Developing A Universal Religion/Thinking/Second-Level Thinking—Association

Second-level thinking occurs in two forms, subconscious and conscious. It is defined to be occurring when the mind discovers meaningful associations between stored memories (i.e., earlier-formed, data-storing, neural networks) and incoming information, between two or more sets of incoming data, or between stored memories. Second-level thinking happens continuously at the subconscious level and intermittently at the conscious level. (This implies that subconscious thought precedes conscious thought, a phenomenon that brain-scanning has verified. We will refer to this again, in ../../Revelations And Conversions/.)

Scanning incoming data for relevancy and significance is second-level thinking’s most important function. A living entity’s most relevant and important concern is almost always survival (resulting in a constant search for active threats or potential danger, and for food and water). Its second most relevant and important concern is the possible opportunity to reproduce. The nature of this kind of thinking means that information is almost always stored in conjunction with emotional overtones.

Almost all subconscious second-level thinking is immediately discarded (as most habitat environments are benign and otherwise not of much significance). When meaningful relationships between incoming data and stored memories are found, they may trigger body reactions (such as danger-avoiding activity) and may break through from the subconscious into the conscious mind, where they are further considered.

Again, animals make these associations and comparisons (continually at the subconscious level, and periodically, with varying degrees of ability, at the conscious level). Animals generally ignore non-threatening events but react to potential danger situations, demonstrating that they know from past experience or instinct (remembering the gosling experiment) how to distinguish one from the other.

(Animals can do more than simply react to situations; they can plan ahead, using a knowledge of prevailing circumstances—social as well as situational. Dunbar [after describing how an old, ousted, male chimpanzee used rewards and punishments to manipulate an alliance with a weak young chimpanzee and so regain and retain control of a harem from its new, stronger leader] concluded that the behaviour of monkeys and apes showed that they can predict the outcome of their actions. )

Associating memories and/or stimuli in meaningful ways forms the basis of second-level thinking; language is certainly not needed to make such neural network linkages. Infants demonstrate that they can make associations and comparisons long before they can speak; for example, they react with surprise if some aspect of a frequently observed image has been changed.

The critical aspects that distinguish second-level thinking from first-level thinking are that, during second-level thinking, two or more sets of information are compared, differences are noted, and the relevance of any found variance is sought. The degree to which any detected difference is understood depends upon the sophistication of the animal—its evolutionary level, past experiences, education and intelligence. Simple animals may understand little about any discovered differences; humans may understand much.

The discovered relationship may, as previously noted, be immediately discounted and forgotten. However, those deemed to be significant may become stored as part of a new neural network if one or more links are forged between pre-existing patterns. The simple example that follows might clarify this important process.

Imagine that I want to drill a hole through a block of wood, and that I have the required drill but the drill bits are too short. What would I do? Well, I would look around to see what I had that might be long enough. When this first happened to me, it took a little while to think of cutting the head from a long nail then using the nail. However, the second time this occurred, I quickly remembered my previous solution.

The first situation above entailed second-level thought, the second occurrence did not. In the first situation, my mind had to mentally list the properties a useful bit must possess (strength, hardness, rigidity, length and so on) then cause me to seek something that possessed such properties. The two data sets (the neural network patterns that stored information about what was required, and the streams of data coming from my eyes as I looked over my workshop) were compared, and matches that denoted relevance to the problem induced temporary ion-flow loops between corresponding aspects. Once a solution was found, once I had spotted a nail and realized that it would serve my purpose, the temporary links that were significant were retained long enough to be made permanent through the growth of synaptic knobs, thus becoming available for future use as part of my neural network complex. Linking and learning turn out to be the same thing.

Simply remembering something done, heard, seen or read about is not second-level thinking, it is merely reactivating previously formed neural paths. No new links are made, and nothing new is learned during simple recall. In other words, recalling memories to mind is similar to looking at a picture or running a movie in one’s head, whereas second-level thinking is more akin to looking at two pictures or running two movies side-by-side, while constantly comparing and contrasting the two.

Infants, with brains containing well over 100 billion neurons, make neural links continuously as they attempt to join sensory stimuli with information that is stored in memory. Infants and young children learn quickly and easily, because stimuli are being stored and linked on a more-or-less “tabula rasa” (a term meaning “blank slate,” first used by John Locke in 1690 in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding to describe the mind of a newborn). That many of these associations will turn out to be incorrect and unusable is inconsequential; the links that matter are the ones that are subsequently reinforced through use. Billions of early made connections remain unused throughout all our lives, slowly atrophying. Christian de Duve pointed out that neurons initially make many loose connections; these are strengthened only if useful, and are discarded if not. The associations that are used, of course, are those connecting memories that, by being linked, provide useful understandings: the name of a toy, object or a sibling; the idea that certain results always follow certain activities (things fall to the ground when released, for instance); how to call for food, etc. Adults learn more slowly, because their minds first attempt to fit new stimuli into previously existing networks, and only when this can’t be done do they progress to looking for, then forming, completely new links. In other words, adults do not immediately think when reacting to a stimulus; they first search, very rapidly and almost entirely subconsciously, for past associations and use them, whenever the fit seems close enough.

Realizing that second-level thinking is little more than electrochemically comparing memories with incoming data (or comparing memories already in storage), recognizing relationships of significance between them, then making new neural links, tells us again that this kind of thinking cannot be unique to humankind. The brains of many animals do this. In fact, we should expect linkages to form between memories and incoming sensory stimulations in all animate entities, because sense receptor cells and neurons exist to provide information so that similarities and differences between incoming and stored memories can be detected. Animals and humans learn what these variations may imply and use this knowledge to survive and to mate. In short, humans are not the only life forms that think—animals do too.

However, thinking did not become what we generally understand it to be today until early humans discovered the use of words and languages. The next section shows how this ability led to a more comprehensive level of thought, one that we will be calling third-level thinking. Third-level thinking is, primarily, a human activity.


 * Return to Thinking, Introduction
 * ../Third-Level Thinking And Language/