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Saturday, February 22, 2014

THE CONTROL OF THOUGHT OUR INABILITY TO THINK CAREFULLY

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THE CONTROL OF THOUGHT; OUR INABILITY TO THINK CAREFULLY
 


Thinking is not simple. It is something that people must learn. If one is free, there is needs to be a critical, logical, analytical, open examination of what others teach us and what we come to believe. This is extremely important. 

Without this one is likely to accept and simply memorize ideas. One is likely to be lazy in his/her pursuit of truth. One does not have tool with which he/she can evaluate the truth or falsehood of any idea one might encounter.
          Social psychologists study the many way people are influenced to accept ideas that they hear or read or even work out their own thinking. It is important to question what we are taught and what we come to believe.

 It is important to what constitute good audience and to recognize the way people are influencing us not by evidence, but by tricks, by false logic, by making themselves attractive. It is important to understand our emotional commitments, our value, our biases, our culture, our position in structure in other to evaluate how we have arrives at views.

 In some way learning is buying something from someone who is selling; freedom of though must include a knowledgeable thinking process. One must habitually think about the knowledge and thinking he or she uses.
          This is one of the most skills that formal education should emphasize. Understanding philosophy, natural and social science, humanities, history, literature, language, learning to write, and many other arts classes should all b aimed, in part, to learning how to think. Actually, the term “liberal arts” suggests “liberation”.

 Liberal arts is not a mass of knowledge we need to learn and memorize. Instead, for many teachers good thinking is the real essence of liberation.
          Thinking is an important aspect of human behavior. If the human being is in control of what he or she does, then his or her thinking is central to that control. We think through the culture, language knowledge and understandings that learn. 

We think according to the positions we fill in the social structure according to what we learn from those in powerful position in the structure. Our thinking is controlled by aside social factors, and because of that control it is difficult to argue for the existence of free thinking.   

Freedom is more than free thinking. Even if our thought might have a degree of freedom, then we must go further and ask what, if anything, limits our action?

LIMITED UNDERSTANDING
What we know makes a difference to our ability to think freely. We account knowledge through a mixture of experiences, formal learning, informal learning, reading, discussion, initiation, and trials and error. 

No one understand everything, and no one can understand everything in a given situation. No one has every perspective that can be used in a situation; no one is able to understand all possible choices in the situation. 

What we learn is little and it is a very limited sample of knowledge. We sometimes think we understand when we do not; usually our cultural bias stands in the way of understanding. Sometimes what we learn from others is not accurate; sometimes there is no opportunity in our community to understand our own but we expect to simply accept what others tell us.

 Sometimes our understanding is so firm and unchangeable that we are not willing to change it when new evidence is put forward.
          Knowledge about the universe as well as an understanding of that knowledge is important for freedom. It’s necessary for choice, working out situation we encounter, and rationally controlling our actions, appropriately.

 That is why a free society that encourages debate, criticism, exploration of truth, and a plurality of perceptive is so critical for individual freedom. As all of us are limited in our knowledge and understand, it is important to recognize that as knowledge and understanding increase, more freedom has a better chance.

 Those who lack knowledge and understanding of the situation in which they act are especially limited in their freedom of thought, and this will have implications for the choices they make for their action.

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