The Nature of Thoughts

Have you ever wondered what is a thought, how thoughts come about, and how we are able to think in different capacities?

The human mind has been quite impenetrable throughout humanity’s history, with the exception of a few deeply introspective individuals and philosophers who broke some ground. But over the last few decades, we’ve been slowly lifting the veil on the nature of our minds. These breakthroughs were achieved through the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and other cognitive sciences. Before we discuss what a thought is, however, we have to cover some basic ground about the nature of the human mind, and the human experience.

Generally speaking, our brains work by using perceptual and conceptual models that represent different aspects of our world. Most of the fundamental models are built during our childhood years. These conceptual models are then used by our brains to swiftly predict and present the world to us, rather than having to constantly process the overwhelming sensory information coming in from the environment. This is to prevent us from falling into an endless processing loop of catching up with the world’s rapid moment-to-moment events.

Similar conceptual models are built by the brain to predict and create the sensations and feelings coming from the body, and this same principle of prediction applies to action, cognition, language, and music.

The process of predicting what’s in the environment is what we call perception, or more specifically exteroception; these are our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When the brain turns its predictions towards the external part of our body, it is called proprioception, and it is how we know the location of our body parts even without looking at them, and it is also how we know our position in the environment. Finally, when the brain turns its predictions to the internal body we call it interoception, this is how we perceive the feelings coming from within us, how we can feel our heart beat, and how we can feel our empty stomach churn from hunger.

You might be wondering why I’m using the word predicting as opposed to perhaps processing, well the reason for this is that our intuition gives us the impression that the brain operates on an outside-in perspective. Which means that we receive information from the external environment, which then travels in through the sensory organs and into the brain for “processing”. This is absolutely true, but it does not convey the full picture. In actuality, the brain mostly operates on an inside-out perspective, where the brain pushes out its prediction models of what’s happening in the environment, and then matches it against the information coming in. When there is a prediction error between what the brain expects and what is actually perceived, the brain corrects its internal representation model. This mechanism is what ultimately shapes our attention, perception, and motivation…whether we realize it or not.

Building on the above, since cognition gives us the how which gets translated into action; we can simplify cognition as internal action, or an internal form of responding. To clarify, we always have motivations arising within us, when these motivations are very strong (e.g. survival urges), they can drive us to a reflexive action that happens relatively outside of our control; however, when these motivations are normal, we have the chance to internally respond before acting.

Think about the following questions…Should I go to the kitchen and cook dinner, or should I order takeout? Should I drive to the lake, or should I call a cab? Note how all these thoughts are action-oriented, and even our abstract thoughts are rooted either in action, or in a representation of some aspect of the world. We are only able to mentally visualize planets rotating around the Sun, because we’ve seen how physical objects can spin and move as a result of forces acting on it. Do also note how we constantly use physical actions and objects to fill in for abstract metaphors, for example, “we are cut from the same cloth”.

This brings us to two different types of thinking that we constantly use, verbal and visual thinking. Verbal thinking, or inner speech, is sometimes also referred to as symbolic thinking, since it is rooted in the abstract symbols of language. We can also deploy visual thinking and imagery; where we imagine the preparation of the meal we’re going to cook, or the lake we’re heading to.

One way of simplifying these two modes of thinking is what we usually refer to as our conscious and subconscious minds. Thoughts that easily come to the mind are mostly generated by the subconscious system 1, while deliberate and consciously guided thinking is managed by the conscious system 2. If I ask you what is the the sum of 2 + 2, you automatically know the answer, no effort required, hence system 1. Whereas if I ask you to solve 524 x 3, you’ll begin guiding, structuring and sequencing your thoughts in a purposeful manner through system 2, and might visualize the arithmetic or use a pen and paper. This requires mental effort, but if similar problems are repeated enough times, your brain’s arithmetic model will improve and the changes will get carved into your nervous system…eventually being deployable through system 1 in the future.

What this all means in daily life is that the brain’s default and preferred way of being is system 1; which is plagued with cognitive biases and superstitious thinking (in the absence of rich knowledge and experience). Not only that, but system 1 is also driven by our emotional instincts and can therefore, easily get us in trouble during heated and uncertain situations. Yet because of system 2, we have the ability to stand back in the moment and avoid an immediate system 1 reaction, by directing our attention and thoughts towards alternative actions and responses. Whenever an answer comes to mind with no roots in our memories, experiences, or knowledge, we should not take that answer as immediately being correct or true. In actuality, we should second guess ourselves in these moments and think deeper, in search for better answers; whilst still being mindful of not falling into the abyss of overthinking.

Our perception of our external and internal worlds is more of a constructive and predictive process within the brain, rather than a passive reading out of the environment.

Thoughts are the brain’s attempt to predict what happens next, they are internalized actions, and provide us with the opportunity to efficiently simulate responses in our minds before we choose the means to achieve an end…one that is rooted in our feelings and emotions.

Thoughts can be verbal or visual, and both types of thoughts can be improved with training. We have our subconscious, fast, system 1 thinking that brings thoughts into our awareness, and then we have the slow, conscious, system 2 thinking that works to improve and/or filter out what’s brought up via system 1.

System 1 thinking is easy and friction-free, but it is only consistently reliable in our modern world when enriched with robust mental models, experience, and knowledge. System 2 is energy intensive, hence requiring mental effort, and can eventually give us mental fatigue. This doesn’t mean that we should avoid or minimize system 2 thinking simply because it’s uncomfortable, instead, we should learn to use it wisely when the situation calls for it.

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