Thoughts

I just had an idea that sounded kind of philosophical: That the nonstop thinking of random thoughts in your head is from the neural network in your brain. And your consciousness is separate from this so it can use the body to accomplish things. If you think about it, your body is just a community of various living cells, all dependent on each other for survival. The randomness of the thoughts could be explained by their source being cellular activity. As conscious beings, we're able to listen to these thoughts and then still decide what direction to take your body.

The collective idea is a good one, but I don't see why consciousness is seperate. I see consciousness in part as a group acting as one. Consciousness in a human is a consensus of thought within the tumult of your memories/thought processes. The more focused your thoughts, the more conscious you are.

Well we always see consciousness in assosiation with neural networks, so it would seem that the two are entwined in some way... I'm not sure I understand your idea though. Are you saying that consciousness is separate and 'floats around' until it finds a body, at which point it can detect qualia via sensory organs?

I dont think he is saying it floats around, Im pretty sure he means it stays only inside us, and it is what enables us to organize the randomly arising thoughts and then also pull out ones we need from the randomness.

The consciousness is the observer, the thoughts are the stimuli. Thoughts stimulate consciousness into action, and depending on what form your thoughts take, will cause you to act one way or another.

Good, simple philosophy! I like it!

I don't mean that consciousness floats around until it finds a body. It's separate in the way that even without thinking, we are still conscious. So thinking isn't all of consciousness. I think of consciousness as more of an awareness. I think there's a difference between the random thoughts that are always in your head, and the thoughts that you have when you're directing what you think about. The random ones being from the cells that make up your body, the directed ones being from your consciousness using your ability to think.

I also think that consciousness is really exactly the same thing as awareness but often talked about in different contexts. I've heard many scientists and philosophers come to the same conclusion.

It's like when, for example, you sit in a car and mull over some memories... and then you realise that you weren't aware of the car journey for the last minute or so. Your memories, which you were aware of, were at that time inside what you would consider to be your consciousness, and visual data was not. It was in your brain, but you were not aware, or conscious, of it. Think also of unconsciousness. That occurs when you are not aware of anything.

It is interesting in that, naturally our minds think as non-stop babble because, subconsciously we fear "we will become nothing" if we stop thinking or be bored at the next instant.

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Originally Posted by really

It is interesting in that, naturally our minds think as non-stop babble because, subconsciously we fear "we will become nothing" if we stop thinking or be bored at the next instant.

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Very interesting actually. One night after a solid few games of beirut, I was really tired and thought it'd be a good time to try a WILD. As I lay on a couch, I concentrated on my breathing, and was also aware of my thoughts. After a while, my thoughts stopped completely, and fear washed over me. Somehow at that moment I feared that I would not be able to think again and would die. I know, stupid fear. I was scared at the time, but was kicking myself the next morning.

That's one explanation. My explanation is that it's an evolutionary advantage to have a brain constantly buzzing with ideas. Why do you think there's 7 billion of us on the planet now?

Because with our technology, nothing can stop our population growth.

My point is that our ecological niche is creativity.