Are we the author of our thoughts?

I personally believe that humans highly function on their survival instinct, even in modern society, and that advancement thereof is just adaptation and part of that instinct. Thinking that, my guess is that we are very limited when it comes to how much ’‘freedom’’ we have outside of that, and that thoughts are a big, if not the only, part of our survival instinct. We can shape and fashion them, but their basis, whatever purpose is specifically served, is unmovable.

For example say I decide to dislike a person who wronged me, and I find reasons for it, but in the end that thought process is a defense mechanism, or grounds for an attack if one needs to happen in the name of self preservation. (because living among your peers is as much a part of survival as living in caves and clubbing each did centuries ago) I never decided to ’‘not like’’ that person, it was bound to happen out of natural human instinct. The thoughts and ideas I use to justify it are the only free manipulation I have over this, and even then. Not saying; don’t try being nice, certainly not…but none of that is the point.
Just my…erm, thoughts.

The good news, is ‘Yes’... the bad news is ‘Yes’.

@cazzie – In what way? Could you elaborate?

When I’ve tried meditation, I’ve not had too many thoughts or images pop up in my mind. Mostly I am aware of my physical discomfort of trying to sit still with no support for my back. Occasionally, I get to that grey area between wakefulness and sleep, and have dream-like experiences. Those, I feel come from the same place as dreams, though – and we do not control them. I don’t find that many thoughts just randomly pop into my head that haven’t been referenced and ruminating on some level.

As for our thoughts in daily life, including self-talk – we can control them if we choose to. Having had a dysfunctional childhood, my self-talk was extremely negative and I would react emotionally before ever thinking about what I wanted to say. I spent a lot of time with my foot in my mouth. I managed to retrain myself to be conscious of my thoughts and actions at nearly 40 years of age – so it wasn’t easy!! It is still a work in progress, for sure!

In fact, I believe that being on sites like this, where I have to collect my thoughts into cohesive language and try to be clear and not easily misinterpreted, have greatly helped me handle face-to-face interactions. I’ve learned how to pause to quell emotions, and pull the words together. I also speak slowly so that the thoughts can continue to be processed while I’m talking.

Again, my self-talk and inner dialogue are still challenging at times, but they are nowhere near as negative and defeatist as they once were. Having my partner whom I trust completely also helps, because when we are together I can think out loud, which helps me catch and correct myself.

@hearkat: “As for our thoughts in daily life, including self-talk – we can control them if we choose to. Having had a dysfunctional childhood, my self-talk was extremely negative and I would react emotionally before ever thinking about what I wanted to say.”

You have the ability to respond to your thoughts once they arrive in your consciousness. Much of our work that we do to improve our happiness, including therapy, is based on finding ways to respond to these thoughts. It’s little different from learning to respond appropriately to other people.

@hearkat: “I spent a lot of time with my foot in my mouth. I managed to retrain myself to be conscious of my thoughts and actions”

This is great. And it does take a ton of work. But you are essentially learning to corral thoughts and becoming aware of them so you have a choice of how to respond to them. But being mindful of your thoughts doesn’t seem to point to you being the author of those thoughts. Do you know what I mean?

@hominid: I did realize that as I was writing my response, because I am at a loss for words for how to describe the process of controlling thoughts. (This is so meta!)

There are absolutely different levels of thought and some are more conscious than others. The subconscious thoughts are fairly automatic and I agree that they are not truly “authored”, because they are not “conscious” thoughts – but are they even actual ‘thoughts’, then? Aren’t they more like sensory perceptions and/or emotions than thoughts, in fact?

Much of what we do “think” does occur on a higher level of consciousness in reaction to those perceptions – the types of thoughts that separate us from other animals. My cats think (non-linguistically) “I’m hungry, I’ll go to the place where the two-legs puts the kibble.” “The sun is shining in the living room window, I’ll go over there and perform my morning grooming ritual.” “That dos is so annoying. Why won’t someone let me out so I can shut it up once and for all?” Humans think, “I’m hungry. Do I want pasta or a salad?” “The sun is shining in the living room window – I bet a stained glass ornament would look great as it catches that morning light.” “That dog is so annoying. Why won’t their owners train it properly so it doesn’t freak out every time a leaf blows by?”

I guess the best way to phrase my earlier point is that I redirected my thought patterns. By putting conscious effort into catching the negative thoughts and consciously rephrasing them, and focusing on the positive events occurring in my environment instead of the negative, I no longer think, “That’s the story of my life, what else is new,” whenever something shitty happens. Instead, I think, “Well, that sucks – what’s the silver lining; what have I learned?” The undercurrent is no longer automatically negative.

You state in the OP about thoughts that pop in our heads, but I mentioned that I do not have many thoughts that randomly pop in my head – usually it’s a reaction to an observation or an old memory that has been jogged by something that has occurred. Could you explain further what you mean by these “pop-up” thoughts?

Thoughts just are, it is in the observing them that we become conscious. It is when we are unconscious that we believe our thoughts to be who we are.
A measure of self awareness is amazing! When one can actually catch and observe their thoughts arising instead of just living with the mind chatter in a place of unconsciousness.

“Sure, they are the product of our brains…”

Many folks believe so. Others, like myself, do not. If I answer the question true to my beliefs, you may think me mad, and that might make you mad.

So I’m really not trying to start any trouble here @hominid. I just believe the conditions you put upon the answer (product of brain) is a false start.

I believe in non locality. The brain is just a receiver/transmitter. But it is not the station.

So yes, and no… I think we do indeed “author our thoughts”, non-locally. But our brain receivers are also picking up timeless ethereal noise that mixes with the present physical reception of the current thought.

Yes

I have the same belief that realeyes does concerning brain function and consciousness, and I had this in mind when I had asked my other question about hearing our own thoughts. Personally I think that our thoughts and sense of individuality are just fragments of a greater level of some type of universal consciousness. It’s difficult to talk about this without derailing the thread and turning it into another topic of debate.

To be honest though, whether consciousness is a brain function or not, this is still a difficult question to answer I think. If we always were, and we are more than our bodies, then perhaps our thoughts were just simply always there, but we simply express these in our own unique ways.

@Paradox25 “If we always were…”

Right. There is (I believe) a state of “IS-ness” that transcends traditional notions of time, past, present, and future.

For instance, The Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln, (and all fluther comments), only serve to REPRESENT our thoughts at the time they were communicated to other humans. But that representation, (ink and paper), is not equal to the actual thought itself. The thought cannot be reduced to neoro-chemical stimulus anymore than the Gettysburg address can be reduced to ink and paper, or my comments here can be reduced to photons firing on your computer monitor.

If I die tomorrow, you would still have access to my thoughts on this subject every bit as much as when I was alive. We still have access to Abrahams thoughts about equal rights every bit as much as when he was alive. This is regardless of whether our brains exist or not. The thought still exists even though the brain is gone.

How could this be possible if the thought is in the brain?

I propose the thoughts we share between each other are not IN the brain so much as they are OF the mind.

Thoughts are not like water inside a bucket. Thoughts do not spill onto the floor during brain surgery. Repairing the brain is similar to repairing a radio receiver. The thought is there, regardless of whether we have ability to tune into it or not. The physical sciences allow us to tune the receiver for better thought reception and transmission. But that tuning has nothing to do with the essence or creation of the original thought itself.

Fluther is nothing more than the physical manifestation OF the thought OF the mind of its creator.

Not IN the mind of its creator. OF the mind of its creator. Where is that mind?

I propose that mind is nowhere.

Because, literally translated, now here is nowhere.

I don’t believe traditional scientific concepts of human consciousness are anywhere close to the actual reality of what consciousness, time, or eternity is truly about.

It is thoughts that create us, not we who author thoughts.

The conviction that “I am the thinker of my thoughts” is not dissimilar to the conviction that there is a God who created and is running the universe. Just as the default ssumption through most of human history has been that “all of this can’t just have emerged from nothing” therefore there has to be someone behind it all, in the same way we assume that there is an agent—an “I”—who summons up thoughts.

But if you believe that God is nothing more than an idea created by man—the supposed “creation”—in order to satisfy an intellectual demand for a master agent of the universe, then it’s not such a huge leap to understand that thoughts create their own agent, an “I” at the root of experience and thought.

To someone who believes fervently in God, God seems very real, and all manner of happenings are attributed to him. It’s inconceivable to someone like this that there wouldn’t be a God because he’s right there at the heart of their worldview. An athiest looks at this and realizes that dropping the idea of God doesn’t actually change much; the world rolls along just fine without that idea. Maybe even better.

In the same way, it can seem inconceivable that there is no “thinker” behind thoughts, nor any agent behind our actions and experiences, but in fact dropping the idea of “I” doesn’t actually change much. Why? Because that “I” was only an idea, a thought, a conceit. If the thinker is itself a thought, then it can’t be doing the thinking.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Your reasons for believing what’s frequently termed as the filter hypothesis of the brain appear to be much different from mine. I’m still not sure what I think of ‘thought’, or what it is. Some scientists who are open to the filter hypothesis of the brain appear to be open to the possibility that the universe operates like a gigantic analogue computer, where thought or sentience (both need to co-exist) was the system becoming aware of itself gradually through order coming to chaos and evolution.

Personally I myself believe that thought (or information) has to come from somewhere, and can’t exist on its own. I’m not claiming that information is the same thing as matter or energy, but I think it has to come from some type of source. I could be wrong though.

Yes we are. We are a sum of of memories, experiences, significant influences and most of the time we are unaware of our thoughts. Whether good or bad, which can be a good or bad thing.

@thorninmud do you really believe that? Does the voice of god in your head tell you to do things? Are you on any medication? or should be? Even your strong belief in your god is coming from a section of your own brain. You made your belief in it. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104291534

@cazzie I don’t believe in God. Read again.

@thorninmud well, then, I guess you were really enjoying your 420 holiday. There was no point I could discern from your diatribe without bringing out a pick axe and a microscope. You put a capital on the word ‘god’, and that is usually an indication that one believes.

If we don’t create our thoughts, what you are saying is that they come from somewhere else. That sounds like a rather ‘supernatural’ argument.

@hearkat: “There are absolutely different levels of thought and some are more conscious than others. The subconscious thoughts are fairly automatic and I agree that they are not truly “authored”, because they are not “conscious” thoughts – but are they even actual ‘thoughts’, then? Aren’t they more like sensory perceptions and/or emotions than thoughts, in fact?”

I suppose that’s my question/problem. I can’t really identify a difference – at least in how I experience them. The next thought is going to appear in my mind (consciousness), and it will arrive without me doing anything about it.

I know you mentioned that you don’t seem to have thoughts just arise when you attempting to focus on the breath. But that seems highly unlikely, since the fact that our brains are a constant river of noise is what makes such a simple task as focusing on the breath so challenging. If you close your eyes right now, get settled, and turn your attention to the sensations of the air passing through your nose as you breathe (or your chest rising and falling), can you maintain that attention through multiple inhalations, exhalations, and that pause in between without realizing that are thinking about something (what happened yesterday, what you need to do today, wondering what you might have for lunch, etc)? I suspect that the all-too-human chatter is there.

As a side note, it seems that even things that we can easily identify as pure sensory perceptions, immune from manipulation, are experienced in a way that bears little resemblence to the pure sensations themselves. For example, I have chronic back pain and I will frequently turn my attention on the pain. When really attempting to witness the raw sensations of this pain, I have found that it’s diffficult to pinpoint exactly where the pain is. And when I think I have it cornered, the very nature of what I am labeling as “pain” seems to fall apart as the raw sensations of pain become (almost) nothing but a fluid, slippery sensation that is hard to identify at all. Yet, when I’m walking around throughout my day, my experience is quite different.

@hearkat: “By putting conscious effort into catching the negative thoughts and consciously rephrasing them…”

I think we are largely in agreement or have a similar understanding that our consciousness is an audience to our thoughts.

@hominid: “Are we the author of our thoughts?”

@cazzie: “The good news, is ‘Yes’... the bad news is ‘Yes’.”

@hominid: “In what way? Could you elaborate?”

Could you answer this question, rather than egregiously misunderstanding @thorninmud‘s comments and then assuming that he is high?

@thorninmud – Interesting. I had never made the god/self connection in our instinct to imply agency.

This might be a different question altogether, but I really can’t see how we can get any working definition of free will that is compatible with what appears to be thoughts without a “thinker”.

@hominid It’s very self explanatory. Which part don’t you understand?

@cazzie – I wouldn’t be asking the question if it were “self explanatory”. If you have something add, say it.

@hominid Right, the question of free will is integral to this one. This is where that whole matter of “emergence” that we discussed before helps clarify.

By way of analogy, you can understand the reality of the physical world on more than one level of complexity: there is the underlying interplay of subatomic particles and forces, and there is our world of things and beings. These aren’t two different worlds at all, of course; when you look at your kid, you’re also looking at the interplay of subatomic forces, and vice versa. But when you’re considering the world on the subatomic level, its “kid” aspect disappears; and when you consider it on the “kid” level, its subatomic level disappears. Both levels are “true” simultaneously, even though its hard to consider them both at the same time.

We live our lives at the level populated by things and beings, so that this level seems the most relevant and practical. You can live your life without ever even suspecting that any other level exists (though your life couldn’t exist were it not for the workings of the subatomic level).

In much the same way, we live our lives on a level where the world conjured up by thought has relevance and practicality. The personal agent “I” is a feature of this thought-based world. On this level, I choose and bear responsibility for my actions, and these are “my” thoughts. By social convention we agree that this is the case, and so we mutually reinforce this perception and organize our society around it.

But underlying all of this is a far simpler reality, one in which it can’t really be said that there are things and beings (which is why Buddhists refer to it as “Emptiness”). On this simpler level, cause and effect alone hold sway. This perspective is absolutely true, but quite unworkable as a basis for living one’s day-to-day life. There is great value in becoming aware of this underlying truth, though, since it disarms much of the anxiety associated with being aware only of the “things and beings” perspective.

I’m interjecting to throw in some things that made all the difference for me regarding meditation and observing thoughts.

The first is understanding who you are that is observing the mind. If you are observing the mind create thoughts, then you must be something other than the mind.

The second is to let your mind rest inside your heart. In it’s unbridled state, the mind only knows to multiply the problems that must be examined and solved. We regard it as the boss, but really it is only a powerful tool. It’s a wonderful servant and terrible master, and generally we treat it as master.

So in some forms of meditation, there’s a battle to unseat the mind from it’s primacy. The mind will rebel against this until it submits. In rebelling, it will produce all kinds of distraction and discomfort (sometimes it even makes people ill) to knock you off the path of realizing your truer nature as awareness. The more you can minimize the importance of what is “only thought” and instead hold on to the sense and perspective of the one that is observing the thoughts, the surer you are to tire out the mind and turn it to submission.

To paraphrase what’s already been said, “thoughts appear, and in giving them attention, belief and identity, we take them to be who we are, but we can withdraw belief, attention and identity and they may as well have never happened. Yet there is still the one that gives attention and takes it away.” Who is that one?

@thorninmud: “There is great value in becoming aware of this underlying truth, though, since it disarms much of the anxiety associated with being aware only of the “things and beings” perspective.”

I hope this is true for eventually. My recent experiences during meditation have caused some anxiety, surprisingly. For example, I was an hour early for doctor appointment last week, and I decided to meditate in the parking lot in my car. After a brief period of settling by concentrating on the breath, I opened it up to my “pain” in my back, then sounds, then opened my eyes (which I hardly ever do) to be aware of light and color. As I had described, all of it – heat, warmth, itch, light, color, sounds, and thoughts appeared to be landing in the same place. And it felt as if the place it was landing was me (or my consciousness, which in a way is what I think I actively consider as “me”).

Once concern I have here with the whole free will thing is that it doesn’t feel good to me to be unable to find a definition of free will that maps to reality. Here’s the thing – I have journal entries from 1992 where I’m outlining my conclusion that everything is a simple matter of cause and effect. If we were to only have the ability to be aware of all of the variables, the algorithms, and the interplay between them all, knowing exactly what I will do, say, or think next would be as simple as writing a computer simulation. So, I’ve had a tendency towards a type of determinism for some time. But how do I know that what I think I am experiencing isn’t just some kind of unconscious justification of my long-standing determinism?

But if what you are saying is true, which I suspect it is, the “subatomic” view of cause and effect and it’s ability to obliterate any common ideas of free will seems to be extremely relevant to how we operate in a world of “things and beings”. Are we to keep the views (and each view’s implications) separate, or is there a way to merge them in an intellectually and emotionally satisfying way?

@hominid Yes, it’s the integration of the “Emptiness” and the “Things and Beings” perspectives that does the trick. Looked at in isolation, each of these perspectives is terrible in its own way. But they don’t exist in isolation; they’re the exact same reality. So while we can talk about Emptiness as opposed to Things and Beings, that’s an artificial distinction. We find it useful to make this distinction at times because people tend to get stuck in the Things and Beings perspective, and need to know that that’s not all there is to it. But neither is Emptiness all there is to it.

The integration isn’t a cognitive exercise. It’s accomplished by not holding on to any idea. Ideas can only capture partial realities, and this integrated reality can’t be bagged with such small-caliber ammunition.

@thorninmud – thanks. If it’s not a cognitive exercise, which is my default mode (unfortunately), I’ll need to see where I can go with this. The two perspectives seem to conflict in some deep way. For example, the concept of “blame” seems just as silly as blaming a rock for falling when we let it go. And all of favorite emotions of pride and shame about who “we” are seem to be rooted in a self that doesn’t seem to exist. Or maybe what you’re saying is that the understanding that my kids are collections of atoms and that everything about them is dependent on prior causes in no way diminishes the fact that I love them more than anything or myself.

Also, I should have given this disclaimer – while I have experienced far less than optimal sleep for 1.5 years, the past few weeks have been rather extreme, and I have been experiencing simultaneous work-related stress, which is triggering crisis all around for me. The “self” is just another thing lately that I have found elusive. Slipping into an all-around existential funk. My ramblings in an attempt to make sense of it might be absurd.

@hominid It’s very much like dreaming: The dream perspective—say, that I’m taking a crap on a toilet right in the middle of a crowded living room—seems to deeply conflict with what you might call the “absolute” perspective—that all of this imagery is transpiring within a sleeping brain.

In a way, it’s true that I’m there on that toilet. That’s exactly where my sense of self lies (or sits), and nowhere else. I’m intensely uncomfortable because of all of the others observing me in that room. I wish things were different and I desperately look for a way out.

In the absolute perspective, none of this really matters. I’m not really in the dream at all. All of those others in the living room are, just like the “me” on the toilet, dream-stuff. There’s no problem there, nothing that needs changing. It’s all good.

You’ve probably had the experience of a dream going lucid, so that even though the dream scenario rolls on, you know that it’s a dream. This realization transforms your experience of the dream, even though the dream continues. I may still be sitting on that toilet, but so what? I’m dream-stuff, the toilet is dream-stuff, the bystanders are dream stuff. The dream becomes a playground. I’m in no hurry to escape it.

This leads back to the question, “If I’m in the dream, who’s dreaming?”

@hominid – Yes, I have quieted much of the chatter in my mind.  I am nowhere near as well-studied or disciplined as thorninmud or kevbo, so I won’t even attempt to get into the depths of discussion where they are far more capable than I.  I can only relay my personal observations and experiences, because that is how I have learned.  I find that when I do understand the points that those better educated than I are making, they very closely reflect the conclusions I have come to in my own journey.

At some point several years ago, I had the epiphany that control is an illusion.  Sure, it’s something I had pondered; but in this moment, I “got” it and I have difficulty putting it to words.  Essentially, I realized that it is not as simple as cause an effect, because there are innumerable variables that we can not predict.  The only thing that each of us can control is what we do with this moment in time.  We can not control or predict the actions of others with 100% accuracy, nor of the events in the world around us. All the worrying beforehand and all the guilt afterwards don’t change what has happens – they only diminish our presence in the moment.  Letting go of that attempt to micromanage life has freed me from chatter and most stress.

It’s true that I don’t do well focusing on the breath, I usually am aware of auditory and tactile sensations, like the muscle spasms in my shoulders from trying to hold me and my breasts upright. That is why I gave up on practicing meditation. My mind is pretty quiet since I let go of control and worry. I can empty my mind in nearly any place and time if I notice myself getting uptight. My cats are my zen masters. Animals take life as it comes and don’t stress about what happened yesterday or worry about what will happen tomorrow. Now I’m not saying that this approach is ideal for humans, since we’ve constructed these societies and monetary systems and we can’t really live well on instinct alone. So I try to choose actions today that will leave me with fewer regrets tomorrow. I’m not too good at that, though; self-discipline is a major challenge for me. But I do not lose sleep with guilt over things I “should have done.” Instead, I just take accountability for my choices and deal with the consequences in the here and now.

Perceptions and feelings flow through my daily existence, and I choose whether to invest time and thought processes on them. If I find that I’m over-thinking or stressing about something, I will retreat from it and deal with it later, if possible. If it is something I have to deal with right now, I just take a deep breath, remind myself that the experience will be over eventually, and quickly prioritize what needs to be done in what order to bring resolution. When I do make a mistake, I will review my choices and actions in order to learn – but I don’t dwell on it and let my human imperfection leave me full of self doubt.

I know it’s a bit off-topic, but these were the thoughts that I put together after reading your response. I do have chronic pain, but nothing as acute as you. I sleep fairly well now, but when my son was an infant and toddler I was ridiculously sleep deprived and don’t remember much of those 3 years. Therefore, while I can’t fully relate to your challenges, I do respect them and the influence they probably have on your thought process. I hope this is helpful, and if you want to redirect the conversation, feel free – it’s your thread.