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VIII. Thinking

Memory and thought are both powers of the mind, but while there is some connection between them they are regarded as two different phenomena.

Memory is a matter of association that enables us to recall a specific thing or the idea of that thing when another thought or perception is in mind. There is no understanding of the relationships between the individual memories, merely a basic link between the two.

Thinking entails understanding of the things in our memory - knowing how they are related to one another or how they function. Thought is based upon memory, as we cannot conceive of relationships or functions without items that are related or functional (EN: though abstract logic may enable us to do this without knowledge of a specific thing - to know that dogs bark does not require memory of a specific dog or a specific sound, the archetypes in the relationship are based on concrete knowledge and the amalgamation of particular things we have encountered or imagined.)

Said another way, there can be memory without thought, but no thought without memory.

Association of Ideas

Pyle mentions word-association as a method of observing how the mind works. In an experiment with students, he asked them to write the word "horse" at the top of a piece of paper, then to spend three or four minutes writing down other words that come to mind, in a list.

Most often, there are simple connections

Less common, and most curious, are the instances in which the words form chains of connection.

It is very difficult to write a list of entirely random words that have nothing to do with a horse unless the student meant to purposefully avoid them.

All of this illustrates the manner in which the mind thinks: a word triggers many memories and these memories may trigger other memories. What is most important to thinking than remembering is recognizing the reason those words came to mind. There is a definite logic to them, and this becomes increasingly clear when it is noticed that the words occur in clusters (a few words that describe the quality of the animal, a few that describe its actions, etc.) that are logically connected.

Determinants of Associations

Pyle mentions in brief a number of the factors that create strong and persistent associations between concepts.

Novelty

A strong factor that creates association is the novelty of an experience. The human mind tends to ignore things that are familiar, and focus on the unfamiliar. If we walk down a busy street and pass crowds of men in black suits, a man in a white suit comes to our attention, is noticed, and is remembered.

For the same reason, our first experience with things persists with great strength. A person's first love is a particularly strong memory, as is their first time riding on a train, or the first time they tasted something.

He pauses to mention that this should be carefully considered by parents and teachers, in making sure that a child's first experience of something that is beneficial remains positive, and his first experience of something harmful is negative, to create a strong and enduring association.

Recency

Another strong factor that creates associations is one of recency: we may remember what we ate for lunch yesterday or the day before, but certainly not on the fifteenth of the previous month, or on this date in the previous year, unless there was something particularly unusual that happened at the time.

Frequency

It has been noted that repetition is an aid in memory, and it is also an aid in creating logical connections. If a colleague shows up at the office at a quarter after nine every day, we sense that something is wrong if he shows up much earlier or later than his usual time. OR if a person always says "hello" we feel peculiar on the occasion when he neglects to do so.

In this sense, consistency is particularly important in remembering things - if two things are experienced in a given arrangement in space or time, we develop a strong sense that it is how they ought to be. Recall the earlier mention of being unable to recognize a policeman who is out of uniform.

Intensity

Intensity is considered in two dimensions: the first is the intensity of sensory stimulation. We remember bright colors, loud noises, strong aromas, etc. more readily than weaker stimuli.

In another sense, intensity refers to the emotional state that was experienced proximate to a stimulus. We may remember an incident that caused us fear, or something that we noticed immediately afterward when we are in a fearful state. We can also remember details that we did not directly experience, merely heard or read about, that produced an emotional reaction.

He also mentions that things tat stimulate us in multiple ways create stronger memories. To read of something is a single source of stimulation (albeit mental and abstract), to see an illustration in a book causes us to recall it better, to see a physical object better still, and to handle that object even more so. Sensual immersion, such as a visit to an apple orchard in which all five senses are engaged, are the strongest experiences.

Mood and Attitude

While it has been said that intensity of emotion creates stronger memories and association, the relationship between a person's mental state and their adeptness and manor of thinking is not so simple. Mood can also be a distraction, calling our attention away from external stimuli and clouding the thoughts.

Moods tend to be temporary and attitudes longer-lasting. The most long-lasting attitudes are also part of our character, and character plays a significant role in our attentiveness to certain things.

It is especially noticeable in terms of the prejudices a person holds: any person who has a strong opinion tends to notice things that support his opinion and ignore things that contradict it - except in instances where he becomes outraged at something that contradicts his attitude about something.

A person's race, gender, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion, academic interests, and other factors strongly influence the amount of attention that he gives to certain things, his willingness to acknowledge them, and his propensity to remember them.

In other instances a person can be in a particularly poor mood: having a headache, indigestion, or other sort of pain tends to distract from other stimuli. Being angry, hurried, or even excited likewise cause a person to give less attention or selective attention to thoughts and sensations.

We cannot prevent ourselves from having moods, attitudes, and qualities of character - but it would be wise to be aware of them, and the manner in which we tend to be influenced by them, in evaluating and mitigating our reaction to the things we experience.

Thinking and Reasoning

Thinking is the exploration of ideas in the mind, following the kinds of associations discussed thus far. There is a rationale for the connection of one idea to another, then to another, and so on but it is merely an association that has a very basic rationale. That is to say, that thinking is far more basic and unstructured than reasoning.

Pyle considers that in the earliest stages of life, the mind is chiefly perceptual - attempting to fathom the stimulus we received through the senses and having no method of associating what we experience to memory, as memory does not have any structure until it has a sufficient store of information to work upon. Perception alone limits us to the present moment, unable to connect one experience to the next.

As the store of memories increases, that which we experience can be compared and contrasted to that which is already known. This first enables us to evaluate experienced stimuli as being similar or different to remembered stimuli and begin a primitive categorization based on correlations.

It is only then that we are able to think. This becomes evident in comparing the behavior of children and men when they are deprived of present stimuli. A man can be content to sit in a chair and think for hours at a time because he has a store of memories to furnish his mind with something to work upon. A child becomes restless quickly because he has little to think about, as a result of the shallowness and brevity of his life's experiences.

However, the existence of too many memories can at times become its own distraction. An adult or older child may have difficulty in focusing his mind on an intended task because memories intrude. He cannot see a thing without recalling a great deal of information about that thing and related concepts. His mind drifts during the course of conversation because the memories triggered by one sentence distract him from paying attention to the next, and he meanders off to topics unrelated to the thread of the present conversation.

Reasoning is a more advanced form of thinking, in which the flow of ideas is constrained to a purpose. It is a matter of sorting out all of the memories that are aroused in the mind to focus on those that are germane to a topic, such as evaluation of problem-solving. Thinking is amorphous and disorganized, whereas reasoning has a specific shape and purpose.

This gives rise to a question: what is the faculty or power that controls thought and enables us to reason? Pyle believes it has to do with the most basic matching skills of the mind, which isolates certain thoughts as being related to a topic and disqualifies others as irrelevant. In that sense a man attempting to pole a raft across a channel is interested only in the information about rafts, poles, and rivers that are useful to the task of using a pole to push a raft across a river - and not every fact that is remembered about those three objects.

Reasoning is also based on a structure. When a thought occurs to us, it is because "this" reminds one of "that" - and no more. Where reasoning takes place, it is not enough for two things to be connected in memory, but to understand the relationship between the two: is one a property of another, or a similarity between them, or that one precedes or causes the other in our experience. Thus to the man attempting to cross the river, "wood reminds me of trees" is a thought, but "wood floats upon water" is an element of reasoning to the individual whose interest is crossing a body of water.

In essence, reasoning is the confluence of various elements of thought: to know what something is, what it does, how it relates to other things, how its properties relate to certain actions, and other details that are germane to achieving a specific outcome. Thoughts of irrelevant facts and relationships may intrude upon our reasoning, but are not included in our reasoning unless we recognize that they are useful to the process.

Reasoning is also based on speculation. A person who has used a device in the past knows what it does and can set himself to using it in the same manner as in the past without having to employ reason to any substantial degree. Meanwhile a person who encounters a device for the first time and does not understand how it works must inspect it, in an attempt to figure out what it does and how to operate, and then experiment to determine whether his speculation is correct. If he is successful, his next encounter with the same device and task becomes a matter of memory rather than reasoning.

It is particularly clear in moral reasoning that reason does not require a physical object or sensory stimuli. To ponder the question "is it ever acceptable to lie" requires imagination and abstract reasoning. In younger or less sophisticated minds, the reasoning is based solely on their past experience. In older or more advanced minds, the reasoning includes contemplation of scenarios outside of experience, ruminating over the possible effects of taking an action.

Reasoning is the basis of motivation to undertake new actions. That is, anything that has been done before can be repeated out of habit, but any new action is the product of reasoning: one must speculate what might occur if an action is taken, then take the action, then evaluate the results.

In general, a failure means dissatisfaction and a memory is sometimes created that reminds us not to do the same thing again - though given the penchant for repeating our mistakes, this seems an entirely optional part of the process, and failure does not produce a strong dissuasive memory.

And likewise, a success means satisfaction and the memory is sometimes stored to remind us to do the same thing in future - though again, we do not always repeat our successes and can often be seen to engage in reasoning to figure out what was done the last time a situation was encountered - or when success is entirely forgotten, to invent a new idea about how to proceed.

So in this manner, reasoning is the first step in taking any action, in forming any habit, and in adopting any mannerism as a quality of our character. People attempt to repeat the actions that gave them success in the past and avoid those which resulted in failure, insofar as they can remember them.

The Meaning of Ideas

The meaning of ideas involves their identity and purpose. Asked the question of "What is a horse?" the answer might be that a horse is an animal (identity) or that a horse is a means of transportation (purpose). The same is true of abstract concepts: one may identify justice as ensuring that the consequences of an action is visited on the person who initiated the action (identity) or that justice encourages people to be considerate of others (purpose).

A single idea may have many meanings, and the meaning that comes to mind is derived from the situation in which we are considering its meaning. If we are tired from standing, a chair is something to be sat upon; if we are physically threatened it can be a shield or a weapon to defend us; if we are cold a chair is something to be broken apart and used to fuel a fire.

Where there is no immediate need to use a thing, our first answer to a question about a thing or an idea derives from our personal experience with it, then form things we have been told about it, and only later begins to be based on abstract and speculative reasoning about what it might be or what purpose it might serve.

There is a circular argument to be made about whether meaning is more based on the present moment or on past experience. It may not occur to a person who is cold that a chair can be used for fuel, even though they may be aware that the chair is made of wood. But if that person had read about a situation in which a person broke a chair to build a fire, it would come to mind more readily.

So reason, personal experience, and related experience can all suggest meanings in any given moment. And ultimately, reason is the factor that determines what we decide is the most relevant meaning of a thing in the context of a situation in which we have an objective. We do not recognize the alternate meanings, but consider them to be of less importance.

It can likewise be observed that there are two processes of reasoning: a process that identifies multiple meanings and selects the most relevant one, or a process that stops once a single relevant meaning is discovered. We generally make better decisions when we think broadly and choose, but are prone to making hasty decisions by latching onto the first plausible idea.

Back to education: children in school do not have a purpose in learning something other than to learn it, which makes it difficult because they do not understand the relevance. An example may help to understand one meaning of a thing - but if the student is taught only one meaning, it may not occur to him to think of others. Therefore educators should attempt to teach the young many possible meanings that may suit various situations they may encounter in future.

And here, there can be some argument about exactly what students should be taught. Unfortunately, the teacher has no way of predicting their future situations. If it is known that a student intends to become a carpenter, this guides the teacher in delivering only those meanings germane to the tasks of that profession - and while this equips the student well for that particular profession, it may also mean that he is unsuited for other professions. This is the reason education should be broad and general, particularly at early ages, teaching skills that can apply to a range of professions.

The content and organization of a person's memory is important to their success in routine and predicted situations - but the ability to think outside those constraints enables the to succeed in unusual and unpredicted situations. And given that in the author's time the industrial revolution was quickly rendering some skills moot and requiring new ones to be developed, he tends to favor a broader and more flexible approach to education.

Developing Reasoning Skills

Pyle offers tips to improve reasoning skills.

First, attend to the quality of an experience. Our strongest impressions of things come to us through sensory experience rather than imagery or verbal accounts. To understand something requires direct content and interaction - but because direct experience is often haphazard, it can be done in cycles: study a thing, interact with it, study it again, interact with it again. One without the other is insufficient for developing understanding.

Second, recognize that reasoning is systematic. Where information is random and disjointed, it results in confusion rather than knowledge. Structure observation in a categorical manner, just as the data will be stored. Focus on something's intrinsic qualities, then the way it relates to other things, then the causal relationships when it is involved in purposeful activity.

Third, Pyle suggests developing a list of questions that can stimulate reasoning and making a habit of considering them when encountering something of a given kind (an object, a person, an environment, an event, etc.) to encourage breadth of thinking.

Fourth, be aware of mental habits that cause you to be less attentive because you are focused on only one thing. It's observed that doctors tend to misdiagnose patients because they fall into a habit of looking for evidence of a small number of conditions, which leads them to ignore thing that are obvious but unrelated.

Fifth, adopt a scientific methodology. Do not come to a firm decision that "it is" based on a single observation or limited ones. Look to put things to a test, or observe them in different circumstances, to become more confident of conclusions before using them as axioms.

Language and Thinking

There is a certain circular argument about the manner in which language limits thinking. The argument that it does suggests that we cannot understand anything we do not have words to describe, and the argument against it suggests that we will create words to describe things for which language is insufficient.

The greatest limitation of language is in second-hand experience: if we gain information about something from another person, then we are removed from the true nature of the thing and limited to his ability to describe it, which is often limited by language - both in the extent of the lexicon and the individual's skills in communicating.

So it is likely true that we cannot understand anything we experience second-hand if our language is inadequate to describing it.

This also indicates the importance if getting first-hand experience. There are likely things we will notice about something, but cannot describe - and which cannot be adequately described to us by anyone else. While ineffable, it is a sense-memory impression that becomes for us a part of our mental model of a thing, and in some instances quite an important one.

It is not uncommon to notice that someone is adept at something but cannot explain it. Ask an old woman who is able to routinely select the best produce in the market how she does it, and she is likely to say that she "just knows" from having done it so many times. That is to say, she possesses knowledge but not the ability to convey it in words.

We have the same experience when, after concentrating intensely upon a problem and failing to find a solution, it seems to pop into our minds when we stop trying to think about it. Our mind is able to make connections that we cannot describe in words.

Another example is the difficulty we have in describing an experience to others sufficiently. We often find we cannot do so. Consider how you might describe the flavor of a pear to someone who has never tasted one - it is impossible to do with sufficient accuracy that they would know upon tasting one that it is the same thing you had described.

Language, therefore, is a tool of communicating thought, but not the stuff of which thoughts are made. A great deal of confusion and misunderstanding comes of failure to make that distinction.

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