The Chain

After writing my last post, I started thinking about the way that I think. And once again, I'm just going to write and not edit, because I doubt I'll read through it again and make much sense of it.

My brain tends to get stuck. A thought, as thoughts tend to do, will pop in innocently enough. But then it won't go. And I just keep thinking about it.

Or does the thought "think" about itself?

What I mean by a meaningless statement like that, is that when trying to describe how I think, I find that I can't describe what it even means to think.

I've got an idea. How did it "get there"? Wherever there is?

And even more confusing is trying to think about how a thought develops? What is it that moves an idea and rolls it over and turns it into a new idea? or a conclusion? Well, "I" am the one controlling this thought. But I don't have experience of that. Not really. All I have is experience of thought progression.

Maybe I'll work on a more tangible example. Moving my arm. I think about moving my arm, and my arm moves. But what if what I'm describing, and believe to be an experience of control, is actually just an experience of impulses that I have no control over, but constantly coincide. If "I" am just an awareness that can experience all impulses in my body and mind, then maybe every time I think I am consciously moving my arm, is just a movement of my arm coupled to a thought or belief that I have somehow moved my arm. Meanwhile, I am just aware of these two thoughts, and in the absence of any other evidence, I peace this together into an experience of "me" actually having played a role at all.

What I think I'm trying to say, is that if "I" am just this awareness, and the impulses moving my arm and and the idea that I have moved my arm, are coming from "me" or are being initiated by something besides this apparent consciousness, how would I, in fact, be able to tell? I have no connection I experience between the arm moving, and the thought of the arm. They just coincide every time.

So, if "I" am not magically initiating impulses, what else could it be? Well, nothing, at least in biological or physical terms, seems to happen without a cause. This is a major assumption I'm throwing in here. Causation can be argued separately. But I am assuming, (and I think not too unfairly so) that things don't just happen. something causes something else.

Could it, then, just be a chain of impulses and events more complicated than we could ever imagine or conceive? Maybe. Maybe, since my body was first made, it has functioned based entirely on a cause and effect, stimulus-response, system so complex and intricate that the collection of experiences of this bizarre situation accidentally formed into some sort of awareness that has mistaken itself for a consciousness that is actually controlling the whole thing. Like gloves thinking that they're moving the hands.

And then, if that's the case, there is no such thing as "me" thinking. There is only an awareness of thoughts. Not mine per se. Just thoughts that are there. In which case, I once again arrive at confusion about what this "I" is. Because if all that is plausible. Which I compelled to think it is. (I have no say in the matter, remember?) Then what I believe to be the "I", isn't actually there?

I have a headache.