February 2025
My uncle has written to me the old-fashioned way again, sending a letter in the post. He says I can share it with you. This time, it’s about thinking. What is it that calls on us to think? What is this thing called thinking? Though itās quite long, what he says is fascinating.
You can download a PDF version with a few additional comments here.
Paracelsusgasse 14
SaarbrĆ¼cken
JƤnner 2025
Dear Nephew,
I hope your trip to Vienna went well.
Iāve spent most of the last month looking after my books, inspired by my recent trip to Japan. I went to one of the libraries in Tokyo and found the staff taking all the books off the shelves, meticulously turning every page, and then putting them back. They said this was to preserve them. Damp is a problem in Japan.
After such a wet autumn, it inspired me to do the same when I got home. Of course, the process took far longer than it should because I was frequently distracted by the books, and by Pushkin. As soon as a shelf was free, he climbed onto it, crouched down, and stared at me.
Sometimes, he had a long wait, especially after I came across one particular book which interrupted my work for many days. It’s a book* I had almost forgotten I had. Itās subject? Thinking.
As you might expect, the book got me thinking. I began to wonder why there is so little academic work on what is called thinking.
I’ve been making notes and I thought you might be interested. They’re in four sections, though there is overlap. The first section is about the physical process of thinking. The next is on what I’ve called the ethereal process of what is called thinking, the hardest to define. The third part is on the currency of thinking, how it is boxed-in and directed. The last part is on the role language plays. I’ve added references where I can. Some of what I am sending is still in note form. I’ll write it up and turn it into a lecture once I’ve finished sorting my books.
I hope you find it interesting. Please note: there are lots more questions than answers!
1: Notes on the physical process of what is called thinking
There appears to be a great deal of research on neural pathways and the biological functions of the brain. Yet very little is really understood. There is almost no research on the process of thinking. That seems remiss, careless even. Everyone thinks almost constantly. Thinking determines everything people say and do. Yet very little serious work has been put into analysing what thinking is and how it works.
What exactly is this thing called thinking?
Scientists say thinking occurs in the brain, and that our bodies are mostly controlled by what our minds decide. Yet the body also appears to have some level of distributed intelligence. Not everything depends on the brain. Many bodily functions appear to work themselves, without the brain’s intervention. As long as people eat, rest, and exercise, their bodies’ cells do their job, and renew themselves, without instructions from the brain. The cardiac systems of people who are brain dead can continue to function for several weeks1.
This raises a tantalising question. Is the brain the source of everything we call thinking?
Scientists can measure wave patterns in the brain. When they cut bits of the brain away they find this leads to physical, behavioural and memory changes, but not always. It seems to vary. Doctors can send signals electrically and chemically to the brain and get a response. The brain can move prosthetic limbs. Scientists say they can track how the brain processes information.
But none of this proves the brain is thinking. Computers process information, but they don’t think.
Do scientists consider the brain, the mind, and consciousness one entity because they can’t prove empirically there’s a difference? Or don’t they ask that question? Where does the soul fit? Or is the soul an idea that belongs to the Church, so no one can question it, and science can ignore it?
Aristotle believed all living creatures have a soul, even plants. It is their essence, he thought. Animals have what he calls a “sensitive soul” while humans have a “rational soul”. This is what distinguishes humans from other species, he said. He believed the intellectual soul, the human soul, is eternal.
Do you remember Suzanna GrĆ¼ber, my good friend who lives in Graz? She says she has suffered pain all her life, spiritual pain. You know how sensitive she is, how much she sees the world in ways the rest of us don’t, how much she hears, and how much she hates crowds and needs tranquillity. She thinks her pain is because her soul was misaligned at birth. It’s an interesting idea. She says there are people who suffer from the opposite problem; they don’t communicate with their souls at all, or recognise them. They ignore them and suffer pain as a result.
Is there dualism? Are the mind and body separate? Countless philosophers and many religious thinkers believe so, though the prevailing Western consensus appears so often to deny or ignore the idea. The thought that when people die everything dies with them, including their thoughts, is commonly held. That may be because those who believe that don’t think of course, as Suzanna says.
Could consciousness be eternal? Might it live forever as Aristotle, Buddhists, many religions and some philosophers say? Is there a link between human thought and String Theory or M-Theory in particle physics? Could human thinking be linked to one of the other dimensions identified?
Could the theory of Quantum Entanglement offer any insight into what we call thinking? Physicists know it takes millions of years for light to travel vast distances and yet the theory of Quantum Entanglement says two electrons can communicate instantly, no matter where they are in the universe, because they are always linked. Is it possible that this communication could impact the trillions of connections and 100bn neurons that make up the human brain? Could it have any impact on how people think, or could think?
Does thinking have mass or energy? Scientists generally believe thinking is the result of electrical impulses, which have mass and energy. But could this be because scientists don’t recognise anything without these properties?
According to the āglobal workspace2ā theory of consciousness, incoming sensory information is first processed in parts of the brain without us being aware of it. People only become aware of what’s happening when the signals are sent to a network of neurons, which are then distributed across the brain. This raises a difficult question: are the electrical impulses doctors track on their oscilloscopes caused by thinking, or are they the result of thinking being communicated from somewhere else to the the brain? Could the wave patterns be a physical response to thoughts, not the result of thinking itself? If so, this raises an even more difficult question: could thoughts also come from outside us? Is it possible that the processing part of the brain receives messages not just from the body’s sensors and the environment but also from somewhere else? Could there be a field of consciousness around us, a property of the universe, like mass or energy, that our brains are tuned into?
As I’ll explain this is not as fanciful an idea as it might seem.
If this were true, could this mean the God-created-the-universe theory is basically correct, just misunderstood? There is no supreme being. There is no single creator. But there is a living, conscious universe, developing and evolving. Could there be a universal consciousness present in all living things? Is it what gives life? Do each of us have the whole universe within us, just as a fragment of a hologram contains the entire picture within it?
It’s clear, I think, that some of our ideas emerge from past thinking. The mind takes another step along a path that has been created in our memories. Other thoughts are harder to explain. They seem to appear spontaneously, unlinked to anything else. A sudden impulse to go somewhere or see someone. A sudden desire to take a different path in life. How to explain where these thoughts come from? Where do these random ideas, those that can’t be tied to any obvious stimulus, emerge? How to explain impulses that appear out of the blue? Where do entirely new ideas spring from? Could our minds really be linked to some invisible strand of existence not yet discovered?
Or is everything exactly as science suggests? Is the world, as Schopenhauer said, our own idea? Does everything we perceive depend entirely on our consciousness for its existence? “However immeasurable and massive the world may be, its existence hangs by one single thread: the individual consciousness in which it exists.”3
Is reality not as we believe but “a controlled hallucination”, as some neuroscientists say?
If some ideas are communicated by a universal consciousness, if they are detected by the brain in some way, might this explain the theory of multiple discovery, when different people make similar discoveries even when they are far apart? The discovery of magnetism, oxygen, and Calculus for example, each of which was identified by people in unconnected, geographically disparate societies around the same time. Perhaps discovery is not the right word here. It’s too often confused with invention and breakthrough. Magnetism, oxygen, and Calculus have always existed. Perhaps it’s better to say they were “revealed” in different places simultaneously.
Do all people think in the same way? Is the process the same for everyone? Logic suggests not. People think in different ways and not simply because they have different values, opinions, and levels of intelligence. Thinking appears to be an aspect of individual character. Different people draw different conclusions from the same information. Is this because their minds are “wired” differently? Is the activity of the brain, the process of what we call thinking, similar to the way people move? Individuals run, walk, and move in ways that are unique, which is why modern surveillance systems watch peopleās gait. If people move their bodies in unique ways, do they also think in unique ways?
What makes one mind superior to another? Is a superior mind determined by the number of neurons, the inter-linkages connecting the lobes of the brain, or the speed of information transfer? Can people improve their ability to think, can they make their minds better or stronger? Can someone become more intelligent? People can improve memory and recall. The brain’s function also decays with age. Can people boost their intellect or fundamentally improve the process of their thinking? Or is intelligence hard-wired from birth?
Studies show people’s brains can be synchronised. The brains of lovers kissing, chess players, computer gamers, and musicians4 will gradually adapt until they have the same wave patterns, as if each is tuning into some universal frequency. Our ability to do this can even be improved. Studies show people can learn5 to coordinate their brains with others, to make them work in harmony. How is this possible if everything is held within our heads?
I ask again: what is it, this thing called thinking? What is it that allows a material brain to generate something we call consciousness, to generate that palpable, invisible thing we call awareness? Is it possible to measure this thing called thinking? Is there such a thing as big thinking, or small thinking, just as there are big hands, and small hands?
Stanley Rose, a neighbour of mine a few years ago, ended up in hospital with cirrhosis. He was very ill and treated with strong painkillers and other chemicals. When he got home he spent three days sitting up in bed talking nonsense. Never slept, constantly recited random parts of stories from his life, endlessly. He told me about it afterwards. He said the most frightening thing was that he knew he was doing it. He couldnāt control it. He knew he appeared mad. He was trapped inside his mind.
How do those labelled mad think? How does it differ from everyone else? Is there a sliding scale of thinking, from sanity to madness? Could it be measured? How do some people have special thinking skills? How do some people see numbers and music as colours? How it is possible for some of those with autism, some people born with a genetic variation, some people who suffer a brain injury and some of those afflicted by a disease of the central nervous system, to have enhanced skills? Do they actually have greater skills, or does their affliction just make a universal ability visible? Could everyone have these enhanced faculties hidden within?
Why do some forms of autism develop in later life, or appear suddenly? How can some parts of the brain appear to heal or restructure? What does this mean for what is called thinking?
Why do only a small percentage of savants appear to have enhanced abilities? Why are there far more male than female savants, a ratio of 6:1? Why are there 6x more male savants with special thinking skills than women? Does this suggest the female thinking process is different from the male?
The most common type of savants are called calendrical. They have the ability to calculate and memorise dates and days of the week with great accuracy almost instantly. How do they access this information or know how to do this? Other savants have exceptional abilities in memory, art, music, mathematics or arithmetic. Some have an enhanced ability to see or manipulate 2- or 3-dimensional objects. Others instinctively know the correct time, down to the precise minute. These skills arguably have roots in numbers, in mathematics, symmetry and natural harmonies. Is this significant? Why do savants often suffer from intellectual, physical or social impairments? Why are they motorically handicapped?
What role does simultaneous thinking play? People think in multiple ways at the same time. They drive a car, maintain a conversation, and listen to the radio while thinking about a relationship, what to eat for lunch, or the weather. Does everyone do this to the same degree? Can some people think in multiple dimensions and others with only a few strands of thought?
Does not-thinking offer any clues about this thing we call thinking? Thoughts appear to constantly pour into our minds from all sides. They are almost impossible to stop. Not-thinking, clearing the mind of every thought, is extremely difficult. Try meditating. Stopping the stream of noise takes a lot of work, though it can be improved with practice. By focussing completely on a task, thinking can be funnelled, to dampen or silence other frequencies. But thoughts still try to interrupt. Some of these relate to time, or what comes next. Others appear to be random and unconnected. Why?
What of dreams? Are dreams thinking too? What happens during that delicious time in the morning, between wakefulness and sleep, when the mind keeps drifting between two states, where there is rational thought interspersed with random ideas and images, where the mind wants to wake and sleep equally? How does thinking in a mind that is awake differ from thinking in a mind that is asleep? How does this differ from a mind when it dreams? And does thinking in sleep differ from thinking in a coma, or other forms of unconsciousness? What happens to thinking when someone is under anaesthetic? Is there thinking at every level of consciousness or only some levels? What determines the difference?
Why do some people wake up after many years in a coma? Why do they sometimes go back into a coma after appearing to recover? How do some people emerge from what is medically classified as a ‘vegetative state’6? Why do some people in a persistent vegetative state appear to be awake and yet have no awareness of their surroundings? Unlike those in a coma, people in a vegetative state can sometimes chew and swallow, sleep (interestingly, with their eyes open), move, respond to stimuli and make sounds. Yet they are not considered to be conscious.
This smacks into an enormous and eternal question: what is consciousness?
I find it amazing that after so many years of study, and so many centuries of scientific progress, no one knows what it is.
I remember meeting someone at a dinner party in Singapore many years ago who had just qualified as an anaesthetist. I asked her about how the process worked, about what exactly induces unconsciousness. She told me that doctors don’t know exactly. They understand what they need to do to create the effect necessary for treatment, and they get it wrong sometimes. But they don’t fully understand how anaesthesia works, what it does to the mind, or why such a wide range of seemingly unrelated chemicals can create similar effects.
Isn’t that astonishing?
The cerebellum contains about three-quarters of the brain’s neurons and yet it seems to have almost nothing to do with consciousness. While it’s been shown that damage to parts of the thalamus or the brain stem can result in permanent unconsciousness, scientists don’t know why. Are these parts the power-socket to the brain, they ask, or something more? In the last few decades, new research suggests consciousness depends on the ways different parts of the brain communicate with each other, especially the cortex. But this is just an observation.
Most research work on the brain has been about perception, cognition, learning and behaviour, concepts that are relatively simple to understand and study. Papers on the more complex question of defining the life-force are less common. I found several that come back to my earlier comments on a universal consciousness though, with some even asking if an electron could have consciousness.
What happens to thinking during sex? Studies at Rutgers University show there is a change in consciousness during orgasm, with parts of the brain shutting down, creating a sense of loss of control. Having an orgasm with a partner creates a slightly altered brain state from having one alone. Research7 in this area is now looking at how the brain patterns could be replicated, not for pleasure, but to help people ease pain.
What of other species? Do they think the same way? There is a commonly-held belief in most of the world that humans are a more intelligent species, the most intelligent. Aristotle thought so. Many people even think other species and animals are not self-aware. To me, this is nonsense.
Studies show that animals can communicate over vast distances in real time. Whales communicate8 using particle motion9. A US study10 has shown rats can share information over great distances too. A rat in America was able to help a rat in Brazil solve a puzzle. Scientists wired their brains up and then plugged them into the Internet. One rat helped the other through a maze for a reward. This begs a question too: did this communication need the Internet? The Internet is man-made communication system. Could it work without the Internet?
Wohlleben11 says trees communicate with each other and with their environment. Do they think? Plants communicate using volatile organic compounds (VOCs)12. Inter-plant communication protects them from environmental threats. Humans communicate using sound waves. Voices generate sound waves that are picked up by the ears. Do dogs, deer and other mammals use olfactory communication systems? Is their language based on scent? Could some species use brain waves to talk? Cats can anticipate where their owners are going to be. How do they do this?
Have I ever told you about a cat I had as a boy? His name was Tigger. I have a picture of him on my desk. He was a remarkable cat.
I used to come home from school on the bus. Because of after-school activities, I would come back at all sorts of different times. I’d also take different buses, which went to different locations near to where we lived. This meant I could approach the house from several different directions, at different times of day. Yet on many occasions Tigger would be waiting for me at the correct bus stop at the correct time. He’d walk home with me, often crossing several busy roads by himself. He seemed to know where I was going to be in advance, and know when I was going to get there. The funniest thing was that on the walk back he’d never walk beside me, as a dog would. He’d always walk on the opposite pavement, on the other side of the road, as if he wasn’t really there for me. But he was. He’d stop every so often and watch me.
When we lived in Zurich we had another cat, a black and white one, and it did exactly the same thing. Didn’t you meet her when you came to see us? We called her Schatzi. Just like Tigger, she’d regularly come and meet us from the cable car we took home, the Seilbahn. She’d be sitting there, at the top of the steps, at all sorts of times of day, at exactly the time we got there. Then she’d walk home with us, not on the other side of the road, but 20m in front. Cats always hate to give the impression of being dependent on those they deign to let feed them. Whenever we were away for more than a few days, or whenever your aunt came back after her month-long trips to Hong Kong, she’d always be there, waiting.
Quite remarkable.
Notes for further research
- Look at the impact of light waves on the brain. A research paper shows the brain can detect infra-red light not visible to the eyes13.
- Theories on thinking seem thin. Scientists and philosophers understand little about the process of thinking. Almost nothing to explain how the process works, or why some thoughts are retained and others are not. Most descriptions of thinking liken the brain to a computer or machine. This doesn’t seem a good analogy. The human neural network is much more complex. Thoughts don’t emerge in one area. They are spread throughout the network.
- Might it be shown that telepathy is possible according to the laws of quantum physics?!
- What can MDMA, psychedelics and other drugs tell us? Psilocybin causes acute changes in how people perceive time, space, and the self. Functional Connectivity within brain networks becomes less synchronized. The effect can last three weeks. A Cornell paper14 says psychedelics reduce the energy needed to switch between different activity states. What does this mean for thinking? Emotions can be enhanced, such as bliss or fear. It’s possible to induce vast changes in perceptions of reality. Patients report a sense of āvisitingā alternative realities or dimensions. Others report similarities to near death experiences and increased empathy. This raises another very difficult question: what is reality?
- Peking Uni paper. Top desk drawer, blue folder.
- Rostov analysis – green notebook, marked page.
* * *
Heavens! What a pile of notes I’ve accumulated on the physical process of thinking! It’s far larger than I planned. If I send you my other notes now, on the ethereal process of thinking, the currency of thinking, and the linguistic aspects there will be far too much paper for the envelope. I also want to do some more work on these other topics before I send them.
So I’m posting you what I have for now, and will write again soon when I’ve collected my other thoughts.
With much love
Max
* Heidegger, Martin (1968). What is called thinking?. Translated by Gray, J. Glenn. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-06-090528-X. OCLC 273314
1Al-Shammri S, Nelson RF, Madavan R, Subramaniam TA, Swaminathan TR. Survival of cardiac function after brain death in patients in Kuwait. Eur Neurol. 2003;49(2):90-3. doi: 10.1159/000068506. PMID: 12584416.
2https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50004-9
3Schopenhauer, 1818, The world as will and idea, Chapter 1, volume 2.
4Lindenberger, U., Li, SC., Gruber, W. et al. Brains swinging in concert: cortical phase synchronization while playing guitar. BMC Neurosci 10, 22 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-10-22
5Max Plank Institute interview February 06, 2024, Inter-Brain Synchronization: “My fascination with the topic continues to this day!” Interview with Viktor MĆ¼ller on the occasion of his retirement https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/1805490/pm-2024-feburary-lip Accessed January 27, 2025.
6QuiƱones-Ossa, G.A., Durango-Espinosa, Y.A., Janjua, T. et al. Persistent vegetative state: an overview. Egypt J Neurosurg 36, 9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41984-021-00111-3
7Komisaruk BR, Whipple B, Crawford A, Liu WC, Kalnin A, Mosier K. Brain activation during vaginocervical self-stimulation and orgasm in women with complete spinal cord injury: fMRI evidence of mediation by the vagus nerves. Brain Res. 2004 Oct 22;1024(1-2):77-88. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2004.07.029. PMID: 15451368.
8Mooney TA, Kaplan MB, Lammers MO. Singing whales generate high levels of particle motion: implications for acoustic communication and hearing? Biol Lett. 2016 Nov;12(11):20160381. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0381. PMID: 27807249; PMCID: PMC5134030.
9https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12544
10Pais-Vieira, M., Lebedev, M., Kunicki, C. et al. A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information. Sci Rep 3, 1319 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01319
11Wohlleben, P. (2016). The Hidden Life of Trees. [United States], Greystone Books.
12Aratani, Y., Uemura, T., Hagihara, T. et al. Green leaf volatile sensory calcium transduction in Arabidopsis. Nat Commun 14, 6236 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41589-9
13Thomson, E., Carra, R. & Nicolelis, M. Perceiving invisible light through a somatosensory cortical prosthesis. Nat Commun 4, 1482 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2497
14Singleton, S.P., Luppi, A.I., Carhart-Harris, R.L. et al. Receptor-informed network control theory links LSD and psilocybin to a flattening of the brainās control energy landscape. Nat Commun 13, 5812 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33578-1
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