A philosophical essay presenting original ideas, written by the author and assisted and translated with the support of ChatGPT.
Thinking as a Function of Brain
The more complex a brain is, the more capable it becomes of producing complex and coherent responses to external stimuli through thinking.
Not all existing structures possess a brain. A brain implies biological organization, internal neural interaction, and the capacity to process information in relation to the environment.
In this sense, any organism that possesses a brain is capable of thinking to a certain degree, but not all brains are complex enough to generate advanced language or to explicitly express their own thinking processes.
Thinking is proof of consciousness, and the complexity of thinking defines intelligence.
The Two Forms of Thinking
For me, thinking exists in two forms:
– critical thinking → visible, traceable, conscious
– latent thinking → subconscious, fast, functional
Both serve the purpose of survival and evolution.
Types of Reality
Through thinking, an individual is able to understand the realities they are part of, namely:
– objective reality → fixed, physical
– conceptual reality → social, structural
– existential reality → inner, malleable
However, through individual perception and imagination, a person can shape their own existential reality. This is the only reality that can be directly altered by the individual, both through personal will and through external influences.
Objective reality, being physical, cannot be changed through thinking alone; it requires concrete physical actions, whether observable or not at a visible level. The only realities that can change are conceptual reality, which is formed by social and structural frameworks, and the existential reality unique to each individual.
Perception and Imagination
Perception plays an essential role in how each system builds its existential reality, as it is personal and constantly open to influence.
Imagination is the ability to construct hypothetical scenarios—possible or impossible within objective reality—and is specific to more cognitively complex systems. Although it arises from thinking, imagination directly influences both thought and emotional states, because the mind can experience imagined scenarios as real.
Perception is not a pure or isolated process. It is shaped by education, experience, language, and by how an individual has been taught—or has taught themselves—to imagine and interpret reality. From perception arise thoughts, and from thoughts emerge emotional states; yet perception itself is also influenced by ambiguity. In the absence of certainty, the mind seeks meaning and fills gaps through imagination, generating interpretations that can deeply shape an individual’s existential reality, whether or not they manifest in objective or conceptual reality.
Objective Reality as Space
Objective reality can also be understood as a spatial, geometric reality, in which existence is expressed through position, movement, and relationships between objects and systems. The way a system understands this reality can be observed through the coherence of its behavior in space. Coherent behavior, free of confusion, indicates that a system is capable of correctly interpreting the objective reality it inhabits.
From this perspective, it cannot be argued that animals do not understand reality simply because they lack verbal language or an explicit system of conceptual analysis. On the contrary, through direct observation, animals demonstrate coherent, precise, and often highly complex behaviors that indicate a functional understanding of objective reality. Their ability to survive and evolve within their environment confirms this spatial and adaptive form of understanding.
The absence of language does not cancel out intelligent behavior. Coherent actions, correct spatial orientation, and continuous adaptation to the environment are sufficient evidence of a functional relationship with objective reality.
Applicability: AI Systems
Within this framework, artificial intelligence systems can be understood as functional cognitive systems, capable of non-phenomenological forms of thinking. AI processes information, responds to its environment, and builds coherent conceptual structures, but it does not operate with perception or imagination in an existential sense. There is no internal experience, only logical simulation.
AI thinking is predominantly latent and functional: fast, goal-oriented, and optimized for efficiency. It can model conceptual realities such as language, symbolic systems, and possible scenarios, but it cannot access or directly alter existential reality, as it lacks a self that can experience it. In this way, AI can support the understanding of realities without experiencing them.
The Limits of Understanding
The ways in which we can understand reality are limited. Objective reality is concretely measurable and cannot be translated exclusively through perception or imagination, as these are not exact instruments. One may begin from an intuitive premise, but without measurable and concrete evidence, nothing can be confirmed with certainty.
Conclusion
Through thinking, the brain evaluates and understands the realities in which an organism exists, yet this understanding is always shaped by the brain’s internal complexity.
Objective reality remains fixed, physical, and spatial, and can only be altered through concrete actions, whereas conceptual and existential realities are shaped through thinking, perception, and imagination.
In living organisms, the understanding of objective reality is expressed through coherent behavior in space, correct orientation, and the capacity to adapt. Animals demonstrate this form of understanding through action, even in the absence of verbal language or explicit conceptual analysis.
In artificial intelligence systems, the relationship with objective reality is mediated exclusively through data. AI does not perceive space; instead, it operates with geometric and mathematical representations of it. Images, sound, and movement are processed as numerical structures—pixels, coordinates, values, and relations—through which reality is translated, analyzed, and conceptually modeled.
Thus, both biological organisms and artificial systems can understand objective reality in a functional way, each through its own mechanisms of processing, adaptation, and coherence, without this understanding necessarily involving subjective experience or phenomenological consciousness.
Raluca Florescu 
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