"Cognition"

 "Cognition"

Brian Lynch

The other day I was explaining to someone how we could now see emotional expressions on babies’ faces before they were born. Some might think this is not news, but it is. We have been able to see the fetus for years, but not clear facial images until only a few years ago. So now we can see that a fetus can smile (I then note that after birth it is several months before the baby then has a full smile again. Which I think is a testament to how rough life is.). I off handily said that we are feeling and not “thinking” and the person said, “How do you know we are not thinking?” My heart sank and I paused.

The cognitive monster raises its head. Why on earth would we presume that we are thinking before we are born? It is because as humans cognition is what makes us human. Without cognition, humans are nothing more than other mammals.  Cognition gives us control. We intuitively know when anyone says anything along the lines that is going to remove “thinking” from the equation we panic and put it back in. We are unable to learn a new system of thought.

This summarizes the entire problem I and all my colleagues have in explaining what we think is the most important psychology information available. In our essence “thinking” is not the most important part of being human. What is “feeling’ or “emotion” or whatever you want to call it is the most important. We conclude that reason and emotion have to be handmaidens but it seems almost no one can put down the gun of reason even long enough so that they do not stop shooting themselves in their foot and listen not to us necessarily but to their own emotions.

So back to the fetus, if anyone is going to make the statement “How do you know we are not thinking before we are born?” My retort is, my default position is, it is a moot question until someone proves to me that they remember thinking before they were born or it is a meaningful statement for the average person. The default or meaningful statement is that we all can agree that none of us remember anything until our first memory and that, on average, is somewhere about two years of age. What we do have is proof of feeling and that is plentiful and it is demonstrated in the face.

I am not saying we do not think before we remember. This is not so as we clearly behave logically early on and talk long before we have memory.

The point is thinking takes learning. We have to build on concepts and relationships. We feel the very basic building blocks are the biological “feeling” building blocks. We are stimulated and our feeling centers are stimulated. This is how we feel alive. This is how we begin to “know” the world first. 

Brian Lynch