Thinking is as natural and inevitable as breathing, but when we try to pin down what it is that we actually do when we think, we run into difficulties. In part, this is because many aspects of our thinking are not available to our awareness. We cannot sum up everything that we believe, for example; yet the beliefs that we fail to communicate may be as or more important than what we speak about. This paradox has much to tell us about the nature of mind.

"The mind is a language without words, a language that links us through the whole history of mankind. If you like, it's a fellowship from one human mind to another."

Here are three questions: Who was the sixteenth president of the United States? How far is Los Angeles from San Francisco? Are the toes of a pigeon arranged differently from those of a parrot, and if so, what is the difference? Each of these questions required you to think in a different way. On Occasion, thinking consists of working with words and concepts: the sixteenth president. At other times it requires vivid images: parrots compared to pigeons. On still other occasions, thinking may use either of these approaches you can figure out the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles by reasoning, or you can dispense with words altogether and consult an "inner map" based on your travels. Often, thinking involves all these processes.

None of these scenarios is the result of stupidity, flawed thinking, or malfunctioning within the mind. Rather, they illustrate how the mind actually works. Put in evolutionary terms, the mind has evolved to be effective in situations that are most likely to arise. Mechanisms have developed to respond to these situations. Logic is one of these mechanisms, but it's not the only one, nor often, it is the most useful, adequate, or even the most important one most of the time, few of us operate according to strict principles of logic. Our minds are not logic machines, and for good reasons.

Because traditionally we have been taught to think of ourselves as acting freely most of the time, the extensive consequences of frontal lob damage are profoundly disturbing, our thinking and behavior involve a delicate balance between tow opposing factors. As a result of an influence we can turn toward those processes necessary for insight, abstraction, planning, and a sense of personal information. Disturbances are also escape measures of the brain, but only by being aware of their prior personality and comparing it with present thinking and behavior can we detect the alterations induced by frontal damage to the most subtle aspects of thinking; judgment, and innate feeling for what's appropriate, and the ability to take the "long view" and look beyond one's immediate circumstances.

Thinking shapes mental models. The art of navigating a ship is a demonstration of what we all do all our lives: construct models, solve problems, and anticipate the future. These mental processes reach their culmination in the human brain.

The argument for the human brain as a computer typically takes the following form. The human brain makes all experience and thought possible; all decision functions in the brain are reducible to a binary yes/no process; the brain is nothing more than an elaborate

Some common words found in the essay are:
Los Angeles, Mind Thinking, Dr Johnson-Laird, College Forty, Joseph Kovach, School None, San Francisco, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Johnson Laird, Menninger Foundation, human brain, representations world, native navigator, joseph kovach, native navigator intuit, jonathan teacher, occasions thinking, los angeles, human mind, mind thinking, sixteenth president, construct representations world, jonathan teacher school,
Approximate Word count = 1781
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)