Actually it’s an intriguing idea that people can think
consciously, or that they can “think” for short. Some scientists believe that
thinking is merely an epiphenomenon. From this point of view, it would make no
difference, whether we would think or not: we would behave in the same way in
both cases. I don’t endorse this viewpoint, but here I’ll not discuss the
arguments pro and con. Others scientists take the view that our thinking does
cause or at least does influence our behaviour. This idea seems more plausible
to me, but here I’ll pass over this viewpoint, too. However, even if the idea
that thinking is a mere epiphenomenon is true and man would be a very
complicated kind of machine (in the way Descartes thought that animals are), it
remains intriguing: For who has ever heard of a man-made machine that thinks?
Apparently man is more than just a construction of nuts and bolts that fasten a
physical structure.
What I find even more intriguing than the idea that
man can think is that man can think about thinking. In my last blog, I have given
an example of such “meta-thinking”, when I wondered whether a certain thought of
mine was a case of cognitive dissonance reduction or whether I “really meant” what
I thought.
Scientists are divided over whether thoughts can
influence the behaviour of the thinker. But how about meta-thoughts? Take this
example from my last blog: You always wanted to buy a yellow car, but in the
end you buy a grey one, because the dealer had only this colour in stock. You
think: “Actually a grey car fits me better”. Then you realize that you are
reducing a cognitive dissonance and you change your opinion: “A grey car
doesn’t fit me better. I wanted a yellow car, but the dealer did not have it in
stock. I had no choice, but I still prefer a yellow one”. In this case you had
a meta-thought, but it had no influence on your behaviour. If your thinking is
epiphenomenal, than your meta-thinking is as well.
Is this always so? I can take the study by Festinger
again for showing how meta-thinking might influence behaviour, but actually
thinking about thinking in order to influence our behaviour is something we
often do. For instance, you have to do an exam on a theoretical subject. Your
traditional strategy is to learn all the stuff by heart by repeating the required
reading so often that it becomes stored in your brain. Then your teacher tells
you that another good method is explaining the subject matter to someone else.
You decide to test the method and you ask a friend to be your audience. By
doing so your thoughts about how you think have changed your behaviour. In this
way our meta-thoughts often change our behaviour.
The case just described seems to substantiate the view
that our meta-thoughts can influence the way we think and by means of that our
behaviour. If so, it will not be difficult to prove that thinking can directly cause
behaviour as well. However, we cannot exclude the possibility that some
unconscious process in the brain is triggered by what the teacher told and that
it is this unconscious process that both changed the learning behaviour and
produced the meta-thoughts about learning. Then meta-thoughts are adaptations
to what you actually do, just in the way as reducing a cognitive dissonance is
a way to make thoughts and facts fit.
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