THINKING about THINKING V012

This is a public work space at the Minciu Sodas Laboratory where thoughts about thinking can tumble to become more polished so as to reflect better insight. The Minciu Sodas Laboratory is a collection of people on the Internet who care about thinking, particularly those mental processes engaged in solving problems, evaluating alternatives, setting goals, planning future actions, understanding complex situations, developing insights, and we seek to develop tools for enhancing these processes.

Our purpose here is to collect a consistent set of thoughts about thinking that will inform visitors about the latest scientific and philosophic THINKING about THINKING. This is a cooperative and public activity of the Minciu Sodas Laboratory performed by its members and visitors. Review, comment, suggestions and references are sought from all visitors. All submitted material will be reviewed for possible inclusion. All material will be edited for consistency and gradually the collection will be reduced to a brief and coherent overview in this space. If you are a member, please make your submissions to…. thinkingrelevantly@yahoogroups.com with subject line [thinkingrelevantly] TaboutT - Your subject The overall function of the “thinkingrelevantly” workgroup is to learn how to engage a group mind on a topic. If you wish more information about what the laboratory is about, please go to www.ms.lt

John Leppik will act as editor of this summary of views on THINKING about THINKING. He can be reached directly at jleppik@knowledgesystems.com

New material since the last post is colored This site is presently at Post #8. Please note that for this post the complete document has been edited.

PLANNED TOPICS TO BE COVERED HERE:

Overview of scope.

Definition of key concepts and words as used here.

The scope of thinking that will be considered here.

Differentiation of human and animal thinking.

Identification of thinking processes of interest.

Means for operating these processes more effectively.

What is thinking. How does it influence society?

Reference material

These headings will grow and evolve as we progress in our work.

ASPECTS OF THINKING TO BE CONSIDERED HERE

Our minds do many things. The mind manages the operation of the body. This includes blood circulation, breathing, temperature management, digestion, repair, immunology, sensory perception and reaction, motion and locomotion, and much more. Our mammal cousins have attitudes, emotions, expressions, relationships. They have offspring, families and social groupings, they groom and tend injuries, they hunt and gather, some make tools and construct elaborate homes, they learn and teach, they adapt to novel situations, they establish and protect territories, they fight ceremonial battles, they find their way in complex migrations, they communicate and coordinate group activities, they establish goals and strategies, they contend for position in organized and structured society, and in many ways do as we do. We humans have a more complete collection of these capabilities than any other being but we do not have them all, in many we are more capable and in many we are not as capable.

Our focus here will be on those capabilities that are particularly human, those capabilities in which we are markedly more capable than any other species. It is clear that most of the functions and capabilities of our brain and mind are widely available in other species, yet humans are so very different in accomplishments. What makes for this difference? How does it work? How can we use it more effectively? How can we enhance this capability?

We will start with questions about our distinguishing capabilities and seek your input on further questions and on answers so that hopefully in time we will develop a coherent view. The questions will be numbered simply in sequence and will be limited to 999 in number. Please reference them by number when submitting your thoughts.

Q001 WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE OF OUR DIFFERENCE?

A look at the accomplishments of humans in the developed world and compared to any other species would lead to the conclusion that we are of an entirely different kind, probably from a different world and so human kind thought for a long time. However an anatomical dissection and a DNA analysis of a human and a chimpanzee would provide convincing evidence that we are very closely related species, almost identical.

If we turned time back by 10,000 years and looked at what some 5,000,000 years of separate evolution had achieved in the way of difference between human and chimp, we would see very little difference. Humans were learning that if they took a stick, used it to make a hole in the ground, put some seed in the hole and waited for months in an appropriate season, then a plant would grow and produce more seed of the same kind. Chimps had learned that if they made a stick by stripping a branch and stuck it into a termite mound, they could withdraw some delectable termites. The termites would replenish themselves on an ongoing basis. There were some other differences that we now recognize as important. Humans did build shelters, but they were not remarkable. Humans did wear animal skins when needed because they did not have fur of their own. Humans built and used more tools. Humans lived in larger groups of up to 200 members.

At this stage humans showed some promise, but our survival was a risky bet because we had so many liabilities physically. There was no evidence on which to project an extraordinary future. We were more capable with tools and language was far better developed, but there was scant evidence that these did more for us than compensate for our very obvious physical shortcomings. Such was our state after 99.8% of our separate existence, that is after 4,990,000 years of our 5,000,000 years of separate development.

We still have societies living today who have not advanced beyond this stage of development. They live at the juncture of survival and extinction. We also have substantial evidence that if we take a child out of such a community and put it through a 21^st Century upbringing, then that child can become a top flight computer scientist. Thus our difference in achievement is unlikely to have much of a genetic cause. That leaves societal causes for our consideration here.

Q002 HOW IMPORTANT IS THINKING TO HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT?

We often associate new insights and ideas with thinking. How much of this do we do? How important is such thinking to our achievements? The evidence is that we have very few new ideas of any significance that stick in our social memories.  We can do a computation on our record.  The 20^th Century was the most productive century in human history in terms of new ideas and change.  If one out of 10,000 people had one significant new idea in their lifetime, then humanity should have produced 1,000,000 significant new ideas in that century.  ‘New’ and ‘significant’ are relative terms in this context, but most of us would have great difficulty listing 500 of these and no likelihood of being able to identify the next 500.  If we assume that the twentieth century was driven by 1,000 important new ideas, then one of them would have occurred in every 10,000,000 lives. Our records in previous centuries are much sparser. Is it possible that animals could also have this level of idea production, for we would not have noticed this level of activity? Thus the average individual contributes almost nothing, but all great ideas start in a single mind.  This business of thinking may not be very important at all because our output so limited. It seems to be very rare and very difficult for us. It appears that our achievements come from a very large number of contributors making very few contributions to a great societal retention system.  Perhaps that can explain the difference between human and chimp achievements. It appears that we are very good at learning known ‘thinkways’ and great at running up and down them but we are not very likely to think of a new thinkway.

Q003 DID HUMANS BUILD MORE ELABORATELY THAN OTHER SPECIES 10,000 YEARS AGO?

There is evidence that we occasionally painted on cave walls and that we decorated huts with animal bones, but did this show evidence of more advanced capability than a weaver bird’s nest, a beaver dam, hornet nest, or a termite mound? For their size, apparently termites still build the tallest buildings. They do it without the aid of education, power tools, scaffolding or elevators. They provide for termite traffic, garbage disposal and air conditioning

Q004 IS IT NECESSARY TO HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS TO THINK?

Many people have the experience of having done their best thinking without any conscious awareness of thinking. Bertrand Russell described in some detail his method of defining the problem, gathering relevant information, thinking about the issues and then letting it be. Some days, or weeks later, the answer would pop into his consciousness. There is evidence that our minds devise answers to all questions. Such answers are the best that can be devised with the information at hand. The answers are not necessarily correct, but they are plausible to the mind that produces them. How else would we explain so many divergent and deeply held beliefs to common questions for which we have no real answers? Clearly a large number of our brain functions are not accessible to our consciousness. Many of our consciously accessible functions often proceed without conscious participation. It seems that consciousness may be like one tiny flashlight in a huge blacked-out system. That light can reach only a few activities at a time and most of the action is beyond its reach.

Q005 IF WE CAN THINK WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESS, THEN DO PRESENT-DAY COMPUTERS THAT SOLVE PROBLEMS THINK?

The computer program Deep Blue is world chess champion. No one has claimed that it is conscious, but does it think? Computers do many things that humans do with thinking. Irrespective of how they do it, if they do it are they thinking? Magic evaporates once we understand how it is done. When we understand how thinking and intelligence are done, can they be anything but algorithmic, just like our computers?

Q006 IS NOT OUR UNIQUENESS MAINLY DUE TO OUR ABILITY TO TRANSFER THOUGHTS INTO OTHER MINDS?

With language, both spoken and written, and specialized notations, we can reliably transfer the few novel thoughts that we have into many other minds. Thus the rates of replication, application and retention are very high. A little goes a long way. If each new idea can be made available to everybody forever, then we do not need many new ideas. Most religions are centuries old. They sometimes have difficulty relating to the modern world, but they flourish. Thus the fundamentals have changed very little in thousands of years.

Q007 WITHOUT LANGUAGE, SPECIALIZED NOTATIONS AND THINKING TOOLS, COULD OUR THOUGHTS BE MUCH DIFFERENT THAN THOSE OF CHIMPS?

How could I in such a state without any consolidating and focusing notation arrive at the thought ‘democracy’ and communicate it to another person? Perhaps I cannot do it very well even with language. Aphasia, the loss of languages, is sometimes thought to amount to the loss of the person. In many ways our elements of thought are external in language, notation, tools, structures, procedures, customs, traditions routs, procedures.

Q008 IS THINKING ADVANCED BETTER BY BETTER ANSWERS OR BETTER QUESTIONS?

The history of science indicates that better answers fill in the details. Better questions open up new fields of inquiry and get us out of ruts that lead nowhere Are new questions key? Where do they come from?.

Q009 WHY CAN I NOT VISUALIZE AS EFFECTIVELY AS I DREAM?

Vision is very important to our thinking because much of our thinking is triggered by what we see, our thinking is greatly enhanced by visual notations and many of our thinking aids are visual. My dreams appear to be almost as real and complete as actual vision so my mind appears to be quite capable of creating full action, 3D, technicolor visualizations. My visualization is no better than locating the position and rough shape of objects in the dark. Why can I not achieve the quality of image in my visualizations that I think I achieve in my dreams?

Q010 ARE EMOTIONS UNIQUELY HUMAN AND ARE THEY OF PARTICULARLY HIGH VALUE?

Emotions appear to be very quick assessments of the situation that we are in. They are a reading on whether it’s friendly, life-threatening, sad, uncertain, pleasurable, promising, ingenuous, very much like a thermometer indicates its ambient temperature. The feelings that we experience appear to be genetic. The triggers to those feelings appear to be both genetic and learned from experience, with all of them being at least partially reprogrammable. Animals appear to have the same range of emotions so there does not appear to be anything particularly human about them even though many people want to think there is. Most animals respond much quicker than humans so their quick assessment circuits must be faster.

Q011 IS THINKING NECESSARY FOR MAKING DECISIONS AND CHOICES?

It seems that we make many choices without thinking, such as reacting to perceived threat, some of our talking, walking, driving, eating, working. A key function of thinking appears to be to make the most desirable choice, but it appears to be an optional extra. We can make it through a day, week, month without doing much of what most of us would call thinking.

Q012 ARE OUR BRAINS MEMETIC HAMBURGER?

There is a school of thought developing to the effect that most of our goals and activities are driven by mimicry. Memetics is the study of memes. Memes are copyable concepts, thoughts, acts that hop from brain to brain, replicate in brain ‘hamburger’ and evolving in the process. Does the fact that we have such a great variety of Gods confirm that we follow memes rather than think? Thinking would tend to lead us towards one ‘best’ conception of God rather than the claim that ‘mine is the best and only true God’.

Q013 WHY IS IT THAT THE MORE I THINK THE LESS IMPRESSED I AM WITH MY THINKING CAPABILITIES?

The more I try to be conscious of my thinking, of how, when and to what effect I do it, the less impressed I am by my capabilities. The more I think, the more I think that except for societal knowledge, I differ very little from a chimp. That small difference has resulted in a very large difference in our outcomes over the past 10,000 years, even though we were roughly even for a five million years. Today it takes us about twenty years of quite diligent work to develop our knowledge and thinking to the level required to be accepted as a beginning professional and the majority of humanity is not capable of achieving this level for lack of capability, diligence, or desire. Strange that it takes about the same time to become a top flight athlete. Twenty years of barreling down the runway before the first takeoff! We do not have much of a margin of safety do we? Most of us settle into some form of non-thinking routine.

Q014 WHAT IS THINKING?

Thinking is choosing where to focus our consciousness, deciding what we are perceiving, projecting alternate reactions and choosing, selecting goals, strategies and tactics, solving problems, making trial fits, digesting information into understanding and knowledge, planning, generalizing, accepting new ideas, relating cause and effect, formulating new ideas, reason, ponder, believe, imagine, evaluate, judging, prioritizing, question. Cows and parrots do these things as well. Here we will consider only those mental capabilities that are markedly different in humans from the corresponding processes in animals, when such capabilities are activated.

Q015 WHERE IS OUR MEMORY LOCATED?

Much of our functional memory is external to us and the recall triggers are external. Let’s do a mental experiment. Describe how to get to your home from your office to someone who is totally unfamiliar with the rout, does not have a map and cannot read street signs. I add these qualifiers because when you go home you don’t read a map or street signs. Some of us have done this thousands of times, but I don’t think any of us could describe the visual cues that would enable a stranger to find our home. Similarly we function with our notebooks, computers, library, filing system, office, kitchen, home, tools, municipality: we get to a familiar situation and we remember the context and what to do there. In a real sense we function like a ball in a pinball machine: at specific stations we do specific things; so much of our memory and ability to think and function is tied to familiarity and continuity of our outside world.

Many of us who have worked extensively on personal computers for a few years find that much of our memory and continuity in thinking is in our computers and the only way to do intellectual work is with our computers.

Q016 HOW CAN WE BE MORE AWARE OF HOW WE COLOR OUR INPUTS?

All of us develop preconceptions for that is the point of learning. All of us collect experiences for that is the point to living. Thus as we live we focus more and more on what we have decided is important and less and less on what is irrelevant to us. When operating under information overload, we push this to the extreme. This makes us into biased receptors to the extent that some philosophers suggest that a book has no meaning at all, only that which the reader ascribes to it. We can counteract this tendency a little by always considering what the input is trying to tell us rather than being totally absorbed in what it means to us. We need to also periodically recheck our settings on our acceptance and rejection screens. Most importantly we need to recognize that we live on biased inputs and therefore make a point of scanning beyond our focus to make sure that we are focusing in the right place for us.

Q017 HOW DOES HUMAN THOUGHT DIFFER FROM CHIMP THOUGHT?

It is doubtful that humans have any unique capabilities. We differ in degree. In some functions we are more capable, in others, less. Was it writing that set us on an entirely novel path?

Q018 HOW DOES THINKING DIFFER FROM LEARNING?

Both involve mental functions that appear to be common, however some learning such as recognition and physical skills appears to happen without conscious thinking.

Q019  WHICH OF OUR THINKING ACTIVITIES GO BEYOND FUZZY FITS INTO OUR WORLD SIMULATOR?

All we know of the world is the model of the world that we build in our minds out of our collected sense inputs.  We are very able in taking new input and doing a fuzzy search on where it might fit in our model and then doing a fuzzy fit.  After we fully account for this activity, what activity in thinking remains unaccounted for?

Q020 HOW CAN HONEST PEOPLE OF INTEGRITY COME TO OPPOSING CONCLUSION ON THE SAME ISSUE AND NOT BE INFLUENCED BY THE OPPOSING VIEW?

Can our thought patterns be so different? Can both of two opposites regarding the same issue be true? Does one of them have to be dishonest with themselves? Could such a situation be mediated? It would appear that the answers to these questions is NO. It would appear more likely that such a situation represents two lifetimes of collecting biased data, of retaining only that data which supports one’s predisposition and rejecting all else.

Q021 HOW CAN WE GET A MEASURE OF OUR THINKING CAPABILITY?

A review of “A History of the Machine” by Sigvard Strandh is very revealing. Humans have invented some very ingenious devices. Such devices are very recent in our existence. Thus the difference in the minds that have produced our world of today and the minds that produced no technology at all is very small. Even very small contributions, out of a very small fraction of a very large population over many years can bring about great change if society has an effective retention system. That is the magic of compound growth sustained over a long time.

Q022 HOW MUCH LOWER ARE ANIMAL CAPABILITIES?

Animals have not had occasion to use many of the capabilities that they have. Similarly, primitive peoples have not had the opportunity to use some of their capabilities such as mathematics but can learn and do it well. Bears in the wild had no occasion to ride motorcycles, but they learn quickly when shown and they do it very well. Parrots in the wild had no occasion to make human word sounds. Animals have had no occasion to interpret signs, but many can learn.

Q023 TO WHAT EXTENT COULD OUR DREAMS BE MEANS FOR EXPLORING OUR THINKING PROCESSES?

People speak of directing dream content. Our own David Kankiewicz asks “Have you ever experienced a semi-Lucid dream where you were in control of your surroundings?  Being able to change, create, or remove anything. I’ve never been in one for very long but I can say that every potential possibility, including modifying “gravity”, seemed quite possible...”

Q024  IS IT POSSIBLE OR EVEN DESIRABLE TO PROCESS OUR INPUTS IN A NON-PRE-JUDGED WAY?

It is neither possible or desirable.  We rewrite our histories on a continuing basis.  The valid reason for this is that our point of view and interests keep changing and the meaning of history is dependent on these.  If we were to accept all inputs in a non-pre-judged way our minds would flutter like weather vanes in turbulent storms and expire from gross information overload.  We cannot approach anything as if we had no opinions at all.  We do not have the time and energy to process many reactions from first disinterested principles.  A response from nowhere is no response at all.  Thus the unprejudiced point of view is a vacuous concept and what we need to tend to is our pre-judgments.

Q025 HOW LONG DO WESTERN SOCIETIES TAKE TO CHANGE ITS THINKING ON A BODY OF THOUGHT?

If we take a societal body of thought to be a preference for conservative or liberal policies, protectionism or free trade, how we educate our children, rights to medical care, war and peace, adopting new methods, intent of taxation, government or private ownership, welfare, then it seems to take from twenty to forty years to change from one to the other. It takes society that long to understand the new way, develop opinions about it, perceive a better way, develop arguments for a better way and develop a consensus for a new way.

Q026 HOW CAPABLE ARE INDIVIDUALS OF CHANGING THEIR BODIES OF THOUGHT?

If societies take twenty to forty years to change bodies of thought, then it appears that the majority of individuals do not change at all. There are exceptions, but they are relatively rare. For societal thinking to change, the society has to be repopulated. It seems to take a new generation to look at what exists with disdain and devise a new approach without having learned much from the old. The older generation carries on in its established ways and awfulizes about the younger generation. It seems to be a matter of pride to have a consistent and unvarying view of the world and how to live in it. Does that not mean unthinking view?

Q027 HOW DO WE USE THINKING?

We are not so very different from our cousins in the animal world.  We, like they, use thinking mainly to learn about our world and to navigate within what we know about this world.  Our thinking is capable of expanding this world, but that happens very, very rarely.  We have well-developed language and learning capabilities which enables us to learn what others have learned.  Most of our thinking is spent on making known choices and finding known solutions to known problems. With our unusual ability to receive other people's thoughts, one thought in one mind can enrich the minds of billions.  When that rarity of a new thought occurs, we can express,  record and disseminate it rapidly and accurately.

Q028 WHAT MEDIUMS DO WE USE FOR OUR THINKING?

It appears self-evident that we do much of our thinking is words, but what about our reptilian brain? Certainly our memory is connected to all of our senses, in addition to words. But we remember smells, tastes, feels, feelings, emotions, sounds. Surely we think with them too. Our thinking about trips, places, scenery, house, devices, paintings deal with images. Music is auditory, feel and image. Dogs go for olfactory walks. Appetite is taste, smell and image. Sex is feel, feeling, emotion. It seems we use them all to some degree.

Q029  OUR MINDS SEEM CAPABLE OF THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING.  HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT IS TRUE?

Twenty six hundred years of recorded philosophic thinking seems to have concluded that the only truths we can access are those that we have defined ourselves such as 2 + 2 = 4.  Some five thousand years of religious histories amount to claimed hearsay.  We have common sense which leads us to not touch something that is glowing red and not hit our thumb with a hammer.  We have the scientific method which in very limited areas of our world has established methods for reliably achieving intended consequences like successfully sending a person on a round trip to the moon.  All the rest is a matter of personal experience and opinion, but personal experience and opinions are almost the only thing we have, so treat them with respect.

Q030 WHAT IN THE HUMAN BRAIN GIVES US OUR EXTRAORDINARY THINKING CAPABILITY?

Scientific American reports “…findings, detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, led to a rather different conclusion. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers obtained brain scans of 15 living great apes, four lesser apes, five monkeys and 10 humans—a sample larger than any used in the previous studies, which looked at the brains of deceased individuals. They found that, in fact, "the human frontal cortex was as large as expected for a primate brain of human size." That is, the size of the human frontal cortex is, relatively speaking, comparable with—not larger than—that of the great ape frontal cortex.”

Q031 IS IT POSSIBLE TO THINK WITHOUT PREJUDICE?

Edwin Newman in a taped lecture observes “Since observational hypothesis can be checked only by making further observations, and since these new observations also cannot get beyond the wall of interpretation and hypothesis, it seems that we can never reach that realm of pure objective fact that was so dear to Bacon. So, it’s futile to spend one’s life merely collecting data. Observation is a worthless undertaking until we make some hypothesis that applies not only to the data we have collected but also to the future. Even in the initial collection of data, some hypothesis is incorporated in the very identification of objects as belonging to this or that category. To sit around gawking at the universe, receiving it uninterpreted, to collect information without differentiating it is to declare oneself inanimate. Rocks and oceans react in quite the same way to the universe. Perhaps we could avoid any error by achieving nirvana, but such an achievement has nothing to do with awareness or understanding. It would be the very negation of acting sensitively to the world around us. Awareness happens only when we stick our conceptual necks out to interpret the world as it is given to us in terms of some categorical scheme. If we seek to understand the world, then merely gazing at it is worthless until some hypothesis fits it all into a meaningful scheme. All this says that we have no access to Bacon’s nature other than through our interpretations and our hypothesis. It says we cannot entirely leave behind Bacon’s idles of tribal or collective prejudice, individual partisanship, the excesses of social and commercial interactions and various philosophical dogmas. Objective information is unavailable to us. The information that is available appears to be quite dependent on other things such as perception and interpretation.

“David Hume left us with a dilemma that was well expressed by the twentieth century American philosopher C. I. Lewis. ‘If there be no datum given to the mind, then knowledge must be content less and arbitrary. There would be nothing which it must be true to, and if there be no interpretation or construction which the mind itself imposes, then thought is rendered superfluous. The possibility of error becomes inexplicable and the distinction of true and false is in danger of becoming meaningless.’”

It is thus impossible for us to be without prejudice if we are going to be at all. What could we be doing when we think we are without prejudice? Are we not unknowingly reacting with the prevalent prejudice, that being the only way to appear neutral?

Q032 ARE WE THINKING AT ALL IF WE THINK ONLY SOCIALLY PERMITTED THOUGHTS?

It seems that we would only be running along established ruts. Most valid novel thoughts will not be socially unacceptable, but some will be. Is society enhanced or debased when objectionable thoughts are suppressed by government force?

Q033 IS THERE ANY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT IDEAS ARE VERY RARE?

Yes. Science records its incremental advances in the names of the searchers who achieved the advance. The list of people who have been credited with more than one advance is very short. Many of us know these names, like Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Faraday, Einstein …. Atomic physicist, James Rutherford observed "It is not in the nature of science for one man to make great leaps. Science is a matter of thousands taking an occasional small step. .......Science is dependent on the combined wisdom of thousands of men."

Q034 WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF THINKING IN PUBLIC?

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk failure. But risks must be taken. Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. If you risk nothing and do nothing, you dull your spirit. You may avoid suffering and sorrow, But you cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, and live. Chained by your attitude, you are a slave. You have forfeited your freedom. Only if you risk are you free. Cited in More of...The Best of BITS & PIECES

Q035 IS NOT OUR LIFE WHAT OUR THOUGHTS MAKE IT?

Everything that we are, do, or feel is a product of our thinking. It is our choice and decision to feel adventurous or fearful, successful or defeated, positive or negative, loving or hateful, participative or withdrawing, thriving or decaying, helping or contentious and our world reflects our choices.

Q036 HOW CAN WE MAKE OUR THINKING REALISTIC?

Our thinking will have to have close ties to reality experiences. The use of logic over the years has demonstrated that logic is a great tool for building mental castles in quicksand. The best and most widespread would be our many philosophies and our many religions. As Dr. Phil (Philip McGraw) says “A psychotic is a person who has really bizarre perceptions and they don’t test them. We have to test our perceptions for they are not reality”

Q037 HOW CAN WE STIMULATE MORE EFFECTIVE THINKING?

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, writing in the New York Times shares a clue “the Arab world has been in decline for six centuries because of a stultifying intellectual conformism, an insufficient clash of ideas” Information will seldom yield what we are not already looking for and we can always find some information to support whatever we are determined to believe. Thoughts that have to rub up against different and contrary thoughts invariably get better.

Q038 IS IT NECESSARY TO THINK THROUGH OUR BELIEFS TO HAVE THEM?

Definitely not. We are social beings, so we have a great need to fit in. We fit in by adopting the predominant thinking of our current group. It is often too much hard work to think for ourselves and it can be very counterproductive to our social effectiveness.

Q039 HOW CAN WE THINK BEYOND THE KNOWLEDGE THAT WE HAVE?

We cannot. How can we think about what we do not know? Is it impossible for us to learn? No, we can learn from others and we can very occasionally postulate a necessary new observation based on what we know. But mostly, if we are educated in a homogenous community we will think within what it teaches. This is reinforced by traditions that make it sinful to question our impinged beliefs and to consider others. The intent of these traditions is to keep us confined. Added to this, we each know only a small portion of accumulated, human, worldly knowledge and each of our knowledge profiles are different. Thus in heterogeneous communities. there are strong forces to keep people with the same belief systems together and other strong causes for honest disagreement based on worldly knowledge to drive us apart.

We each live within a small, irregularly shaped knowledge bubble which limits our range of thought. Are there ways to reshape and expand these bubbles? Yes, if we are willing to risk sin and disloyalty, or if we choose to not have any convictions, or if we are willing to change our minds, or if we are willing to abandon our community in siege. These are all very negatively loaded if’s and there is no known community with a track record for doing so.

The exhortation to not discuss religion, politics, or sex in civil company is a strong indicator that we have serious problems in resolving and accepting different views even in homogeneous communities. Discussion of these subjects is to be limited to discussions within like-minded groups. The fourth category, worldly knowledge, seems to be open to discussion in Western communities, but not within our own minds. Most of us have a solid wall between our religious beliefs and our worldly knowledge to keep us from having to face the impossible contradictions. This gives us the capacity to be fixed and faithful is one category of thought, and open and learning in another. This compromise is probably an important source of the material wealth of Western civilization.

Q040 HOW CAN THE THINKING OF BELIEVERS AND NON-BELIEVERS COME TO OPPOSITE CONCLUSIONS FROM THE SAME EVIDENCE?

Possibly because our initial orientation is established by teachings that occur before our judgment is in gear. Possibly because some of us want to go with the flow, others make their own path and many flavors in between. Possibly because we have different criteria for what we believe. Possibly because we grow up in different environments. Possibly because this is one of the few situations in which chaos theory’s flap-of-a-butterfly’s-wing applies because a new mind is a fresh start, even though it starts in an established context. Possibly because our goals are different. But I suspect mainly because the pros who have been developing believers millennia start the orientation early and reinforce frequently, in some cases at least five times a day.

April 16, 2002