We are born as unreflective thinkers; many of us die decades later, still unreflective thinkers.
Who ever told us that we need to think about thinking? Who told us that we must practice thinking? Just as we must practice throwing or hitting a ball to improve our ability to play sports, likewise we must also practice thinking if we wish to improve our ability to think.
Isn’t thinking just like breathing? We all breath and think; no one needs to practice such automatic things that our body does without our conscious action. Wrong! The body does handle breathing pretty well without our conscious management, but not so with thinking.
There is a difference between “naive thinking” and “sophisticated thinking”. Can the naïve thinker become a sophisticated thinker? The answer is yes; provided there is motivated practice and study.
A child clinging to her mother’s skirt is not an uncommon site. A child with wide eyes and a look of apprehension seeking security and assurance by remaining very close to his mother (his center of balance) is similar to the centricities we all carry forward and often remain with us until we die.
Our centricities, our centers of irrational influence, are often the ego and the group. I suspect that as we get older we focus less on the ego for guidance and more upon the social group. Our nation centric, our ethnic centric, our political centric forces provide us with illusions of security without any independent thinking on our own.
I think that it is worthwhile to focus our attention on the metaphors ‘egocentricity is a disease’ and ‘sociocentricity is a disease’. The cure for both diseases is self-consciousness. Being self-conscious permits us to combat the fever of irrationality caused by both tendencies.
Of the two I suspect sociocentricity causes us and our community the greatest harm. When our ego leads us to do stupid things the harm done is limited because we generally affect only our self and maybe a few others. Sociocentricity, however, can easily be identified as the cause of the destruction and death of many.
Ethno centric is one form of socio centric attitudes and behavior. Ethno centric is placing ones own race as the privileged group. This form of socio centric behavior is perhaps the most predominate and lethal form of social bias. Regardless of which group we belong to I suspect that one of the most important things one might do to make the world a better place in which to live is for all of us to become self-conscious of these innate human tendencies.
Basic concepts become weapons of warfare within social groups. Basic words such as capitalism, socialism, communism, democracy, freedom, oligarchy, plutocracy, evil, patriotism, terrorism, etc. are twisted and maneuvered to confuse, distort, and to excite members of a group one way or another.
I think that people often have difficulty distinguishing ideological uses of such words from their non ideological uses. What do you think?
It appears that the key question of an egocentric is “How can I get what I want and avoid having to change in any fundamental way?”
Thinking is a natural body instinct in order to survive. I guess we could survive without thinking, but if we never thought, we wouldn't have any technology, so thinking is a good thing.
Thinking is good and bad i think (i think lol) Some days I have great good fun thoughts but other days not so good I wish we could just have good happy thoughts.
god, I was hoping for epistemology and alls I gets is some anti-conformity stuff
in all seriousness, I find this type of logic quickly devolves into "My way of thinking is right" which is not far away from "If you don't think what I think, you aren't thinking properly".
In the 1970s a new body of empirical research began to introduce findings that questioned the traditional Anglo-American cognitive paradigm of AI (Artificial Intelligence), i.e. symbol manipulation.
This research indicates that the neurological structures associated with sensorimotor activity are mapped directly to the higher cortical brain structures to form the foundation for subjective conceptualization in the human brain. In other words, our abstract ideas are constructed with copies of sensorimotor neurological structures as a foundation. “It is the rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate.”
Categorization, the first level of abstraction from “Reality” is our first level of conceptualization and thus of knowing. Seeing is a process that includes categorization, we see something as an interaction between the seer and what is seen. “Seeing typically involves categorization.”
Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.
Human categories, the stuff of experience, are reasoned about in many different ways. These differing ways of reasoning, these different conceptualizations, are called prototypes and represent the second level of conceptualization
Typical-case prototype conceptualization modes are “used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard…Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgments…Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments…Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without them.”
When we conceptualize categories in this fashion we often envision them using spatial metaphors. Spatial relation metaphors form the heart of our ability to perceive, conceive, and to move about in space. We unconsciously form spatial relation contexts for entities: ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘about’, ‘across from’ some other entity are common relationships that make it possible for us to function in our normal manner.
When we perceive a black cat and do not wish to cross its path our imagination conceives container shapes such that we do not penetrate the container space occupied by the cat at some time in its journey. We function in space and the container schema is a normal means we have for reasoning about action in space. Such imaginings are not conscious but most of our perception and conception is an automatic unconscious force for functioning in the world.
Our manner of using language to explain experience provides us with an insight into our cognitive structuring process. Perceptual cues are mapped onto cognitive spaces wherein a representation of the experience is structured onto our spatial-relation contour. There is no direct connection between perception and language.
The claim of cognitive science is “that the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and the body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”
Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson
Questions for discussion
Is all of this of any importance for ‘the man on the street’? I think so because if we comprehend these fundamental facts about human perception and motor movement we will better comprehend why we do the things we do.
We live our lives by our abstract ideas, i.e. morality, flag, nation, patriotism, value, motive, good, right, fairness, etc.
Do you think it is important for ‘the man on the street’ to comprehend how concepts are made?
I feel like I'm being lectured to. Perhaps I needed to clarify.
To post all this stuff suggests a recent epiphany on your part. What have you experienced that's connected you to this information?
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
lol, lots has been done in Cognitive Psych since the 70s
I'd suggest Gazzaniga as a good place to start
certainly not
what you are talking about are very low level perceptual processes of our brain. These are essentially inaccessible by higher order cognitive processes. Feature detectors and schematic categorization may be the basis of perception, but there is no reason for someone to know of them if they aren't interested.
These have little to do with concepts of morality and of semantic categorization or patriotism.
The closest it comes is recent stuff that shows negative outgroup motivations for people who don't have the same physical characteristics as those who belong to an ingroup. However, one can fight these ideas with far simpler policies and more direct prioritization. Making someone aware of their neurological processes (when they even believe you) means nothing for their behaviour. Exposing children to new ideas and people off all creeds will without a doubt be a more powerful way to end discrimination than would explaining to people how salient physical racial characteristics cause different schematic activation.
I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”
I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.
Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.
I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ‘see’ and then to ‘grasp’ through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.
We often use the metaphors of ‘seeing’ for knowing and ‘grasping’ for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.
The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ‘truth’, is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ‘truth’ discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.
In the United States our culture compels us to have a purpose. Our culture defines that purpose to be ‘maximize production and consumption’. As a result all good children feel compelled to become a successful producer and consumer. All good children both consciously and unconsciously organize their life for this journey.
At mid-life many citizens begin to analyze their life and often discover a need to reconstitute their purpose. Some of the advantageous of this self-learning experience is that it is virtually free, undeterred by age, not a zero sum game, surprising, exciting and makes each discovery a new eureka moment. The self-learning experience I am suggesting is similar to any other hobby one might undertake; interest will ebb and flow. In my case this was a hobby that I continually came back to after other hobbies lost appeal.
I suggest for your consideration that if we “Get a life—Get an intellectual life” we very well might gain substantially in self-worth and, perhaps, community-worth.
As a popular saying goes ‘there is a season for all things’. We might consider that spring and summer are times for gathering knowledge, maximizing production and consumption, and increasing net-worth; while fall and winter are seasons for gathering understanding, creating wisdom and increasing self-worth.
I have been trying to encourage adults, who in general consider education as a matter only for young people, to give this idea of self-learning a try. It seems to be human nature to do a turtle (close the mind) when encountering a new and unorthodox idea. Generally we seem to need for an idea to face us many times before we can consider it seriously. A common method for brushing aside this idea is to think ‘I’ve been there and done that’, i.e. ‘I have read and been a self-learner all my life’.
I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ‘Lewis and Clark Expedition’. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.
I can appreciate what you're saying here, much more so than in your preceding posts. And it's conjuring in my mind one overriding question: Do you meditate?
Specifically I mean, do you regularly practice any form of attentional training, especially aimed at getting through the layers of mentation?
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
I mention it because meditation (ie, metaconsciousness, attention-training) gives perspective on thinking (and thinking about thinking), as well as awareness of subtler phenomena (obviously, such awareness doesn't blossom overnight). You bring up educating people on how the mind works; meditation, IMO, is indispensable. However, as you've also noted, the dominant mindset / culture-at-large is not big on such reflection, especially when it's given a heavily spiritual / anti-materialistic bent (which is not really necessary; meditation can be appreciated on a number of levels).
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
I think that CT (Critical Thinking) is a better means for comprehending the self and the world, however, I am not very knowledable about Eastern tradition.
another sentiment I find a lot of people share, lol
and one more try:
What about the speech perception or reading? What about the Stroop Task? What about the McGurk effect?
There are direct neuronal connections between our sensory areas and our language areas. I don't understand how you could comment that there is no connection between them. Could you clarify?
KMC Community Forums
Feb 23rd, 2009 11:27 AM
