Thank you for clarifying that for me. The key word here is "unthinkingly". It is amazing imho how prevalent that is in all of us.Have you ever thought about how much we/you do without thinking?
No
But seriously, yes, I have an abiding interest in brain function, particularly with respect to conscious and unconscious thought (I assume by 'unthinkingly' you mean without
conscious thought). The issue here is that conscious thought is relatively slow, effortful, and sequential, taking up a lot of resources and attention - which is why, even during conscious thought, a lot of the work is delegated to the unconscious, which is fast, effortless, and highly parallel (i.e. lots of things going on at the same time), which is why it can pop words into your head as you're speaking, and give you unexpected insights, associations, and 'aha!' moments, as well as running your day-to-day life.
Neuroscientists typically estimate that conscious activity accounts for only about 5% on brain activity - if that.
I'm frequently aware of how much of my daily activity is handled by hierarchies of autonomous 'subroutines', how their activity is monitored by other processes that compare the results of their activities with expectations (from context & habit), and how those monitors grab my focus of attention when they spot a mismatch so that my conscious awareness (the 'executive') is brought to bear on a potential problem.
A typical example of this is when I'm cooking and thinking about other things when I go to put the olive oil away and find myself holding the fridge door open and about to put the olive oil in the fridge. The 'put bottle away' subroutine has picked the fridge because that's where bottles usually go (milk, etc). The monitor has spotted the mismatch between the open fridge and olive oil (it's usually open fridge and milk) and alerted my focus of attention so I can fix the problem (roll eyes, tut, shut the fridge, and put the olive oil in the cupboard).
Another popular instance is driving off in the direction of work when going on a weekend trip somewhere else.
Brain deterioration (old age, dementia, etc.) degrades according to complexity and sophistication, so the subroutines are less affected than the monitors which are less affected than the executive. So context errors may not be spotted, and if they are, they're referred to an impaired executive which may be confused or unable to handle the situation.
An excellent introduction to the conscious and unconscious activity of the brain is Daniel Khaneman's '
Thinking, Fast and Slow', which is a real eye-opener and has lots of examples and things to try out for yourself.