Home > Thought
Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires.
Concepts akin to thought are sentience, consciousness, idea and imagination.
Thinking involves manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions.
Thinking is a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of cognitive psychology.
In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, thinking means you tend to put a higher priority on impersonal factors than personal factors.
1 Aids to thinking
- Use of models, symbols, diagramA diagram is a simplified and structured visual representation of concepts, ideas, constructions, relations, statistical data, anatomy etc used in all aspects of human activities to visualize and clarify the topic. Basic diagram types: Tree Graph Matrix Ns and pictures
- Use of abstractionThis article is about the concept of abstraction in general. For other uses, please see abstract (disambiguation). Abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects. Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification of detail, wherei to simplify the effort of thinking
- Use of metasyntactic variableIn computer programming, a metasyntactic variable is a kind of alias, a name commonly used in examples and understood by hackers and programmers to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion.s to simplify the effort of naming
- Use of iterationIteration is the repetition of a process, typically within a computer program. Confusingly, it can be used both as a general term, synonymous with repetition, and to describe a specific form of repetition with mutable state. When used in the first sense, and recursionIn mathematics and computer science, recursion is a particular way of specifying (or constructing) a class of objects (or an object from a certain class) with the help of a reference to other objects of the class: a recursive definition defines objects in to converge on a conceptA concept is an abstract, universal psychical entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events or relations. A concept is the element of a proposition rather in the way that a word is the element of a sentence. Concepts are abstract
- Limitation of attentionThis article discusses the psychological concept of Attention . Also see Pages needing attention. For the military concept, see Military courtesy. The word attention refers to the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one thing while deliberat to aid concentration and focus on a concept. Use of peace and quiet to aid concentration.
- Goal setting and goal revision. Simply letting the concept percolate in the subconscious, and waiting for the concept to re-surface.
- Talking with like-minded people. Resorting to communication with others, if this is allowed.
See George Polya's books on Heuristics
2 See also
See: Eric Baum What is Thought MIT Press 2004 BooksEnthsiast.com - Chapter Two: The Mind is a Computer Program
Mind
Thought
