where does thought come from?

Question

like thing about a car, u can see it right? i know there is a section of the brain dedicated to visual recall and imagination but where does the thought to begin thinking about a car in the first place come from?

okay people are getting confused, forget the car for a minute it was prolly a stupid example, i wasnt asking how you see an object i was asking how you think, the inner voice, inner ear, inner eyes etc, i dont buy the latest explanation that thought is just a side effect of a random chemical imbalance, it doesnt make much sense really

Answer 1

in the words of someone awesome..

who knows where thoughts come from, they just appear.

Answer 2

Do you mean conscientiousness/awareness? An evolution in the brain. The question of my life, because it put a monkey wrench in the natural process, or so it would seem. In the natural world everything seems to have a purpose, but with conscience seems to come destruction. Was it a natural mutation in the process of evolution? Every other mutation seemed to fit into the cycle of life but this one. But then again, is it like the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs, perhaps suggesting there is no true overall good, but a process by which things will change regardless of the event of conscientiousness. Will it lead to the ultimate destruction of the the thing that provides it sustenance? I wonder what will happen next.

Answer 3

I've often wondered about this myself and looked into behavioral science, psychology, and medicine in an effort to find an answer to what comprises thoughts, cognition, and awareness. I have thought about the way mammals view their environment and considered how their eyes and ears play a part in their behavior. Take cats for example. Cat's are tuned into things by movement..their eyes catch movement and are light sensitive because they are more nocturnal than daylight oriented creatures. So a cat's awareness is more focused on what moves in it's environment. What is simpler than a cat? Okay, let's look at insects, and I know that is a huge leap. Insects view the world through many lenses and process that information in order to survive and continue their existence. What kind of a thought would an insect have? Well, it is motivated by hunger and the survival instinct so it would be more affected by the size of a thing than it's shape or color. There is a lot to consider.
You might consider an octopus as well...what would its awareness be like? I would certainly be different than what we experience as homo sapiens but that too can be considered a thought process.


Look at the archeaological studies of hominids and see how much larger the brain pan was in comparison to other creatures. We have large brains, as our ancestors did...and with a larger brain (and I won't go into how we got a larger brain) we can process more information and in more complex varieties than a mammalian or reptilian creature with a smaller and more primative brain...that's the mechanics of it in a nutshell...but what of the essence of thoughts as we experience them in daily life? We see things as a species in many ways...it has been suggested that we share a race memory or a species memory...see C.G. Jung on the collective unconscious...what Jung didn't take into consideration at the time of his studies is that there is the possibility that there is an extra physical link and that synchronicity (an acausal connecting principal) may have causal and measurable qualities. See Dr. Rupert Sheldrake on morphogenetic fields, morphic resonance, and formative causation.


Damn, I hate to get this deep into something on a day when I've just worked my butt off...LOL

I think in order to define thought one must look at how a creature views the world and go from there...look into its awareness...I hope I have helped in some way.

Answer 4

You must have some input of stimulous before you can think of something, but here's the stickler... you ignore over 99.99% of your stimulous.

Right now you can feel your toes, but you are ignoring it (until I mentioned it.) There's so much coming in at you, that almost anything could set you off. Perhaps you hear a car horn in the distance, but you don't consiously notice it, that might then spark what appears to be a spontaneous thought of a car.

Your mind if constantly filtering, and sometimes not filtering things. So all thought comes from stimulous, like sight, touch, hearing, but you ignore most of it. Some leaks through and you have what seem like random thoughts.

Answer 5

the human mind is a miracle isnt it?
i think it depends on your religious belief, if i was an athiest i would really sruggle with such a question, my monkey ancestors had thought processes and they just developed over time or something bla bla.

as i believe in the creator thought is a gift given to us in order to discover the truth of life, why we are here etc. i think the whole life thing is awesome, when we analyse things like your question (thanks) and we go really deep it makes it all exciting and interesting, we only use a small % of our brains, whats that all about? look what we have achieved with that small % i could go on for hours about this but ppl would get bored, all as i can say is i am satisfied with my thought esp regarding life itself i just need to put it into practice which is the hard part.

Answer 6

If you see the car, it triggers the visual center in your brain, which transmits an impulse to the section about memory, which provides you with the frontal lobe stimulus for the thought about cars. There is usually some trigger for a thought before it happens, even if it is a random association we don't really understand. The brain is a complicated organ, and we don't really know how it works yet.

Answer 7

Thought, the function of the mind, is on the subtle plane in between the gross, material plane that consists of the gross elements of earth, water, fire, air, etc and the spiritual plane which consists of eternity, knowledge or consciousness and bliss. For anything to exist on the gross material plane, it first has to exist on the subtle plane and before that it must exist on the spiritual plane. That is why the spiritual world is described in the Bhagavad-gita as being full of all variety, just as this material world. This material world is actually only a perverted reflection of the spiritual world. (Bg.15.1-4)

Thought comes from the higher plane of spiritual existence. Lets take inspiration as an example because we often think of inspiration as thought that seemingly comes from 'nowhere'. The spirit soul in the material world is covered by two kinds of bodies, the gross body of the senses and the subtle body of the mind, intelligence and ego. In this condition the spirit soul is dependent upon the Paramatma (Supersoul), the plenary expansion of the Lord within the heart of every living being, to fulfill his desires. This is because we don't have the power to work the gross and subtle elements ourselves. We believe we are the doer of our activities, because we are deluded by Maya, the Lord's potency. (Bg. 3.27) In reality, the Lord's material energy is being directed to act by the Paramatma to fulfill our desires. He witnesses our desires and then directs the material energy to fulfill them. Of course there is much more to it than this because we obviously don't get everything we desire. Our past actions and their resultant reactions also play a huge role. When someone receives inspiration this is the Paramatma fulfilling the desire of that person to invent something, create art, solve a problem, etc. The thought is coming from the spiritual platform, the Lord in the heart. He states in the Bhagavad-gita that He is seated in everyone's heart and that He is the source of all knowledge, remembrance and forgetfulness (Bg. 15.15)

Answer 8

I suppose it depends on what u believe in. If we are all nothing more than physical entities then it comes from nowhere it is just a mechanical process like the engine spark plugs in your car but if the conscious is a spiritual thing then that of course is a whole different bag of beans!!

Answer 9

The thought to start thinking about a car comes from the soles of you feet multiplied by the distance you have to walk. The farther you have to walk, the more you wish you had a car. Simple linear algebra.

Answer 10

Thoughts come from your brain. As conscious beings we collect and store information of the world around us... We imagine and invent, we evolve ideas of what we like, what we want and what would make life easier. Without thought we'd just lay at our birth place wiggling about on the spot... Life would be kinda dull.

Answer 11

start reading plato my dear friend
what you are asking about is basically his idea theory. which goes as such
First there is Idea
then there is reality
Plato explains this as such
Our minds first form a thought of a subject (the idea) then they will turn themselves towards the subject (the reality)
The Idea is always perfect(whatever that is to you[e.g.try to picture a girl in your mind in your mind she will have maybe brown hair, fair skin, brown eyes, slender build with big breasts] just to set an example) In reality you will find that there are hardly any women that comply to that Idea. Thus reality is born in our minds.
But as Plato put it
First there is idea
then there is reality

To Angela
Plato didn't ask it
he solved the question

Just wanted to add a little something I forgot (in case you're reviewing)
The Ideas come from the one thing that makes us truly human nl. our creative thoughtprocess.
If you wish to know where that comes from check a neurologist