Automatic Thinking

2019 ◽  
pp. 278-297
Author(s):  
Bradley E. Alger
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Hypothesis Generation ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Hypothesis Formation ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Illusions

This chapter introduces the role of “automatic thinking,” in hypothesis formation. Automatic thinking refers to the default operations of our mind that affect how we view and understand the world. These operations are behind cognitive biases and heuristic reasoning, inductive reasoning, and, most importantly, our tendency to engage in continual, conscious and unconscious, hypothesis generation. Unconscious hypotheses allow us to predict what will happen next and see why things “make sense.” They also account for our susceptibility to the “cognitive illusions,” that lead us astray. The chapter also questions whether “inductive reasoning” should count as a form of “reasoning” at all, since the ability to recognize and respond to regularities in the environment appears to be an adaptive trait shared by all animals and, perhaps, plants as well. This chapter argues that much of the criticism of the hypothesis has failed to take these automatic mental processes into account. The chapter suggests that a better sense of our automatic mental activity can lead to improvements in scientific thinking.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Cassaniti
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World

The final chapter returns the analysis back to mindfulness in the United States, and the lessons learned about how mindfulness is understood differently in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka compared with its popular meanings in the United States. Drawing from the experiences of over 100 informants in the Pacific Northwest, the concluding chapter shows how the TAPES of temporality, affect, power, ethics, and selfhood are articulated in different ways by people in the different regions. The chapter includes a concluding discussion of how authoritative discourses about mindfulness move through space and time, and how these lessons may inform larger questions about the role of culture in mental processes around the world.

scholarly journals Insight, interactivity and materiality

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic Vallee-Tourangeau
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Abstract Representation ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
External Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatio Temporal

The popular iconography of insight casts a thinker as he or she uncoils from a Rodin pose and a bulb that lights a world hitherto hidden. By and large, these features of folk mythology capture and guide how psychologists conduct research on insight: Mental processes — some of which may be unconscious — transform an inceptive abstract representation of the world until it prescribes a fruitful solution to a problem. Yet thinking and problem solving outside the laboratory involve interacting with external resources, and through this interactivity with a material world, solutions are distilled. Still, laboratory work on problem solving pays scant and largely indifferent attention to interactivity: Sometimes problems are presented as riddles or static graphical or diagrammatic images, or sometimes they are accompanied by artefacts that can be manipulated (and sometimes interactivity is possible for some problems but not others within a set of problems over which performance is indiscriminately amalgamated). The research methodology — and indifference to the central role of interactivity in thinking — follows from a deep-seated commitment to mentalism and methodological individualism. However, a thinker is an embodied creature embedded in a physical world: The materiality of external resources and artefacts through which problems manifest themselves inevitably determines a set of action affordances. From a systemic perspective, thinking is traceable along a contingent spatio-temporal itinerary wrought by interactivity and evidenced by changes in the world.

scholarly journals Cognitive Activity: Philosophical Analysis, Psychological and Pedagogical Characteristics

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 01083
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Korobova ◽  
Irina Kardovich ◽  
Marina Konysheva ◽  
Dina Mironova
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
The World

Cognition is an integral part of a person’s orientation in the world. It is studied by different sciences – philosophy, sociology, pedagogics, and psychology. In information society, the role of cognition and the ways it is realized are becoming extremely important. Cognitive activity is an essential part of cognition. It is formed and developed in the process of education. Cognitive activity is traditionally regarded as a special kind of mental activity. There are different components of cognitive activity and levels of its development. The higher the level of cognitive activity is, the more efficient the whole process of education is as knowledge is acquired more quickly and at a higher level. Cognitive independence combined with cognitive activity can radically improve the whole process of cognition. Thus, the task of an educational process is to activate cognition and develop cognitive independence by different methods and approaches.

Disclosing the World

2018 ◽  
pp. 334-352
Author(s):  
Mark Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Mental Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
General Picture ◽  
Mode Of Presentation ◽  
The World ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Brain

This chapter defends a general picture of intentionality. Intentional directedness toward the world consists in revealing or disclosing activity: activity in virtue of which an object is revealed as falling under a given mode of presentation. This revealing activity often straddles processes occurring in the brain, in the body more generally, and the environment in which this body is situated. The result is that mental processes are often—not always, not necessarily, but often—embodied, enacted, and extended. There is no principled reason for thinking that the revealing activity that occurs outside the brain and/or body is not mental activity.

A pragmatist philosophy of psychological science and its implications for replication

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Gantman ◽  
Robin Gomila ◽  
Joel E. Martinez ◽  
J. Nathan Matias ◽  
Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Behavioral Measurement ◽  
The World ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.

Understanding and reducing tension between science and religion: The role of meaning in social cognitive biases and reducing defensiveness

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryl R. Van Tongeren ◽  
Jeffrey D. Green ◽  
Timothy L. Hulsey ◽  
Cristine H. Legare ◽  
David G. Bromley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Science And Religion

The essence and causes of the spiritual and moral decline of mankind in the XX century

1998 ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
V. Tolkachenko
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Social Force ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Of Religion

One of the most important reasons for such a clearly distressed state of society was the decline of religion as a social force, the external manifestation of which is the weakening of religious institutions. "Religion," Baha'u'llah writes, "is the greatest of all means of establishing order in the world to the universal satisfaction of those who live in it." The weakening of the foundations of religion strengthened the ranks of ignoramuses, gave them impudence and arrogance. "I truly say that everything that belittles the supreme role of religion opens way for the revelry of maliciousness, inevitably leading to anarchy. " In another Tablet, He says: "Religion is a radiant light and an impregnable fortress that ensures the safety and well-being of the peoples of the world, for God-fearing induces man to adhere to the good and to reject all evil." Blink the light of religion, and chaos and distemper will set in, the radiance of justice, justice, tranquility and peace. "

The problem of periodization of the history of religion

1997 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Borys Lobovyk
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Religious Development ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Role Of Religion

An important problem of religious studies, the history of religion as a branch of knowledge is the periodization process of the development of religious phenomenon. It is precisely here, as in focus, that the question of the essence and meaning of the religious development of the human being of the world, the origin of beliefs and cult, the reasons for the changes in them, the place and role of religion in the social and spiritual process, etc., are converging.

External Factors of Big Business Transformation in Russia

2005 ◽  
pp. 72-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ya. Pappe ◽  
Ya. Galukhina
Keyword(s):  
Financial Market ◽  
Capital Market ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Big Business ◽  
Business Transformation ◽  
Global Standards ◽  
The World ◽  
Principal Subject

The paper is devoted to the role of the global financial market in the development of Russian big business. It proves that terms and standards posed by this market as well as opportunities it offers determine major changes in Russian big business in the last three years. The article examines why Russian companies go abroad to attract capital and provides data, which indicate the scope of this phenomenon. It stresses the effects of Russian big business’s interaction with the world capital market, including the modification of the principal subject of Russian big business from integrated business groups to companies and the changes in companies’ behavior: they gradually move away from the so-called Russian specifics and adopt global standards.

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