Thought , language , memories , movement and the smell of strawberries. page1 of 1

Never mind evolution needing a rethink, this whole page needs a rethink..
Abilities like thought and memory don’t come from nowhere , or in some odd way to us , maybe they do. We just don’t know what the nowhere is , or how or where it could have came from to be. But at some point these things didn’t exist , or at least not on earth.

We have tried to trace whole animals back to their origins using fossils , thinking that there have been stages of changes and developments comparable to the growth of a baby to an adult. It’s more difficult though to look for evidence to trace back to find anything about thought and memory. What we do know though , is that the us in us didn’t form our ability to think. We have it , but we know that we didn’t or don’t produce that ability to have thoughts or to think.

So we’d have to consider where in the evolution idea would thought and thinking fit. We think that we are doing the thinking , but if we think that life evolved we’d have to think that the thought and thinking ability also evolved. It’s hard though to imagine that our thoughts and thinking is down to evolution.
It could be thought that thought and thinking are a given , like any other sense , like seeing. That is , that although we think that it is us that is doing the thinking , it might not be us doing the thinking at all. It would otherwise mean that an animal has in it a thinking ability that is responsible for it’s survival.

Ultimately , we think that our thinking is us thinking. But that can’t be so. We would have to think that we ourselves have a sort of power of thinking ability to get along in the world. There is though the ability to think , but only to think about what we are thinking about. Could it be that thought and thinking could be like a sense. After all , we didn’t make the eyes that we use to see or the ears that make us hear. We are in a way at the mercy of them and that might apply to thought and thinking as well.

If so , it must be that the thinking is set to be. That is , it is set to think only about what is necessary in any animals situation and can’t be that we are doing the actual thinking. That is that we, didn’t construct whatever the the ability to think is and so maybe we in some way we direct the available thinking like we direct the eyes. We would though have to wonder though how we direct the eyes or thinking.

But back to the main , evolution. The very first thoughts and thinking wouldn’t have occurred because they evolved. There could only have been an instant thought and not a progression from a half of a thought or even less. It must have been in one go.

Then there are what we call memories. We can sort of hang on to memories that will be useful to make things right the next time. We know that those snippets of time that could have made everything different can’t be made to happen again so that we can change them.
We also wouldn’t think that any cow in a field or squirrel in the trees is thinking of the split second lost opportunity of kissing another in the past and that they could have lived forever together.

Somehow , humans we might think , have a different kind of memory , but that gives the idea that memory is like a physical system. Maybe that is or not the case , but it does feel that it isn’t that way. There are novels and books and films galore of that human experience of memory. Take that kissing memory between two people who absolutely like each other that might last forever. But evolution theory couldn’t come up with whatever memory is and then to have memories to remember those sorts of happenings years later in thoughts that things could have been different. Maybe though a squirrel does wish they had buried more nuts in the summer. No idea.

Then , children of all animals instantly know to keep near mum or dad. The fossils and DNA and genetics don’t show show how any of that exists. No evolution theories explains those sort of things. The evolution thoughts totally stop all thinking. Young fish swim around mum or dad. Saying that that is an instinct doesn’t say anything about what an instinct is , and is much like saying that we have memory , but not knowing what the memory thing actually is. So we say that we have a memory , and imagine that that the memory could have no memories in it , or just a few in it and be like a half empty box , or that there is no restriction and so it is limitless.

But giving these things a word makes us relax. The word instinct is only a word that says that for example that a species of animal only fancies their own species. But the word instinct is only a descriptive word to say that animals will fancy their own species. It doesn’t mean that something called an instinct exists. To say that animals fancy their own species because of instinct is wrong. A jelly fish might fancy another jelly fish but the use of the word instinct just says that this or that behaviour exists in any animal species. We don’t know how a jelly fish will always fancy a jelly fish. Instinct isn’t a thing , and neither is memory or thought or thinking. They are words to describe only what we observe. In themselves they don’t exist.

Thought and language page 2

Home