Over the last ten years great strides have been made in understanding the nature of thought. The ongoing research is very exciting. This thread is a place where people may share interesting articles describing the latest discoveries.

http://www.mpg.de/news02/news0202.htm

http://www.uh.edu/admin/media/nr/012002/dryernerve.htm

Hemineglect...the left hand ignores there is a right hand
http://www.braincampus.com/npsych/percept.html

Dissociative identity Disorder (formerly multiple personality)
http://www.benbest.com/science/anatmind/anatmd8.html

quote:

"Two pieces of ochre engraved with geometrical patterns more than 70,000 years ago reveal that people were able to think abstractly and behave as modern humans much earlier than previously thought".

http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/cape.nsf/pages/press

WhatsHerFace, posted this link on the “Life inside a Computer” thread. It’s a web site devoted to “Mind Uplifting” and has good material relevant to the Nature of Thought.
http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/MUHomePage.html

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-01/nofs-poi012402.php

Here is a site with a lot of links to online papers of philosophers of mind and cognition. Very relevant!

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/people.html

Thanks Merlijn. A wealth of papers at that site.

Thanks to Shaman for the following:

www.wismed.org/foundation/eachus.htm

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-02/cmu-cmc020802.php

Cris provided the following link on the neural basis of consciousness:

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/crick-koch-cc-97.html

This very interesting article is an overview of the neural evidence for regions of the brain that are directly involved in consciousness. The final section discusses how the neurological view of consciousness compares to the philosopher view.

http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~herz/dresden.pdf

How is the brain processing information?

Synaesthesia

-Perception, thought and language-


http://psy.ucsd.edu/~edhubbard/JCS.pdf

Darn!

Can't get the last link to work, Shaman. Bet it was a good one, too.

Sigh.

CB

Yaaaayyy! It worked! And it does look like a good one.

thx,

CB

Shaman, here's some "synfire chain" links and some general stuff thrown in. Have no idea if any of it will be new to you, or even useful. Lots of stuff... Have fun! :)


http://proxy3.nj.nec.com/herrmann95analysis.html

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/postma96robust.html

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/wennekers96controlling.html

http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~dcs/research.html

http://eva.ipi.uma.es/research/LESA/results.html

http://www.neuroinf.org/CNS/

Quote:
_________________________________________________

6:43 a.m. March 19, 2002 PST
WASHINGTON -- Black and white words on a page and the sounds of language explode into many colors in the mind of a middle-aged man. "Two" is blue, "2" is orange, "3" is pink and "traffic" is both blue and brown.

The man has synesthesia -- an altered perception in which printed words and numbers burst with color, flavors take on shapes and the spoken language turns into a mental rainbow.
_________________________________________________

www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,51163,00.html

When this hamster sees traffic, this hamster sees red.

Originally posted by ImaHamster2
When this hamster sees traffic, this hamster sees red.

ImaHamster2:
Maybe it is not the same kind of traffic...or is something special in the hamster's visual system?

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-03/cshl-sef032202.php

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,51660,00.html

Quote:
______________________________________________

This form is consistent with Brownian motion and telegraph noise. The unpredictability of
brain oscillations suggests that EEGs and MEGs manifest either multiple limit cycle
attractors with time variance by continuous modulation, or multiple chaotic attractors with
repetitive state transitions, or time-varying colored noise, or all of the above. In all
likelihood these fields of potential are epiphenomenal, probably equivalent to the sounds of
internal combustion engines at work, or to antique computers in science fiction movies, or
to the roars of crowds at football games.
______________________________________________

http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/wjf/BD.Stochastic.chaos.name.pdf

Shaman, thanks. Interesting paper.

Recently this hamster discussed with a friend research on building a neural net simulation to solve Raven Matrices. Major focus was on how dynamic neural nets could perform symbolic reasoning and learn. Very ambitious. Too ambitious. He couldn’t get his simulation of the nonlinear dynamics to converge. Would guess that some of the concepts mentioned in this paper might have helped.

<a href = "http://www.bbsonline.org/">Behavior and Brain Sciences</a> (archive).

<a href ="http://www.bbsonline.org/view-ROOT.html">Browse</a> the subjects or <a href = "http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/search">search</a> for keywords/author/etc.

There is a special edition Scientific America in the newsstands NOW that is titled 'the hidden mind' and the whole magazine is dedicated to exploring the mind.

It is interesting, but nothing new that I haven't seen on shows on discovery channel before. A good 'potty' read nontheless:)

and while its not a 100% pertinent to the topic, read "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" its a collection of very interesting physiological cases, VERY good read. easy to read at that.

Thought is simply this.... M + SP X L
(memory) (sense perception) (language)

I have no idea what im talking about. Peace

This subject of thought is a very perplexing riddle for me.I had a stroke about 2 years ago,and realised just how abstract thoughts really are,in losing my ability to talk ,see ,or move my right side, I realized that the responses we use to communicate are conditioned,habitual,reflexive responses that are common to anyone who has had the same training as another.
Thoughts are totally abstract things,there is no real substance to them until they are expressed to another person in a way they can be understood.
I am fully recovered now,it was just a lesson that god wanted me to learn,and please,if you want to go on about how god doesn't exist,go on in front of the mirror, I don't want to try to explain it to you through a keyboard.
I am not a self proclaimed genius like many others on these forums,life is too short to have a battle of the brains,I just know what I know ,firsthand,OK?

Thought is layered reflex circuits.

Here's some interesting papers on abstract thought from my old lab.
the most intersting being the one on time.

http://www.mit.edu/~lera/papers/

Random websites of people (off the top of my head) writing on foundational issues in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/pubpage.htm
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/

Cognitive sciences eprint archive:
http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

Journal of Consciousness Studies:
http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html

why is this thread sticky?

Thought arises from universal self-definiteness. Thought is directed toward unfolding of the interaction that builds us. More info at
http://www.eugenesavov.com

Hello!

I hope you enjoy reading about nature of human thought at; http://education.vsnl.com/nimbkar/thought.html

Cheers.

Thank you for the intersting link.

For new insights in space, time and the universe you may
enjoy the Sample Chapters and the other free downloads at http://www.eugenesavov.com

:cool:

http://www.aynrand.org/academic/bopar_pop.html

Give yourself the gift of you.

We cannot understand the nature of thought before revealing the universe unfolding.

Can you please tell me that what can be the effects of our thoughts on our body . Suppose we think doing something good for others, then if cells of our body will also learn doing something good to our body & vice versa?? If the phrase i.e. " One who dig pit for others falls in to it himself " can be linked to this aspect. I don't remember the opposite pharse of this saying may be.. " One who make mountains for others climb on to it himself ":D .:m:

Most of the posters deal with the essence of thought as Meaning.

Here's a book that deals with the nature of thinking (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465087868).

I recommend the Evolutionary Psychology Primer (http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html) for a good introduction to evolutionary psychology.

Thought (imagination ?) may be the quality that programs our DNA and powers evolution forward towards what we 'imagine' we will need to survive.

It could also be the force that 'fixes' quantum states into measurable patterns.

Here are a few more of my thoughts on the matter (as it were !)

http://www.mtvdance.com/artists/magic%20lamp/geometry%20of%20conciousness.htm

kula

Great to see someone appears to be on the right track. Thought, maybe "gnosis" (a broader, more inclusive "thought" , haha) is the cutting edge of evolution. The poor little birdies who blew up on the shores of the pacific islands "knew" that to survive they would have to genetically adapt, and quickly. Hence the rapid and diverse evolution of their species. Understanding the mechanics of this process is where we need to search.

Since my previous post i have found some info on how sperm changes. It desribes the hormones in the male effected the hormone content of the sperm (which has a cycle of a couple of weeks in humans). For example, a males testosterone is dependent on the level of the fathers at the time the sperm is produced. So even uncounscious bodily reactions to the environment can produce changes that are dependent on the experience of the organism. So what can we do with directed imagination ? Bio-feedback also sounds promising, but i'm using that as a buzz word as i dont fully understand what it means.

kula

We cannot understand the nature of thought before revealing the universe unfolding.
Interesting. I believe it is the Hindhu story of creation that said all creation (this world and all of infinity) was/is/will be the result of "God's" self relection (thought). Something like, and I paraphrase greatly, He was sitting in the depths of empty space and realized that He was all ALONE, and became frightened. Then He reasoned that if He were all alone (all one) there was nothing to be frightened of. And this created the universes. Maybe a better story than the "big bang". I have always thought that physics should include consciousness. You know, time and space. What is it without some awareness?

i think we think in IMAGES. we dream in images, not text of mathematical formula, or hieroglyphics, or cuniform, but in images. NDEs OBEs are images.

Mythology predates both philosophy and religion and was orignally preliterate, and based on associative images...ie., an enitity like say for example a snake meant many different association of meanings....Tree etc. like poetry, which it is. visual poetry

If for every sensation that our bodies perceive, there is a unique neural pathway is created, perhaps there is a corresponding neural pathway that records the memory of this perception.

Can't you hear, see, smell, feel, and even taste in your memory? The sensation isn't as strong, of course, but it's there, something is there.

To say we think in images is only partly right. We think mostly in images, but we perceive most of 'reality' through sight as well.
I'd say we think according to all of our senses, or according our brains' representations of sensual experiences.

If for every sensation that our bodies perceive, there is a unique neural pathway is created, perhaps there is a corresponding neural pathway that records the memory of this perception.

Can't you hear, see, smell, feel, and even taste in your memory? The sensation isn't as strong, of course, but it's there, something is there.

To say we think in images is only partly right. We think mostly in images, but we perceive most of 'reality' through sight as well.
I'd say we think according to all of our senses, or according our brains' representations of sensual experiences.

Yes, of course. when we allow image, we allow all sensuality.
for me the most powerful memories are ones that come with a gestalt....a sense of what the scent was when you were 'there'--and the whole feeling-bubble of the remembered event. you can suddenly find yourself in this kind of memory and it is really entrancing

but also, image isn't 'partly'...even if there doesn't seem to be the other senses bar perception and feeling. for example, dreams, we usually remember the images dont we?

I hav also read stuff from modern consciousness research, and have experienced similar myself. so say a person has taken hallucinogenic substance, or had induced a non-ordinary state of consciousness through another means. they can 'remember'--called 'regression' in shrink speak. so remembering being a young pre-pubescent kid will bring the feeling of having no pubic hair, of scent, of everying being a child is. this means that all of that is recorded in our bodymind, and can be accessed under the appropriate conditions

Do you think thought can ever be used to describe thought "objectively"?

<a href = "http://www.bbsonline.org/">Behavior and Brain Sciences</a> (archive).

<a href ="http://www.bbsonline.org/view-ROOT.html">Browse</a> the subjects or <a href = "http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/search">search</a> for keywords/author/etc.

This is the right direction for new journals. Thanks for the link!

BBS is the internationally renowned journal with the innovative format known as Open Peer Commentary. Particularly significant and controversial pieces of work are published from researchers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, behavioural biology or cognitive science, together with 10–25 commentaries on each article from specialists within and across these disciplines, plus the author's response to them. The result is a fascinating and unique forum for the communication, criticism, stimulation, and particularly the unification of research in behavioural and brain sciences from molecular neurobiology to artificial intelligence and the philosophy of the mind. As Cambridge continues its philosophy of moving towards fully online submission, refereeing and commentary, see preprints of articles currently undergoing commentary at http://www.bbsonline.org

Over the last ten years great strides have been made in understanding the nature of thought. The ongoing research is very exciting. This thread is a place where people may share interesting articles describing the latest discoveries.


The nature of thought is that there are thoughts but no such thing as thinking. And thoughts are Reality's nothing, fiction.

There can be no such thing as thinking because it is just a thought. This has been obvious in the East for over 5000 years. It is called non-duality, Advaita. Advaita comes to us from the Supreme Science which is the “study of thoughts.”
The Supreme Science gives us everything that modern physics gives us 5000 years later.

It all has to do with physics' quantum-gap that makes particles just thoughts, fiction, nothing.

I am utterly certain that I cannot think because I Laugh every time I think that I am more real than is Mickey Mouse in the TV set.

This Laughter is the "Supreme Comedy."
Call it “me” or call it Mickey Mouse -- they are both the same, fiction, thoughts -- the Supreme Comedy.

Heh. I would only say come and post your ultimate truth to all of my threads which beg for them in relation to myself! (ex. freethought section: Bizare(?) relation a reality;.. there are a lot: also in the free thought section: mental health and the existentialists; clarify my situation (the worst of them all); and in the general philosophy section: Please, describe to me something.... I am not suggesting, I am more asking. I have problems.) And I see this thread as.. plainly awesome.

Good thread. Wish I could find the answer to the nature of thought! Has to be out there, right?

I think a thought is only a thought with awareness. Awareness must be the key.

The less awareness (senses) in a being the less it can think on its on.

Organisms, virii, and bugs, dont exactly think as much as its programmed to do that.

Then we get into animals, wich have more intelligence and more awareness.

Finally human, with complete self realization bringing them a big awareness and strong ability to use the mind to create thoughts.

Other beings have this to a much lesser degree.

I think the brain and the outer world are just like two concentric circles, and
any point on one circle has its certain counterpart on another circle.In other words, one piece of sensual experience will induce one state of brain while one state of brain will represent one piece of of experience.
By technology of BCI(brain-computer interface)we can find what object is in a person's mind after detecting the bioelectrical state of his brain, and electrical retina implant has given a way to import signals into brain to induce corresponding sensual experience.

Most of the links on this page don't even work anymore, especially on the first page.

''Thought (imagination ?) may be the quality that programs our DNA and powers evolution forward towards what we 'imagine' we will need to survive.

It could also be the force that 'fixes' quantum states into measurable patterns.''

This is good stuff.

''I think a thought is only a thought with awareness. Awareness must be the key.

The less awareness (senses) in a being the less it can think on its on.

Organisms, virii, and bugs, dont exactly think as much as its programmed to do that.

Then we get into animals, wich have more intelligence and more awareness.

Finally human, with complete self realization bringing them a big awareness and strong ability to use the mind to create thoughts.

Other beings have this to a much lesser degree.''

Spot on. I am glad to see someone is involving a model of awareness into a logical theory.

''I think the brain and the outer world are just like two concentric circles, and
any point on one circle has its certain counterpart on another circle.In other words, one piece of sensual experience will induce one state of brain while one state of brain will represent one piece of of experience.
By technology of BCI(brain-computer interface)we can find what object is in a person's mind after detecting the bioelectrical state of his brain, and electrical retina implant has given a way to import signals into brain to induce corresponding sensual experience.''

And what can i say? Brilliant again. I was just talking about bioelectric conditions.

Reiku

I am also interested in knowing about nature.

How do you distinguish between reality and wishful thinking?
What are your criteria for making this distinction?
How can you make sure that what you know as [reality], truly is [reality], and not simply your projections and wishful thinking? --greenberg sciforums.com


if you want to go on about how god doesn't exist, go on in front of the mirror The mirror all around us: :cool:
If you were the only observer in the universe, what would you observe? What would it 'mean'?
Why bother to remember any of it, or observe it even? :confused:
WIthout communication, there is no information. Knowledge is not an individual notion. The concept of belonging, necessarily requires the notion of not belonging: inclusion/exclusion, a duality. Other individuals reflect our knowledge, and the group, in terms of any observation, has more status.:)

The idea that we can "stop thinking" is related to the (Oriental) notion of "calming the mind". I don't believe it is possible to "stop" the mind, but the "inner conversation" that most of us recognise as thought can certainly be quietened.

If our brains could "stop" there would be narcoleptic humans everywhere, waiting around for their brains to start up again...(why does that sound familiar?!).

Thinking you can stop thinking is a non-sequitur. Which means it doesn't follow. You can no more consider this possibility than say, a wave could stop 'waving', or heat could stop 'heating', or change could stop 'changing'.


Thoughts are totally abstract things,there is no real substance to them until they are expressed to another person in a way they can be understood.
I agree with this completely.
Abstraction is a process. Thoughts aren't static, like words on a page. A book is a channel that projects 'information' at us.
What is a book? What's a book with words in it if it gets lost somewhere, or turned into thermal energy and ashes? The books are in our heads.

While this is not a link to a site, it is about an incredible book I read recently written by a one Norman Doidge, M.D. on how thoughts effect the architecture of our brains. It is a sort of pioneering book that gives us a look into this new field dubbed "Neuroplastics"

If you are unable to believe we are living in a real world then hit your finger with a hammer, hard. You will quickly get a handle on reality.

As far as thoughts, thinking etc are bandied about on this thread it is seemingly missed by most that " thoughts "' are things, real...Therefore they possess matter in some form or other, as does light and sound. Now the question maybe better put, " What are WE? ".

Let me elucidate.

But first:

This would be easier understood if you first try to understand your own reality needs matter, energy, space and time to explain everything it is aware of and uses this same rational to explain to itself what it becomes aware of newly put to you.

Now:

You are a STATIC.

A Static= Possesses no matter, no energy, has no space nor time.
A Static is= The creator of matter, energy, space and time.

You must agree that even thought is a self creation then you, as self are indeed a STATIC.

Oh yeah, another important point. You, as a Static, are also immortal. Not your body...YOU!

Cool huh.

Thought is a response of the mind like a thrown pebble is to the ripples of the pond it lands in.

These are all links. I would like to know what the actual people think about it. In their own words.

On thought...my belief/understanding is, "we have thoughts"-but I don't believe I am able to tell what your thoughts are.

So, I am only? qualified? to tell you my thoughts.

Wild, creative, bursting forth in a barrage, dreamy somedays, dirty sometimes;), funny, irresponsible, crazy, logical sometimes, abstract mostly, visionary, curious, loving, colorful-they are many things.

I think the good thing what I do with some of them, put into action to improve my knowledge, my circumstances, my wellbeing, my finances, development...bring some of them to fruition.

I like my thoughts, they are great company.:)

What's new in the thinking about thought?