15 August 1989
(This paper was delivered at a conference on education held at the University of Puerto Rico in 1989)
This paper consists of three main parts. The first will be a set of definitions of thinking. The second will be a comment on the history and future of thinking. The third will be the description of a system of instruction for teaching people to think in the manner defined and in the historic context outlined.
The position taken here is that the major problem in thinking is not formal. Logic seldom trips anyone up. It is the considered opinion here that the two major problems in thinking are 1) techniques of information handling and 2) gaining truth as a basis for thinking. Problems of logic come a distant third in this comparison.
I. Definitions of thinking.
The following definitions of thinking are intended to describe the same process, but in different idioms and applications. It is intended that the understanding of each separate kind of definition will assist the reader or hearer to gain a positive grasp on the ideas here being described.
First a common-sense definition: Thinking is what happens in the mind and heart of a person as that person learns, uses and transforms the social and natural milieu in which the person finds himself. “Mind” and “heart” are here used as metaphors for the imagining and deciding functions of the human being. It is assumed that the individual person is shaped and molded by his environment before coming to any consciousness of self or of the surroundings of the self. We are born mentally as individuals only as we have learned well the social, linguistic and natural context of our lives. Our individuality at first is largely a product of the environment in which we are reared. Later we contribute to and change that milieu according to our desires and abilities.
Now a technical definition of thinking. Thinking is the concept sequences which result from a person’s choosings. Concept sequences are systems of concepts. Thinking is thus the creation and use of concept sequences. Admittedly this is a non-behavioral approach to the subject. It depends upon introspection: you and I as individuals are aware of our own concepts, even if those concepts have no standing in a “scientific,” that is to say, “behavioral” account. Not all good thinking is science, and thinking about thinking is not science, just as thinking about mathematics is not science. But concepts and systems of concepts are known and used by us. Thus the focus of the investigation of thinking must focus on concepts and systems of concepts.
The third definition of thinking is a description of ideal thinking: Ideal thinking is the deployment of concepts and systems of concepts which allow the individual to solve every problem which it is desirable to solve with a maximum efficiency and with no later regrets. Ideal thinking thus includes three main elements: the truth of the way things are, the possibilities of how what is might be transformed, and values as to what is good and worthwhile. This definition is thus a stipulation that thinking has its end in solving problems, and in solving them effectively, efficiently and wisely. Turning now to the historical perspective, we see how thinking has and may yet operate in human affairs.
II. The history and future of thinking.
The individual human being in our society today inherits a vast cultural deposit. This deposit consists of one or more languages, a social order, technical skills, and a value hierarchy. Languages are the basic socializing factor; they make all things in the deposit available to the person. The social order is the human relationships of which one is a part, including the nature of the family structure into which a person is born, the neighborhood structure, and the church, educational and governmental arrangements one partakes of in the process of growing up. Thinking in this personal situation consists of learning and using the ambient milieu in order to fulfill or to attempt to fulfill one’s desires.
It is to be emphasized that no one person creates or controls the ambient milieu in which each person comes to consciousness. The milieu is a fabric, woven of many strands by every person who affects an individual, living and dead. No two persons have identical milieus, for each person has a unique set of relationships with the persons around him and becomes part of the milieu for every other person whom he or she affects. In a special way, the individual is created by his unique milieu, given his speech, ideas, values and habits. How he acts on the milieu may indeed have something to do with his unique personality, but that personality is at first almost wholly shaped by the milieu itself. Whatever latent absolute individuality there may be in the person can only emerge and find expression in terms of the cultural heritage. It is notable that few persons affect very many others in passing on that cultural heritage, though everyone affects someone in living their lives.
The picture we are painting of the individual is that of a web. Every person is born into and becomes part of a social web. The web gives the person existence and the opportunity to act. But the person acts within the web and whenever he or she acts it is within the web. No person can destroy the web into which he or she is born. One may affect it, change it, in some way. But for any individual the change can be only small. One individual may apply those small changes to assist some around him also make small changes; but the receiving of those changes will be mostly voluntary. As the number of persons acting in concert grows, the net effect on the web may be drastic. Of such stuff are revolutions made, both military and cultural. But no one person can swing a revolution by himself. Many must cooperate and add their deliberate changes to the web to make any lasting change in the whole.
Power in this world into which each of us is born thus comes from social organization, numbers of people working in concert. Only by joining the concert can any of us become persons. Only by working within the concerted effort can any person make a contribution. And the contribution of any individual is always small, notwithstanding the mythologies which grow up under the “great man” theories of history. The “great man” theories are simply useful fictions which focus upon one individual to describe changes which it takes many like-minded people to make. Theories as to why one individual appears to succeed and another appears to fail are interesting, but like all theories, cannot be proved to be true. But the theories sometimes become part of the cultural milieu, the small influence of some individual multiplied by the small influence of other persons who choose to believe the theory.
As far back as our historical documents reach, we see this same picture of human beings and human life. Each human being has come into existence and has learned the language, the social system, the arts and the values of his context, has made some small impact on that milieu, and has then passed out of this existence through death. But there has been at least one major change in that cultural heritage in historic times. We now turn to an examination of that change, which we shall call the scientific revolution.
The scientific revolution has its focus in the desire of individuals to understand the processes of the natural and social world, the milieu or context in which each individual finds himself, and to describe the processes of this milieu in general terms. This desire has probably always been present in some persons of every society. But the revolution came because many persons joined forces in that desire and created a new social and intellectual heritage, one in which the procedures and fruits of scientific thinking were socially codified and transmitted.
Scientific thinking begins with asking the questions “how” and “why” does something operate or work in this world. That beginning has probably always been present, and is not itself scientific thinking. For no person is ever at a loss to answer such questions. Historically, most persons either ask someone else to answer their questions of this sort or they invent an answer for themselves. The scientific revolution takes place in the demand that the answers must pass two kinds of muster. First, they must satisfy certain canons of adequacy. These canons are culturally determined, that is to say, are changeable and do change historically and from place to place. They include today such requirements as rationality (the demand to be rationally consistent), the necessity of being grounded in some phenomenal base (the demand that there be a relevant body of empirical evidence on which the ideas are based), and the requirement that the ideas be predictive (that they successfully enable one to predict future phenomena, especially novel or unexpected phenomena). These requirements are not strictly “rational” themselves. Rather they are social. They are requirements established by the consensus of those who are considered to be scientists. Which brings us to the second factor for passing muster in the scientific revolution: the explanation must not only meet the requirements or canons set by those who are scientists, but must be accepted by the scientists themselves.
We see that the scientific revolution was thus a social revolution. It consisted in the institutionalizing of truth. A certain body of persons loosely known as “the scientists” of their day became the arbiters of what would be and could be called truth. They were socially successful in replacing the clergy because they took a special and different focus than had the clergy. Where the clergy had focused on being the keepers of the truth by claiming the ability to deliver men’s souls to happiness in the next life, the scientists focused their claim as the arbiters of truth on the ability to improve the arts, the technical traditions of mankind. And because they were able to deliver obvious and impressive technical gains by means of their socialization of truth, they gained the acceptance of many persons, thus becoming socially acceptable and influential. The clergy, on the other hand, took a back seat, because one needed to die first to verify their claims to truth.
Today scientists would like to think they have a corner on all truth. That they have not been able to accomplish thar, for the average person does not yet believe them in all things. But they are roaringly successful nevertheless, and would fain claim to be the keepers of all that is true. The atom bomb, medical advances, electronics, and other innovations have given them great clout, so they try sometimes to take dominion over the past in connection with their cousins, the scholars, and over the future. But they sometimes go too far, and are forced back into their proper bailiwick, the improvement of technical processes.
The scientific revolution was thus a revolution in thinking. Those who created it said and showed that there was a process, a systematic approach, which was beneficial, in answering the questions “how” and “why” things work as they do in this world especially as related to physical or material processes. They have been successful in socially institutionalizing this method of thinking using the PhD degree. And they maintain their hold as keepers of the truth by attacking all others and any mavericks within their own ranks who will not bend to the socializing process and accept their group verdict as to what is truth and what is not.
It would seem that on the whole, the scientific revolution has been a great plus for humanity. Apart from the exaggerated claims of some persons of the scientific community, they have shown very real gains for humankind, gains which continue and which give every promise of continuing into the future. And perhaps the domain may expand as human beings come to agreement about psychic phenomena as they have about physical phenomena.
But there is another revolution in the wings, waiting for enough persons and enough consensus, that it might be truly institutionalized as science has been. This revolution is the revolution of value considerations, the question of good and evil, that values are all either non-existent or entirely arbitrary. But they have not convinced the majority.
Today the majority of persons know that human survival depends upon getting the same kind of hold on good and evil that science made possible for truth about technical processes. It will not do to simply politicize the matter. That did not work for truth, and doubtless it will not work for good and evil. The opinion of the majority does not make persons happy just as it does not launch rockets to the moon. Today we look into the near future and see that if we do not come to some value conclusions as to what to do with the production and distribution of garbage, with the allocation of health care, with the endlessly draining arms race, with the breakup of the family, we will all soon be in misery. And misery is evil.
The historic solution for misery has been social. Into the dark recesses of the past our peering reveals that a few have always organized things so that they could escape misery by focusing the labors of the many upon themselves. This is to say in plain terms that every great world civilization has been formed on the social base of slavery, some kind of involuntary servitude. The scientific revolution and the accompanying industrial revolution enlarged the few to many, as natural power replaced slave power in producing the amenities of the good life. But the revolution has failed to improve the lot of the remainder. Technical processes used for evil now threaten everyone (e.g., the nuclear threat). Gone is the old scientific optimism, replaced by a wandering apprehension of gloom and doom.
The gloom and doom will continue until we have a widespread recognition of the realities of good and evil, even as there was a widespread recognition of a corner on some kinds of truth in the scientific revolution. How this will come, I do not know. But doubtless it will be a new kind of thinking, even as was the scientific revolution. It will be a thinking which has some demonstrable benefit, even as the scientific revolution benefited industrial and technical processes. Perhaps some group of persons will achieve a society so happy and emotionally prosperous that everyone will have to admit that they have a corner on good and evil, and will make them the keepers of good and evil, even as the scientific community has been made the keepers of certain kinds of truth.
But clearly a value revolution is needed as our world of inequities so clearly shows. Not only must we choose our future on the basis of truth but also on the basis of which choices are good and which are evil, which choices lead to peace and happiness, and which ones lead to misery and degradation. The next revolution must and will be a social thing. As was the scientific revolution, it must also be an institutionalizing of good thinking. And it will make possible the final revolution which will be the creation of a social order in which the cultural heritage and milieu of every child born will be truth, good, and perfected social order. But the revolution of good over evil must come before the society can be perfected. The mistake of Marx was to jump the gun. He thought that the scientific revolution was all that was necessary to destroy evil and create the just and perfect society. He did not see that science does not and cannot answer the question of good and evil. His new state simply perpetuates the evil of the old system, replacing nobles with party members, perpetuating social inequality in the midst of technical triumphs.
All that has been said thus far is a prelude as to how to teach thinking, good thinking. The prelude has been necessary, because not to put thinking into its historic context would be to shear thinking of its true power, the power to help us to see what our real problems are and to assist us with creating and implementing the social institutions which will assuage those ills. Good thinking must be a two-edged sword: cutting away error from truth and evil from good, that good and reasonable men and women might work in concert for that better world to which so many of us have dedicated our lives. Good thinking must see the world as a whole, as a system which includes people, truths and values.
III. The teaching of thinking.
As with everything else, thinking cannot be taught. But it can be learned. What we call good teaching is actually the facilitation of learning, and it can exist only as and if learning is actually taking place. But a good deal can be done to facilitate good thinking. Most of what can be done is to suggest possibilities which the learner can try, to see if they help. If they help, and if problems are solved, then facilitation has taken place.
The following is a description of an intense experimental honors course in thinking which has been conducted at Brigham Young University for the last nine years (since 1980). The course is actually a workshop in which daily written assignments which involve the practice of thinking skills are required of each student. The course has undergone many revisions. This account will review its present major features.
a. The Key is to ask good questions.
The key to thinking and learning is the asking of good questions. The interrogative stance puts the initiative on the inquirer, begins where he needs to begin, pursues what he wants and needs, proceeds at his pace, and terminates only according to the individual’s desire.
All learning is thinking, and thinking is the creation of concepts and the establishing of relationships among the ideas one has created. Relationships among concepts or ideas is what we ordinarily call understanding, and all questions are questions of understanding. It is the world of saber, not conocer knowledge which is opened up by questioning. (Of course, good questions may well lead indirectly to conocer types of knowledge.)
It is helpful in the facilitation of questioning to note that there are five kinds of questions. First there is the generic question of understanding, and all questions are questions of understanding. But within the domain of questions of understanding there are four principal subtypes. These are questions which elicit clarification, verification, evaluation and application. Questions of clarification are requests which seek surety of the intention of the speaker or enlargement of an area of ideas indicated by a speaker. “Do you mean to say that…?” and “Would you be more explicit?” and “Tell me more about X” are questions of clarification. Verification is concerned with the evidence for the truthfulness of an idea. Questions such as “What is the documentation for that data” and “How do you know whereof you speak?” and “How can you hold that idea in the face of evidence that X?” are questions of verification. Evaluation has to do with the value connections of ideas, and results in questions such as “Why is concept X better than concept Y?”, “Is this procedure a practical thing to do?” and “How can we be sure this is the moral thing to do in this situation.” Application questions deal with the actual use of ideas in the real world, and result in questions such as “How do I put this on?” and “Will this work for every occasion of the problem?”, and “Of what use is this object?” Questions for general understanding which do not well fit any of the four specialized kinds might be the following: “How is X related to Y?”, “In what ways is the human brain like a computer?”, and “What does hygiene have to do with longevity?”
One can, of course, mix categories of questions, such as asking, “How can you be sure that this is the best thing to do?” which mixes verification with evaluation. And if all questions are simply questions of understanding, why even separate out the four subtypes? The answer is that as one becomes aware of the subtypes and their combinations, one can become more expert in asking just the right question to elicit the answer needed. It is true that one can use a shovel to do the work of a hoe, just as one can use questions of evaluation to get at problems of verification. But clumsy and inefficient applications are not desirable in either gardening or thinking. Asking “Is this a good idea?” is a clumsy way of asking for the evidence for the truthfulness of a concept, and would better be replaced by “How can we be sure that this procedure is reliable?”
b. Everything is part of a system.
When a person has been alerted to the importance of asking good questions, he is ready to be exposed to systems thinking. Systems thinking is different from ordinary thinking in that it insists on conceiving things as wholes. It involves the recognition that though analysis of things or ideas is valuable, analysis must always result in a resynthesis to be fully fruitful. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and nothing can be understood all by itself. Understanding is a matter or relating, even as existing is a matter of being a part of a system. And it is important to realize that there is but a single system in existence: the universe itself.
It is useful to distinguish five modes of systems thinking. The first is systems analysis, which is studying something in the real world to determine its parts, how they function, and how that something relates to the universe around it. An example of this kind of thinking is a market survey to see what is needed in an area. The second mode of systems thinking is systems design. This is the invention of an idea structure which is not part of reality, but which hopefully would be an improvement upon reality if actualized. This is the planning, designing, inventing function which is so crucial to all successful solving of practical problems. An example of this would be the work of an architect. The third mode of systems thinking is systems creation, which is the translation of the desired systems design into reality, as a contractor builds the building which the architect has envisioned. The fourth kind of systems thinking is systems operation, which is the maintenance and use of a system for its intended purpose, such as the work a hotel manager would do. Finally, there is systems evaluation, which is the comparison of two systems according to some criterion of desirability to ascertain which of the two beings compared most nearly meets the desired standard. An example of systems evaluation is the star system by which many hotels are rated in various countries of the world.
To assist persons to learn to think in systems format it is useful to establish a standard set of questions which form a useful beginning to the five types of systems thinking. It is useful to see that every real system has a form, and may be considered as a static system. The important questions to ask for a static system are, “What are the system boundaries, which set it apart from the environment?” “What are the system parts and how are they related to one another?” And, “What is the function or purpose of this system as it exists in its environment?”
Many systems may also be analyzed in a dynamic aspect, asking such questions as: What are the inputs of the environment to this system? What are the outputs of the system to the environment? What are the factors which are in opposition to this system, which tend to its destruction? What is the relative efficiency of this system as it functions in its environment?
A system may also sometimes be seen as an agent system, one which contains an agent and is therefore not fully to be understood in terms of its structure and environment. For agent systems we ask such questions as: What is the goal or desire of this agent? What are the resources available to the agent? What strategy may the agent employ to use the resources available to attain the goal? What tactics would be useful to implement the strategy selected? What assessment can and should be made to determine when the agent has reached the desired goal? What evaluation of the cost/benefit ratio of the attainment of the goal can and should be made?
These questions of the static, dynamic and agent systems analysis are of course not exhaustive. They do provide a beginning, and a solid beginning for interrogative investigation of an area, and as the technique of systems thinking is learned by a person, his list of questions becomes tailored to his own particular personality, needs and successes. What is important for thinking is that a person see all things as systems, and all part of the one actual system of the universe. An example of the fruit of such systems thinking is the environmental concerns which are beginning to abound as people become painfully aware that no factory or business is an isolated entity unto itself. We will do better systems thinking when we all realize that individuals must not be a law unto themselves either. Consciousness of that necessity is beginning to be seen in restrictions on the public burning of tobacco (smoking), which burning some individuals seem to enjoy while being oblivious to the stress which that act causes in other persons near them.
c. Concepts are systems also.
The concept of systems as a foundation leads to an analysis of concepts as systems. Concepts are the building blocks of our thinking. Human beings think, speak and act according to their concepts, whether these concepts be correct or incorrect, fuzzy or precisely defined, few or many. To attain to clear and precisely articulated concepts is the foundation of all expertise. This process benefits from the application of good questions in order to elicit the systemic relationships which all concepts possess. The following is a list of ten questions which have been found useful to assist persons to think newly and precisely about their own concepts, thus to be able to think and to communicate with greater ability.
1. What are the names which attach to this concept? A listing of the names used, even from several languages, provides the key to researching of the concept. The name is not the concept, but is the index.
2. What is the base, language, culture, time-frame of this concept? All concepts are related to people in their historic settings, thus the necessity of seeing a concept as part of a particular cultural system at a particular time and place.
3. What is the etymology of the words used to designate this concept? It is important not to confuse historic usage with present concept, but historic usage of them provides important nuances of meaning for a concept.
4. What are the dictionary definitions of the symbol being used? Dictionary definitions are not to be confused with what a concept should be. They are simply a register of historic usage. But historic usage needs to be known whether or not that usage is fortunate or useful or not.
5. What are examples of the use of this concept (symbol) in the designated cultural base? Good dictionaries give such examples, and such examples are helpful in seeing how the concept has actually been deployed by other persons.
6. What are the correlative concepts which form the matrix of meaning in which this concept has its significance? Examples of such helpful correlative concepts are the genus, concepts which are similar, contrary and opposite, concepts which are complementary, counterfeit, and the perfection of the concept. Here we see systems operating as a concept is shaped and defined by the concepts with which a person associates the idea on which they are trying to shed light.
7. What key questions should I ask and answer to elicit factors of this concept which have not already been brought to light? This category gives the thinker the opportunity to get away from the prescribed questions and to explore what is needed at the fuzzy edges of this concept which is being fashioned.
8. What is the best definition of this concept? Here the person has the opportunity to pull together the very best thinking he or she can do to detail the nature of the concept in question. It is here recognized that concepts are and should be personal, for every person creates his own concepts within the cultural milieu in which he or she finds intellect. A concept system which is clear, articulated, which has integrity or consistency in itself and is most useful in solving problems is never a gift from the public domain, but must be achieved by the individual out of the materials furnished by the cultural heritage. Having achieved such a concept system, the fortunate possessor of same then has the problem of communicating it. But at least then he has the possibility of communicating precisely, which the cultural heritage alone does not usually afford.
9. What are positive and negative examples of this newly formulated concept? The definition is a beginning of the process of communicating the new concept. As we learn in life the usage of words from positive and negative examples used by our tutor, so we may communicate to others the nature of our concept by furnishing many positive and negative usages of the concept, according to the needs of the circumstances.
10. What effect should and does this concept have on me? What does it do for my mind, for my belief system? What does it do for my heart, for my value system? What does it do for my actions, the skills of body with which I relate to the universe? And what does it do for my power to influence the universe around me? A concept demonstrates its existence and power by the changes it makes in its possessor. Thus, part of the defining and communicating of the concept is the answering of questions as to what difference using it will make in the life of the user.
Concept formulation is the deliberate and forthright attempt of an individual to control his own thinking by acquiring a set and system of carefully thought-out concepts with which to relate to the universe. Anyone who does well at anything in this world has performed this operation, which operation enables the person to make correct and precise judgments about the world around him, and to make wise plans for acting. Concept formulation is a species of systems analysis as a preparation for other modes of systems thinking.
d. Strategies for effective systems action.
Armed with good questions, a sense of systems, and a power to formulate useful concepts, the person who is learning to think is ready to consider strategies. Strategies are specialized patterns of thinking which are devised to handle efficiently recurring human problems related to thinking. While there are many strategies, the principal ones for a thinker to master are those of communication, scholarship, science, religion, creativity, and evaluation. We shall consider each of these in turn.
1. Communication. Communication is the affecting of others. We communicate diseases, blows, and gifts, but the communication with which we are here principally concerned is the communication of ideas, which we do mainly through symbols. Communication is an expression of thinking in the speaker and a stimulus to thinking in the hearer.
It is useful for a user of language to know that there are four principal uses of language: to express one’s feelings and ideas, to describe the world, to command others, and to perform acts by authority. These are the disclosure, the descriptive, the directive and the declarative modes of assertion, or human symbol usage. Good thinking distinguishes them and identifies each correctly both when the person is speaker and hearer.
Knowing the type of assertion is the key to the capture process. To capture is to grasp the essence of any human communication, seeing it for just what it is. The capture format is to ask and answer four basic questions about any assertion:
a. What is the speaker’s purpose? (Knowing the correct type of assertion is of assistance here.)
b. What is the speaker’s main assertion? When a message is all boiled down, what is the point being made?
c. What is the support of that main point? Is it a true or important assertion, and what evidence is there for that? Does the speaker give evidence, or do I already have evidence which shows me that the speaker’s point is true or false, or important or unimportant?
d. What is the relevance of what the speaker says? Should I do something about it, and if so, what? And what might be the loss if I do nothing.
Only as a person grasps all four of these factors does a person grasp a message. These four parts map the nature of human beings. Each human being is made of value choices which are reflected in purpose: ideas which are reflected in main assertion; clout, which is reflected in support; and effects, which are reflected in relevance. These are the four aspects of the human system, and every communication reflects systemically these four aspects of a speaker. To communicate well, both as speaker and hearer, is to understand communication and communicators well, which these questions help one to do.
2. Scholarship. Scholarship is researching and interpreting the written communications of other persons, then forming an image of whatever they are describing on the basis of what has been documented. This is the typical mode of gaining ideas about the past and the distant where we have no personal opportunity to observe. Scholarship is a specialized mode of thinking which is designed to eliminate error in favor of the truth about matters one cannot directly observe. This strategy has served mankind rather well, but has not proved to be without problems, for it sometimes rejects truth in favor of error.
The essential thinking process of scholarship is to assemble the extant documents on a subject, interpret them, then to form a reconstruction of what they describe according to the stricture and canons of scholarship acceptable to the community of scholars at the present time in history. As with science, this is an institutionalizing of truth. No one person can read all the documents about every subject. So there is a division of labor in which one person becomes an expert on one set of documents and ideas, other persons on other documents and ideas. The hope is that if each person is responsible and careful, each person will contribute to the society the best that can be done and thus all will be edified as they believe the delivered reconstruction of the scholars.
Scholarship has large problems, of course, because human beings perform it and human beings have large problems. The scholar is at the mercy of whatever documents happen to be extant, what other scholars have said, the truthfulness of the writers of the original documents, and the canons which obtain at the time of writing. Scholarship eliminates the unusual, the spiritual, the unlikely, and the unverified. And this is done with good reason, for many things that are unusual, spiritual, unlikely and unverified are in fact not true. But some are, and thus the scholar labors in the cause of likely truth. The person who does good thinking understands and uses scholarship, both as a consumer and a producer, but is acutely aware of its limitations.
3. Science. The strategy of science is to produce reliable generalizations of fact, law, theory and principle out of the phenomena human beings observe about the universe. It is a creative enterprise, necessarily restricted by what ordinary human senses perceive, but highly flexible as to how those sensations shall be construed. Science also weaves a social fabric, for no person can observe and imagine all things. As one person does his task of generalizing and creating ideas which are responsible and within the current canons of scientific acceptability, all are enriched. Science has the advantage over scholarship that some of its products have enormous potential for technical application, and therefore for commercial gain, where scholarship is limited to the production of information.
To think scientifically is to attempt to characterize the universe in which we live in a manner that reduces surprises to zero. Its surety lies in its predictive ability. The controlled experiment reveals what has been and is; inductive faith in uniformity projects what will be. Fortunately for us humans, uniformity seems to be a real thing, making planning and engineering of many kinds feasible. But there are limitations to science.
Science cannot operate except in an area of controllable phenomena. If there cannot be a controlled experiment, there cannot be reliable projection. If the phenomena are not public, (if they are unique to some personal sensibility) again there cannot be scientific projection. And controlled experiments are very difficult to achieve, even in simpler cases such as physics and chemistry. But notwithstanding the limitations of science as a thinking strategy, every good thinker needs to know the procedure, to perform it well as necessary, and to consume its products with care and skepticism.
4. Religion. Religion is the strategy of the creation and maintenance of one’s self or one’s character through controlling habit formation. Habits are formed by unbroken patterns of choosing, and the strategy of religion is to learn to perform such unbroken patterns even in the face of thoroughly entrenched habits which one has had for a lifetime.
Using this strategy, there seems to be no limit as to which or how many habits can be changed. This gives the individual total control over his own personality over time. It is thus a great access to personal freedom. To understand the patterns of habit change, the function of triggers, of positive and negative feedback and rewards, the necessity of controlling the environment as well as the person, all give the person power over self.
The strategy of religion is not to be confused with church institutions. Churches traditionally have attempted to influence the habits of individual participants, to influence the character and choices of persons. But churches have usually done a poor job of making much difference except for initial imprint. Learning to think in the strategy of religion gives the individual the opportunity to take good out of every culture and environment and to incorporate that good into himself, be it values, ideas or physical action patterns. The strategy of religion is what gives lasting personal harvest to all other good thinking.
5. Creativity. Creativity is the strategy of taking the patterns given to the individual by nature and by his culture and then recombining those patterns in ways not before encountered. Creativity is a thought process, a thinking method. To learn how to do it is to free the imagination, that the imagination might learn well the heritage of the past and then expand that heritage. The greater the heritage of patterns, the greater the recombining potential, other things being equal.
Not all creativity is good or useful, even as the seemingly random mutations in a gene pool seldom produce viable, much less superior, individuals. But the value of a genuine improvement is so great, and so few persons seem to want to be genuinely creative, that the creative person has a great advantage in society.
Society is double-minded about creativity. In general what society rewards, especially in children, is conformity. Through conformity one learns his language and becomes acculturated and an acceptable member of the adult world. But then for an adult, lavish praises are heaped upon those who manage yet to be creative and produce things which society then treasures.
Thinking creatively is a social skill as well as a thinking skill. The wild imagination must be tamed to select and publicly produce just those new ideas which are on a leading edge of social change, which will be desirable and tolerable to the mass of less imaginative persons. Artist, inventors, military people, scientist and scholars all need to be creative, but responsibly and socially creative lest they be ostracized from the human sphere. To learn this double bind of unfettering the imagination then carefully fettering what is shared with others is the skill of creative thinking, which every good thinker may master, but especially can master if they are a creative facilitator.
6. Evaluation. The necessary companion skill for creativity must be evaluation. Evaluation is comparison of things with an idea. Having ideals is itself a matter of evaluation, for one must select good ideals or the process flounders. To pretend there is no good and no evil is to eliminate the possibility of evaluation. Some persons so pretend, but must introduce good and evil by the back door to avoid being flooded with the trivial and the obnoxious.
The strategy of evaluation is to have an acute sensitivity to value, which sensitivity can be enhanced by the deliberate thinking and experiences of a desiring individual, even it it cannot be taught. Like most other things, evaluation is a matter of experimentation, learning from the results of our choices. Admittedly this is circular, and a person who has no clue as to what is good and evil to begin with cannot learn evaluation, even from a lifetime of experience. But most persons do seem to have that starter ability to evaluate. Careful cultivation of that ability by good example and by special exercises then places evaluation in the repertoire of the thinker, enabling him to evaluate all of his own thinking and also those things communicated by other persons. Most people can tell physical garbage when they see it. But curiously many do not see intellectual garbage unless they are directed in thinking about it. The propaganda machines, acculturation techniques, and cultural pressures to conform seem to have done such a good job that not only is creativity rare but the ability to be a forthright and obviously responsible evaluator is at least as rare.
Evaluation is a social skill, even as creativity is. One must not be too far away from the sensibility and norms of the social milieu, or one will not be heard. To evaluate clearly in one’s own mind, then to make public only that which will be socially acceptable and helpful is the test of good thinking. Those who promote evil suffer the same social strictures, for they must not be too different from their contemporaries either. But promoting evil seems to be like rolling stones down a mountain; given the right social situation, it is easy. But promoting good is like rolling the stone back up the mountain. Not only does one need to evaluate correctly and carefully, but to affect the social scene you usually need to assist others to learn to think, to learn to evaluate; it is not enough to propound you own evaluation as it often is in the promotion of evil.
There are many other strategies, such as that of philosophy, persuasion, and entertainment. There are strategies of facilitation of learning, as there are specialized strategies that form the background of every profession. The more strategies of thinking a person masters, the more powerful he or she will be. But the emphasis in the teaching of thinking must be on those which are fundamental to the successful utilization of all other strategies, such as those discussed above.
e. Relevant general knowledge.
The thinking skills discussed above mostly fall into the category of the processing of information in special ways, which we stipulated in the beginning was the first priority in the teaching of thinking. The second priority was that of special knowledge, or truth. We turn now to a discussion of that area, focusing on the subjects of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and worldviews.
1. Epistemology. Epistemology is the discussion of how human beings know. Understanding what can be known and how it can be known is indispensable to good thinking and to the proper skepticism which every thinking person must constantly employ. To bring someone to a realization of the ways of knowing, with their strengths and limitations, is to give those persons a great freedom of perspective with which to evaluate the sayings of mankind.
The epistemologies which seem important to bring every thinker’s attention are the following:
a. Authoritarianism: Forming beliefs on the basis of information communicated from other human beings.
b. Rationalism: Ideas deduced from what one already believes or which is consistent with what one believes.
c. Empiricism: Forming beliefs on the basis of one’s own sensory observations.
d. Scientific empiricism: Forming beliefs on the basis of arrays of empirical data which have been mathematically treated to reveal justifiable generalizations.
e. Pragmatism: Forming and accepting ideas because they seem to work.
f. Skepticism: Rejecting ideas when there is not sufficient warrant to believe them.
g. Mysticism: The substitution of feeling for mental evidence in the accepting of ideas.
h. Non-human authoritarianism: Forming or accepting ideas on the basis of communication from non-human persons, should one encounter such.
i. Fabrication: The invention of ideas where there is a need and no other epistemology offers help.
j. Sensitivity to good and evil: The basic ability to make value judgments not based on personal preference. This is often seen in children but tends to be covered up in the process of acculturation. It is an epistemology which focuses not on truth, as do the others (with the possible exception of mysticism), but on values.
This list of epistemologies is longer than the standard philosophic categorization. It is deliberately longer to include all of the kinds of knowledge and knowing which are important to human beings in this world, even though some are not popular in academic circles. But it is important to understand them all, and to use each of them as needed. The best approach to thinking seems to be to use them in concert, as so many organ stops which enrich the flow of ideas. It is assumed that the ultimate justification for any epistemology is pragmatic: the source is judged by what it produces. But clearly, one who is ignorant of epistemological possibilities is woefully hindered. To know how to know and the limitations of what can be known is a great advance in the process of knowing and thinking.
2. Metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of the unseen world. While it is not implied that there is no value in studying the seen world, the seen world is rather well-known to human beings both through their own observations and through the cultural and scientific deposits which are the cultural heritage of particular peoples. But everyone is confused about metaphysics, for by definition it is the area of truth about which there is no established procedure for defining what is true and what is not.
What is crucial about metaphysics is not so much to have a set of answers but to have a set of questions. If one has answers, they cannot be verified. But if one has an understanding of the questions, then at least he or she can be wary whenever anyone propounds an idea which is clearly metaphysical or which is based on some metaphysical conclusion. Which is to say, of course, that the study of metaphysics makes one very skeptical about most things, because most human ideas of truth are demonstrably based on and intertwined with metaphysical presuppositions.
The questions of metaphysics are such as the following:
· Is the universe material, ideal, or both?
· Are universals or particulars more real, or do they have different status in different realities?
· What is the nature of time and space?
· Is there a genuine uniformity which guarantees our inductions, or is the universe an assemblage of curious chance events?
· What is the true nature of human beings? Is there more to a person than the physical body?
Some questions are borderline, as might be expected, bridging the seen and unseen worlds, such as:
· Are there intelligent beings other places in the universe?
· Are human beings part of a race which also exists elsewhere?
These questions are quasi-metaphysical because solid physical evidence would answer the question but in the absence of such evidence answers to the questions remain metaphysical speculations.
To be aware of metaphysical snares is again to be a wary purchaser in the marketplace of ideas. To be without this ability to think and to evaluate leaves one in a position of great naivete, which is unbecoming of one who likes to think that he thinks well.
3. Ethics. Ethics is the study of different value systems. Of itself, ethics does not make a person more moral, a better citizen of the world. But it does make a person more conscious of the alternatives and can assist a person to sharpen his or her perceptions of value if one cares to do so.
It is important for both personal decisions and for cultural awareness to be knowledgeable about the great historic value systems. These include the Cyrenaic emphasis on physical pleasure, the Platonic emphasis on knowing, the Aristotelian emphasis on the golden mean, the Epicurean emphasis on the balance of higher and lower pleasures, the Stoic tradition of apatheia, the moral sense of doctrine, the Kantian categorical imperative, and the utilitarian social emphasis on the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. A brush with one or two less traditional schemes is also valuable and invites the student to explore the great variety of these on his or her own.
One conclusion that seems important to emphasize is that all of these schemes mentioned are “rational” systems of ethics. They give an adherent a rule or principle on which to base practical decisions. But they fail to give any surety that the result one obtains from following them is in any way guaranteed to deliver the kind of reward the user anticipates. That is a way of saying that human ethical systems cannot deliver wisdom. They are not powerful enough to cover all contingencies, and therefore each fails, even in its own terms, at times. Not to learn this great lesson which Socrates taught so clearly is to miss one of the greatest cornerstones of good thinking. The moral of the story is, of course, that one must search beyond the rational systems of ethics to obtain a system of value considerations which has any hope of being a sure deliverer of sure and enduring wisdom.
Since all practical thinking and planning in this world involves value considerations and commitments, the study of ethics is indispensable to the learning of good thinking. If one cannot be sure, one can at least be wary, and that of itself is a great boon to thinking.
4. Worldviews. Having examined epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, it is next important to emphasize the systemic function of these areas of thought. To put answers to the questions of each area of thought together in a consistent whole is the business of building worldviews. A worldview is a person’s belief and planning system, and includes each of the above named disciplines and more, even if the person is not aware of it. But to become aware of one’s own thinking is one mark of a good thinker.
The study of worldviews asks and answers three basic questions. The first question is, “How do I know this?” The second question is, “What is the truth about this matter?” The question about truth must be answered in two separate phases, one relating to the seen or knowable world of nature (physics in the Greek sense), and the other relating to the unseen world of metaphysics. The third question relates to values and choices, and asks “What should be done in this situation?” The last question is the area of ethics.
Putting together the areas of epistemology, physics, metaphysics and ethics enables one to build a coherent worldview. Or, starting at the other end, one can take a person’s thinking and analyze it into the components of a worldview. For purposes of teaching a person to analyze a worldview, twenty or so questions suffice to elicit the information to give a picture of a person’s mind-set or worldview.
This ability to analyze and to synthesize worldview gives a person great power over his own thinking. Most persons have subscribed to a worldview in their youth as they learned their language but are almost totally oblivious to the fact that the view they have is in many aspects arbitrary and may indeed be false or undesirable in some points. But teaching that person to discover his own worldview as well as those of other persons gives the individual great power over his own thinking, for he or she can then alter that worldview in accordance with personal desires and experiences.
5. Applications. Armed with the skills and knowledge described above, students are then exposed to a number of readings in the subjects of personal responsibility, education, science, history, technology, education, politics and religion. They are challenged to ferret out of each area the issues which are of crucial importance and to evaluate and rank the answers to those issues. This is that part of the course which seems most rewarding to students, for they see and feel the power of their skills in working with the traditional problems of mankind.
IV. Conclusion
This approach to the teaching of thinking thus focuses on systems thinking. Individuals are taught to ask questions that elicit the systems characteristics of everything which they investigate, then to pursue the best way to conceive of these matters using background knowledge from the areas of philosophy, science, scholarship and common sense. As they learn to and do solve their problems, they will know that their thinking is good. As they compare the success they have in attaining personal goals with the success others around them have, they gain a sense of the comparative value of their thinking skills. But only as they look back over a lifetime of good thinking will they be able to see the value of their thinking powers in any ultimate perspective. The owl of Minerva looks only backwards.
But hope looks forward. There are a good many problems yet to solve to make this human world a fit place for all human beings to live. Good thinking, responsible thinking, systematic thinking which takes everything and every person into account is one thing that will help all of us towards that goal.