The Being of Thought

What is a thought? Is it the electron which passes between the synapses of our brain and makes its way down neural pathways? This electron, like all electrons, existed before the thought was ever formed. So the thought cannot be the electron. At most, it can only be a carrier of data, just like an electron that moves through the wires, across printed circuits, and into the silicon chips of a computer.

Could a thought be a series of electrons that collectively structure various parts of the mind into a thought based on the portions of the brain they interact with? This would be somewhat like a structure of electrons, each representing a piece of data, that course through the computer, flipping tiny magnets to represent either 1 or 0, collectively creating machine code that is converted into output that makes the computer look as if it is capable of conscious thought. But in the case of technology this is an illusion and the computer is only capable of appearing to be conscious based on, and completely limited by the programming that provides the source of that illusion. (Though some philosophers argue that we do not really know if a computer is conscious or not).

Even if electrons excite various portions of the brain, and appear to create what we perceive as a thought, what gives being to that thought? Thoughts can be, after all, very spontaneous, and go off into different directions. We can even conceive of brand new things, and even things that would be impossible to exist.

There are elements of consciousness that cannot programmed or even explained. They can only be experienced. These are called qualia. For example, a computer can be programmed to identify light of a certain frequency as, ‘red,’ and thereby be able to identify red objects and colors. But it still does not experience the existential (i.e. human) experience of ‘red.’ You cannot program the aesthetic appreciation, nor any of the many connotations and conscious and subconscious connections that red implies to a human. And even if we programmed them as a list, it would still not provide the genuine existential experience of a human. Much more so the qualia of love, infatuation, hate, or even just aesthetic appreciation.

Even if we try to reduce the thought around, and the emotions generated by, qualia, to the effect of mind- and feeling-altering proteins and drugs produced by the brain (based on a programmed response to previous experience that has been logged into the memory), does this sufficiently explain the experience of qualia? Such a mechanistic explanation, just like the example of electrons crossing synapses and neural pathways to explain thought, still seems to fall short. Because one sunrise is different from another, one painting is different from another, and even one friend or lover is different from another friend or lover. Clearly we respond with a greater variety of emotion than chemical variations produced by the brain. And even then, such chemicals are meant to induce physical responses, and have no bearing on the being of the thought, especially those thoughts which preceded the chemical production, or even those that triggered the brain to produce such chemicals. There is often a thought, and almost always an awareness, before the chemical trigger that induces a physical response.

Heidegger, and his teacher, Husserl, both stated that consciousness can only be consciousness of something. It is impossible to have a thought without that thought being about something. Sartre added that a necessary condition to being conscious is that you are conscious of being conscious. In other words, you cannot have a thought about something, without knowing that you are having a thought about something. I would not consider this to be a prerequisite of consciousness, because subconscious, or unconscious, consciousness also exists. But this self-awareness is certainly a requirement at the conscious level of consciousness, or as a prerequisite to being aware that we are conscious of something.

This self-awareness is different from that famous statement of Descartes several centuries earlier: I think, therefore I am. (Cogito ergo sum), because in this case, Descarte is still thinking of ‘something,’—he is thinking of his being. But this self-awareness that Sartre referred to is not a ‘thinking of something’ in the same sense. We do not think in terms of, I now think of thinking of the book. Sartre explained that consciousness of something, is a subject – object duality. It is reflective in that it implies a value judgment. If you think of a book, for example, the implication is that you pass some form of judgment: it is a book, it is a plain book, or a red book, or a thick book, or small book, or you like the book, or hate the book, etc.

However the self-awareness of being aware of being conscious cannot be reflective, nor a part of the subject-object duality. Otherwise, it would take us back to the problem of, ‘I now think of thinking of the book.’ You know without expressing it that you are thinking of the book and that is all there is to it. It is an awareness that you experience, yet it is fully implied only. As Sartre wrote in ‘Being and Nothingness,’ “…there is a pre-reflective cogito which is the condition of the Cartesian cogito.” This means that there is a non-cognitive relation of the self to itself, and it is through this pre-reflective cogito (thought).

Since such a pre-reflective cogito is not programmed into a computer, how could a computer be ‘conscious’ of its own data processing and communication of the results of that process with the outside world? The consciousness of a computer is an illusion (or at the very best, merely an unconscious consciousness). But more importantly, if the thought is represented by an electron, carrying data, and passing between synapses, and down neural pathways, then how are we aware of that thought? How are we always aware of being aware? Where is the physical manifestation of the pre-reflective non-cognitive relation of the self to itself?

You might argue that, it should be enough to simply think of ‘something,’ and the thought itself is the awareness. But is a computer, when programmed to calculate a complex mathematical equation, or the best route to take from Denver to Disneyland, conscious of what exactly it is doing? Or have you ever experienced a momentary scotoma, or blind-spot, created psychologically by expectations. A good example of this is what sometimes happens to drivers when they pull in front of a car or hit another car when they did not ‘see’ a car that for all practical purposes they should have seen. Tradition has it that when Columbus first landed in the Americas, that the local Natives could not see his ships out in the ocean, because it was so unusual for them, and beyond their expectations. Their Medicine Man could see the ripples in the water, and was curious as to what was causing them. As he concentrated on what was causing the ripples he was finally able to see the ships. In these cases of psychological scotoma, the eyes surely see, and the brain certainly records, what consciously is blind to the observer. There must be a pre-reflective cogito in order to be aware of the subjective – objective duality of consciousness.

In the end, after a long path into the Modern World, and with philosophy years ago discarding the trappings of metaphysics, we still find ourselves faced with the very problem that Descartes had: ‘who, or what, is that subjective observer I understand as the ‘I’? Only this time we are not talking about a subjective observer viewing an objective world. We are talking about a non-cognitive pre-reflective awareness that is the ‘I.’

Nonetheless, Defining just what a thought is, or what being it manifests as, is somewhat problematic for a materialist who believes that only physical reality exists. But then we add qualia, which becomes still more problematic. Then to add even more complication there is this pre-cognitive awareness that is the precondition to awareness of conscious thought.

Earlier we suggested, as did Sartre himself, that subconscious thought does not have such a pre-cognitive awareness. But such is not always the case, and this adds even more problems for the materialist. For example, when we dream we experience this same awareness of our dreams, and often times create a very strange Kafkaesque world, in which we experience, firsthand, a different reality. Most of us do not remember the majority of our dreams when we wake up, but the fact is, we do remember them, it is just that without practice or training, we are not consciously aware that we remember them (another such scotoma as we spoke of earlier). So yes we are aware during our dreams.

There are also other moments of awareness that also become very problematic for a materialist. Intuition is one example, especially in those rare cases that turn out to be bona fide premonitions, past life experiences, near death experiences and the like, any of which can be so bizarre as to defy any rational explanation. Drugs too create problematic episodes of consciousness that defy materialist explanation. Dr. Stanislav Grof, a psychologist who has done extensive research on the implications and reality of the LSD experience, has many thousands of such cases that defy rational explanation. Then there are those series of experiments conducted by Doctors Tiller, Dibble, Jr, and Kohane at MIT that clearly demonstrate that human intention can and does influence and alter physical reality.

From a Materialist perspective, and for that matter, from empirical evidence and existential (i.e. human) experience, the idealist perspective that consciousness, and therefore thought and awareness, arise from a non-physical or even spiritual source is also very problematic. But a nonphysical consciousness goes far to explain the problematic issues faced by the Materialist. But is the idealist concept of reality really that strange? After all, the multiple universe interpretation of quantum physics tells us that there could be an alternate universe everywhere a single atom is faced with alternate potential realities. And for that matter, any reality existing within an alternate universe, that is one of many possible universes less than an atom away, must clearly exist outside of the 3 dimensions that make up our own physical world. It too is therefore a non-physical reality from the perspective of our universe. In other words, science has gone so far to avoid any solution that could suggest a nonphysical source to being, that it has created a non-physical reality of its own. …And here materialists thought the idealist interpretation was strange.

 

...and, to get the debate going---does thought even have 'being?' (Remember, being can have a somewhat broad definition in philosophy).

 

Only if the thinker is thought of as a thinker

 

I think thought like a wave that writes in the sand.

 

The thinker is the non-cognitive, pre-reflective awareness that is 'I.'

But does this awareness end with the physical body of the thinker, or does it go beyond that? Or another way to state it, is the ground of the being of that awareness nonphysical?

 

Is thinking a thought, thunk? Or is it just a natural phenomenon? If there is no positive/negative opposition, does it matter? Like if a tree falls in the forest....

 

No problem. Reading is a kind of thinking; it is that just because the thought may apply directly to the writing of the thought for the reader. Sartre claimed writing was like re-reading the thinking of another, which disclamours the notion of the project of a book which constantly is writing for the re-reading of one's own mind. This is more accustomed to our patience of regarding independent thinking in research projects.

But for the creative project, writing was called considerably re-reading. And that's Object.

 

Sounds like you have a diary.

 

So.. awareness implies the thinker, because it implies everything else, that can only be thought of if you're aware of it, and round and round we go?

 

If we define being as the state of existing then everything that is has being.
Of course there are abstract concepts that have no objective constituents outside of imagination and this is where the sensation of non-physical arises.

The mind is naturally abstract, of indefinite physical proportions, a transitional phase between primordial arrangement and the more complex or aggregated matter. Consciousness is psychic analogue or sensational representation of quantum scale.

What is being called

Is the shape of reality or of the membrane. For purposes of cognitive progression coin that member brain. We get the sensation of pre-reflective awareness because our member brain fits into a receptor on the surface of a cell called reality. Reality or physical world as we perceive it being various states of bonding, chemical, strong, weak, nuclear, etc..

As to the sensation of unobserved observer, that is psychic analogue to the fact that our eyes are oriented against the background of the back of our heads, a trick of the perceptive apparatus.

 

the identity of thought can not be held as one's own . try to
do that , defend it as property ... see what happens . played
out as a philosophical model the result is very bizarre yet rather
sparkly just prior to Oblivion .

 

I think that is so, we share our thoughts substantially although we adopt group perspectives as the liver and the heart are arranged along congruent lines of force.

 

Circular reasoning is like defining a word by repeating the word you are trying to define and in the absence of that effort new ideas might become apparent.

Perhaps we may quantify first knowledge as being shared and from that point we may surmise there is in fact no discrete or individual awareness but certainly individual perspective is understandable because no one occupies physically other than their specific vantage point. Individual consciousness being a corridor of refraction in a communal mind.

 

Descartes would not have universal conciousness , and was
quite cruel in insisting on it . first he denied wholistic existence
and then took owner-ship of the remainder with a single thought . well ya , it's a technique popular with cult leaders for having a group perspective adopted . i met one of those guys this summer , and , ya he talked nonsense kicked me out the commune too .

so i went off to camp with
indians and talk with ravens .

 

Thereby sharing his universally even though we've never met. Self denial is the improper use of denial.

 

i don't think .

 

You think so?

 

We can be consciously aware without comment, still mind. A still mind is a mind not looking for conscious entanglements. Consciousness is impulse toward and impulses may become conscious thought which is the manipulation of symbols.