This is part 2 of a 7-part series.
Click here for part 1.
Ever since learning some things about the relationship between language and thinking, and how they seem to have developed alongside one another and in relation, I’ve been wondering about what human beings were like before that — before we were able to actively think, to make connections, to form complex abstractions. Our savage mind.
We would have been more like animals than we imagine, able to passively have thoughts, but not quite able to deliberately think. Having passive thought responses, but generating no abstract thinking of our own volition. Able to dream but not being able to become lucid enough to make a calculated decision.
With the philosophical discipline being presented here, seeing the action of thinking and the neurological function of Thought itself as separate yet related processes, with distinctively different characteristics, is a practical and necessary observation to make. Thoughts being something you have, thinking being something you do. The action of thinking might be dependent on our ability to have thoughts, but the function of us having thoughts doesn’t depend on our ability to actively think. Passive thought came first, and set the foundation.
