Thinking styles

General Philosophy
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This topic poses no clear philosophical question(s), it’s just me examining something that intrigues me. Axiomatic (i.e. assumptions; (hopefully-educated) guesses):

Mind exists. Mind entertains thoughts and thinking.

As a retired software designer, with my speciality being firmware, I find it natural to begin with the hardware and work upward in abstract levels. In this case, my use of “hardware” is thoroughly figurative, as mind has no physical (the “hard” in hardware) existence that I know of.

The first level we encounter is the most basic. Almost everyone thinks in words, pictures, or some combination of the two. I think in patterns, which is unusual, but not unheard-of. Perhaps there are other variants of which I am unaware? It would be interesting to find out…

Does our internal ‘thought language’ (words, pictures, etc) influence the way we do philosophy? I think it must, mustn’t it? :thinking:

At the next level, we find one of the most basic thinking styles: binary thinking. Fight-or-flight thinking. In our earlier history, this was what we needed. Without it, the survival of the fittest probably wouldn’t’ve included most of us. :wink:

Binary thinking seeks to simplify everything to a simple two-way decision. TRUE or FALSE; black or white, fight or flight, and so forth. When you’re not sure what that noise was, you don’t have time for philosophical deliberation, so this style of thinking is thoroughly appropriate to our needs at that time.

But there are other styles of thinking too, the most obvious complement to binary thinking is multivalued thinking; flexible thinking; systems thinking; network thinking; gestalt thinking. Such styles can be more powerful than binary thinking, in some circumstances. In some cases, there are issues that binary thinking simply can’t deal with. In other cases, not so much. It’s always about selecting the most appropriate tool from your toolbox: horses for courses, as they say.

Up another level, we might discover seeming ‘types’ of thinking: logical/rational, emotional, team/faith doctrine, sociocultural or personal, the list probably goes on… Not all of these are useful to philosophers, but they are styles for which we find uses, in various aspects of our lives.

As we rise in (abstract) levels, the term “thinking style” gradually seems to become less useful and relevant, but I think we have at least one more useful level. The contrast between certain and ‘objective’ thinking, such as a scientist might do, and flexible and uncertain consideration. Again, these tools are appropriate for some tasks, but not so much for others.

As a final offering, we might consider a focus on ‘law’ or on ‘chaos’. Or a more inclusive view that tries to consider both, perhaps as some sort of spectrum.

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So, is there anything here that you find interesting, and would like to discuss? I hope so. I await your judgement. :wink:

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Here are some philosophical temperaments which are related: Tough-minded vs tender minded (James), rationalist vs empiricist, analytic vs continental, systematic vs fragmentary, abstract vs concrete, optimistic vs pessimistic (Schopenhauer), idealist vs realist, Apollonian vs Dionysian (Nietscszhe)

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I think it’s worth asking oneself “to what end do I ask these questions?” I think to some, the reason is almost solely for aesthetic or entertainment purposes. For others, it’s about developing a view of the world that can be applied and useful (I think these views are rarely reconcilable). I am sure there are other answers too, that I don’t currently have the imagination to summon.

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I don’t know anything about computers or what software is, but I hear this.

Not sure that most binary thinking seeks to do anything in particular. I think it’s the default setting for a lot of people: either/or, friend/foe. It is the easiest (and perhaps most primitive) story to tell. Perhaps it’s not so much that we aim to simplify, we’re just lacking shades of grey.

Father Richard Rohr talks a lot about the pitfalls of binary thinking (and no, I am not a theist). Rohr’s alternative to this binary thinking is “both/and” or non-dual thinking, where you can hold two apparently opposing things together without assuming one must be completely right and the other completely wrong. It is useful because reality is often more complicated than simple either/or categories, and it allows us to see contradictions, ambiguity and different perspectives. The point is not to abandon all judgement, but to become less trapped by rigid categories.

Some people are inordinately fond of categorising the world around them, and if they can’t name something with unambiguous clarity, they become uncomfortable or seek to force it into a category.

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True enough, but I think this is something that has been greatly excacerbated by Western culture in particular. Consider that for long periods of Western history, at least prior to the 20th century, there was considerable societal pressure to conform to approved (or orthodox) religious views. I think binary thinking owes much more to that, than to evolutionary pressures and adaptation. After all, Christianity has had a very strong element of ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ and ‘this is the one true faith’. And in Western philosophy, in particular, great emphasis was placed on Aristotelian logic, where such principles as the principle of non-contradiction and the related law of the excluded middle were said to be foundational. The combination of religious orthodoxy and Aristotelian logic can (not must) result in that kind of binary thinking.

Contrast the Catuṣkoṭi (four-cornered) logic of Indian philosophy: P (it is), not P (it is not) P & not P (both is and is not); not( P or not P) e.g.

  1. Animals understand love
  2. Animals do not understand love
  3. Animals both do and do not understand love
  4. Animals neither do nor do not understand love

This was notable of the philosophical exegesis of Buddhism given by Nāgārjuna originater of ‘madhyamaka’ (Middle Way) Buddhism that has had great influence in East Asian culture. An analysis from a contemporary philosopher can be found in this Aeon essay which contrasts Buddhist and Aristotelian logic.

But in addition to the considerations of logic, there’s also one of temperament. Some have philosophical temperaments, whilst others do not. Much of what is discussed on this forum would draw blank incomprehension from many people I know, even a kind of bemused pity: “why do you think about these questions which probably have no answer? What’s the point?” There’s also the question of religion which has often been seen as adjacent to philosophy: “What does it all mean? Does the world make sense?”

Whereas for another kind of temperment, the questions might be: “How does that happen? How does it work? What causes it?” And many of those differences of temperament are constitutional to the individuals, they are natural to them.

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Various styles of thought exist for various purposes. But like the theory of evolution explains the organism as evolving from simple to complex, one might believe that also mental capacities or thought evolves from simple to complex.

I don’t think so, but I remember reading an old art historian who was trying to explain ancient Egyptian pyramids as if they were the result of a simple capacity to think of spatial relations. Yet complex monumental architecture existed millennia before the pyramids, (e.g. in Turkey).

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I’ve always found it interesting, that if it is indeed the case thinking is a certain process within a dedicated system, there won’t be a style, per se, that isn’t merely a representation of the thinker himself, in his employment of that system.

Style doesn’t belong to the strictly procedural form of thought in general. It belongs to the thinker, by determining what content his thoughts in general will have.

Besides, and holding with a procedural cognitive system, to even say thought has this or that style, is a judgement of relative quality, which cannot possibly occurred with the thought itself, which makes explicit style is not contained in it.

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Wow! Thanks to @Thrifclyfe, @Dobbler, @Tom_Storm, @Wayfarer, @jkop, @Mww, and anyone else who comments later too. Thank you all. :smiley:

Oh, I think it does. I think its nature is, in part, to help the thinker to simplify our pesky over-complicated world, reducing nuanced situations by removing even grey — never mind colour — leaving only black and white. Choices don’t get simpler than this. And for many applications, that’s a good thing, but not all.

I think it’s the default setting for most or all humans.

I think that, as we simplify, we reject grey as part of the simplification operation. Perhaps the ideal might be to lose even more, say light, leaving only one option: dark. No troubling choices, no matter how simple, but only one possibility, one truth value. Bliss! For some…

Thanks for the name! I found several articles worth reading. I’m a theist, I’m afraid, but not a Christian. The God I venerate is not even a creator-God, but that’s another story for another topic.

Our desperate-seeming need to categorise everything has bothered me ever since I realised that there are no such things as categories in the real world in which we live. They’re merely part of our efforts to simplify the world enough to fit inside our heads. After all, it’s all so difficult and complex, and we are so, er, small and limited. :wink:

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Ooo, thanks. That Aeon essay, in particular, is a Real Find, for me, at least. It’s a gem!

Adjacent? Aren’t such questions central to metaphysics, always my favourite area of philosophy? :wink: Not that I discount religion, although my views on religion and spirituality are not quite mainstream, at least in countries where the Abrahamic religions hold sway. Too proscriptive for me; too keen on ‘we are right, so you are wrong’.

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Yes, I’ve always found it a bit strange when some seem to believe that “mental capacities or thought”, or maybe consciousness, evolved from nothing in a single step. Such things are often multi-stage phenomena, because they take a while to emerge in their final (?) form. IMO.

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I have often said a casual thing at debate: Language is ambiguous.

What surprises me is the vehemence with which some people oppose such a mundane observation.

I suspect those are the binaries. :smiley:

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Yes, thinking styles have little or no meaning or applicability, except to thinkers, so such styles must (?) be applicable to the thinkers, not to thought.

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Yes. As I get older, and learn a little more, it is increasingly and screamingly obvious that our categories don’t fit the world we insist on applying them to. Consider the diagnosis of a mental health condition like autism. We sort of assume it’s well-defined, and maybe quite precise, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Autists are a collection of individuals who have a few things in common, but they (we) are almost as different from one another as so-called neurotypical folk are. We just share a few things with each other that others tend not to possess. But we force them all into the category called “autism”, and that’s that. Except that the pitfalls of that over-simplification become very clear, very quickly.

There are lots of other examples. What I’m saying here is not about, or limited to, autism. The latter merely offers a good example. Categorisation has some very significant weaknesses, IMO.

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Oh yes. If it wasn’t, and we had one word for every concept that we required, we would all need vocabularies of many millions of words. This is quite impossible for our limited human minds. And so we have ambiguity, where words can carry more than one meaning, sometimes simultaneously.

For myself, I shrug and make the best of it. There are occasions when ambiguity can be used to express some things more clearly, if that makes sense? The so-called double entendre is a good, and amusing, example of this.

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Yes, words are compressions. We make up words like “Negroid” so that we can talk about a particular type of human. The problem, as I see it, is that we then forget it is a compression. We think that “a black guy” exists out there, rather than remembering it’s just a word we use to point.

When I was a kid, pre-integration, I went to a new school and was surprised to find that I had two black classmates, so I asked about it. “Oh, they’re not black,” I was told. “They’re Puerto Ricans.”

Pretty good evidence that ‘black’ is a man-made term and not some kind of equals sign between our minds and reality.

But I am a guy who doesn’t even believe in species. I’ve had too many dogs to believe that there is such a thing as a dog. They’re all different. It’s fine if the scientists need the term to do their business, but I’m not falling for it.

Yes, it’s why we have the word ‘spectrum’ now, isn’t it?

The category was too sharp even for the science types.

Oh, goodness. Don’t get me started. The forum may regret it!

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What’s interesting to me is the number of people who are frightened by that realization. We have a passion to control reality in a nice orderly fashion.

I blame it on our primal lust to know. Uncertainty is painful out in the bush. Every animal wants to know what’s what. Is that a lion I hear behind that tree or isn’t it?

But we humans mostly know things through language, so our lust is to nail it down and make it give us knowledge as certain as our knowledge of the lion/no-lion.

The logicians seem to be on a quest to wrestle language and truth to ground, but I think they should relax and write a poem.

At least on weekends.

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Well, here’s me: I can’t think in pictures if I tried. I may have, most likely have aphantasia. So that’s out. There are almost always words running through my head, but it’s a “surface flow”. Sometimes it’s just for the fun of it - there’s no real thought beneath the flow. When I do have a thought, I try to formulate it, but when I formulate a thought I have to concentrate. I have false starts. It’s different from the word-flow I have when I just see where it goes. I feel I must close the gap somehow, and I never quite succeed. At the same time, words pin down thought in my short term memory so I can expand on them. There’s a “chaos state” that includes wondering, holding and questioning positions and such. But if something distracts me I can “lose the thread”, the words remain, but I have to guess what I thought when I formulated a thought like, just as if I hadn’t been the origin of the thought. It’s really weird to try and explain that, and almost certainly not quite like that, but it’s the best I can do.

I get frustrated when people conflate words and thoughts. I mean, sure, creating words involves thoughts, and if they run through your head you certainly have word-thoughts, but you also have… thought-thoughts? Concept thoughts? I’ve learned that for many others words and thoughts go so closely together that the difference seems to elude them. And I can’t seem to grasp how that works.

For me, words are communication tools, but also a source of thought-alienation: thoughts reflected back at myself as something other than what they were when I thought them and weren’t words yet. There’s this weird back and forth going on. And it takes a long time to write a forum post, and even then I probably post about 40 % of what I type up.

I don’t know if I’d say I think in patterns; I think patterns are what remains when thought calms down (like a new film of skin over a wound?) Because I’m like that in my head, I have little choice but to be a relativist and structuralist at heart. It’s not a considered position; it’s a necessary grounding so I can think at all. Affinities to various philosophies follow: I’m highly compatible with Husserl, don’t understand Heidegger at all, am ambivalent about Kant, have little in common with Aristotle or Plato, and so on. I tend to assume it’s like that for everyone - a grounding and affinities growing outwards. But who knows? If I try to question that, thought falls apart.

Words remain, though. I can keep a conversation going on auto-pilot for a while before I face total blankness (which is inevitable in such a case). I don’t always immediately notice I’ve lost the thread. And I’m not sure how to proceed (socially) in such a case, because I find people don’t understand my attempts to explain.

While I was at university, I’d sometimes spin a theory and then without a change in inflection I’d just say something like “but that’s probably all just nonsense”. I didn’t notice how frustrating this was for people who were trying to follow what I said, until someone told me. I eventually stopped doing that.

I guess my style of thinking is directed turbulence both enabled and hampered by words until the liquid just sinks into ground and leaves behind patches of recognisable quicksand.

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I’m the same, but there is a twist to it.

At sleep onset, I try to imagine faces. I can’t really see the faces, not with any detail, and yet there is unmistakable recognition. When I try to bring up Granny’s face, I can’t see her clearly, but I feel certain it’s her. It’s the faintest outline of a face, along with the certainty that that’s Granny.

Sometimes minor actors come up—faces I’ve seen rarely and without significance, and yet I’m certain who they are.

I suspect there’s some kind of similar dance going on between concepts and words. Maybe the word isn’t visible even when we’re sure of the concept.

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Not sure what you have in mind here. Do you mean the contingent nature of human understanding? Are you heading towards a post structural frame, or do you reject this as a category?

Personally I often find categorisation useful and unavoidable. But it depends on what we mean by it.

Sure, however, if we agree that autism is a genuine phenomenon, then it can be described. To say there is a diversity of presentations within the “spectrum” reminds us to be mindful of generalisations. To me, it seems that the harm is often done by the generalisations we make about categories. Republican voters, for instance, are a category, but they do not all see the world in the same way.

It might be although that’s not my experience. I would say that people may be binary on certain subjects and not on others. I suspect that country, class and culture play a role in all that.

That is surprising. I would have thought that the salient lessons of politics, law, advertising and religion in our post-Orwellian era is just how slippery language and meaning are. And of course there are post-structuralist thinkers who regard language as unstable, in the sense that meanings are contingent, context-dependent, and never finally fixed. Seems almost like common sense.

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I think it’s both common sense and entirely obvious. Easily demonstrated.

But people build their knowledge structures with words, and some get uneasy when a guy walks in and announces that steel girders are actually composed of putty.

That’s my best guess anyway.

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