A new attitude towards thinking

Photo: Catbird, Bryant Park, NY. This catbird has lost not its tongue, but its tail.

We commonly conceive of thought as collections of words that string themselves together and run through our minds. That is to say, those collections of the words become apparent to our conscious mind, we notice them. They’re even reflexive: we think to ourselves that we are thinking. In other words, they’re like a mirror that reflects itself.

Underscoring that association, when we talk about thinking things over, we refer to it as reflecting. And this is exactly true in some senses; a thought arises as a set of words that mirror what is outside.

We can surmise from this that thinking originally arose in creatures because molecules in cells needed to enter states corresponding to outer conditions in order to interact with them. Even today, it is still the same way. So our thinking on the macroscopic level is actually an inflated version of our atomic, molecular, and cellular nature.

This doesn't necessarily help me much in understanding thinking; but it's good to understand the underpinnings of what thought is. It’s a reflection of the world; and it arises in response to it.