The Brain.

The Brain

The Thinking Process 2

The brain is truly incredible. Even now, I think we don’t truly appreciate just how incredible it is. On the other hand, I believe we often give it credit for things it doesn’t actually do. Unfortunately, that contradiction is probably an example of how our human brain works.

Yes, there are some animals without brains, such as jellyfish, sponges, starfish, etc. Yet, surely, the main feature that separates most animals from other life forms is the presence of a brain.

To serve its many purposes, as well as the major function of thinking, I believe the brain has three major features. These are probably part of any animal’s brain, though there may always be those exceptions.

Firstly, the brain is part of the physical body and helps manage the bodily functions. As essential as this is, we all know the brain is much more than that.

The second major feature is memory. Only when I started thinking about this did it strike me how important memory is. To some extent, I regret not having concentrated on the skills of memory more. I simply worried about my other ‘intellectual’ skills. But the human race would never have developed those skills without memory, and better recall is always useful.

How much memory is stored in the brain? It’s always amazing when you remember some detail that happened many years before, and you had forgotten until something reminded you.  Does the brain remember everything? I wonder if the brain has a recycle bin, or even a trash bin.

But even this isn’t why I realised how important memory really is. Imagine if we had no memory at all—nothing. How would our body work? Not very well, I would suggest, and that thought made me wonder if even plant cells also possess some basic form of memory.

Perhaps even more importantly than those misfiring bodily functions would be those ‘intellectual’ skills. They simply wouldn’t exist. How could we even develop them, much less use them, without any memory?

I would expect that most, if not all, animals with brains have some amount of memory.

And what about that third major feature of our brain—our emotional self?

How would our emotions work without memory? Without memory, surely our emotions would have as little chance of functioning as those intellectual skills. How could we love, hate, desire, be curious, or even think without any memory?

And just as memory affects us emotionally, so do our emotions affect our memories. In fact, surely all three features of our brain, intertwine, assisting or affecting each other.

If intelligence is not an innate part of the brain, how does thinking work? I would suggest that it is our emotional self, perhaps aided by the other two features, that is both the trigger and the engine for the thinking process.

What does this mean?

It means that we don’t need to worry about emotions influencing our thinking. It already is. What we need to do is attempt to control our emotions so that we can use those cognitive skills as effectively as possible.

Not so easy to do if emotion is at the very basis of our thinking.

I believe any living organism with a brain has all three features to some degree. Perhaps the brains of more primitive creatures are focused mainly on the physical functions, but surely most animals have some memory and some emotions. Why did that insect dart away from you when you approached? How can so many animals, not just mammals and birds, be trained? How did those mice find their way through that maze?

So, the brain enables us to be what we are, but don’t underestimate the importance of the human shape as well. How clever are whales and dolphins? What if they had the same brain but a more human shape? What would they have achieved?

Unfortunately, our communication with other animals is very limited and we simply make assumptions, usually about how much more clever we are.

I would suggest that this is why we like the concept of intelligence so much. I would also suggest it’s why we come up with concepts such as consciousness and self-awareness. Are we adding something to the ‘human’ brain, or are we simply failing to accept what the brain does? Surely consciousness and self-awareness are a result of emotion and memory.

And that would imply that other animals may have at least some degree of both, and that we humans really aren’t quite as special as we may like to think.

Yep, Just my thoughts. Nope, not much research.