They Are Not Your Thoughts
Thought is not what you think it is, and that is why we need a model of thought. I’ve been developing a model of thought called the Web Of Thought (WOT) based on the work of Dr. David Bohm. Ultimately, the WOT model will drive a Thought API to empower applications that help humanity.
“An idea or opinion produced by thinking, or occurring suddenly in the mind.” — Oxford English Dictionary
Our common understanding of thought as something we produce or occurs within our minds lacks coherence. How can this be? How can we produce a thought suddenly out of nowhere?
We know we can’t have a thought about something that we don’t know anything about. It’s impossible to have a thought about a detail of rocket science if we don’t know anything about rocket science. So, it seems we need to acquire the underlying concepts of a thought prior to forming the thought.
It so happens that most of the concepts we acquire come from someone else. This means that someone else had to think that thought before it was passed to you. And, someone else before them and so on. In essence, it seems thought is not so much created in our minds. It is a manipulation of other people’s thought. As we learn concepts we accumulate the building blocks that allow us to form new thoughts in the future.
In other words, our thoughts are integrally linked to everyone else’s thoughts in a ‘system of thought’. This was Krishnamurti’s and Bohm’s insight.
“What I mean by ‘thought’ is the whole thing — thought, ‘felt’, the body, the whole society sharing thoughts — it’s all one process.” — David Bohm
At the heart of Bohm’s views on thought is his redefinition of thought. Like Bohm’s, the WOT definition of thought is broader than the common definition. But in WOT, thought is defined as information within a network. This makes WOT a information model, rather than a psychological model. I believe this is consistent with Bohm, though he didn’t explicitly define thought in these terms.
The model doesn’t only describe thought (information) in our minds, it includes thought that comes from inside and outside our bodies. Additionally, the model expands Bohm’s definition to include genetic information which is called genetic-thought. These is information which is passed from one generation to the next via DNA, which I will detail in a future article.
In the WOT model, there are three types of thought. We start off life with thought from our parents defined as genetic-thought. As we live our lives, we experience and learn new thoughts defined as extrinsic-thought. Our bodies also generate sensations and emotions defined as intrinsic-thought.
From the model’s perspective, thought is not yours, it is our shared thought. This may be difficult to accept, due to our common understanding of thought. By seeing thought as information, we can better track how it behaves within and between us. This is a critical aspect of the model. It’s the transmission, generation, and processing of thought that drives our lives.
Any questions? Does the WOT definition of thought make sense? Am I explaining it well? What am I missing? I welcome your input.
