What Limits Our Thinking?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There are four factors that limit thinking, the influence of which is difficult to reflect, and many people are not aware of at all. By realizing these factors, we can direct our efforts to eliminate, or at least reduce, their negative impact.

The first factor is values

Values are ideas, meanings that matter to us and on which we rely when making decisions. Operationally, value is a function of meaning. For example, if we use a certain meaning in a situation of choice, then this meaning becomes a value and performs the function of designating other meanings.

Considering other meanings in the light of some value, we seem to weigh them on the scales of a given value, determining the significance of these meanings and thereby approaching an acceptable solution for us in the light of these values.

Thus, values set the boundaries of the semantic and semantic space, within which various solutions are possible. Well, since the values set and outline the field of meanings, boundaries and direction of the movement of attention in the process of thinking, then they also set the range of possible solutions. Therefore, values need to be periodically reviewed and improved.

The second factor is a sense of self-righteousness

A logically correct conclusion remains true regardless of whether a person feels that he is right or not. The truth of the judgment may or may not be established, there is no third way.

A sense of self-righteousness is required in a situation where a person does not have enough information to draw conclusions. In this case, we rely on opinions, on our personal life experience, which is always limited. In a situation of lack of information, the feeling of righteousness gives a false sense of confidence and helps to decide, to prefer one alternative to the other. It is clear that the probability of error increases by orders of magnitude, compared to the decision to find the missing information before the decision is made.

Self-righteousness stops the search for new data, even when information continues to flow. A person ignores it as inconsistent with those hypotheses that have already been assigned the status of reliable knowledge.

Thus, self-righteousness can be seen as an indicator of limited thinking. It is necessary to react sensitively to the appearance of this feeling and to disidentify with it in a volitional way and with the help of posing new questions.

The third factor is instant emotion

This factor is known, perhaps, to everyone. However, not everyone thinks about what makes instant emotion possible. For example, react with anger to a colleague's statement. This means being confident, at least, in the correct interpretation of his words and the positions behind them.

It is well known that we perceive only a small part of information, and here we are talking about information that is completely open and accessible to the senses. We just turn our attention to only a small part of the available information.

In order to experience instant emotion, you need to feel right. These factors limiting logic are interrelated. So anger arising from confidence in the correct recognition of the situation subsequently strengthens the feeling of one's own righteousness and stops the process of searching for new information.

The fourth factor is the image of "I"

Having been born, each of us is forced to identify ourselves as a source of actions and consciousness of consequences in the world. However, this self-identification, this self-discovery, does not come immediately and in a complete form.

The path to self-awareness resembles a ladder with fairly high steps. At first, the child identifies himself with physiological needs, pleasure and pain. Then with desires and emotional reactions. Then with the image of "I", formed in their own and others' eyes. And only then, if he seriously tries, he awakens to the level of consciousness of himself as a source of volitional action and meaning.

Until a person is awakened, until he is self-sufficient and capable of constant self-development, he will be inclined to conclusions that put him in a favorable light, to conclusions that confirm the person's ideas about himself. Because these ideas about oneself, this image of "I" are perceived as "I".

Until a person has realized the basis of his “I”, as a source of intention, choice and action, he will identify himself with ideas about himself, including those that are reflected in the minds of other people.

The absence of awakened subjectivity leads to systematic logical errors in thinking, since the lines of thinking that do not agree with the image of the "I", contradict the idea of oneself, are cut off in advance, ignored.

The danger of such self-deception is understandable - over time, a person has to build more and more psychic defenses in order to preserve ideas about himself, despite the feedback from the environment and the real results of the action. It is clear that there is no need to talk about clarity of thinking here.

Thus, the better a person realizes his “I” as an observer, as the initial support of attention, as a point of activity of consciousness, the less he is attached to the idea of himself and the freer he is in his thinking.

It is necessary to look from the outside as often as possible at your own emotions, values, sense of righteousness and the image of "I". This disidentification liberates the true "I" of a person, which has a colossal creative and constructive potential.

The article appeared thanks to the works of Vadim Levkin, Mikhail Litvak.