Thinking styles

[PatternChaser]

@Tom_Storm

@PatternChaser

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.

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?

Sorry, now it’s me who’s not sure what you’re getting at.

@Tom_Storm

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

Placing things into categories is what we mean by it. Even if the thing doesn’t fit the category, all that matters is that it’s been identified as a plant, or a squirrel, or a mass spectrometer…

It’s often convenient to be able to refer to “that car over there”. It makes speech so much easier. But beyond that? Philosophically, categorisation is fine, if the elements match the category, and the category itself is rationally formed. Often, one or the other of those is missing, though…

****

@Tom_Storm

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.

I think we’re using the term differently, and maybe to describe different things? To use binary thinking as a style is a sort of habit, and I suspect that “country, class and culture” play no role in it.

There are many issues for which binary thinking is the best and most appropriate. There are others for which network thinking is more useful. But if one is unable to think in a network fashion, perhaps only because we never learned to do it that way, then one is limited, and may find some problems more difficult to solve as a result?

[Tom_Storm]

@PatternChaser

To use binary thinking as a style is a sort of habit, and I suspect that “country, class and culture” play no role in it.

They come to mind because many of our habits of thought are rooted in the culture we acquire. My father and his working class friends saw everything in bifurcation. While my mother and her ilk from a bohemian background were more likely to see shades of grey. I suspect there’s a correlation between certain types of education and culture and certain ways of framing.

@PatternChaser

It’s often convenient to be able to refer to “that car over there”. It makes speech so much easier. But beyond that? Philosophically, categorisation is fine, if the elements match the category, and the category itself is rationally formed. Often, one or the other of those is missing, though…

I’m still not clear on your formulation. Do you have an alternative to binary thinking you can lay out in a sentence maybe that will assist?

Rohr would say that the alternative to binary thinking is “both/and” thinking; being able to hold opposites together, live with paradox, and see that truth is often bigger than either side.

Do you see it differently?

[PatternChaser]

@Tom_Storm

@PatternChaser

To use binary thinking as a style is a sort of habit, and I suspect that “country, class and culture” play no role in it.

They come to mind because many of our habits of thought are rooted in the culture we acquire. My father and his working class friends saw everything in bifurcation. While my mother and her ilk from a bohemian background were more likely to see shades of grey. I suspect there’s a correlation between certain types of education and culture and certain ways of framing.

Those are interesting thoughts. Sadly, I have nothing constructive to add to them. Thanks, all the same.

@Tom_Storm

Do you have an alternative to binary thinking you can lay out in a sentence maybe that will assist?

Rohr would say that the alternative to binary thinking is “both/and” thinking; being able to hold opposites together, live with paradox, and see that truth is often bigger than either side.

Do you see it differently?

Not really. One alternative to binary thinking starts by getting rid of the ‘Law’ of the excluded middle, and starting instead with TRUE, MAYBE, FALSE, BOTH, NEITHER, but the real gain, I think, is when you reach network thinking…

IMO