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Admittedly, "think" is perhaps an inapt word choice, but how is response to stimuli not, in some fashion, awareness?
by rosser 14y ago
Admittedly, "think" is perhaps an inapt word choice, but how is response to stimuli not, in some fashion, awareness?
- derleth 14y ago> Admittedly, "think" is perhaps an inapt word choice, but how is response to stimuli not, in some fashion, awareness? Sure, it can be, if you're willing to admit that computers respond to stimuli.
- greenyoda 14y agoThink of the "knee-jerk" reflex you get when the doctor hits you on the knee. It's a response to a stimulus, but it happens without even any involvement from your brain: it's just a round trip to the spinal cord.[1] I don't think that's what we usually think of as "awareness", which happens at the cognitive level. Reflexes like eye-blinking are even operational when you're unconscious. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patellar_reflex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patellar_reflex
- saraid216 14y agoRight. Questions like this are stupid because they're not asking a usable question. The best response to the headline is really, "Define a thought." This is difficult in humans, never mind anything else. If you choose to define thoughts as stimuli-response, then you're classifying our entire system of instinctive responses as thoughts, which is practically a brain bypass. (The literal knee-jerk reaction.)