Book | Series 8: The Problems with Thought

Description

The course teaches you about the problems that arise due to the way thought functions. For instance, we may hold limited knowledge on a subject, but thought may present an opinion to the mind as if it were complete, true and could not be any other way. The book builds resilience to these problems.

INTRODUCTION

The way thought operates is determined by a biological structure and psychological configuration.

• The biological structure relates to the physical way the brain and body is constructed, and how the way we see, think, learn, and act is determined by that structure.
• The psychological configuration refers to the way knowledge is configured in memory (through experiences, ideologies and beliefs), and how that determines how we see, think, learn, and act.

The combination of the biological structure and psychological configuration determines our behaviour. The constraints placed upon thought by the biological structure, and the tacit assumptions placed upon thinking by the psychological configuration, produce problems that each person must be aware of in order for thought to function adequately. In this series we discuss those problems.

• We discuss how the thoughts we have are the product of limited knowledge, yet present themselves to the mind as complete.
• We explain how a thought that is experienced as complete, is interpreted by the mind as true, and achieves the status of reality in perception.
• We state that in the absence of perceiving what is true, thought invents what may be true through the process of speculation, and we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
• We explore the feeling of security that arises from thought, and state it to be the result of what we know, and the ignorance of what we don’t know.
• We discuss memory to be highly malleable, but state that thought will resist change to sustain the intellectual and emotional stability of its current structure.
• We explain how thought seeks security in the division created by identifying itself with nations and religions, but how that identification creates a rift in perception and thinking that produces conflict, and generates insecurity throughout society as a whole.
• We state that thought creates inventions and ideologies that attain a reality independent of those who invented it. The ideology lives on through time, and the next generations grow up never knowing a time when the ideology did not exist. Without much consideration, they treat the ideology with a sense of permanence, seeing it as a physical reality that could not be any other way, instead of a mere projection of thought that could be quickly dismantled.

The series The Problems with Thought explains the ways thought is biologically structured and psychologically configured to cause conflict and incoherent behaviour. Understanding these problems enables the mind to psychologically reconfigure itself to alleviate the problems created by the way we think, and have a rational intelligence that can detect the illusions created by the biological structure of thought.