Consciousness, Thoughts And… Maps?

In attempting to resolve the seeming enigma of how the brain produces consciousness, it’s important to first understand "What Actually Is a Thought? And How Is Information Physical?" Thoughts are physical representations or maps. The mind is a kind of map. The brain, and its functional product, the mind, evolved as a map of the body’s relation to its external environment.

More evolved brains, such as human ones, can integrate past sensory experiences to form representations of things that are not presently “out there”—predictive simulations.

Beliefs are a form of predictive modeling.