ID :
164229
Sat, 02/26/2011 - 16:06
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Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/164229
The shortlink copeid
Expert: It is impossible to define thinking
TEHRAN, Feb.26 (MNA)-- Dr. Mark Tebbit, a lecturer at the University of Reading, said “it is impossible to define thinking.”
“We cannot say where thinking starts, or identify the level at which mere perceptual awareness of our surroundings becomes thought,” Tebbit told .
Tebbit made this statement when asked about the definition of “authentic thinking”, and why do we need to have authentic thinking in our time?
Following is Tebbit’s full answer:
As philosophers, this is our stock-in-trade. Teaching the art or skill of thinking properly is what we do. We teach students to question premises and identify defective arguments, to recognize fallacies and expose dangerous rhetoric. In a word, 'critical' thinking. This acquired ability is indispensable but relatively primitive. Taken alone and valued only for itself, it will never deliver what philosophy needs to deliver today. What else do we need? The greatest cliché of our time is that we need to think holistically. Everyone says it, not many do it. We need to recognize that every area of thought connects with every other. Breaking out and going beyond analysis into genuine synthesis and integrated thought requires the fusing of imagination with intellect. It means thinking with the whole brain, rather than alternating between its two hemispheres. This cannot be taught, at least not directly, but it can be encouraged. Abductive leaps of the imagination - this is what the human animal excels at. Combining sharp analysis with imaginative insight. Too much orthodox theory and practice does everything it can to stifle this faculty.
Take a step back. It is impossible to define thinking, never mind authentic thinking, because its lower limits cannot be fixed. We cannot say where thinking starts, or identify the level at which mere perceptual awareness of our surroundings becomes thought. I repeat: this awareness becomes thought, it is not replaced or supplemented by it. Conscious thought includes pre-reflective awareness, and is itself a heightened form of awareness.
So how does one single out authentic thinking? What is the real thing? We have first to contrast it with the inauthentic. What kinds of thinking might we regard as unreal? Superficial critical thought floats on the surface of things. Criticism reproduced from learned maxims or habitual ways of thinking, following fixed patterns, through fear of falling off the edge of the world, or falling through the cracks.
There is a paradox at the heart of any serious answer to this problem. Real critical thinking starts with the ability to reflect on one's own automatic thought processes, to ask 'why did I just think that?' Am I the genuine creator of my own thoughts? How much control do I have over the structures of the language that runs through my mind? Herein lies the paradox. Critical thought must link up with its own sources, with what inspired it in the first place. Real thought presupposes the restored power of language, the rediscovery of the rough world beneath the smooth world of the universals that spring to mind automatically. Abductive reasoning powers pervade the animal world. The first human achievement was to rise from the animal kingdom armed with not much else but these powers. The unique human ability has been the will to control language and concretize particularity. With the advance of philosophical sophistication, these faculties are drained of their dynamic power, as reason is formalized and creativity stifled. Making contact with these abilities requires the suspension of formal logic, but the result is an untrammeled spontaneity that one was trying to bring under control in the first place. That is the paradox. The more genuine the thinking becomes, the more you begin to lose critical acuity. The more spontaneous, the less free. This is the paradox that has to be resolved today.
There is a lot of good reading on this topic. I strongly recommend Umberto Eco: The Sign of Four. John Dewey: How We Think. Norwood R. Hanson: Patterns of Discovery. C.S.Peirce: Collected Writings Vol.5. Gilbert Harman: Thought. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self. A.N.Whitehead: Science and the Modern World. Anything by Martin Heidegger.
(Dr Mark Tebbit is lecturer of University of Reading. He lectures on the philosophy of law and crime, epistemology, early modern philosophy, and also the philosophy of A.N.Whitehead, on which he is writing a book. He is the author of Philosophy of Law (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2005), as well as articles and reviews on epistemology and philosophy of science. He is also a member of Faculty at the University of Notre Dame (London Centre)).
“We cannot say where thinking starts, or identify the level at which mere perceptual awareness of our surroundings becomes thought,” Tebbit told .
Tebbit made this statement when asked about the definition of “authentic thinking”, and why do we need to have authentic thinking in our time?
Following is Tebbit’s full answer:
As philosophers, this is our stock-in-trade. Teaching the art or skill of thinking properly is what we do. We teach students to question premises and identify defective arguments, to recognize fallacies and expose dangerous rhetoric. In a word, 'critical' thinking. This acquired ability is indispensable but relatively primitive. Taken alone and valued only for itself, it will never deliver what philosophy needs to deliver today. What else do we need? The greatest cliché of our time is that we need to think holistically. Everyone says it, not many do it. We need to recognize that every area of thought connects with every other. Breaking out and going beyond analysis into genuine synthesis and integrated thought requires the fusing of imagination with intellect. It means thinking with the whole brain, rather than alternating between its two hemispheres. This cannot be taught, at least not directly, but it can be encouraged. Abductive leaps of the imagination - this is what the human animal excels at. Combining sharp analysis with imaginative insight. Too much orthodox theory and practice does everything it can to stifle this faculty.
Take a step back. It is impossible to define thinking, never mind authentic thinking, because its lower limits cannot be fixed. We cannot say where thinking starts, or identify the level at which mere perceptual awareness of our surroundings becomes thought. I repeat: this awareness becomes thought, it is not replaced or supplemented by it. Conscious thought includes pre-reflective awareness, and is itself a heightened form of awareness.
So how does one single out authentic thinking? What is the real thing? We have first to contrast it with the inauthentic. What kinds of thinking might we regard as unreal? Superficial critical thought floats on the surface of things. Criticism reproduced from learned maxims or habitual ways of thinking, following fixed patterns, through fear of falling off the edge of the world, or falling through the cracks.
There is a paradox at the heart of any serious answer to this problem. Real critical thinking starts with the ability to reflect on one's own automatic thought processes, to ask 'why did I just think that?' Am I the genuine creator of my own thoughts? How much control do I have over the structures of the language that runs through my mind? Herein lies the paradox. Critical thought must link up with its own sources, with what inspired it in the first place. Real thought presupposes the restored power of language, the rediscovery of the rough world beneath the smooth world of the universals that spring to mind automatically. Abductive reasoning powers pervade the animal world. The first human achievement was to rise from the animal kingdom armed with not much else but these powers. The unique human ability has been the will to control language and concretize particularity. With the advance of philosophical sophistication, these faculties are drained of their dynamic power, as reason is formalized and creativity stifled. Making contact with these abilities requires the suspension of formal logic, but the result is an untrammeled spontaneity that one was trying to bring under control in the first place. That is the paradox. The more genuine the thinking becomes, the more you begin to lose critical acuity. The more spontaneous, the less free. This is the paradox that has to be resolved today.
There is a lot of good reading on this topic. I strongly recommend Umberto Eco: The Sign of Four. John Dewey: How We Think. Norwood R. Hanson: Patterns of Discovery. C.S.Peirce: Collected Writings Vol.5. Gilbert Harman: Thought. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self. A.N.Whitehead: Science and the Modern World. Anything by Martin Heidegger.
(Dr Mark Tebbit is lecturer of University of Reading. He lectures on the philosophy of law and crime, epistemology, early modern philosophy, and also the philosophy of A.N.Whitehead, on which he is writing a book. He is the author of Philosophy of Law (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2005), as well as articles and reviews on epistemology and philosophy of science. He is also a member of Faculty at the University of Notre Dame (London Centre)).
