About the brain

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petra22

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Once I asked where thought comes from. I was amazed by the technical answers. My thought only touched the tip of the iceberg…

Now I have a question and I think I know the answer but what I think has often been proved to be too shallow. So, I appeal to “brainiacks” here on CAF.

Does thought weigh anything? You know like people think air doesn’t weigh anything… I’m wondering about the real answer…
 
Thought is an action, or a process, or a pattern, or a truth. Things like these have no physical weight.
 
No, people do not think air doesn’t weigh anything if they think about it for more than few seconds. What could barometric pressure be coming from, if the Earth’s atmosphere weighed nothing?

Think about thoughts in the brain this way, because they are analogous: When you save a document to your computer, does it change the weight of your computer? No. It just changes the arrangement of what is already there, the internal electromagnetic layout of the memory hardware and so on. The weight of your brain may change depending on whether or not you’ve been getting enough water to drink, perhaps, but it doesn’t change because you “have
a lot on your mind.”

As for what effect it has on your body as a whole to hold some particular thought in your mind or how the state of your body affects the thoughts you have, that is another matter. There are signalling chemicals from the brain that go to the entire body, based partly on the person’s emotional state, on what and how much their brain is working, and so on. The effect of thinking on the body and the extent to which it could be said you think with your entire body instead of just your brain is an area of active research.
 
Of course air has a weight. If it didn’t, flight wouldn’t work, because wings push air down to go up. Reaction requires weight.

What holds the air around our heads so we can breathe, in fact, if not it’s weight in the gravity of the Earth?

Air is a material substance. Thought is not. But even thought depends upon energy to make it happen, like the breath-filled blood that requires heartbeat and caloric energy to push it up our necks!

ICXC NIKA
 
“Spirit produces ideas. Since we are continually producing things which have no attribute of matter, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is in us some element which is not matter to produce them. This element we call spirit.”

“Our ideas are not material. They have no resemblance to our body. Their resemblance is to our spirit. They have no shape, no size, no color, no weight, no space. Neither has spirit, whose offspring they are. But no one can call it nothing, for it produces thought, and thought is the most powerful thing in the world – unless love is, which spirit also produces.”

Frank Sheed

richardconlin.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/theology-for-beginners-by-frank-sheed-chapters-1-6/
 
There may be more blood in your head during a spell of hard thinking, which would increase its weight some; but this would correct once you lie down and the additional blood flows back down your neck.

ICXC NIKA.
 
What weight do you expect a thought to have? Does the times table weigh more than your baby sister’s name, and less than a chapter of Scripture?

If thinking added weight to our heads, why are cerebral-type people not known for having huge neck muscles, and why are bodybuilders not urged to memorize poetry to bulk up their neck?

ICXC NIKA
 
Air certainly does have weight. Atomic weight of carbon dioxide, oxygen, water and any number of other things. If an object has mass it has weight. So parts of a thought, the materials and reactions that cause it can have weight but that is really just the weight of the materials being used…
 
We do think with our bodies. A simple example would be someone counting on their fingers, or composing a song at the piano.

And our bodies use physiological energy to do everything, including think, or just keep alive (breathing requires energy). This energy comes from substances that have weight

While thinking (and at all other times) our neurons absorb oxygen and expel an equal amount of CO2 through the breathing system. CO2 weighs more than oxygen; so one could say that thought has a **negative **weight. :):). But even that biochemical process is not the thought itself.

ICXC NIKA
 
petra22 said:
Once I asked where thought comes from. I was amazed by the technical answers. My thought only touched the tip of the iceberg…

Now I have a question and I think I know the answer but what I think has often been proved to be too shallow. So, I appeal to “brainiacks” here on CAF.

Does thought weigh anything? You know like people think air doesn’t weigh anything… I’m wondering about the real answer…
Click to expand...
I think you need to make a distinction between the brain (hardware defined by electrochemical processes) and the mind (consciousness, soul).
 
petra22 said:
Once I asked where thought comes from. I was amazed by the technical answers. My thought only touched the tip of the iceberg…

Now I have a question and I think I know the answer but what I think has often been proved to be too shallow. So, I appeal to “brainiacks” here on CAF.

Does thought weigh anything? You know like people think air doesn’t weigh anything… I’m wondering about the real answer…
Click to expand...
Read Fr.Chad Rippergers Introduction to the Science of Mental Health
 
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