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Can we think without any presumptions?
Questions arised from one of the conversation and a reminiscence of a old lady who said:"nobody is right but me."
Are we free of personal bias when we think?
how reliable it is for us ourselves to judge if we are free of personal bias or not ?
Barry Hillman
Presumptions also provide us with a baseline to operate from...as in the "presumption of innocence". If we were to say guilty until proved innocent you can imagine for ourself how that would change the jury process. At the very least presumptions provide us comfort, closure and protection, when used well, but presumptions can also work against us, as in the case of personal bias. We are as humans hard-wired to make presumptions, it's impossible for us not to. Everyone has some personal bias, if we didn't have bias, we'd listen to what everyone tells us with the same weight....but we don't....we made judgements and presumptions often that "the experts" have a better understanding of what to do and how to do it.....whatever it might be. If someone has a strong conviction about something, presumptions are usually made....you are unlikely to believe or even listen to someone that has the opposite view....yet they may have a point to make that has value. My point is that be careful with presumptions we make on a personal level and realize that no one is free of making presumptions....can you think of anyone?
Lewis Smart 20+
Grant Schumacher
scott lee
Colleen Steen 500+
I, and many others do not "need presumptions", nor do I agree that "humans are innately ignorant. If, as you say, we "make presumptions to cope", and "these become the foundations of our beliefs", what happens if/when we change our presumptions?
You say...."we will never get there". I suggest that "there", is "here"...."now". When we live in the moment of "now", the presumptions we have created to "cope" may not be needed. With "reason and observation", we can realize that our presumptions were only created to "cope", and perhaps we can move beyond the coping mechenism of our preconceived presumptions to a more broad view of the life experience. Without our presumptions, we have a much broader, unlimited framework in which to reason and experience:>)
scott lee
I do however stand by my statement that humans are innately ignorant. I didn't mean to be insulting. Remember, ignorance is simply lack of knowledge. If you are not omniscient, then you are, to some degree, ignorant. My acceptance of my own ignorance is important to my sense of humility.
We all have beliefs that unproven. Some are metaphysical. Is there a reality, or is all of this just a dream? Are other people conscious? Am I conscious? Is there such a thing as free will, and if not what does it mean to be responsible for one's actions?
Others unproven beliefs are responses to questions about people and society. Should I trust the body of knowledge I am taught in school, even though I have not seen the evidence? Should I trust what I'm taught in church? Is it safe to invest in the financial system? Is this person in front of me being honest? Is the cost of education worth it?
We make decisions without the benefit of evidence and proof every day, and we do it by making presumptions. That's what I meant when I said presumptions are a way of coping with ignorance.
Colleen Steen 500+
I totally agree that it is healthy, and desirable in my perception, to question ones beliefs and presumptions. We, as individuals, are as "conscious", mindful and aware as we choose to be.
I stand by my statement that I do not agree that humans are ignorant, because, it is as you say...."ignorance is simply lack of knowledge". If we are willing to question our presumptions and consider new information, what happens to our presumptions? That, to me, is the sticky wicket:>) People get "stuck" in presemptions, do not question them, and live their whole life with the same presumptions.
As you explain your perception now, yes, I agree...presumptions are a way of coping with ignorance. I don't put all humans in that catagory:>)
You will, as an individual, trust whatever information you choose to trust:>)
Barry Hillman
Philip Cogswell
Casey Christofaris 10+
Thaddea Thompson
I hope not compassion, I hope not my situation.
it is contradictory for the naturally biased (us-humans) to state that Justice is unbiased.
Thomas Hawkins
Martin Herrigan
Anshul Mehta
Talking of biasness... it's in our psychology that we take things in our way....sometime this positive attitude helps us and sometimes not...
But ya presumptions helps us in learning from ones mistakes....!!!!
Teo Teo
Casey Christofaris 10+
scott lee
Tom Eccleston
Nancy Giovino
I am attempting to actually define the concept of "thinking" ...
So, can one really observe one's own thinking as a completely objective observer..as in Theravada meditation? or is this also in itself an aspect of thinking?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "thinking" as:
1. : the action of using one's mind to produce thoughts
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines "thought" as:
thought, covert symbolic responses to stimuli that are either intrinsic (arising from within) or extrinsic (arising from the environment). Thought, or thinking, is considered to mediate between inner activity and external stimuli.
In everyday language, the word thinking covers several distinct psychological activities. It is sometimes a synonym for “tending to believe,” especially with less than full confidence (“I think that it will rain, but I am not sure”). At other times it denotes the degree of attentiveness (“I did it without thinking”) or whatever is in consciousness, especially if it refers to something outside the immediate environment
Shakespeare says:
“Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
William James says:
‘A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.’
Thaddea Thompson
"Justice is blind."(justice is blind to prejudice and compassion) If justice is blind then how can humans decide what is just?
Barry Palmer 50+
When thinking about a particular issue we can certainly reduce the presumptions, but to eliminate them altogether would be impossible. You would have to completely segregate your thinking from the internal model of the universe that you are constantly maintaining. Your thinking would then be outside of any context and would be meaningless.
Try a thought experiment. Consider a thinking machine. Could a machine think with zero presumptions? I cannot imagine how this would be possible. It would be possible to have experiences, and assimilate information with no presumptions, but thinking requires meaningful content. In a machine it would be possible to limit its input to facts, but you can imagine the human arguments over what is a fact and what is not. There have been such arguments in TED conversations. (Is the Theory of Evolution a fact?)
Also consider the differences between human thinking and machine thinking. In a human all brain activity is related to our values, which are based on biological needs. A machine would not have this complication. Due to this difference, it would be impossible for a machine to duplicate the thinking of a human, or vice versa.
The question of personal bias is a very different question. We all have some personal bias, some people more than others. Due to the nature of personal bias we are not good judges of our own bias. (National Public Radio has made repeated attempts at finding its own bias and fails every time.) We can become aware of own bias and we can produce objective methods to help find our bias. One method is to count all the different words in your writing and compare your counts with the counts of other people.
Fortunately there are many of us. Instead of futilely trying to eliminate presumptions and bias from our thinking, we can make positive use of many different points of view.
By the way, that lady was wrong. Nobody is right but me.
Dino Bus
Dorian Knus
Mike Colera 10+
The only person who can do this is a new born. And as soon as an older sibling places a lemon peel in his mouth, he has a preconception and a presumption. And I am not sure anyone has confirmed this point.
How can we possibly "think" and not be effected by our experiences. A wag once said that a wise man is the guy that touched the hot stove the most times. A smart man is the one who asks the wise man about stove touching.
Scott Bell
Thinking without preconceptions is Conscious thinking.
The mind may be your slave or your master........
If you are not the mind, then who are you?
Atanaa Inquisitive
There are certain things that we (nearly?) all agree on and depend on as the foundation of out thinking, yet I am unsure can be proved logically from the available evidence. Certainly I would not know how to prove them. For example, “The physical world I experience is real”. I could in theory be a brain in a tank being given artificial stimulation to mimic the real world – or a computer simulation of a brain also being stimulated.
The possibilities seem endless. If that is the case then the process of thinking even a simple thought without presumption would be equally endless and therefore impossible on practical grounds.
Scott Reil
That aside, how do we avoid preconcepts or misconcepts in our own thought process? I think Amily has made that first and most crucial step on her own, by questioning conceptualization in the first place. The most likely place to find misconceptions is at the junction of knowledge and hubris. There was a study done where three groups were asked to complete a basic construction task; the first group was engineers, the second was laymen and engineers, and the third was all laymen. Who completed the task best and fastest? The third group, of course. Group One was fraught with power struggles and competing ideas, fracturing the team and stretching out planning to the detriment of actual work time, the second group deferred to the pros immediately, who did everything like they usually do; ideas debated, plans drawn, then executed, then revamped, etc. Group 3, lacking preconcepts on methodology, just started, improvised as they went and engineered on the fly.
So I differ with Elizabeth in that I find preconceptualization to often be counter-productive, and unlike her I cannot leave that in the neutral column. I find as David did,our slavish devotion to ego ill suited to community decisions or results. Be it religious edicts, social "norms", or faddish trend, preconceptions are almost universally stunting,even if not actually misconceptions (which they so often are). I try to remember that as I talk to Tea Party folks, but even I am not perfect... :)
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Daniel Kahneman is one scholar who has done research in this area.
Blazn Aymondo
Free and open-minded thinking leads to high potential productivity in everyone.
But don't just take my word for it...ask a child.
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