Thinking intelligently

Most everything we think and say is (ultimately) speculation. How could it not be, the pointer (word idea image) is never the thing pointed to, if indeed there IS a thing being pointed to.

We’re all just making this up as we go along! Thus spake nobody.

I think the issue here is that Rick began the thread without fully explaining the context for his question.

The quote he shared from K…

… is part of a much longer talk he gave in 1948 on the subject of education.

We know K’s language around thought and intelligence evolved over the coming decades, but in the context of this 1948 talk his main concern was the failure of education to prevent the devastating world war that had just occurred.

In the lecture K talks about the importance of teaching children how to think rather than what to think; he says that intelligence implies integration of the mind (rather than specialism and fragmentation), and that it is this capacity for integration that is the essential quality for creating an intelligent response in students. He also says that intelligence and integration cannot be brought about though discipline, through punishment, through do’s and don’t’s, through any system or pattern. Rather it must begin with self-knowledge and intelligent revolt.

All of this is relevant to understand the context of the OP quotation. A more representative extract from the talk might be the following:

Our problem, then, is how to create an individual who is integrated through intelligence, so that he would be able to grapple with life from moment to moment, to face life as it comes with its complexities, with its conflicts, with its miseries, with its inequalities; an individual who can meet life, not according to a particular system either of the left or of the right, but intelligently, without seeking an answer or a pattern of action.

Thanks for taking the time to contextualize the OP quote.

But you should know there’s a method to my madness! (Madness to my method?) I quoted just enough to get the neurons firing. I was interested in hearing what ‘intelligent thinking’ means to different people, what the term conjures up. And that proved to be quite revealing, a good amount of agreement, some unconventional takes, and a bit of negation of the validity of the question itself. Overall quite a good session of sharing stories around the campfire. :wink:

In the campfire :crazy_face:

Auto-da-fé!


Sharing stories around the ‘house that’s burning’.

Wow, intense image! Warming our feet and roasting marshmallows around a world on fire.

Doesn’t it mean to use the whole of one’s mind, not just a few scraps? Thought is composed of fragments of the past; and thinking is impossible when those fragments take precedence.

Hi Paul, it’s been a while (here). :slight_smile:

“To use the whole of one’s mind.” It feels this is pointing to something, a big way of _____ing. (To say   _think_ing   limits it.)

The art of thinking is not to mix things that are unrelated to each other, not to conclude things that are irrelevant.

Let’s stick with thinking for the moment. Can a noisy, busy mind think? Is a mind that is full of contradictory ideas, images, speculations and theories capable of clear thinking?

That is kind of like asking: Can the sky be clear in the middle of a thunderstorm?

Is it like a thunderstorm? Or is more like the clouds that fill the sky? We are all too aware of a storm when it strikes, but even the tiniest clouds contain the seeds of a future storm.

Let’s stick with the fact that we can only imagine, speculate, as to what “clear thinking” is, and that this is an exercise in speculation. Or, if you’re implying that you are capable of clear thinking, please ascend to the dais and assume the role of teacher.

Or we don’t know and move from there. Thought uses fragments of knowledge to put together some acceptable picture of the world. So the presence of thought prevents any possibility of thinking for ourselves. The presence of thought is based on an assumption that thinking has already taken place. The suggestion now, however, is that we have never really bothered to find out what it means to think. And this finding out is something that we can only do together. Thinking demands our being together from the start. Thought makes no such demands; and therefore we can comfortably hide behind thoughts in the belief that we are communicating with others. Thought is all about sharing noise; thinking together can only arise out of our immersion in the most profound silence.

Clear thinking when the mind is in a state of chaos is difficult, perhaps impossible. The chaos needs to subside for a beat, like a temporary clearing in a cloudy sky.

Oups! Sorry I just edited my last reply - Its gone.
But this is what I meant to say - so please enjoy!

Do we ever ask ourselves: what is the state of my mind? Surely, when we put this question to ourselves, the mind is in no state at all. It is neither clear nor chaotic.

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So you say, but actually, you are didactic - not at all collaborative.

The dialogues between Bohm and K may have exemplified “thinking together”, but I can’t think of any other examples.

When I observe my mind with a heavy hand, it stops the flow of thoughts and images in its tracks. When I observe lightly without trying to change anything, the flow is unimpeded.