Where Do Our Thoughts Physically Exist?

[aka CAT]

Well if thoughts were a form of energy when they went away they would dissipate as heat. The energy would be conserved but with much more entropy[...]

Entropy doesn't belong in the equation for a reason that I hope to example with White Unicorn's model.

[...] maybe there's a medium that we don't recognize yet that records them outside of the contained memory. Something that works like a photographic plate which captures the images of light to be stored even if its just a reflection of the original subject. The reflection is not lost in time to others who can see it as well as producing new living thoughts which are influenced by new thought or emotion from viewing the photogragh.

Kid's Heath - Eyes - how your eyes work [therein, too, is a description, illustrated, of a camera].

http://www.cyh.com/H...&np=152&id=1730

Your eye works in a similar way to a camera - light passes through the lens of your eye and is 'recorded' on the back of your eye (the retina).

The eye and brain instantly perceive a set of images. With a set, e.g. the

top one above, one can envision a subject tree bare, blooming, decorated,

cut down and/or burned...&c. In fact, he can choose to center his entire

life around one idea, e.g. one guiding principle, and live quite effectively.

0:-) MGby'all.

Edited May 14, 2014 by aka CAT

[lightly]

My basic idea of dreams is they are memory re-orgs to make stored stuff more accessible using short-term memory for temporary storage, where it is picked up by the consciousness which tries to make sense of it, in the context of our experience, culture and beliefs.

Dreams occur in the absence of any external stimuli? Would dreams be considered thought?

I've had dreams in which i "experienced" things that i have Never experienced in waking life ... so, the dream events were never stored, or created "neural pathways" to "activate" ? Maybe though if somehow the dream experience was similar enough somehow to past experience ??

I create things all the time Music&art? .. that are unique . Similar in that they are music.. or a painting.. but still , unique. Where do UNIQUE thoughts come from?

I think thought must be more than a 'response'. ?

[aka CAT]

I create things all the time Music&art? .. that are unique . Similar in that they are music.. or a painting.. but still , unique. Where do UNIQUE thoughts come from?

Our expression of things,

influenced by the sum of our experience,

is our claiming of them in ways self-defining.

Again, it is a process of selection.

For example, my overriding mentality:

God is good. I choose good

and, thereby, seek to express good

in every imaginable way.

The expression of it requires action

that not only is good but tends to make one

as well as others feel good

in ways mutually self-defining.

The same can apply to artistic appreciations,

which, in your instance,

are creatively expressed in ways authentic.

Edited May 14, 2014 by aka CAT

[StarMountainKid]

I create things all the time Music&art? .. that are unique . Similar in that they are music.. or a painting.. but still , unique. Where do UNIQUE thoughts come from?

I think thought must be more than a 'response'. ?

I don't think there are ever unique thoughts. I consider thoughts always to be based on past experience. There is always a paper trail, however tenuous. Can we ever think a thought that has positively no relation to any previous experience or to any event or object within our environment?

If we could think of some unique thing, we wouldn't have language to describe it, we couldn't express it in any way because it would have no relationship to anything known.

[XenoFish]

Yet where does the thought itself originate? Where do thoughts come from? Experience and reinforcement create neural pathway that make a memory. Theses can be reinforced enough that 'no-thought' is required to do them. You can hit the right letter on your keyboard because you've done it hundreds of thousands of times. Perhaps you can think of the original thought as seed that is sown and watered in the mind through consistent attention. The thought become a part of the brain itself. It becomes hard wired.

[Leonardo]

(thanks Leonardo) I'll just toss in another question for all ok? Leonardo said that thoughts are " intellectual response to stimuli " .. i'm wondering if Dreams are considered to be "thoughts" ... and if so, what is the stimuli being intellectually responded to?

Yet where does the thought itself originate? Where do thoughts come from? Experience and reinforcement create neural pathway that make a memory. Theses can be reinforced enough that 'no-thought' is required to do them. You can hit the right letter on your keyboard because you've done it hundreds of thousands of times. Perhaps you can think of the original thought as seed that is sown and watered in the mind through consistent attention. The thought become a part of the brain itself. It becomes hard wired.

To use an analogy, consider the neural pathways as the 'fossilised tracks' of some long-dead organism. Just as a paleoarchaeologist can reconstruct the organism it was made the tracks from the tracks themselves, so our brain is able to reconstruct thoughts from the 'tracks' left in it's structure. Thoughts don't reside in our brains, except when they are 'being thunk' - the template of those thoughts resides in the brain.

This also somewhat answers lightly's question about dreams. Once the stimuli which leads to a particular pattern of neural pathway being established is experienced, that pathway resides in the brain and may be 'triggered' by brain activity - leading to the 'thought' that pathway is the template for. Dreams are (among other states of consciousness) thoughts reconstructed from the fossil remnants of previous experiences.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Leonardo

[Jargogle Ergo]

Things not understood are often referred to as dark.

I agree entirely with this. And, I suppose, the point is that we understand so little about ourselves that effectively we are creatures of the dark...

The same holds true for dark energy where, contextually, dark is not to be taken literally.[/background][/size][/font]

In terms of dark energy (in space) as I understand it anyway, it is an energy that is anti-gravitational and expansive in nature. However, the context I was attempting to put across was dark and light in the philosophical sense of consciousness and unconsciousness.

[bee]

.

I have heard 'reality' likened to a strip of motion picture film....

perhaps out thoughts reside (originate) in between the individual frames..

and when they manifest on the physical level (the frames) they have a tiny tiny bit of mass...

The amazing and brilliant Bruce Cathie said....

http://www.whale.to/m/cathie.html

A rough analogy of physical existence can be made by reference to a strip of motion-picture film. Each frame, or static picture, on the film strip may be likened to a single pulse of physical existence. The division between one frame and the next represents a pulse of antimatter. When viewed as a complete strip, each frame would be seen as a static picture (say, one at either end of the strip), then the past and the future can be viewed simultaneously. However, when the film is fed through a projector, we obtain the illusion of motion and the passage of time. The divisions between the static pictures are not detected by our senses because of the frequency or speed of each projection on the movie screen. But by speeding up or slowing down the projector, we can alter the apparent time-rate of the actions shown by the film.

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[Frank Merton]

I go outside and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and I stretch and sigh and am happy. All that happens and there are no "thoughts." If someone asks me what I'm thinking I may say, "It's a beautiful day," but until then there was no such thought. In fact there still isn't. There are some words that communicate very poorly how I feel. That is all. In short I come to think there is no such thing as thinking, that it is an illusion. The brain does things and puts two and two together but it does not think, "two and two."

[Jargogle Ergo]

Would dreams be considered thought?

Yes.

Dreams sometimes portray the dreamer's relation with the external world, that Is, with the people, events, and activities of the dreamer's daily life. Jung called this the objective level of a dream's meaning. At other times, dreams portray the dreamer's inner world; the dream figures are' personifications of thoughts and feelings within the dreamer's own psyche . This, Jung said, is the subjective level of a dream's meaning.

http://www.dreamresearch.ca/pdf/jung.pdfFrom: Jung's Dream Theory

[bee]

I go outside and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and I stretch and sigh and am happy. All that happens and there are no "thoughts." If someone asks me what I'm thinking I may say, "It's a beautiful day," but until then there was no such thought. In fact there still isn't. There are some words that communicate very poorly how I feel. That is all. In short I come to think there is no such thing as thinking, that it is an illusion. The brain does things and puts two and two together but it does not think, "two and two."

Interesting comment Frank....you are very lucky if you can switch off the stream of internal 'chatter' that most? people experience..

To just 'be'.... when that happens it is very relaxing and precious....

There does seem to be different categories of thought...

The stream of random 'thoughts' that pop up uninvited...

Concentrated and purposeful 'thought'...like studying or working out a problem...(having a conversation / answering a post)

Passive (ish) thought fed by watching telly or similar..

I love the bit in your post when you say... 'In short I come to think there is no such thing as thinking'

A paradox or what !!!

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[bee]

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Also we have the thoughts that appear to come from other people....like as I have mentioned before..

thinking of someone, out of the blue, and then they phone or text...

And with animals too....say dogs...they are very much a pack animal and the pack must share a collective

mind to function as a pack...?

(We humans, could be pack-like as well?)

But back to dogs...they seem to have very good mind reading / thought sharing abilities...

My Mom has a dog and she is totally in tune with it... and the dog in tune with her...

They are a mini pack...

If Mom thinks (just thinks with no physical clues) of say...picking up the scissors

to cut a knot out of the dog's fur...the dog jumps up and rushes off..

Or if she just thinks (again with no physical clues) that she will go in the car to the shops..

The dog goes running to the door and stays there because it doesn't want to miss the trip out...

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[Frank Merton]

I suppose when we form things into unvocalized words, that those can be called thoughts, but I don't usually do that. Maybe because I have several languages I could do that in I do it in none of them, but I suspect monolingual people also do not usually form thoughts into words. It is an unnecessary extra step in mental life.

When I type on this board, the words come out with no prior thinking about what words to use, although the idea is of course already framed. They just appear as needed. The same when I'm talking with someone. I think everyone does (doesn't do) this but maybe doesn't realize it.

[StarMountainKid]

I suppose when we form things into unvocalized words, that those can be called thoughts, but I don't usually do that. Maybe because I have several languages I could do that in I do it in none of them, but I suspect monolingual people also do not usually form thoughts into words. It is an unnecessary extra step in mental life.

When I type on this board, the words come out with no prior thinking about what words to use, although the idea is of course already framed. They just appear as needed. The same when I'm talking with someone. I think everyone does (doesn't do) this but maybe doesn't realize it.

Yes. In conversation especially we don't have to consciously think of every word we're going to say next (except in special cases, and even then when we pause to consider what to say, we usually don't plan out every sentence).

Words just come automatically, so who is doing the thinking and planning every sentence before we speak them? When we consider our conscious mind as 'the boss', I believe we are mistaken.

[StarMountainKid]

Kurt Godel, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, who was a friend of Albert Einstein at Princeton (Godel was the only one there who considered himself an intellectual equal to Einstein, and probably was) was a sort of Platonist. He considered that all thoughts already exist in some Platonic realm.

When we think, our intuition somehow reaches out the this realm and plucks the already existant thought and it enters the mind. An eccentric genius of his cliber can have some strange ideas, and Godel was no exception, but who can say conclusively he was wrong?

Another idea is that thoughts are neurological parasites. If I tell you an idea (thought) I have, that thought is transfered to your brain where you are the new host for that thought, and it feeds on your mental energy for its existence. This is how thought-parasites reproduce.

The more mental energy you supply it (by thinking it), the stronger and healthier it becomes, then you may pass it on to someone else (its means of reproduction).

[Perceptivum]

Where do our thoughts physically exist?

That is a very easy question to answer. Thoughts are commonly associated with the mind and since we commonly refer to our mind as our brain, it stands to reason that thoughts are located in the brain. In fact we know and understand this to be true as all scientists concur our thoughts are electro-chemical reactions in our brain.

I believe the question you are trying to ask, and a much deeper question, is what happens to our thoughts?

[aka CAT]

...you are very lucky if you can switch off the stream of internal 'chatter'..

To just 'be'.... when that happens it is very relaxing and precious....

One of my mom's favorite sayings whereof I remind my hyperactive spouse:

"You're not a human doing, you're a human being."

[...]Another idea is that thoughts are neurological parasites. If I tell you an idea (thought) I have,

that thought is transfered to your brain where you are the new host for that thought,

and it feeds on your mental energy for its existence. This is how thought-parasites reproduce.

The more mental energy you supply it (by thinking it), the stronger and healthier it becomes,

then you may pass it on to someone else (its means of reproduction).

That's an interesting concept, only that no differentiation is made between destructive

and constructive thoughts. Of the latter, an exchange thereof might be considered symbiotic

and few would deny instruction vital.

[XenoFish]

Another idea is that thoughts are neurological parasites. If I tell you an idea (thought) I have, that thought is transfered to your brain where you are the new host for that thought, and it feeds on your mental energy for its existence. This is how thought-parasites reproduce.

The more mental energy you supply it (by thinking it), the stronger and healthier it becomes, then you may pass it on to someone else (its means of reproduction).

I've always considered Ideas (that are shared) to be a very dangerous things. Depending on the idea and who it's spread to. You can create a better world or destroy it.

[bee]

One of my mom's favorite sayings whereof I remind my hyperactive spouse:

"You're not a human doing, you're a human being."

I like that saying....

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[eaglesareskykittens]

Interesting concept, until you think about all the stupid thoughts we have each day. Like: "I need to fart", or "What does a lamp shade, shade?"

[Leonardo]

One of my mom's favorite sayings whereof I remind my hyperactive spouse:

"You're not a human doing, you're a human being."

Your spouse is probably too loving to rebut with "If you never do, you'll cease to be."

[TheGreatBeliever]

of cos when u intentionally think of it! but i notice hopes/wishes rarely comes thru

[Lobotomy]

An interesting topic indeed. I briefly looked at the work of noted neuropsychologist Peter Fenwick a few years ago and I can say we are still nowhere near finding the answers to this. His speciality of the near-death experience including that of crisis apparitions (where the apparition of the recently deceased would appear to loved ones sometimes before they were even aware of their loved one's passing), correlates with the argument of whether the mind is separate and works independently of the physical brain.

[Ralaman]

No they don't. Because if they did Scarlett Johansson would be naked in my room with a sign that said "Free Buffet".

Edited June 1, 2014 by Azznerak the Black

[SaraT]

So a thought which just occurred to me has been bouncing round in the ether and eventually collided with my head. Right. Perfectly sensible.