TRY, if you can, to imagine a life without thought. For a human being it wouldn't be much of an existence. Thoughts fill our every waking moment, and whether they are insightful, banal, playful or bizarre, there is no denying that thinking comes naturally to us. We might say that thought is to human beings what flight is to eagles and swimming is to dolphins.
But it is one thing to think and quite another to understand the nature of thought. Just as eagles fly without any grasp of aerodynamics and dolphins swim without understanding fluid mechanics, so most of us think without having any insight into its nature. Thinking may be commonplace, but it is quite rare to think about thought itself.
So what is thought? That is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and other disciplines have approached it from their various perspectives, but thought ...
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