How to think well

Note: This is a recycled (and heavily rewritten) post from an old thread.

Note 2: I’ve added notes and some explanations after reading responses to this OP, and I will be editing and adding more in future, most probably.

Note 3: “logic” and “logical” in this post are us in the sense of “Perspective Logic”, and it’s not exactly the same as “formal logic”, “propositional logic”, and so on. It is more about the focus of awareness (a.k.a perspectives) and its nature. More about this (and links for other threads) at the end of this post, if you are interested.

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To think well, we want to know how we tend to think and how to improve in the area of each specific tendencies.

One of the major tendencies of human thinking is what I call “associative thinking”.
Basically, "associative thinking " is following links stored in our memory and it isn’t very organized nor logical because we don’t always store information in organized or logical manner.
So, we want to become aware of our “associative thinking” and stop it, avoid it.

*** Note: What I call "associative thinking in this post is the type of thinking that simply follows unorganized memory links without much care nor awareness. More logical thinking takes certain perspectives and examines/analyzes matters, which are identified by other perspectives, as well.

The next one is the “absolutist” tendency.
We tend to think that things are absolutely certain, and we tend to take things for granted, without due evaluation. Certain types of “believing” is the different name of this tendency.
This tendency can cause strong “blinding effect” and make us unaware of otherwise evident possibilities and reasoning.
We can improve our thinking and reduce this tendency by being well aware of the conditions and limitations inherent in any rational evaluation and thus keeping the relative nature of any evaluation in our mind.

The “absolutist” tendency can be seen as the tendency of “sticky focus”, as well.
The focus of our attention, our awareness may be pulled and stuck on certain object, concept, etc, and we may start to take the focused area as a “whole” and “everything”.
It can make us pretty unaware of other area, other point of view, other possibilities, and so on, and this explains the cause of “blinding effect”.
We can verify if we are having any persistent and sticky focus that trap us and inhibit us from seeing other area.
Once focus is released, we can take different focus and adapt multiple perspective with more ease. And this will let us think more logically.

Another aspect of “absolutist thinking” is the accompanying “absolute certainty” and the sense (or just a claim) of “reality”, “truth”, “fact”, etc. on the matter.
Although it does provide the sense of psychological stability because there is something absolutely dependable, because there is solid ground to base one’s thought and action, it is usually not really so sure when examined closely and precisely.
By thinking in logical and conditional manner, we can have well defined “relative certainty” that is dependable and practical in applicable situation. And this logically coherent relative certainty will satisfy the desire of our mind to have some kind of certainty, more than adequately and reduce the tendency to seek “absolute certainty” with “absolutist thinking”.

The third one is the tendency to think with words.
Words are symbols and tags that point specific concept and matters. When we are well aware of concepts and matters we are dealing with, we can choose and use the proper word that would convey and indicate the concepts and matters.
But some of us tend to loose the awareness of this relation between symbol and concept/matter.
When this happens, we are not really aware of what we are trying to indicate/convey and thus we don’t know what we are talking about.
We can remain aware of what we want to convey by keeping in touch with the actual particular object, sensation, emotion, and/or concept symbolized by the words we are using.
In other words, we know the definition of each word in the particular sentence or thought when we know what they represent.
This will clarify our thought and also allow us to explain what we are talking about in detail and from different angles if needed.

The next one is the tendency to think “horizontally”, like the “flat earth” theory.
As the validity and accuracy logic depends on its premises, it’s highly important to verify the premises.
And usually it leads to the examination of another set of premises used for supporting the first premises.
So, we tend to dig the foundation of theory, “vertically”, if we want to be sure of what we are thinking/talking about.
But some of us may simply take the premises as if they are correct without enough validation, and go on thinking and expanding the theory on the same “plain” or “horizon”.
And “flat earth” thinking will confuse us because potentially complex and multiple layered structure is projected upon 2D surface and thus it looses lots of information and also because it presents mixed up relations due to the projection. We can’t project multi-dimensional structure on 2D surface without loosing details and keeping relations.
So, by thinking “vertically”, rather than “horizontally”, we can learn the multiple layered structure of logic and gain the freedom in thinking and seeing in multiple dimensional perspectives, released from 2D “flat earth” world.

In addition to all these, we are emotional beings.
We have the emotional tendency to run away from conclusion that doesn’t please us.
It may lead us to prefer to keep comfortable delusions, instead of logical integrity.
Because our emotion generally evaluates in “absolutist” manner, “emotional thinking” will often results in absolutist conviction that has not much logical ground.
By separating emotion from logic, we can be more rational and also less emotionally confused because mixing emotion with logic not only falsifies logic but also amplifies certain emotion and even creates vicious loop of emotion and bad logic feeding and each other to cause extreme emotional state of various kinds.

And there is another factor that complicates our situation, combined with all other elements above.
It’s the structure of our consciousness.
We can be aware of many different things, but we are actually aware of only some part of our sensual, emotional, and mental activities.
It’s like seeing only the tip of an iceberg floating on the ocean.
We are aware of the top, the surface, but there is huge chunk of subconscious part.
And the huge subconscious part is mostly driving us into actions, emotions, abd different thoughts, although we usually don’t become aware of this.

So, although many of us tend to think that we are deciding what we do and we are aware of ourselves, often it’s our subconscious feelings and thoughts that move us.
This applies to our thinking processes, too.
Our thoughts tend to follow our subconscious pressure current, which is mostly invisible to us.

To think better, we need to become aware of our subconscious area in addition to other tendencies, and we can do this by observing our thoughts and words. Taking notes of our thoughts and making sketches of how we think and feel can be highly effective if they are done with the care.
Other than taking notes, participating in the discussion forum can be beneficial if we verify our own posts with very critical manner.
Listing up habits and recurrent thoughts and feelings, and then observing what pushes us into these (in terms of preferences, fears and desires) may reveal a lot about subconscious structure.
Also, listing up the items that we consider “good” or we like and we consider “bad” or we don’t like, in many different area of interest can be very interesting and revealing, especially if it’s done with the similar listing up for our parents and them comparison against our own list.

Once we know more and more about our subconscious region, we can verify and face the baseless nature of most of our subconscious beliefs. Also, we can verify and condition the information stored in the subconscious area, and it will make our emotional evaluation more logical and reliable.
This will help us to prevent our emotion confusing our logical thinking.
And improved logical thought will allow us to reduce irrational data stored in subconscious area.

Although it takes great interest, determination, honesty, time, and even courage (to see and remain faced what we don’t like and what we fear), improving our thinking process is something we all may want to tackle to be less confused (and frustrated, unhappy,depressed, and so on).

And I think “civilization”, “culture”, “common sense”, etc. need to include the practical knowledge and methodology for thinking well. What we currently teach at home and school isn’t enough at all.
But it takes lots of adults who can think well to train others (young and old), and thus we won’t see the improvement of thinking quality in greater scale among mass population in any time soon.
It will remain highly personal endeavor, at first.

So, we can mind our own business and keep learning and enjoying new perspectives, new states of mind and awareness, finer understandings of things, and so on, for now. And I think it’s a pretty decent start for us, the beginners in this field.

[EDIT]

The Logic I talk about is what I call “Perspective Logic”, and it’s more about the relation, dependency, structure of perspectives. As the awareness is the basis for nay of our perception, observation, interpretation, etc, the focus of awareness and how it works has very great importance in understanding how we think, evaluate, and even feel and sense. Thus logic (in the sense of Perspective Logic) has far greater implication than we usually think (in terms of conventional “logic”) n all our activities, be it sensory, emotional, or mental.

More about “Perspective Logic”: Beginner’s guide to “Perspective Logic”

The effect/nature of focusing: Separated reality = virtual world

[Edit 2]
Logical thought is based on perspectives. And perspective as the focus of awareness is to divide and to limit the area of awareness. So, thought is “limiting” in nature and it is also “limited”, naturally.

Other than that, logical thought process is linear (sequential) and slower compared to emotional evaluation, for example. It means logical thought can’t handle well activities that require processing of multiple factors within very short time frame. For example, mogul skiers wouldn’t be able to go down the hill if they tried to calculate things like the path to take, muscle control, the impact of moguls, and so on with the logical thought process. It’s the same for musicians, pilots shooting instrument approach, and many many other situations that requires rapid and multiplexed evaluations.

So, there are obvious disadvantage of logical thought process. And some people have tendencies to discredit it altogether without even learning how to think well.
But they are not aware that they will be using the thought process they’ve discredited, and especially in its unimproved and flawed state.

Actually, they’ve discredited the thought process by their own faulty thought process. We can say that their though was faulty because thought process can be pretty useful and practical in certain area, evidently.
The major flaw of their thought, in this case, is to focus only on the “limitation” of the thought process and seeing it as if it’s unfit in ALL situation, and it can be avoided by being aware of overly sticky focus (on the “limitation” of the thought") and by adopting multiple perspectives yieling both positive and negative views.

[EDIT 3]
I made this OP because I do think our logical mind has the desire to think well.
When our thought is confused, we may feel that something isn’t correct.
Also, contradiction in the perspectives may produce the feeling that something isn’t right.

In other words, badly done thinking produces negative sensation (depending on the “logical sensitivity” of the person) and it can be seen as a kind of pain.
And when we do think well, it may give us “smooth” sensation and the feeling that there is no resistance, friction, etc.

So, i think it’s more or less natural for us to try to think well, to reduce the sense of contradiction and friction, other than it can open the door way to different possibilities such as better understanding of various things from many different perspectives and improved emotional state, and so on.

I think it’s natural to feel bad to certain degree as long as we think badly.
And this negative sensation would push us to think more, but it won’t reduce the negative sensation unless the thinking is improved, obviously.

Thought is a mechanical thing and can solve only mechanical problems. But you want to use it to understand something living; that is the problem. It is not intended for that. Human problems are something living. You cannot use thinking to solve those problems.

Pretty nice little overview, Nah.

To anyone interested in the OP, I suggest reading up on Piaget’s concepts of Assimilation versus Accommodation.

For a lot of people Accommodation is a painful process, so they’ll assimilate environmental data into their current worldview(s). That way the world is a more familiar place.

However, sometimes one can have an extremely narrow worldview that only looks for specific validating things, and this can not only cut one off from the shared environment, make result in one being bombarded with disconcerting images one has to constantly rationalize as definitely fitting into their worldview, when attempting to do so causes cognitive dissonance.

Accommodation requires a certain amount of modesty (both in terms of one’s general habits and limitations, and in terms of one’s potential bias towards an object in question–as well as those things one associates them with).

I skimmed through the OP, but from it I only have one criticism:

For the sake of clear communication, I think you should have wrote something like “we can be affected by”, or “we can perceive”, rather than to say “be aware”. I don’t think it’s practical to distinguish “aware” with “actually aware”. I might suddenly be surprised by a friend, because I was looking down reading, and then be aware that his shadow was in my field of vision, standing next to me for quite some time before he startled me, but I wouldn’t say I was previously “aware” of the shadow.

finishman:

What the difference between a living thing and a mechanical thing?

And what do you mean thought “is not intended for that”?

Although the evaluation/analysis it gives is always limited and conditional, it doesn’t mean it can’t have any perspective.
And without solving problem both experiential manner and logical manner, I don’t think we are not totally satisfied because our logical mind seems to have its own desire to evaluate and to analyze in fully logical manner.

Also, your post is a sort of self-referencing in nature and can be seen as contradicting because you are showing your thought about the problem of life even though you claim that thought cannot handle it.
Other than that, you haven’t shown how you can separate the problem of life from mechanical problem, nor why you can say that thoughts are mechanical things, for example.
In other words, the logical quality of your post doesn’t seem to be very high and I honestly think that you can probably re-read OP to reduce this type of confusion I often see in your posts.

In the first part “We can be aware of many different things,”, I was presenting the possibilities, and then, in contrast, I was presenting what actually seems to take place: “but we are actually aware of only some part of our sensual, emotional, and mental activities”.

So, they are both referencing to the awareness, but as the potential (suggested by “can be”) in the first part and then in the actual practice (as suggested by “actually”), which is somewhat more limited than the potential (suggested by “only some part”).

You can lower a bucket into a flowing river, get some water, take it to the lab and analyze its constituent parts, but you can never capture the flow.

There is nothing you can do to change your present condition because whatever you are now, your confusions, problems, conflicts, violence, are all products of thought and self-consciousness. Any attempt on your part to change the given is born out of thought, and whatever thought does only perpetuates and strengthens itself and the knowledge it has, but does not make you free from them.

The dead structure of the mind can never touch what is alive. The mind and its desires can never touch life and what lives.

Thought uses the mechanism of knowledge to perpetuate itself, to create a continuity and permanence for itself. Thought can never know anything as it is. It has to distort what is given according to its predilections as to what is pleasant and what is unpleasant, pursue what it sees as pleasant, avoid what it sees as unpleasant in experience, and perpetuate itself in this process of seeking.

In your case …

….you want to use logical knowledge and distort the unlimited free expression of life energy according to certain rational observations confined to logic and its predictable behavior. Actually some occurrences in the life of an individual are acausal where the cause and effect logic of thought doesn’t apply.

Really good post Nah, let me just add a few comments and clarifications, if you do not mind.

Technically, everything in memory is linked to everything else, through a set of relations - these might be long and cumbersome and bear no logical significance, of course. So the association of one concept with another through a non-logical relation, and then the ascribing to this relation a logical connectivity between the concepts, is fallacious. However, associative thinking is, in fact, all that we do, really - we think from one concept to another, one idea to another, one image or impression or sensation to another, and these frequently and ceaselessly link into other connections of differing types . . . ie. a sensation can lead to an image in memory which can lead to an emotion which can lead to a concept which can lead to another concept or back again into sensational, emotive or image memories, back out and again, over and through, always looping, forming connections. This process in itself is not bad, it is quite the way we ordinarily think. But if we are to here concern ourselves solely with the logical reasoning capabilities that are afforded us by thought, then yes we must learn to differentiate these types of mental impressions which are called-forth and made available to conscious short-term memory (awareness), so that we can tell one from the other along the lines of relevant/irrelevant, or logical/illogical. Thus can we ascertain any significant logical relation between concepts or ideas, and as we learn or train ourselves to follow consciously this logical connection we can increase our cognitive powers and follow it in and out of concepts and ideas and beliefs, letting it branch out and lead us away and into new fields and ideas which we were not previously aware.

Yes, and I would add here, what I call black and white thinking - that we tend to reduce problems to an either/or relationship, and lump all relevant elements into either category, thus generating a false oppositional relationship. This relationship then becomes the criterion for differentiation among ideas. This is very harmful, logically speaking, but it is what most people do without realising it, leading me to conclude that this is a somewhat unconscious process and therefore takes some practice to rid oneself of.

One way to work on ridding ourselves of this is to stop forming value judgments and stop pre-judging things, even if we know our prejudice is correct. Having an need, psychologically and egoistically, to “know it all” or “have an opinion” in terms of a value judgment (good/bad, right/wrong, ingroup/outgroup, etc) will naturally bias us to this sort of black and white evaluation before the necessary information from the concepts or ideas in question is even analysed sufficiently.

Another point I would add is the pervasive and insidious power of paradigms, which I have written about here elsewhere. The paradigm is a pre-emptive system which treats all information that falls within its range in a bias manner, assigning weight and value to it based only on where it appears to fall within the paradigm, and not based on the content of the information in question. Thus paradigms, and all beliefs which reside within them, need to be exposed - we cannot entirely rid ourselves of these systems, and it would certainly be undesirable even if we could, but elevating them into conscious awareness is sufficient to undermine their power of pre-emption, and thus we can use them as mental tools for analysing information based on which paradigm we want to use - this I find is especially helpful when I shift my paradigm at will and process the same information/concept/idea through both paradigms consecutively, and then compare and contrast the results. This gives me information about the concept being analysed, as the understanding created is multi-perspectival and thus transcends a limited perspective of focus, as well as this gives me understanding of the paradigms themselves, which is useful to this process of paradigm shifting, as well as useful in elevating awarenes of the paradigm, its logics and assumptions and rules, into conscious attention. This tends to free thinking from a rote mechanism or automatism that it is habitually trapped within, and extends conscious attention deeper towards unconsciousness, making thinking a richer and more powerful tool overall, and giving one added insight into himself and how his thinking, conscious and unconscious, operates.

Great point here, being trapped by a perspective is certainly limiting, I notice a lot of people fall into this trap. This sort of problem tends to go away on its own once thinking in general is elevated and trained - once we becomes more conscious and take direct responsibility for our thoughts, we recognize (assuming we possess enough intellectual integrity) when we are “sticking” to an idea too much or at the expense of that idea and other ideas, and so can force ourselves out of this trap.

Wonderful point, this is a great insight, I hope people are paying attention here. I would only add that we must attain to erecting degrees of relative-conditional certainty upon abolishing absolute certainty, and the more degrees we can sustain, the better our thinking gets, because we gain the ability to form more relations of hierarchy and cause/effect, as well as more nuanced and intricate relations can be sustained and examined the more diverse and deep our “certainty index” (as I will call it) gets (this also ties into the vertical thinking that you mention later).

Also we ought to attain to an “uncertainty index” as well, not in the sense that each level of relative certainty incorporated within it a necessary uncertainty, which it does, but more so than this, that we ought to be able to deliberately classify ideas in terms of degrees of uncertainty and improbability. This is a parallel to the certainty indexing, and just as important if we are to properly and effectively form relations between concepts and ideas in our mind without falling prey to the absolutist thinking that you mention.

Illogical or impossible ideas are just as useful cognitively as logical or possible ones! This is an important insight to grasp, and likewise it is important to know how to effectively deal with these sorts of data without falling prey to error.

Yes, and while words can be separated from their meanings, and this is crutial that we do this, this is never an absolute sepation, and there exist differing levels or dimensions of relations of concepts and meanings, some on the level of the order of words, and some on the level deeper, on the order of the concept/meaning “behind” the word. Furthermore the concept/meaning is usually itself known through words, and so words are an integral part of almost all levels of thinking. But you are right that we need to not fall prey to a misuse of words at the expense of genuine meaning. Becoming aware of the meanings of the words we use, the diverse meanings and perspectives within even a single word, and then relating both the word to other similar words and the meaning to similar meanings, as well as relating the word/words to different meanings and the meanings to different words, all this is extremely helpful in gaining a maturity of thought and self-awareness that is needed to think more clearly, accurately, logically and genuinely, ie. without overt error.

Again, wonderful. I hope people are paying attention here. These are rare gems you are dispensing with.

These ideas need to be experienced, felt, realised and understood personally for us to really “get it”, to get what you are talking about here. We can understand all fine and well the logic of what you are saying, but until we dive within and meta-think about our thinking process, effecting a two-level or parallel processing of on the one hand thinking about some concept deeply and on the other hand, at the same time, thinking about how we are thinking about this other concept, the gem of understanding here cannot really be extracted.

Emotions are wonderful, but they need to be kept in their proper place if we are to think well and free from error. There is a proper role for emotions in thought, they need to participate in an evaluative role in terms of intuition and broad universalist integration, the types and relations via emotions ought to be mapped accurately - emotions play a role in “common sense” and conscience, as well as self-regulation which keeps us grounded within ourselves and gives us a feedback-loop into how and why we are thinking what we are, on a personal level of intentions and psychological needs, desires and aversions. Emotions are thus necessary to elevating self-awareness, and as self-awareness is crutial to thinking well, emotions are extremely important. But as you say here, thinking through emotions at the expense of logic, confusing the two systems in a false way, that is, in a way which negates one or both of the primary functions of the systems, is harmful.

Rather, it is almost always and almost without exeption our unconscious drives, desires and instincts which give rise to conscious thoughts and feelings, as well as to, directly or through the mediums of thoughts and feelings, our behaviors.

Truly conscious, free thought is far rarer than we think - understanding this is, however, seemingly impossible until one experiences the hidden predeterminism and false automatism that lies behind his “conscious” thoughts and feelings.

Visualizing this in terms of information theory modeling, tree-branching and weighting, is very helpful, I have found.

Yes, we need not only to seek self-awareness and meta-thinking (thinking about our thinking), but almost more importantly we need to cultivate a sincere and genuine intellectual honest within ourselves, a freeing from moralistic and emotional biases and predeterminations or psychological fixations or needs of the ego - these all pre-empt our ability to introspect. If only one thing could be taken away from this entire thread of yours, it should be that we ought to attain to a cultivation of self-honesty and sincerity (lack of ego, psychological attachment or pre-emption - growing as the primary instinct within us a love of accuracy and clarity, genuine wisdom for its own sake and at all costs) as well as learn to see our thinking process as it is thinking.

We are all, really, slaves to our thinking, our moralisms, our paradigms, our perspectives, even those of us who work on elevating ourselves above these - but we can attain a degree of liberation from these and thus form a space of conscious thought which is for the most part unbound and unrestricted by these limitations. The pleasures and endless benefits of attaining this sort of space and thinking skill are unlimited and impossible to communicate to others who have not likewise had this experience for themselves.

Yes, most beliefs are nothing but empty space with no relation to anything real or substantial, at all. Understanding this in a personal way is quite overwhelming and can be depressing, but also frees us to see what beliefs truly matter, and frees us to the capacity for forming genuine beliefs, a talent that most people do not possess.

I am not sure how much I agree that we can order the subconscious areas directly - I think we can try to influence them, and we can come to understand how to do this to a degree, but in the end the subconscious will spring up its own ideas and thoughts however it wishes. Rather than trying to control or direct the subconscious proceeses, I have found it better to reflect and introspect on the brain functions, the areas and specialisations hidden in the unconscious, that is, the heuristics-based processes which catalogue and form subconscious thought-material - in understanding how and why these work the way that they do we can then apply this knowledge second-hand to the products of the subconscious, to glean an understanding of what these products truly mean, and if there is any worth or relevance to them, and in what ways.

Yes we do need to cultivate our thinking in these ways, and it is something that one will never learn from parents or teachers, and will read about in books very rarely. Basically it is a individual thing, as you say, a self-creation process. We need to be strong-willed, motivated, honest and attentive. A great deal of people do not have these prerequisites, which means they will never gain this sort of insight that we speak of here. But that is alright, because it is not meant for them, and they are surely content in their current and habitual thinkings.

One last point on the order of caution: there are dangers in this introspection process. We need to be mindful of our limits and weaknesses as well as our desires and strengths. Growth should come within a sphere of realistic possiblity, and in order to continue growing we must first expand this sphere before the actual growth itself can take place. Re-forming these “shields” and limits is just as important as pushing them back and pushing past them. The mind is not infinitely malleable and is prone to instability and over-exertion. That is, if we lack the necessary energy while working on ourselves deeply, errors can be formed that sink in and become hard to root out. We are literally screwing around with our thinking here, not in some abstract way, but in a very real, physical way, we are consciously changing the neuron patterns in the brain, ripping apart electrical-chemical connections and “re-wiring” new ones. We must have tremendous respect for this awesome power, as well as a good deal of humility and patience. These are just as crutial as the tools and methods of growth themselves.

Also, remember that these problems or errors in our thinking exist for some reason - they fulfil a purpose, or at least they still exist because at some point they were useful. A lot of these errors in fact keep us emotionally and socially balanced, in homeostasis psychologically, because a great deal of unconscious thinking does not need to be known to us in order to work effectively - forgetting, and acting on instict, or acting on compulsion or automatically, are very essential functions of the mind. So if we are going to try and expose and correct these sorts of “errors” in ourselves, we are taking responsibility for maintaining our mental and emotional equilibrium in their absence, if it is the case that the absence of these functions will adversely affect the normal day-to-day tasks that the brain performs for us. And if we do not want this responsibility or we do not have the strength for it, then we really shouldnt be messing around in our thinking. Regular human thought is sufficient for 99% of people, and maintaining a balance and emotional and mental stability and comfortableness with oneself and one’s social interactions is also important, and these shouldnt be sacrificed just because we have a curiousity regarding our thinking. If we deliberately choose to sacrifice these, to some extent, or at least risk this possibility, that is of course up to us, just as long as, again, we accept the resopnsibility for this.

Why so much privelage afforded to logic as the primary and defining characteristic of good thinking? Isn’t that pretty much an arbitrary standard?

Very good. finishedman. You’ve just described how YOUR mind is.
I mean, your mind is mechanically working within the fixations such as the imaginary division of “life” vs “non-life (mind, etc)” and perpetuating itself.
I understand that you feel as if it were a dead structure, as it has lost its mobility because of your sticky perspective that limits movement of your focus.

You are not reading well. I haven’t talked about “unlimited free expression of life energy” nor about the topic such as thought can do this and that.

I can understand how bad you can feel about your thought.
But You don’t have to be so antagonistic about thought.
And even you don’t like your thought, you are using it.
So, rather than feeling bad in such a sticky yacky thought structure, you can feel better with your thought (and emotion) when the “dead structure (of yours)” is reduced.
It’s not easy, but there is still (slight) possibility, even for you.

Anyway, your posts in this threads were very good demonstrations of how narrowed mind may think, naturally in very limited way, distorting free expression of others. Thank you for providing real life example of unimproved thinking.

First of all, why did you ask “Why?” ?
Wasn’t it a question seeking reasonable (logical) answer/explanation?

I’m saying that our mind (logical mind) has the desire to think logically, and do it well.
If you can’t think well, you will not only remain confused as far as your logical mind is concerned, but it feels bad, too.

When you think well about something, you get the satisfaction of obtaining good enough logical perspective (and its expression) and you are no longer confused about the particular matter.
Of course, as finishedmas was insisting, somehow, logical perspectives would not cover entire landscape.
it only provides specific cutout. But obtaining good cutout is the desire of our mind, as far as I’ve observed.

And clearing up logical confusion would help clearing up emotional confusion, and it opens door for other possibilities, as well.

As far as the “standard” is concerned, I do think ALL standards are “arbitrary”.
Any perspective is arbitrary.
Whatever we think is arbitrary.
And it is very good to notice arbitrary nature of all perspectives.
It may lead to or deepen the logical and/or direct understanding of the relative nature of logic and perspectives.

In this thread, I am using the arbitrary perspective that focuses on the ability to think (logically) well, because it was my arbitrary interest of last few months.
Later, I may talk about hot to think emotionally, well, and how to have the multifaceted answer/perspective without thinking nor feeling, instantly, as well, if that becomes my arbitrary interest.

Thank you for the comments. I’ll get back to you, later.

It’s not imaginary. The living organism and thought are two different things.

I don’t get this.

You said thought can only solve mechanical problems… and that thought is a mechanical thing… and since human problems are a living thing (which thought is not intended for), those problems can’t be solved (… the living things can’t be understood by the mechanical mind).

What exactly do you mean by human problems, and how are they separate from “mechanical” problems?

Would you agree thought has helped man learn how to “make” and manipulate fire, and that this solved some problems?

I cannot think of a single real life problem (that is solveable) that cannot be solved by thought, either in theory or in fact. What supposedly makes thought so impotent in the face of “real living” problems?

Maybe an explanation on what he means by thought not being “intended” for solving “human problems” (which are “living problems”) will shed some light.

The only way I could see sense in this impotence of thought is if it were strictly referring to the subjective experience (of “thinking” in words that can be communicated), and suggesting it is merely an after-effect of living things affecting the living body, and that it itself doesn’t have any (independent) power/control/say in what the body does (and how it affects “life”)–every thought being a result of certain neuronal connections; every “idea” or “plan” the mind has only resulting due to “living things” possibly meaning that thoughts themselves never affect anything, it’s just a bizarre, insane “reality”.

BUT, he says thought can solve mechanical problems… so that sorta cancels out that interpretation…

I think what Finishedman is saying, is we rely on habits most of the time IRL. Habits that are formed and refined by experience… we do stuff, get confronted with real live problems, and adapt. Rince, repeat. If our habitual thought patterns are also formed the same way, they naturally wouldn’t be all that logical or rational. But they would be tailored to our specific enviroment, and our feelings…

The kind of logical thought I think Nah is proposing is then potentially hazardous, because he is proposing to do away with these messy irrational perspectives, and in doing so you essentially lose a source that tied you to your world. And I’m still unconvinced that what we get in return, the sliced up logical thinking, would be better suited to do the job.

It’s the difference between integrated experience, and blank and isolated measuring of observations.

Ah, maybe you’re right (that he means something like that).

I agree about the development of (certain habitual kinds of) thought, which can be seen in my above post (where thought is treated as something resulting from certain neuron firings… which depend on certain long-rooted connections/bundles and networks)–“thinking” is not something someone really has power over… the image of a noble, determined intellectual is a bit of an oxymoron; he doesn’t have a tremendous willpower or anything like that, the body just results in certain things.

The main problem for me is this idea of thought not being able to solve “human problems” (/living problems). I want examples of what those problems are.

I think some of you guys are talking about something pretty vague and probably undefined as if you knew it very well.
I mean, “life”, “integrity”,“life expression”, aren’t well defined by users, so far.

Maybe I should add this tendencies of dealing vague matter as if it were concrete, doing so with unmatched level of (pseudo) certainty, to the OP.

Although some people advocate “integral” way or “life” or whatever they might imagine, it’s easy to understand that they are doing it within their limited and “non-integral” thought process.
This type of self-contradictory thought and expression can be reduce by applying a clear and also very thorough perspective, cutout, upon the imaginary view that causes the person to be chained within the flawed and false distinctions they cling.
Just try to draw the precise line between “life” and “non-life”.
What is the actual method of evaluation?

Usually, people who love vague ideals can’t come up with reasonable answer because they’ve never really thought these well.
But we can improve our thinking and reduce these imaginary division that is limiting us.

PS.

I added something at the end of OP to reduce confusion.

In this thread, I’m talking about “thinking well”.
But it’s not my intention to compare logical thought against other possible and imaginary method of evaluation.
Also, our logical thought is clearly limited in speed and nature.
I’ve written a few examples in the added part of OP.

However, improving logical thought (in the sense of “Perspective Logic”) is a key for improving other method, that I may write about, later.
For example, when we can think well, we can treat/condition the data our emotional mind uses.
And this will let us make decision and take action in much much faster manner than thinking with logical mind.
It’s a bit similar to what people in sports. music, etc do. They do condition their muscle and reflex to have desired performance.