Who thinks?

When you accidentally touch a hot stove you immediately move your hand away. The reaction happens before the news of what is happening gets to the bits of your mindbrain that ‘understand’ what is going on and can ‘learn’ from the experience.

You are ‘hard-wired’ to make that kind of reaction to that kind of stimulus. You do it ‘without thinking’.

Along those lines Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) famously noted that “the heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about”. But, in his day, there were no bicycles or motor cars. If there had been he would have noticed that it takes time to learn how to control them. But, once we have learned, we use them “without thinking”. This begs the question of what we mean by “thinking”. Does it include our ‘heart’ learning new reasons?

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) gave us the pithy saying, “I think therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum). But this in turn begs the question of who or what am “I”. It seems fairly obvious that I am closely linked to what I am conscious about and have control over. (I have “free will” over these things?) But can I be held to account for what goes on in the unconscious – for those hard-wired instincts that are part of our evolved human nature? (I am “determined” by these things and should not therefore be held responsible for them?)

If you think about it you will realize that the vast majority of what goes on in your mindbrain does not feature in consciousness. Another way of thinking about this is to say that there is an abundance of mental activity that does not occupy the mindbrain’s attention centre.

Also, there is evidence showing that what appears to consciousness in the attention centre comes a fraction of a second after related happenings in the unconscious.

(Put a decision maker in a brain scanner and get him to report when he makes a decision. The scan shows that the brain lights up in the decision making areas slightly before the decision maker is conscious of making the decision.)

If you make some time to sit quietly doing nothing you will notice that the mind is in constant churn. Even experienced meditators know about their monkey mind – sometimes the monkey is hyperactive and with fleas! The good news is that when, by taking thought, the chatter dies down you experience a deep peace – but that is another story for another day!