Thinking

[Tab]

I often wonder if dreaming is pre-literate thinking.

[tentative]

I often wonder if dreaming is pre-literate thinking.

Maybe, but how does one express such thinking except inside literate thinking? Which dominates? Amygdala or Cortex? At what point do we cross over from instinctual behavior to sentience?

[Tab]

Lol, call me insane, but I have spent some time off and on over the years thinking about how a dog-pack for example would 'think' just using emotion and remembered events.

Initially words in my view are short cuts, wiped of much of their emotional context, which would speed up/enrich/diversify/ thought. Imagine if you had to parse that last sentence into emotional/memorized event language. Beyond remembering seeing a chihuahua, and the last time they cut their paw, and maybe running... It gets real abstract real quick.

"Eating too much is bad for you" is easier though. That would translate.

"Bravery is an admirable quality" would also translate.

Thinking for yourself is one thing, communicating the product of that thought to others without physically demonstrating it in context is another. What spoken language did for us was to link up our isolated brains into one big uberbrain. Massively boosting our species. Writing set us free from death, at least knowledge-wise anyway.

I kinda think that any lifeform over a certain brain size, that runs/swims/flies in groups and demonstrates some kind of social order, is probably sentient. I mean still dumb as fuck compared to even the dumber among us, but still. We should feel bad about what we do to many animals just because they can't shout "Oi!!! please don't kill me."

[tentative]

I don't wanna drag this thread off in looking at all the possibles. That's a first for me, but I'm still confused as to how we sort out thinking from non-thinking? Dan suggests a difference between instinctual and thinking states of being without any real clarification as to when and where he thinks that might occur - in humans. But what about every other living species? What is the definition of thinking?

A scout bee discovers a field of flowers full of pollen. He can and will return to the hive and "communicate" the direction and distance (by way of angle to the sun) to the rest of the hive. Upon discovery of the pollen source did he stop and think about relaying info back to his hive mates? Or, was it some sort of ingrained instinctual behavior? We call it thinking when humans all flock to the best taco stand, but it is the same thing the bee is doing. If there is a difference, what is it?

Just for a small cloud of confusion, do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?

[Tab]

I read a sci-fi novel once, I forget the title. But in it, someone built a computer out of a garden. Questions were parsed into the equivalent of toxic chemical punch-cards, introduced into the ecosystem, and the outputs read out as the ecosystem evolved solutions to restore homeostasis.

There's 'fast' thinking, such as we recognize, and 'slow' thinking that a hive might undertake, but not on the individual bee level, more on a species level. It's all about what you define as thinking, and your capacity for patience.

It's more the subject of the thought that sets humans apart from anything else we've come across. A raven or a squirrel might 'think' about how to get that nut from the feeder, but they ain't never gonna think about alternate endings for the last avengers movie.

That aside I think the hallmark of thinking must be change. You do something. You think about the results and the situation. You change what you did and try it again. You could argue that thinking is an instinct though lol.

Let's try this analogy on for size. What we have in our heads is a shaker. In it we put symbols corresponding to all the elements we can perceive about whatever situation is important to us at the moment, and throw in some extra ones corresponding to elements perceived in situations similar we've encountered in the past, or heard about or read about etc.

The act of thought is just repeatedly shaking the shaker, dumping it out on the table, until suddenly, Shakespeare occurs.

[Dan~]

Dan suggests a difference between instinctual and thinking states of being without any real clarification as to when and where he thinks that might occur - in humans. But what about every other living species? What is the definition of thinking?

Thinking begins as genetic information.
Organs form via genetic code to do tasks.
One task is produce new useful thoughts.
It's all about the information.
Gene -> Cell mass -> Organs -> Brain and Heart.