Questions that come up when you think about Thought

-

 Can you define Thought in a single line?

Anything done by the nervous system is thought.


The above statement does answer a lot of questions but not all, like…


  • What about organisms that don’t have a nervous system, do they not think? -No they don’t, because they cannot take input, process it, and give output.


  • Do plants have thoughts? Despite not having a brain, they have a sort of nervous system -Yes they do. The brain is not necessary for a single thought to appear; a single cell that has the same or similar ability to the nerve cell can also generate thought.


  • So are thoughts made of electricity? -Yes


  • Can we combine thoughts back to make electricity out of it? -maybe, if we do the math, theoretically it may be possible, but I don’t think we have the required technology to prove this hypothesis.


  • Do thoughts appear in living beings only? -no, if a non-living thing has something similar to the nervous system, then thoughts may appear in them too. For example, the AlphaGo computer which beat Lee Sedol learned GO by committing many mistakes while playing practice games. In today's times' computers can also have thoughts because of Artificial intelligence.



Can you tell the types of thoughts?

I can give you examples, which are somewhat types but I am not sure in the future what new things may add on.


  • Unrefined Thoughts : 

    • The reaction of the nervous system in response to data input coming from senses.

    • Thoughts generated by the unconscious mind. 


  • Refined Thoughts: Thoughts after the processing of unrefined thoughts. 

    • Questions

    • Answers

    • Ideas

    • Comments

    • Opinions

    • Memories

    • Images

    • Sounds

    • Judgments

    • Assumptions

    • etc.


Few things which I have left out from the above examples -


  • Dreams - they are thoughts produced by the unconscious mind.


  • Emotions - they are not completely thoughts. I think they are part thoughts and part sensations. 


  • Intuition - it is also a type of thought.



Few other questions related to thoughts 


  • Difference between thoughts and information? -thought is a subset of information, or we can say that every thought is information, but every information is not thought.


  • Difference between observation of thoughts and thinking? - thinking is done by willpower. It is the process of editing thoughts manually. Observation of thought is something that we do in meditation. In it we do not try to change our thoughts but we observe them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Story of a School without a Building Chapter -10

-
Read the previous chapter here... People: How can we build using the available resources? Man: First what do you wanna build? People: We wanna build a proper sitting place, a bathroom and proper water supply. Man: Ok we can build all of this using, unused tires. People: What, tires? Man: Yes tires and some other materials, which are on this list. The man takes out a list from his pocket and gives it to them. People go through the list. People: We have all these materials, but we do not understand how one can build houses of tires, and if we assume we can build houses out of tires are they stable enough? Man: The methods, design principles and philosophy that we are going to follow is that of "Earthship Biotecture", this allows you to build highly efficient buildings using recyclable materials. People: But we have never seen buildings of tires? Are there other buildings that you can show us? Man: Yes, I can People: Please, show us. Man: I'll bring some pho...
Read more

Avtaars (Story of modern Gods) Chapter - 7

-
Read the previous chapter here... Varuna(job, manager of rains) returns home and finds Mitra(job, make friends) partying hard, he goes quietly into his room and takes out his mobile, starts checking the weather reports and after few minutes Mitra walks in. Mitra: How are you, brother? Varuna: How is your friend? Mitra: Which one? Varuna: The one you took to Ashvins(job, healer of gods) . Mitra: He is recovering, you know the Ashvins they can handle anything. Varuna: Not everything. Mitra: Leave that, they were asking me about our savior. Varuna: And? Mitra: Did you learn something new about it? Varuna: Yes. Mitra: And? Varuna: I'll tell you on one condition, no more friends to go see Ashvins. Mitra: you know I cannot accept that condition, let's make a deal Varuna: You always have something up your sleeve, don't you, what's it this time? Mitra: Do you wanna meet Pushan(job, god of meetings) ? Varuna: You kidding me you gonna set up a meeting with th...
Read more

Avtaars (Story of modern Gods) Chapter - 1

-
In a crowded street of Delhi, India, A man( Varuna, job “manager of the rains” ) gets a twitter notification, holding diary in one hand, he tries to get his phone out, now he is holding one diary and phone in his hands, he collides with a man and his diary falls in the mud, as soon as the diary falls on the ground it closes and with a small red light on the front cover it kind of gets locked, the other man with whom he collides start yelling, “Are you blind!”, he picks up his diary and speaks “Sorry, Sir”. He tries to open his diary but there is mud on the back and it does not open, he grumbles, “ Tvastar(job “creator of mystical of devices”) , what is this thing that you’ve made, I can’t even open it”, then he opens his phone and sees the tweet, “Today 65mm rain has been recorded in Saharanpur.” He gets worried, “that's too much!” He opens google maps, and types in Saharanpur, Varuna: Oh, it's in Uttar Pradesh. He tries to open his diary, but it won...
Read more