Where is thought?

[Flash_hound]

An interesting question and I'm not sure if science has an answer for us yet is the question of where is thought?

We all naturally assume that our brain is what causes thought but could you guys show me something that says otherwise? Because to my knowledge it seems that no one has yet proven that thought takes place in the brain.

[journyman161]

Logic says it doesn't. Brains are physical, neurons, axons & dendrites, all of which operate using physical processes - chemicals trigger changes, the chemicals are usually triggered by electrical impulses from elsewhere etc.

One possibility is the thinking area is actually the mind, the holographic field generated by the electrical activity of the brain & body. The problem here is the difficulty of defining what generates a thought if we're trying to say that the thing that generates it is generated by the thing it is generating for.

Biology says that cells are not governed by DNA, but rather by the signals that come in through the membrane to trigger the changes. These signals can be chemical but also, research shows can be electrical or other fields.

There is much more to it, including some rather solid evidence & data from people 'inheriting' characteristics after a transplant, but basically, practical biology is saying that the controller for cells, & thus the source of brain changes that we call having a thought, is actually something that exists outside the cells & 'runs' the body via the signals delievered to cells. ie. we are not our bodies, we are some kind of field phenomena that exists outside the physical body but that connects to it & identifies with it.

So the source of thoughts would seem to be this rather nebulous (as science sees it) entity that is not physical. And remember, this is from biology, not from Consciousness research or similar. The alternative is a logical impossibility where DNA (what most people think of as the 'brains' of a cell) receives instructions from other DNA & nothing seems to originate it.

Where thoughts are 'run' is in the mind, which then generates the changes in the physical hardware (the brain) which then affects the body.

[ButterflyWoman]

There's a very large nerve centre in the gut, as a matter of fact, and another one in the heart (the latter one is a recent discovery; they've known about the "gut brain" for some time). When you know something "in your heart" or have a "gut feeling" there's actually some scientific backing for that.

And neither one of those places is your brain, though both the heart centre and the gut centre are in contact with the brain, of course (which is probably the purpose of the vegus nerve).

I personally believe that thought is a combination of many things chemical, electrical, physical, and spiritual, and that all of your senses play a part. After all, if you smell something nice and think, "Wow, that smells nice," isn't your nose having a part in the thought? If you touch something soft and think, "Wow, that's very soft," don't your fingertips have a role in the thought?

[blacktiger057]

I thinik part of the reason scientist's cannot answer this is because it is also a spiritual matter as well. Thoughts are part of our life force and what makes us all different.

[chips]

i have a theory, or idea, that everything around us is generated by thought. by the universal conciousness (God). as for where thought is, im not sure. i dont believe it's held within the brain. i dont think the brain is capable of creating thought, it just processes it.

[Korpo]

The Chinese believe these are the physical representation of the "Three Tantiens". Their go is to first develop the Lower one, to fully develop the physical body and stay grounded. Then the Higher one, for full mental capability. And then join them in the Heart-Mind, Hsin. Which is to them the real fully-integrated mind.

Oliver

[journyman161]

The problem with any physical explanation of where thought is, is trying to work out just how a thought might arise in physical terms. Saying it is in the brain is a generality - it it's there then it is in the neurons. There are other structures there, but it is neuronic activity that is seen by MRI when a person is thinking.

Now neurons are physical entities that operate via the reactions of chemicals. It seems a bit odd for a chemical to be the initiatory impulse for a thought - particularly when all the processes we know of in the brain are reactive processes. Like the normal cells, we can't seem to locate or identify initiatory impulses.

Biology, real biology, not the Creation stuff, is grappling with the problem but so far has no definite answers. But they see it is clear that cells are NOT run by DNA & react to their environment - which includes fields, not just chemicals.

We know energy fields can trigger changes in cells just like chemicals do. Makes for interesting speculation. But it seems a subject that is being avoided by mainstream media, even though it's possibly the most revolutionary information to even come from straight science.

Think about it; if ALL actions by cells & neurons are reactions, from where comes the initiation of a process? It applies to everything a body does, not just thoughts.

[White Wolf]

Well, observed brain activity certainly has a large correlation with activitys we consider to the thought. Specific type of activities have even been mapped to particular regions of the brain. So, I guess you got a chicken or the egg phenomenon. Choosing to believe the brain to be the seat of the mind certainly lets us make useful predictions that other theories lack. It's certainly a half truth, but its lets us get by until we understand more. Absolute truth is more of a goal than a obtainable destination, chasing it results in knowledge and understanding. Science is one method to do that.

The mind is general convieved as patterns generated by the firing of many neurons in the brain. Particularly the outter layers, as much of the inner layers are devoted mostly to sensory transformations, and integrations.

Many individualy cells connect and disconnect from each other's membranes through an ion exchange process that, over a large number of cells generates particular patterns. Recent research indicates that these connections can be created or destroyed at will, indicating a conscious control over processes that were thought to be too low level to control. Specificly, this research indicates quite strongly (the evidence is in the details, which I won't go into here.) that you can remember something very strongly after you have been exposed to the same stimuli 4 times (correcting, and lending credence to the age old trick of doing something 3 times to remember it). The connection types between neurons are characterized, and the type of connects that are made by stimulating them 4 times, forms the most permanent connect out neurons make. It also indicated conscious control to forgot. You can will yourself to forget.

New research indicateds a much more plastic brain than a decade ago had us believe. And more research is released every month indicating this trend. The we will our thought, actions, and experiences by conscious control, not the deep seated intial conditioning in early development.

We will ourselves into thought. We are smart if we want to be smart. We are good at math if we want to be good at math. We understand shakespear if we want to understand shakespear. The converse is true. If we want to forget, we do so. We MAKE our minds and our brains at will.

Well, that's what the (fairly) latest science tells us. Neuroscience, that is...not the dillydabbery of psycology, but hard sceince. Its fairly convincing stuff: repeatable, peer reviewed, objective science.

[journyman161]

All that is true - the problem is that none of it points at Initiation of anything. Yes the brain is the seat of thought or Mind, but that still doesn't explain Mind.

Look at it this way... A telephone exchange is the seat of the phone network, but it doesn't explain the information being passed across the networjk, day in, day out, 24/7, 365 per year. You can analyse the hardware till the cows come home & you will still have no reasonable concept of what the information universe is about.

Minds are what brains DO. Learning everything about brains will still not tell anyone what the mind will decide. What they are seeing in MRI etc is the physical implementation of something initiated outside ALL the cells. Biology tells us that.

So, in the concept of 'brain is ALL' where does a thought, any thought, begin? What process starts an original thought? Keep in mind you can't simply point out to another cell, because biology tells us ALL cells simply react - we have yet to identify any process within a cell that is an initiation.

So to put it in your terms, 'Who is we?' If 'We will...' in the physical model, just how do 'we will'? Language is nice, but if they want to posit a physical mechanism they MUST provide a mechanism for the initiation of an impulse - and so far, they haven't. Saying 'We will it' is exactly the same as saying 'God did it' & in science that translates to gibberish.

[White Wolf]

Well, about the whole initiation thing. That's what I meant by patterns, or the chicken and the egg scenario. Think of a patten like you do a circle, its a fairly simple apttens, but where does it begin, where does it end?

There's a whole book on how patterns develop from simple rules (A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram), which I think is a step in the right direction to understanding how these patterns develop into the forms that we know. It is, I think, entirely concievable that the creator created the matter we are made of in just the right proportions to self assemble into the people we are of today, and thereby generate the particular patterns required to project back "home" so to speak.

The whole issue revolves around self assembled structures, and is in fact an explosive area of research right now. Who knows, maybe in a few years with further research, self assembly will be able to tell us exactly which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Off topic: Why all the hostility to science I keep sensing here? It seem like everywhere I turn on this forum, theres an almost tanglible contempt for science and imperical reasoning. Not that there's no attempt at understanding phenomenon in scientific terms, but they all somehow stop short of thorough investigation and verification. If ideas are unchallenged, then the path to deeper knowledge is blocked and it becomes dogma.

How does one seek new truths, if one already has the answers?

There is no need to invoke a spiritual explaination just because we don't understand something fully. God exists whether there is a physical explaination or not. In fact, I find observating god's handiwork in explicit detail so much, I decided to make a career of it. Understanding how our reality works doesn't somehow make it less magical, it makes it more so.