Human thinking is largely constricted today, with many people thoughtlessly running behind money, market, merit, masculinity and muscle, along with a deep-rooted sense of ‘me’, ‘my’ and ‘mine’.
For most of them, the most important thing, perhaps, is to ‘earn’ popularity, rather than to ‘learn’ the reality—the reality of the self and innate nature. Learning of ‘thoughtfulness’ and ‘cognizance’ have been an elective list in many. Human thinking, thus far, is not instinct-rich regarding the “purpose of a profound life” and the corresponding “purity of intention”. Thankfully, a few are precisely thinking about materializing inner energy, stillness, introspection, intellect, insight, thought and forethought.
Every insightful notion, discovery, novelty, and great mission is stirred by profound thoughts. These sentient thoughts are the instinctive thoughts, which help foster greatness, ecstasy, silence, opulence and vastness, leading to a profound visceral connection. One thought—a conscious thought—cannot only re-attune your life but also rectify society, nation, the universe, and humankind. Your thoughts and mind substantially resemble who you are. Yet, you are not your thought. Neither are you in your mind. You may be your conscious thought. In essence, you are your consciousness, preaching some philosophies. Nevertheless, your thoughts will determine who you are going to be. How you think, how you act, and how you behave in the present are the major traits that cannot only recalibrate your life, but also define your ‘future you’.
“What you think you become”, said Buddha in his teachings. Our becoming is largely directed or shaped by our thought, while “right understanding” comes first. Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path begins from right understanding and right thought as: “From right understanding proceeds right thought; from right thought proceeds right speech; from right speech proceeds right action; from right action proceeds right livelihood; from right livelihood proceeds right effort; from right effort proceeds right awareness; from right awareness proceeds right concentration; from right concentration proceeds right wisdom; from right wisdom proceeds right liberation.” Subsequently, the precise understanding and conscious thought could lead to emancipation.
We have been mastering our thoughts since we entered modern civilization. Every thinker and philosopher, since ancient times, believes that, “The human mind is an instrument that solves problems”, while many of them assert, “Quality of thought determines the quality of life”, writes D. Foroux in “Think Straight: Change Your Thought, Change Your Life”. When you observe life through a mathematical lens, your thoughts, actions and behaviors are the inputs to the function of your life. Even if the inputs are subjective, the output would be deterministic (as like computation in a machine). Sensibly, when positive thoughts, actions and behaviors are repeated in life, you are likely to get analogous output in every computation of your life processes, writes M. Tegmark in “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. Conversely, when the negative thoughts are encoded as input to the mind, the outcome would go adverse or contradictory. The mind, however, loves to be in a visceral state of calmness and consciousness, but your diverse thoughts circumnavigate it into the waves of upheaval.
Every objective phenomenon of your physical life (called the body) is controlled by an unseen subjective entity (called the mind). Your thoughts navigate the mind, while the mind controls the thoughts. The mind is again controlled by another mind—called “consciousness”, while the conscious mind is again believed to be navigated by “super-consciousness”. Whereas emotions are linked with the body and brain as well. “Since there is intrinsic mind-body connection, your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions can largely affect the overall bodily biological functioning—both positively and negatively” (Jimenez). The health of the physical body significantly influences the health of our mental state and vice-versa. Positive thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitude in mind call for good health in the body; and the good health of body recalls positive thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitude in the mind. This process goes on incessantly recursively as you feed on positive thoughts into your mind, while good thinking begets better thinking.
After all, thoughts control most of the mechanisms in your body such as raising or lowering the heart rate; improving or interfering the digestion; changing the chemical composition of blood; making you happy or sad, alert and aware, or distracted and depressed; making you positive and negative, well or ill, hero or coward, victim or victor, successful or failure, respected or ignored among others, writes B. Tracy in “Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievements”. The actions governed by your thoughts determine your life. Prominently, the thoughts are entirely under your control.
Aristoteles, Aristocles and Siddhartha Gautam were not transformed into Aristotle, Plato and Buddha by fluke. They did not easily gain their introspection just by waking up the next morning; while their consciousness, self-examination, and their ability to think their ‘own thoughts’ were the result of owing their inner voices, writes M. Sigman in “The Secret of Life of the Mind: How our Brain Thinks, Feels and Decides”. People, perhaps, had less or no idea regarding thought, perception, reasoning and consciousness before Aristotle, Plato and Buddha. Their ideas, knowledge and thoughts have been transmitted across an infinite span of space and time, and across our minds, argues Sigman. Later on, Einstein revolutionized our thought and understanding of the universe, space and time; Karl Marx added dynamism in understanding the society and economy; while Mahatma Gandhi introduced a sense in understanding peace and humanity. Subsequently, we all have Aristotle, Plato, Buddha, Einstein, Marx and Gandhi within us today, and we can claim “there I am”. There are several others whose thoughts have significantly contributed in transforming the people, society, nation and the world in our generations too. This is certainly because of their astonishing contribution to human civilization.
The structural aspects of human thoughts have been gradually transformed due to their input, which has subsequently shaped human civilization today. With time, people have started recognizing their own strengths, inner voice, intellect, potentials and innermost intelligence.
Yet people had no idea regarding the “working mechanisms of human thinking” nearly a century ago until the two psychologists—Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget—developed a theory of human development (psychoanalytic theory and cognitive-developmental theory), writes M. Minsky in “The Society of Mind”. Then mathematicians—Kurt Godel and Alan Turing—propounded mechanical theory on computability of machines in the 1930s where they began to study an “abstract machine” that had all the capabilities of today’s computer. By combining these two theories, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts started theorizing on machine thinking and learning in the 1940s.
The Boolean algebra enabled the modern researchers in bringing cognitive and information revolution to the present stage. The grammars or rules associated with logics and ideas are largely rooted in the Boolean algebra. The grammars in today’s highly algorithmic language, which are suitable for computational applications, are considered from the language of Sanskrit grammar formalized by Panini. This grammar is widely applicable for AI due to its ‘highly structured’, ‘logical’ and ‘unambiguous nature’, essentially to operate as a “programming language” for human thought.
George Boole envisioned to analyze all the cognitions of today’s computer even before the invention of today’s computing devices, while the insights from Boole, Turing and Neumann to the modern understanding of information, thinking and intelligence itself is an amazing combination of Mathematics, Physics, Information Theory and Psychology, writes R J King in the article “Thinking about Thinking”. John von Neumann gifted the concept of mathematics along with Quantum Theory, Automata Theory (Mathematical model of computation in today’s computer), Economics, Defense Planning and Game Theory, which conceptually help invent digital computer (Neumann, Turing and Claude Shannon together materialized the idea of digital computer).
Meanwhile Alan Turing proposed a mathematical machine called the ‘Turing Machine’ to model brain function, which turned out significantly useful in studying the ‘computability’ and ‘complexity’ of machines (Rosen, 2001). Turing Machines then could address the two important issues of today’s computer—“what can a computer do at all” and “what can a computer do efficiently”—known as ‘computability’ and ‘complexity’ of a computer respectively (Hopcropt, Motwani, Ullman, 2003). The research on machine intelligence started only in the 1950s, while John McCarthy coined the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ at a Dartmouth Computer Conference in 1956 (Russell & Norvig, 2010). Since then the unprecedented pace of technological change has brought dramatic transformation in human thought, life and civilization.
Though humans have developed highly intelligent machines, their own sense of intelligence is, perhaps, in a critical juncture, today: will humans be able to shape the future of their mind (rationality and critical thinking) and ensure collective wellbeing?
The second part of this article will appear next week
