The Genesis of Thought
What brings us consciousness? What makes us think? What
registers as thought?
Thinking of these questions brought me to the first post on
my blog.
Welcome to a series of conversations between me and my
thoughts shared with a wider audience. As you choose to be a part of it, I
choose to welcome you. Hope I am
enriched by your thoughts as well.
And now, back to the questions.
What brings us consciousness?
Beyond the answers given by medical science and biological
processes, there exists a complex dimension where research has not delved into.
Can consciousness be researched? Wouldn't the mere thought of being researched
/ being under study alert a subject? So rather than looking at it from a
research point of view or even biological, I look at it as a map – a LARGE map.
Suppose a man is on a journey. He needs to travel from Point
A to Point B. You would say that he would plan his way and take one of the
several possible alternatives / routes to commute and reach his destination.
You would be right. Before he does any of that, he thinks about travelling. And
his brain triggers impulses / thought patterns which replicate the journey, the
alternatives, the means to travel and the decision he must make. So the journey
started in the mind. The man had a mental framework in his mind. We can call it
a mental map.
Imagine if we had a visible mental map for all our decisions
made every day, every hour, every minute, every second. How would that map look
like?
‘Complex’ ‘Interwoven’ ‘Interconnected’ ‘Vast’ these may be
some of the terms you could think of.
So if the mere act of deciding/ decision making is like a
series of maps, how would one view consciousness, the feeling of being alert
and aware of surroundings and oneself?
It wouldn't be wrong to compare this feeling of
consciousness to a super information system of complex layers of maps, each
layer further interconnected with various triggers inside and outside the human
mind. You could term it as a supercomputer of MAPS. Each location corresponds
to a given value. Each point is relative to the other. Each point is
interconnected and accessible. Each point forms part of a huge chain.
So consciousness can be described as a huge neural map that
corresponds to all our actions that signify being present, being active, being
wakeful as opposed to being mentally absent, being inactive or being sleepy.
What makes us think?
A fascinating question that I try not to think too much
about! But will attempt to link with my thoughts on it.
The genesis of thought is what makes us human. We have been
blessed with the faculty of thinking which we employ to good use in our daily
life for various purposes. Some say we are human, so we think. Others say we
think, therefore we are human.
I would like to state that the process of the origin of thought
is an involuntary process, not something actively forced upon. Even when we
like to think that we are not thinking about a particular thing or believe that
our mind is blank, it is still occupied with activity that is running in the
background and not evident enough for us to remember / consider. We can however
recollect thinking certain thoughts; reflect on memories and bring back
thoughts, even consciously and selectively choose to think certain thoughts
over other thoughts.
So we know we can choose to think. But then what makes us
think? Is it an external trigger that causes it or an internal inbuilt
mechanism? What causes us to believe we
are thinking? Is it simply because certain areas of the brain light up during
scans to show cognition and perception is at work along with language and
speech processing or is there a more complex network out there?
Like the maps we discussed for consciousness, perhaps. I
suppose that we have a hard coded instruction that triggers thought. The birth
of thought is prevalent from the time a human baby is conceived and born. But science
cannot understand/ measure an unborn baby’s thought patterns, so it effectively
dismisses it by saying that the baby’s brains are not functional being an
embryo / foetus and hence not fully active. But what if the genesis of thought
were hard-coded inside us right from the time of conception! And like the
journey from Point A to Point B, the hard-coded pattern inside us would cause us
to develop and grow. Something has to trigger the growth of cells beyond just
cell division and multiplication and beyond just the DNA map that every human
has.
I call this the hard coding of thought – thought as a process
that is essential to human survival from conception. Thinking defines human beings and
differentiates them from the larger animal population. The genesis of thought
must therefore exist at the basic level of information coding. It’s something
that is transmitted from parent to offspring. The DNA must be the key that
opens it / activates it during conception. While science continues to delve
deeper into understanding human minds and how they work, I propose that the
genesis of thought is hard-coded. Since it is essential for a human being to
mature in thought processes to be a fully active adult, it is not hard to
understand that passing this crucial piece of information through genetic
material would be part of reproductive efforts and an important aspect in conception
and growth of a new life.
Like a processing chip that is already manufactured
to a preset specification, our ability to understand thoughts, process them,
voice them, store them, link and connect them to events, occurrences and time
is predetermined and hard coded in us. Maybe this explains why some children
do not reach milestones of development in thought and information processing and
some adults lag behind in cognitive processes. Is it similar to a defective
chip among thousands of chips being manufactured? Or does it mean that certain
chips were manufactured properly but the instructions were not properly encoded
and hence caused them to malfunction?
What registers as thought?
You might say anything and everything. You are right.
Anything and everything we think of, registers as thought. The mind maps it as
a series of ideas, sequence of words, patterns, concepts, schematic and even
visual representations in many dimensions. External stimuli bring in
information and our brain processes them at various levels. Thoughts may be
formed due to various triggers. It would be fascinating to know how we actually
segregate thoughts from the data and mental maps swirling in our mind. The
process of deciding what constitutes thought is equally captivating and open to
interpretation.
And now, my brain has decided to signal my mind that it
needs a break. So I think this post comes to an end. Since my thoughts gave
form to this blog post, I hope to hear your thoughts from you as well. Hope you
enjoyed thinking on these lines as much as I did!
