I really recommend the book Consciousness and the Brain as a summary of modern neuropsychology. The long story short is that conscious thought is only a small f

I really recommend the book Consciousness and the Brain as a summary of modern neuropsychology. The long story short is that conscious thought is only a small fraction of the brain. There's a tremendous amount of pre-conscious machinery that pre-processes and evaluates sensory input. The role of consciousness is only to act as a sort of "global workspace" to reconcile any discrepancies that can't easily be evaluated and explained by the pre-conscious modules of the brain. As such the vast majority of sensory input never even makes it to the conscious level.