Define Heuristic Thought
Heuristic
Heuristic thought process derives a response from old memories. If a heuristic thinker has not responded to a particular stimulus before, he needs to be shown how to respond for the first time. With each new stimulus, he modifies the response according to desirability. It is self adapting. Desirability is also a heuristic response derived from past experience with the consequences resulting from his response to the stimulus.
The explanation below is in exacting detail, in an unambiguous language designed to describe all rational processes definitively. All real and all imaginary constructs, anything which can be imagined, whether actually possible or not, can be described in this language.
Every neuron in our brain contributes to recursive iterations of this algorithm written below. This algorithm explains the brain's continual state change, disassociation of memories, new memory formation, the mutability of memory, social adaptation, new skill acquisition. It explains every natural thought.
There is no room for Freud's "sub-conscience." That is merely an illusion. The principle which Freud attempted to explain by posing a "sub-conscience" is more effectively expressed in lines 6, 9 and 12 where the response our brains choose is sometimes a response which is being actively considered or is a response from long ago, the circumstances of which are long forgotten. Psychiatry could experience great advance if they adopted this understanding, instead of their ambiguous pedantic hokum, the DSM-5 "psychiatric bible" which recently has been given an overview and dressing down by real scientists.
Heuristic method is a rational process and as such is rationally describable, but heuristic method does not produce rational products. All rational processes are emergent, but most do not give rise to rational results. This is only possible when a response was already seeded with a rational result.
These lines unambiguously define heuristic method which is expressed biologically in all biological systems which behave intelligently such as animals and humans. A general comparable function has not yet been found. We know it exists because biological brains express it. It is mathematically emergent in nature so its discovery will have to be serendipitous. The one who discovers it will win a Nobel Prize and usher in the age of true artificial intelligence.
To date, only specialized comparable functions have been written. --chess playing computers, Google's self driving car, medical applications, information mining, search engines, spell checkers. While they are difficult to produce, requiring rigorous application of rational method, none the less, they are incalculably easier to produce than the general comparable.
Rational
Rational thought process, counter intuitively, is not rational. There is no way to describe it rationally. It must be learned heuristically. The process produces rational products, but the process itself is not rational. It can not be described rationally. It can not be defined as you see heuristic method defined above.
Heuristic process is rational. It can be defined. It is a natural product of the laws of physics which give rise to the laws of logic which define heuristic processes. The results of the heuristic process is not, however, rational. It is heuristic, of course, because it is the result of the rational process of heuristic method. A description of rational method expressed heuristically is theoretically possible, but has never been attempted because of its complexity. It would be comprised of the above algorithm accompanied by a huge $Memory database wherein the heuristic expression of rational method is actually contained.
A rational statement is formally defined as any statement which can be restated entirely in terms of the the sixteen logical oporators. Informally. . . A statement is rational if and only if it can be divided into smaller statements which can be further subdivided until all components can both be reassembled to entirely restate the statement and all components can not be further subdivided and all components contain no ambiguity.
Rational process is not a natural process. The laws of logic can not describe it. It is not a natural consequence of the laws of nature. It is, by definition supernatural. Human brains do not naturally develop rational method. This would be impossible, since rational method has an element of creativity which introduces novel information to the natural universe which would otherwise retain conservation of information.
New information can never arise in any universe governed by the laws of physics which we observe in our universe. All things which look new were already present from the beginning hidden in emergence. Rational process introduce truly novel information. Doing so is not natural. It is miraculous.