Selection of objects ​

Human thinking (and that of other agents) consists of a variety of actions: remembering and recalling, reasoning, fantasizing, problem-solving, activity planning, basically all the behavior that we call "intellectual." Thinking always occurs regarding some objects (entities). There are different views on how exactly the human brain represents and processes objects in the course of its work (let's assume that it is the brain's work that creates "thinking" in humans).

In some cases, we directly think about something, keep an object in focus, call "it" to ourselves in our heads, see it with our mind's eye, move from one object to another explicitly, according to the rules of logic (we will call this type of thinking "rational"). Its intermediate and final results can be discussed and evaluated.

In some cases, we think intuitively, quickly, without even noticing how a complex reasoning is conducted and how its results emerge.

But when we formulate the results of our thoughts, when we communicate them to other people or computers, verbally or in writing - we always talk "about something." This "something" is the very objects that we have focused on, thought about, and now want to draw the attention of others to.

We delegate some types of thinking (increasingly advanced) to other "intellectual" agents (primarily computer programs). Some of them, such as regular algorithmic programs, have a direct representation of the objects they work with in their memory, similar to how our brain does logical reasoning. Other programs (artificial neural networks) work with objects based on different principles, somewhat resembling the work of human intuition, where a chain of understandable computations and reasoning may not be visible. However, computers also communicate the results of their work to us (and to each other), indicating which objects were processed, what results were obtained for which objects.

The unified undivided flow of sensations that our organism receives can be considered a constant background of our existence. Distinguishing objects from this background is the first sign of thinking and the first common principle of any modeling.

In the beginning of life, all images in front of our eyes - are a continuous stream of photons, sounds in our ears - a stream of air vibrations. The first thing a baby learns is to separate individual objects in the surrounding world, then to distinguish sounds or speech from the general noise. Then, the person continues to improve in this, learns to distinguish a sail against the sea, a predator among bushes, or to discern subtle shades of emotions on another person's face.

We can also call some fragment of space with everything in it, or in general the whole world accessible to our senses, as the background. It is precisely from this "surrounding world" that our thinking extracts objects.

Improving their thinking, a person learns to single out objects simply by thinking about something, without the need to see this "something" before their eyes. This is how very non-trivial objects appear in thinking, such as "mathematical variables," "justice," or a "material point," which are difficult to see with the eyes.

All people can somehow distinguish objects - it is a very basic operation in thinking. However, when object identification occurs spontaneously - errors can occur in complex cases. The first thing we need to do is learn to consciously single out objects from the background. To do this, we will pay attention to this ability of ours and work with the results, making it more manageable.