinking, as I am aware when I am dreaming or eating or hearing. But I am also curiously aware of my surroundings as well including you who is reading this now and are far away from where I am. Not just I the human but the monkey on the tree, the alligator in the swamp and the fly on the apple are very aware of me. In fact that pesky fly is so aware of me that he moves before I even think of catching him. Surely this is what makes living things so different from other matter. Even though my presence disrupts something around the chair at the string level, the chair is not aware of me while I am. And this awareness is intricately related to my thoughts and my ability to think. It is this awareness that is the origin of my thought and hence my origin.