It's all in your head. Some simplified thoughts about Thoughts.

Ken Edwards

What are thoughts? What do they look like? How much do they weigh? How do they taste?

Meaningless questions?

Not at all. It might surprise you to know that Thoughts actually exist physiologically as Patterns or Arrangements of brain cells inside of human heads. Those brain cells produce tiny electrical currents that can be detected.

What do thoughts look like? How do they taste? Well, I haven't actually seen any human brains but I have seen calf brains and I know what calf brains look like. They look like bloody lard. I once ate calf brains in my youth, fried with onions and lemon. Very oily and greasy. I can make a very crude guess that every spoonful of Brains and Onions that I ate contained about two hundred million Gigabytes of useful data, not counting the onions.

There are at least 4 kinds of thoughts. Thoughts that can be expressed in words. Thoughts that cannot be expressed in words. Thoughts provoked spontaneously by the default mind. Memories.

Thoughts that are created within the conscious mind are called: "Words". Words that can be spoken or sung. Sometimes these words can actually become visible to the naked eye. In fact you are looking at them right this minute.

The Conscious Mind is unique among minds. It is new. Evolution created The conscious mind in humans only within the last half million years. Only human beings have conscious minds.

Right now my Conscious Mind is indispensable to you, the reader and also indispensable to me, the writer because it is the part of our minds that connects Me with Thee and Thee with Me. It is the the mind that is directing my fingers to write the words of this essay.

So, if you find anything wrong with this essay you can just blame my conscious mind.

Metaphysician Undercover

I can make a very crude guess that every spoonful of Brains and Onions that I ate contained about two hundred million Gigabytes of useful data, not counting the onions. — Ken Edwards

What makes you think that this was "useful data" after the calf was dead?

Sometimes these words can actually become visible to the naked eye. In fact you are looking at them right this minute. — Ken Edwards

What do you think causes some words to become visible to the naked eye?

Ken Edwards

What makes you think that this was "useful data" after the calf was dead?

Oops, I meant useful to the calf, not useful to me.

What do you think causes some words to become visible to the naked eye?
Writing, Printing, Typing

deletedmemberTB

↪Ken Edwards

200 MILLION GB not counting onions
~ like ta piss my pants
Thanks! :blush:
two petabytes in its bland form

Having spent too much of my youth in the days of grand attempts to move mountains with our minds, I have a great affinity for stories that are not easily ridiculed for their ridiculousness.

I love the stories that capture the essence of an issue. We seem to be able to intimately appreciate only that which we can wrap our arms around.

I don't have any familiarity with your story as I understand it here, but it has the ring of possible plausibility to me.

appreciated

khaled

↪Ken Edwards

Only human beings have conscious minds. — Ken Edwards

How do you know this? What about all the other animals that have memories and can communicate? Heck, how do you know I’m conscious?

Not at all. It might surprise you to know that Thoughts actually exist physiologically as Patterns or Arrangements of brain cells inside of human heads. — Ken Edwards

I’m not sure if it makes sense to say “thoughts are patterns” rather than “thoughts are caused by patterns”. But this might just be a meaningless nitpick.

Changeling

Thought thought a thought of thought

Ken Edwards

Hi Khaled. The conscious mind is located in the prefrontal lobes which is that bulge in your head just above your eyes. You can see it. No other animal that I know of has anything like that bulge.

It can only think in words. It cannot think Intuitavly or emotionally but it is intimately connected with much of the rest of the brain and the different parts can work together..

Your question: "Heck, how do you know I’m conscious?" is not redicoulas but it Is ironic. Because. your question consists of nothing except words as do my answers. The Conscius mind is the only part of the mind that can use words. What is actually happening at this moment is that Your conscious mind just asked my conscious mind about conscious thoughts.

That is its job. To allow different people to communicate. That is why it evolved.

Incidently your word "conscios". means something else entirely.

Ken Edwards

Hi Tres Bien. I like your statement: "I love the stories that capture the essence of an issue. We seem to be able to intimately appreciate only that which we can wrap our arms around.

I don't have any familiarity with your story as I understand it here, but it has the ring of possible plausibility to me.

I can wrap my arms around your variation of the phrase: "The ring of truth"

Ken Edwards

Hi The opposite.

A rose is a rose is a rose.
Your statement isn't very smart and it isn't very dumb either. It is just the opposite.

Ken Edwards

Hi again Khaled. You said: ''I’m not sure if it makes sense to say “thoughts are patterns” rather than “thoughts are caused by patterns”. But this might just be a meaningless nitpick.

No, it is not a nitpick. it is fundamental. Thoughts ARE patterns. These arrangemnts of greasy brain cells exist physically and omit electric currents that can be detected. These cells can even be cut out and sometimes are cut out in brain operations. The best know operation is called a pre-frontal lobotomiy and occur to save the life of a person. The entire Bulge is cut out and the skin stuck back over the scar. The patient lives and is intelligent but can no longer think in words, ie talk.

I hope I am not scaring you Khaled.

This is all my muddled version of elementary psycology

synthesis

It would be difficult to imagine that there is an activity more over-rated that thinking.

Ken Edwards

Agreed (I think). But imagining and rating are thinking. So your thinking is belitteling itself.

And why not?

Ken Edwards

Re "Thoughts actually exist physiologically as Patterns or Arrangements of brain cells inside of human heads. Those brain cells produce tiny electrical currents that can be detected."

Is there anything wrong with the following statement?

All thoughts are rich in vitamin C.

Possibility

Re "Thoughts actually exist physiologically as Patterns or Arrangements of brain cells inside of human heads. Those brain cells produce tiny electrical currents that can be detected." — Ken Edwards

This is like saying that ‘energy actually exists physically as patterns or arrangements of matter; this matter produces heat/work that can be detected.’ You’re missing something important here...

Thoughts are arrangements of neuron-firing patterns, not arrangements of brain-cells. And what is being detected is evidence of thought, but not necessarily the thought itself.

Ken Edwards

You say: "Thoughts are arrangements of neuron-firing patterns, not arrangements of brain-cells.."
I take that to mean: "Thoughts are arrangements of patterns" I am using the meanings of both patterns and arrangements to have the same meaning and so I don't get the meaning of the phrase: "Thoughts are arrangements of neuron-firing patterns.

I agree with: "And what is being detected is evidence of thought, but not necessarily the thought itself."

Joe0082

If the question is, what is thought, the neuron patterns do not answer the question. How do electrical impulses become thoughts? It seems the impulses are reactions not causes, the true cause being the mysterious "will" of Schopenhauer or something like it. Where does this will come from? How does it translate brain patterns into consciousness. Those are the questions.

Present awareness

Only human beings have conscious minds. — Ken Edwards

To make the assumption that only humans have conscious minds, seems odd to me. How could one possibly “know” this to be fact? The only consciousness that we may experience is our own, everything else is just conjecture.
Thoughts about what thoughts are, are only thoughts after all. Thinking about thoughts is a lot like getting into your car to go look for your car.

Ken Edwards

An interestig way to put it. But we are reduced to talking about talking which is is like searching for answers by staring dow at our own naveless

Ken Edwards

I tend to avoidthe word know because it smacks of an absolute.
Do you realize you are talking about talking horses? Do you seriously doubt that there are no talking elephants. Of course I assume that. So do you.

I like sushi

I think it’s a big mistake to assume ‘thoughts’ are ‘worded’. I don’t always think in words.

Ken Edwards

↪I like sushi

If you would allow me a well informed guess, permit me to use a wild, meaningles number. You are correct to, lets see, by a factor of 20 million to 1. That is for every thought in words you have you have 20 million intuitive mind thoughts or overmind thoughts.

This can best be illustrated by the the weight of the actual brain cells in the conscuious mind which can only thinks in words compared to the size of the rest of the mind which thinks without words.

There is nothing new or mysterious here. This is all rudimentary, beginners stuff in the Science of Psychology and the Science of Linguistics.

The conscious mind developed very late in human evolution, very, very recently, perhaps as recent as in the last half million years.

The conscious mind is located in the prefronal lobes of the human brain which is that big bulge right above the eyes a very small part of the total human brain.

Valentinus

Only human beings have conscious minds. — Ken Edwards

That is not self evident. Experience with other animals brings that presupposition into doubt.

I like sushi

↪Ken Edwards

You can present evidence for this :

The conscious mind is located in the prefronal lobes of the human brain which is that big bulge right above the eyes a very small part of the total human brain.

It's all in your head. Some simplified thoughts about Thoughts.

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