@Eberhard J Wormer Why you think so? 😅

Thoughts are born well before they become conscious. As we never live in the moment but seconds later, thoughts are part of a journey as if we are at a bus stop and wait for the bus to come pick us up.

What part of the journey interests you?

Dear Bekzod Bekchanov

You ask: " In order to achieve a full understanding of the biological foundations of consciousness, it may take several centuries, but what do you think? "

I think it depends. If you are thinking in terms of the physiology of the brain, I could well agree with you. BUT, really: NO, not centuries, not even decades.

I have no doubt there could be a good empirical science of behavior patterns PER SE (i.e."just behaviors" and that is all). This aspect of biological functioning (behavior patterns and patternings of such patterns) showed a good start in the 70s : it was called ethology; but unfortunately ethology is no longer properly understood or viewed (e.g. there is a common belief that ethology has LESS to do with learning than other approaches BUT that is demonstrably FALSE -- IN FACT, just the opposite is true: the more understanding we could get via just discovering (and empirically well-grounding) behavior patterns ("just 'behaviors'"),THE MORE WE WOULD FIND "learning" and this would be REAL learnings and be of essentially different qualitative types of learning and not some artificial and basically fictitious ubiquitous few "types of learning" now imagined; the ONLY learnings now imagined and seen properly are the simple types of associative learning (sensitization, habituation, and at a cruder level of understanding: classical conditioning and operant conditioning); the others have no clear empirical bases (they are very bad science and, actually NOT SCIENCE).

If we study behavior patterns and patterning well and have all our concepts well-founded or well-grounded as/or as connected-to (and, minimally, at LEAST in their inception SEEN, starting with) DIRECTLY OBSERVABLE OVER BEHAVIOR PATTERNS (basically the same definition of good empiricism is all decent science), MUCH advancement (and continuing advancement) of understanding could occur. But, we first have to rediscover the behavior science that won the Nobel Prize in 1973 ; IT IS THAT "biology of behavior" I have just described. We now basically do not know it.

Dear @Holly B. F. Warren

the first part, how did we get on the bus? ) how we decide to choose this bus ? why? where are we going to ?

Dear @Brad Jesness

but we're not talking about behavior, it's biology, maybe religion? Who knows what inspiration angels think Newton also created the theory of gravity when it hit apples, and why it didn't fly to heaven. Or did I write about a Shakespeare Hamlet and create dramas using bio physiological processes in his brain? The question is not in behavior or science or in the study of it. question is, can we handle it? and go to another step of evolution.

Life unfolding.

@Eberhard J Wormer Why you think so? 😅

This thought might be helpful:

„Neurons in our brain act as individual agents, each one releasing particular neurotransmitters from specific dendrites in response to those that it, in turn, had received from other neurons. Thinking is an emergent property of these neurons. No one neuron can think a thought, but many neurons, each one following local rules, can think about phage assembly.“ Merry Youle, Thinking like a phage

Dear Bekzod Bekchanov

you are on the bus. You travel through your consciousness constantly. Which bus? Which path are you pursuing? What though are you working on? Where is it taking you?

Who are you sitting next to? When do you ring the bell?

good quation

Thoughts by free choice lead to free minds and markets=free societies.

Thoughts born in unfreedom of the human mind, lead to serfdom.

Our mind is a formidable jailer.

So you mean that our mind is jail for himself ?

The moment a thought is born, within milliseconds it leads to a feeling about the thought. This feeling may be either positive or negative. This is the construct in cognitive behavioral psychology or RET

Bekzod:

Regarding your question:

In order to achieve a full understanding of the biological foundations of consciousness, it may take several centuries, but what do you think?

Not at all. We are on the forefront of "radical understanding of the self" and as such the advances to be made in the near future will be astronautical. Primarily this is due to the technological advances of the information age in which we live.

For as Feynman indicated: "If we understand how engineering systems are built and integrated, then why should we not be able to use reverse engineering to understand the human, for the human is also a machine"?

The impediment to doing so is the Rational Reasoning Logic Loop Capture as given in the attached.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://vpchothuegoldenking.com/what-happens-in-the-brain-when-a-thought-is-born/&ved=2ahUKEwiDw6-HpIbpAhW1SBUIHWqIAR0QFjANegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0I3y90BP_ON8fwHpFzD_on

A conscious thought has travelled a long distance when it emerges. As most aspects of life connections are sought and bonds created or repulsed.

In order to understand the biological foundations of consciousness (and of unconscious cognition), looking at the brain is necessary but not sufficient. You must also look at the entire organism, its sociocultural context, and its physical context. Mind can be thought of as a phenomenon that emerges from this dynamic, complex system that ultimately encompasses the entire universe. Imagine a disembodied brain trying to think alone in a void. Not much would happen!

David Charles Wright-Carr

Despite the seemingly short question, I think it needs to be broken down into smaller pieces to give answers that are not too simplistic (I am not claiming that I am capable of doing so):

What happens in the brain when a thought is born?

= this depends strongly on prior experiences and the stimulus of (conscious?/declarative) thought. Looking at Damasio's somatic marker theory, external, internal stimuli, or both represent a potential trigger information processing leading to thought.

Following your recent reply, I wholeheartedly agree and also the reason why I rather like to avoid the term consciousness! We make sense of the world by feeding our nervous system with experiences of interacting with the world with immediate feedback loops. This is, in my view, how our mind emerges. For that to happen, we need perceptual access to relational, interaction principles of the environment, and its objects/agents by being situated with our entire body.

Looking for consciousness in our brain is essentially asking our mind to figure something out that is hard to access in the first place and missing the complete picture.

There are a lot of terminological pitfalls here. I don't feel like I am doing the subject justice via a reply.

Therefore, I won't dare to even touch your second inquiry :)

Please feel free to correct my oversimplifications, everyone.

Best,

Bernd

Dear Bernd:

You are right when you say that it's hard to provide an answer to such a broad and complex question in the format we are using on this RG question page.

I have been collecting sources that provide some clues for answering questions such as this. Perhaps followers of this question will find it useful:

Data Embodied cognition and aesthetic experience: a bibliography ...

I can also share a recent article that attempts to make sense of the concept of embodied cognition and its usefulness in the study of aesthetic experience and visual language:

Article "Embodied cognitive science, aesthetics, and the study of vi...

Best regards,

David

Dear David,

If the study of the relationship between aesthetic experiences and (embodied) cognitive sciences are your main interest, I actually might be of help as it is a slowly emerging field in media studies (especially when the moving image is concerned: e.g. film studies, games studies, VR experiments). But for a satisfying answer, I definitely need more space and time (since I, apparently, did not understand it well enough to put this notion in simple terms). However, since 'the author' died a long time ago, I see no reason not to study aesthetic experiences scientifically, independent of authors' intend (many scholars from the humanities might disagree, though). You can have sublime experiences in VR, for instance - these things are responsible for opening pandora's box called the philosophy of the mind in the first place. I actually feel humbled that you provided more context in response to my answer.

Best wishes,

Bernd

Bernd: I'll click on "Follow" and keep track of your progress.

The question suggests the answer right..as well as there is no „generatio spontanea“ in life, thoughts emerge from parents (neuronal patterns derived from sensual experience).