WHAT IS THINKING?

thinking is the fundamental aspect of being human... no, not emotions - all the higher animals have emotions, as that is a consequence of neural organization, an enhancement of the pleasure/pain mechanism, a selectivity enhancement that allows more variation to reactions... thinking, being rational, is uniquely sapient, uniquely human, the defining characteristic without which humans simply would not exist - for it is impossible to survive without its use, either personally, or via someone else... noncognitive beings are hardwired such to survive to the extent their perceptualness allows... but cognitiveness requires volitionality, no robotiveness here, and cognitiveness requires self awareness in order to be able to make those choices involved in volition... this does not remove the fact that, like every other living organism, humans have a specific nature by which their survival is optimimly operative - but it does require thinking to discover that nature... that is the beauty and challenge of human life... and the importance of thinking...