One thing about mental life that we skip over in psychology is that there is a lot of down time. We talk stimulus and response, but most of our lives are spent without anything terribly stimulating going on. In these moments, our thoughts are the salient stimuli; ideas are the new perceptions. This opens up a whole new dynamic experience for psychology to talk about.
These thoughts have to have some kind of source, whether from the environment or from the body’s physiology. The subtle things we sense in the environment connect themselves to mental imagery, ideas, representations, and often language. And these can sometimes go for a ride on a stream of fantasy and seemingly random thoughts.
This mode of mental activity, where there is nothing external to captivate our attention, we call “thinking.” For most people, this thinking is clearly born out of anxiety or excitement for the future. This observation, which we’ve all had, should give us a key to the nature of thinking itself. Our ability to imagine and prepare has to do with these moments of low-salience external stimulation.
It seems, if there is ever a break between stimulus and response, that consciousness can inhabit, we are thinking and deliberating. The larger this gap, the more we can think and prepare for action, and mull over the possible outcomes of action or inaction. There seems to be an essential connection between thoughts and prediction and imagination of the future.
I want to dive deeper into these claims because of how vital they are to our everyday life. Even the moments we are not compelled to action, are moments that should concern us, perhaps even more, because this is how we can change our lives. This can have implications on our rationality, belief systems, and emotional lives, that eventually will inform our actions.
Attention to an Idea
The first claim we need to accept is the nature of mental imagery, or thoughts themselves. When we think, our minds are focused on an idea, rather than us being reflexively in stimulus-action mode. Even in perceiving, there is thinking involved, when we categorize a complex perception with an idea of what it is, thinking has been done. We are only not thinking at all when we are acting by intuition, by reflex, by habit, or by instinct, such as in a flow state. In other words, a thought is adding something that is absent to the stream of consciousness to inform action.
Where does a thought of an absent thing come from if it is not a direct stimulus? The answer is many and best described in an article I wrote on the summation of influences in the working memory. But to summarize, any given thought can come from hormonal or immune responses, or bodily physiology in general, or subtle emotional perceptions that describe the environment but do not require attention, or the recent highly stimulating events that were reacted to but is now only in the past. Our past, recent or distant, inform the next thought.
The lesson here is that all thoughts have their origins in affective or emotional things. Physiological states latch on to mental states and thoughts which are related to those states. “State-dependent memory” is the psychological phenomenon where an idea can be more easily recalled in the physiological state in which it was learned. This shows on a basic level that our physiology can bring certain ideas more readily to consciousness. And ideas also are helped to consciousness by relationships to recent memory of our perception of the situation. Of course, with our symbolic structures we can link things by relationship and bridge gaps with logical connections, but at some point, the thought’s origin, and thus the thought itself is within the framework of an emotional situation.
“Every thought has a propellant, and that propellant is emotional.”
Akincano Marc Weber, a former Buddhist monk
The Future Quality of Thinking
“As for where the mind wanders to: well, lots of places, obviously but studies have shown that these places are usually in the past or the future”
Robert Wright, psychologist
We can look at how thinking or mind-wandering can go to the past, but it almost always is to serve the future. Perhaps “lamenting a bad golf shot” (Wright’s example) in the past is actually to be preparing to not do it again. The emotional weight carried by the memory of the bad shot implies that it has enough meaning that you know you’ll be standing at the tee again. But we will talk more on memory in a later article, for now we will accept that thinking tends to serve the future.
I believe most animals have the ability to imagine the future, since most animals have just as much time for leisure as we do, if not more. If dogs are dreaming when they bark in their sleep, it is likely that they can also have mental imagery formed by desires and chemistry and memories. While they lay down, they might be fantasizing about the next time the neighbor’s cat walks by the window. However, this is speculative, because mental imagery has a more subjective quality and there is no direct communication of our mental imagery from one mind to another.
It is important to note that we do not need language to have mental representations about an absent object. A language-less thought of hunger for food implies the ability to think about something absent without language.
A child, even before he or she can speak can imagine Mother, even when she is absent. This thought of Mother, contains the emotional content of seeing her again. A child, if unsure her mother will return, feels that emotion towards something that is absent. You can imagine, that this will cause the child to think more and more about the lost guardian, but soon enough, as most children know, she comes back. So, there is the abstract concept containing emotional value that causes thinking to prepare for future possibilities.
The answer to the question of “what will happen next” is an enormous part of the definition of emotion and therefore the definition of thoughts. If we say that thoughts are the attention to a concept, we must accept, therefore that, as Lisa Feldman Barrett says, “concepts are predictions.” Conceptualizing something is like deliberating on how to act towards it the next time you come across it. Our thoughts are therefore highly reliant on what we predict will be the case. In fact, emotions are, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, also predictions.
Specific Emotions as Predictions
It is born out of reflex for a child to react to the absence of a caregiver, but to think of them while they are absent is to have an emotion, because that thinking is in reference to what one fantasizes will happen. Will that person return? How will they act? This is at the core of the anxiety and panic system. To believe something important may be gone forever is to panic. The panic is the solution to quickly make oneself detectable and frantically search. The thoughts that come from this are predictive with an element of the future tense.
Other emotions have predictive elements too.
Anger plots one’s revenge, which is born from the reactive physiology of rage, but its emotional element is usually when the infuriating stimulus has passed and we are left with a tense body and nothing but our thoughts and fantasies of what you might say or do next.
Joy, on the other hand, plots the return to the enjoyable action. The current enjoyment is pleasant, but shortly after we still feel it in its absence that we want more, and we plot the next time we can return to the pleasant experience.
Our fear reactions are quick, fight or flight, but emotional fear is when we imagine a future situation where we run into that feared object. Fear as an emotion plots avoidance.
These I call emotions because they are not necessarily action-provoking, but they cause the thought patterns which can provoke and inform action. The strong stimulus may have caused a reaction but the emotion comes when we think about the situation. They cause thinking and plotting and imagining and fantasy, and practice. This is typically how we define emotion as opposed to instinct or habit.
The Origins of Thought
The moments we can spare for thought hope to fill that time to consider what actions need to be taken, if any. Whether it is a fantasy or a deliberate analysis of the situation or a developing of a philosophy, it prepares one for action, even if that is a subtle action or even a deliberate inaction.
What we experience is imagination propelling our thinking to the future using affects and other unconscious cues to determine the content of our thought. Whether we are thinking of an opportunity or an anxiety, or just a fantasy world, we use our imagination to ask “what if…” and to simulate possible scenarios according to how they play out. Visualizing outcomes has been shown to help performers, but much of the time, unless we are putting full effort in our simulation, the thoughts tend to ruminate about randomly and often, and in the already anxious mind, streams of thought conclude themselves in the eventual failures or catastrophes that lie inevitably ahead.
With the addition of self-consciousness, language, and abstract thinking, this ability to use down time to think leads to more formal logic, fictional imagination, creativity, recalling explicit memories, and thinking of the self. Our whole world of thinking revolves around this emotional property of predicting. This grows more and more complex with our intellectual abilities, but on the whole, thinking is still a preparatory act flung about by emotions.
The Meaning of Thought
We spend most of our lives without a lot of salient stimulation. However, thanks to this down time, we can sit and think, referring to things which are no longer there, in order to prepare ourselves for a future time. In this regard, we should be grateful for this ability. But, as mentioned before, this can have its downsides.
We can have the time and ability to think about the future in productive and strategic ways, but this can easily tread into the world of rumination on anxieties, anger, and unfulfillable desires. With the impulse to prepare, we forget the intrinsic values of pure committed action and of rest as well. During the times where we can rest, we think and prepare, often without actual consequences.
It is easy to justify these simulations, not only because sometimes they do prepare you to act, and fantasies like this are enjoyable even when propelled by desires—there is also a strange enjoyment in even those propelled by anxiety. Anyone who has had a crush knows how enjoyable it is merely to think of him or her and the potential of running into them one day. Anyone who has a job that puts them in a state of anxiety will be spending their weekends simulating all the possible outcomes of the next day, and they cannot shake that from there way of being, as if they need to worry. And as we might think these are necessary for being prepared, they never allow us to rest, and often they lead to a confused solution, which never finds itself a clear action.
I cannot confidently suggest that we should throw away these forethoughts and rely on human instincts, trained or natural, to guide us in the moment. Even if we could, it is not advisable. But I also cannot recommend ruminating on fantasies of opportunity and catastrophe. Forethought is apparently the alternative to presence and moments of relaxation.
This is a difficult paradox to solve. I cannot pretend to have the answer. However, I might suggest simply reflecting on your thoughts and always knowing that your thoughts are preparations. Ask often how they are serving you and whether you can discard your old habits of thought. Will they inform new intelligent actions, or are they simply a justification for staying in the worn path of habit? So, at the very least, anxious thoughts will not perpetuate more anxious thoughts; they can be cut out and disposed of.
This can be applied to any sort of thinking, even those thoughts that seem to be helpful. In the thinking required to write these articles, I hope to be able to find ways of applying this in a way that can help me change the way I act, even if it is in a broad or vague way.
When you have a thought, consider why that thought is meant to prepare you for the future. How does it serve you? Be more deliberate with your thoughts. Where does your mind go when it is left to its own devices? You may be surprised at what thoughts go unchecked on their way to affect our lives. Meditate on why you will think these things and how those thoughts are used to prepare you for future situations.
And if you consider that thoughts’ ultimate goal is action, the priority can be given to the care of the body’s health. This may mean actions resulting the physical health. Or it may be symbolic actions resulting in social or self health. To the body and to ourselves and to others, our thoughts are not ends in themselves, they can only support actions.
