Thought according to Dewey

  • Jul 26, 2021
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Thought according to Dewey

Thought is inscribed for Dewey in a relationship between what we already know, our memory and what we perceive. With this trilogy we give meaning to things, we create, we infer beyond what is given to us and that is the "thought" product. The inference takes place through the Suggestion of everything that is seen and remembered; that succession of ideas is thought. Dewey bases this entire process on two basic and innate resources: curiosity and suggestion or spontaneous ideas. Thought must lead to some goal: an action, a result.

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Index

  1. The need for reflective thinking
  2. The emotion
  3. Scientific thoughts
  4. Mastery of the contents
  5. Reflection
  6. Conclusions

The need for reflective thinking.

Dewey argues that the result requires a reflective thinking, namely, put order to that succession of ideas, that it should not become a simple concatenation of ideas in relations of consequences, but that putting a certain order promotes a thought directed towards some goal. Sustaining the relationship between thought and rationality just that conduction to reflective thinking through careful comparison and balance of evidence and suggestions with a process of evaluation of what takes place to get to detect the most precise relationships that the relationships allow, therefore rationality cannot remain only in the observation but the matter must be scrutinized, inspect, inquire and examine the accuracy.

An idea is an action plan that has a constructive function, because ideas arise to solve problems, accepting as true of all ideas the most successful. Dewey's rationality is related to thinking in the idea of ​​the reflective method (logical competence) introducing empirical knowledge that leads to some goal from initiative, spontaneity, work and responsibility.

This construction leads to something to be done and to a result, facing a mental difficulty in five phases:

  1. Appearance of suggestions
  2. Difficulty intellectualization
  3. Elaboration of hypotheses
  4. Reasoning
  5. Hypothesis testing

Thus the rationality of reflective thought makes action possible with a conscious goal and it makes systematic work and invention possible as well as enriching things with meanings. In the text he mentions this relationship between thought and rationality as a method "It is likely to be a good thought when the subject has attitudes of care, rigor, etc.".

Although it departs from the formal logic by referring to the real thought that occurs in a context that said logic does not take into account. "Rationality is leading to an operational harmony between various desires. RATIONALITY, supposes a review of knowledge from critical analysis, debate, and argumentation, For Dewey the rationality of reflective thinking is the ability to learn, evolve in the time.

Rationality for Dewey is the correspondence between ends and means. Thought is not a conglomeration of sensory impressions, nor is it the fabrication of something called "consciousness," much less a manifestation of a "Absolute spirit", but a mediating and instrumental function that had evolved to serve the interests of survival and well-being humans. This theory of knowledge highlights the "need to test thought through action if it is to become knowledge." Thought is man's instrument for learning.

Dewey tries to finally apply the rational in the everyday in the social through reflective research. Dewey instrumentalizes the descriptive and explanatory models, because he understands reflection in a natural process, but above all prescriptive.

The emotion.

Emotion is a factor in our cognitive system. So problems such as the marital relationship cannot be reduced to the study of logic-mathematics or a type of mental representations. In this definition: emotions should be considered as complex multifactorial phenomena that include, among others, the following aspects: a cognitive assessment (would this correspond to a description of the situation?) situation -appreciation; a very diverse set of physiological changes –mainly related to the autonomic nervous system–; Is this not comparable to the specification of the situation? a series of overt expressions or visible behaviors –facial and gestural expressions–; a motivational component that is reflected in an intention or tendency to action.And this would not be a description of the resources that can or cannot be used to achieve a goal? and a subjective-experiential or feeling state –Hedonic aspect of emotion.

Scientific thoughts.

Scientific concepts have, by definition, a logical structure Most of them have a very accentuated relational nature, that is to say that the nucleus or meaning of the concept determines which are its relevant attributes. However, it has been proven that most people have an erroneous or deviant conception of many scientific phenomena and that this conception conforms, in part, to the demands of probabilistic theories, perhaps for this reason it can be argued that well-defined scientific concepts do not represent the way in which people usually conceptualize the world.

And perhaps that is why he did not get satisfactory answers in the debates and he spoke so generically of experience, thought in relation to feeling, or in being or not being. There I found my gap I reread my notes of Cognition and Emotion in the two basic emotions of the individual (approach / flight) are not regulated since these theories where the everyday is quite neglected or defined as "poorly defined" because the role of emotions is being ignored (cognitive process more archaic in human evolution and that has made the survival of the species possible) when seeking, exploring and acting in solving problems, or perhaps whatever makes the most typical errors of deductive thinking, formal logic, probabilistic or any other strategy to solve problems.

I keep thinking that it is interpretation and the endowment of meaning that make hypotheses possible and a relationship between experience and prior knowledge which enables us to arrive at possible solutions or, as the module says, the most successful ones. Although these can, no matter how scientific their verifications have been, reach scientific conclusions such as that the earth was flat and then round.

Mastery of the contents.

The domain of content I think has been satisfactory from the understanding of the various. Explanatory, prescriptive and normative models, as we form the concepts and problems of the different theories and as depending on the classification they are not able to give an explanation of how we form the concepts.

Deductive reasoning from natural logic where the innate ability of the mind to perform the tasks of certain inferential rules is sustained - that is, competence - to mental models in which reasoning is made by representations that can be derived from perception and from the language. The elaboration and testing of hypotheses: analogy as a model of scientific thought; implicit theories and representational redescription theories; hypothesis testing for the acquisition of concepts and as we continue to see that even scientists see their task as confirmation rather than falsification of hypotheses.

In the probability judgments and decision making its heuristics and biases (anchors, illusory correlations), the accessibility of information. How, from everyday reasoning and formal reasoning, they share equivalent structures; or how from informal reasoning we come to solve ill-defined problems and decision-making in situations of uncertainty.

By last decontextualized thinking, in context and creativity, differing in the normative character of the first from individualistic methodological approach of closed and experimental character to move to the present of the Psychology of current thought where feedback methods, construction, cooperation and motivation, the cultural, the symbolic, the wishful thinking, the narrative form the new tools of this moment.

Reflection.

The reflection has therefore been at all times, from how ideas arise and how they are mediated by our context, how they develop, what is their process. And above all we have learned the hilarity that goes from the concepts and their different combinations expressed through language, the direct influence they have on thought and how it is achieved the acts. The debates that we have been able to develop are the expression of rationality, how and from where our knowledge is argued, our experiences and as we have sought, worked to give you not only our perspective but also working to interweave them with the theories that we have handled in the semester.

Is dynamics of our cognitive process ordering and sequencing by logical rules, deductions, strategies and how we make mistakes. All this has enriched thought. Knowing that memory does not exactly reproduce our previous experiences or knowledge and that based on this knowledge we reproduce new realities, beliefs and hypotheses we have refuted or changed. Our ideas based on those reflections that others give us and that participate in the construction of our own.

I remain in my reflection that the duality of the innate and the learned, all human beings (in the context in who are located) participate in an innate potentiality that will develop based on the adaptive needs of their environment. And that is where learning begins in using the resources at your fingertips - including those that interact with others - to provide solutions to the problems that arise. (both in everyday life and in science) especially in creative thinking that requires skills and work capacity without which creative thinking would not be possible.

Talent and training are not mutually exclusive but both in great need. Creative thinking leads to new experiences, some more developed than others due to cultural and genetic factors, among others. others, who act in the way that the same experiences relate to previous knowledge and find new solutions in the face of difficulties that arise, and in conjunction with critical thinking, which complements the right side of the hemisphere cerebral. Such thinking is influenced by aspects of creativity, which can be learned, developed and depends on the level of importance that each person assigns to him his broadening of thoughts James O. Whittaker ”.

Creativity and thinking

You can learn to think creatively and incorporate innovation processes. One of the most important points is to modify the role of the instructor, teacher, teacher as the only one who knows the subject. Therefore the creative capacity depends, not on how creative people are, but on the conditions that the "Guides" create to foster the innovative spirit of their people. Giving self-confidence to people's cognitive preferences, always transforming the way we think and we behave, motivating and paying attention to the emotional with an interrelation through communication.

Relativizing the capacity and possibility of rules and regulations. Not by opposing the other's reflective thoughts or reasoning but by incorporating, uniting and transforming them, creativity includes reformulating ideas and doing it as a an expectation not a risk, mistakes should help us to restart the process of reflection, create new hypotheses, share imagination, intuition, logic, meaning aesthetic. A rich medium is needed to stimulate creative thinking, which seems to be essential.

It is important to maintain spontaneity, recognize creative efforts and reinforce creative capacity.

Conclusions.

Human thought is in my opinion a whole that, although it can be analyzed in parts in an experimental work It works on a set of processes that separate, unrelated, would not have the ability to create. I say this from the perception that I have in most of the subjects that propose analysis of the parts, and I have the academic feeling (a necessary but not sufficient condition) of be contemplating images of a lame or disabled human being with some characteristics that are stigmatized as little controllable and therefore unscientific (but the affection and fear They are emotions that condition us even in the most experimental situations, and even affection entails, as we have seen, an element that enhances creativity, reflection and rationality. And the flight even produces personal constructions such as learned helplessness "and then this becomes an" obstacle thought "of our rationality. How useful it is to know!

Reflective thinking arises when we want to verify solidity, the rational, something we are dealing with, that is to say to prove its veracity. Except in the modules of Probability Judgments and Hypothesis Elaboration, where one accepts the rules that must be followed to arrive at these concepts, everything has been a continuous reflection, and see how they reflect on the reason for the errors with the theories of Tversky and Kahneman on the representativeness and accessibility heuristics, It has been refreshing, it relocates the concepts of formal logic as a filter and invites us to reflect from any perspective, that is, with an orderly and arduous work.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Thought according to Dewey, we recommend that you enter our category of Cognitive psychology.

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