Originally Posted by
Faux Newbie
Actually, that's also an area where SOME aspects of Chinese philosophy are interesting to me. They tend to distinguish consciousness from thought. In Chinese tradition, thought is a sense, like smell, taste, touch, etc, not an isolated things with its own existence, but a sensory response to stimuli. This is fairly consistent with a lot of research.
Consciousness is seen as a separate thing. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is not as convincing in this view, unless restated as "I think, therefore something to observe that thought is", whether it is a self existent "I", or a bundle of synapses also responding to stimuli, I find an interesting question, and so far, it looks like the latter is more likely.