they are generally related (though each is specifically different)*
It's been shown through brain scans that the senses split things up to do analysis (e.g., for vision, color is processed one place and shape another) and then construct a perception. So there is a deconstructive process and a constructive process.
Conscious thought, however, seems different. People love to deconstruct (splitting problems into smaller pieces, division of labor), but we seem to be very bad at the constructive part.
Some are better than others - some are trying harder than others - but we're none of us big picture thinkers, in the same way that we're big picture see-ers or big picture hear-ers. (I can't quantify constructive ability, so I'm just calling it a feeling.) For example, despite all the analysis we do of human affairs, we can't answer a simple question like what will be the state of the world in 100 years? What are we moving towards?
What do you think about that?
* This exchange reminds me of a description in Wired Magazine of the difference between program designers and program developers. Designers are usually female, talkative, vegetarian and live in lofts. Developers are always male, eat only fast food, live at work and don't speak at all except to say, You're wrong about that.
LOLOL monkey! This is like the observation, "I'm from Venus, you're from Mars." We do see this sort of thing here at FR from time to time.... But it takes all kinds to make a Universe! :^)
You wrote: "Conscious thought, however, seems different [from brain processing which, as you observe, consists of deconstruction of sensory inputs and reconstruction as perception]. People love to deconstruct (splitting problems into smaller pieces, division of labor), but we seem to be very bad at the constructive part."
Oh, I do agree with you there, monkey! We see this especially in science today, where specialities propagate a seemingly endless line of subspecialities; and so the joke goes: "We know more and more about less and less. At the present rate, sooner or later we will know absolutely everything about nothing at all." The loss of the sense of relatedness between the main scientific branches, together with their specialities does not appear to advance the interests of science. It's getting to be a case of "the right hand not knowing what the left is doing." IMO.
You observed: "despite all the analysis we do of human affairs, we can't answer a simple question like what will be the state of the world in 100 years? What are we moving towards? ... What do you think about that?"
The fact is, not only can we not predict what the state of the world will be in 100 years, but it seems to me we cannot even predict what its state will be tomorrow, or even, say, one minute from now. The fact is human existence is contingent, depending on an astronomical number of variables that are entirely outside of our own control. That is why I think it's so important to get the "big picture" view if at all possible. It provides the context in which individual contingent events unfold, and thus helps us to understand what is going on in the world and in our lives. FWIW
Thanks so much for writing, monkey!