S4E191 | Types of Thought | Prof. Dr. Joseph Levitan

0:00The ways in which opinions, thoughts, and ideas intersect are really the centerpiece of what it means to do deep thinking. And you can do deep principle thinking, you can do deep contextualized thinking, and you can do deep reflexive thinking. What if you turn hardship into greatness, anger into serenity, everything changes, make you life a masterpiece. Welcome, I'm Janik Uruhust and now joining me, Dr. Chosev Levittin. Levittin is a professor in the Faculty of Education at McEl University and

1:00Choosing Me Now to really discuss types of human thought, what it is, its development, and what if those thoughts are applied and misused. Welcome back, Cho, it's such a pleasure to have you and that you found time in your very busy schedule. Yep, great to be here, great to see you again. So just let's start overall. Explain to us what actually thought is and why there are different types of human thought in the first place. Yeah, great question. So when we use the word human thought or when we use the term thinking, we are actually talking about a number of different activities that we engage in as people. And one of the things that I've noticed over the years is that the way in which people think are really dependent upon

2:07a number of factors, some of which are consciously chosen by us and some of which are not. And one of the things that I find really interesting about thought is that there are so many different ways of thinking. So there's, for example, a associative thought. So when this happens, this happens, or this feeling is associated with this action, with touching a hot stove and feeling burned. If it's petting an animal and feeling happy, if it's getting scolded and feeling ashamed, if it's playing a sport and feeling exhilarated, this is a kind of associative thought that drives a lot of our early cognitions. So when we think about thought, there's ways to break down the concepts to consider the ways in which we receive information, receive experiences, receive data,

3:16ways in which we enact on that or react to that, ways in which we respond to that, and then the ways in which we initiate to create different effects. So we start with something along the lines of associative thought, especially as babies. And it's interesting to watch how babies start to put together associations to then create initiation thoughts. So once you have some associative thinking happening, then you start to develop causal thinking. So not only is it, you know, I touch my hand to a stove and it burns, that's an association. But if I remove my hand or if I get closer to, but don't touch, then there's a different feeling. And those kinds of thought patterns, those kinds of activities that build on basic fundamental kinds of association create this causal thinking and a lot of our, and that's actually called abductive reasoning. So

4:18you know, scholars have put a term to this kind of thinking. It's called abductive. So we have inductive, deductive, and abductive. Inductive is thinking through gathering a bunch of different information and saying that it is very likely that when this happens, something else becomes as a consequence. Deductive reasoning is a logical way of following certain premises with certain logical connections that create a logical conclusion. Deductive reasoning is, you know, mathematics is a form of deductive reasoning. And then there's more formal logic, which is also a form of deductive reasoning. And then you have abductive reasoning, which is action and consequence. And what does that happen? So it's kind of like a hypothesis. And as people, we engage in all three types of this kind of reasoning. There's also a number of other kinds, you know, there's creative thinking.

5:21There's different kinds of logical reasoning that people engage in. There's modal logic. There's formal logic. But when we think about the ways in which we think there are kind of fundamental foundational kinds of activities that we engage in, and then those grow into more advanced ways of thinking and engaging, you know, from as basic as associate thinking, you can go into multi-regression for data analysis, for example. But the more interesting to me, the most interesting component of this is how do we get to these foundational basic forms of thought. How do we get to these foundational thoughts, really? And also, where do we put them in? So, for example, how do I find out which way and mode of thinking does really apply to me in order to

6:21potentially adjust to the environment we live in today? Yeah. So one of the components that is the most important for understanding human thought is attention is awareness and is focused. So as humans are awareness, the more passive reception of information of experience is the beginning of our consciousness. Consciousness and awareness are not, you know, depending on your definition, they may or may not be the same thing. But I like to use the term awareness because our awareness includes what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we send some of our skin, what we feel in terms of our emotions, what we taste, what we smell. And our awareness, if we're not aware of activities that are going on around us, then even though they exist

7:22to other people that may not exist to us, they could still affect us, they could still have an impact on our well-being. But in terms of our thinking, if we're not aware of something, then we are unable to think about it. Attention is taking that awareness and when people meditate, when people do different kinds of activities that try to increase their awareness, they can receive more information. So our bodies and our brains are capable of having different apertures of awareness. And we can be aware of, for example, the feeling of the seat that we're sitting in, the position of our necks, the movement of our hands, some of that awareness and is conscious and some of it is semi-conscious. It could be considered subconscious or not conscious. And then some of the things that are going on around us, we may not be aware of. There could be a machine running in the background that even though it's making a noise that I could hear if I

8:23paid attention to it, which is where the attention comes in, I actually don't actively hear it right now. So this foundational component of our existence, which is awareness, is the beginning of the actions that we use or is the beginning of the phenomena that we experience that stir our thought. If we did not have any experiences, if we were not aware of anything, we would not have anything to think about. What attention does is it adds a level of volition or agency to our awareness. So in this definition awareness is mostly a passive experience. But then when we have attention, we can pick out from our awareness, particular facets that are relevant to us, relevant to our being. It could be relevant to our ego. If we wanted to be negative about it, it could just be relevant to our survival. It could be relevant to our higher emotions or our higher capacities. But our attention

9:30is what directs our awareness or is what is what clarifies our awareness to create meaning and form to what it is that we're aware of. So this is where we start to begin with associative thought. For example, you may see a circular piece of material that is supported by a few lakes. For you, the association will be a table, for example. But in undifferentiated awareness and without attention and without some cognition, that is just a piece of material that has a certain shape and may or may not have a shape that has meaning yet. And you have to impose or put on the meaning of that shape and the meaning of the form in which this material takes. And so our attention does not necessarily put that meaning to it, but it directs our awareness to then start to put the

10:33meaning to whatever it is that we are seen, whatever it is that we're feeling, whatever it is that we are paying attention to. And then our focus, if we want to follow through, is the amount of intensity that we put onto this. So we can be paying attention to somebody in a moderate way. So a common example is when you're listening to a buddy talk or you're listening to your significant other talk. And sometimes you're paying attention enough to hear what they're saying and to respond, but you're not focusing very carefully on the words. And so sometimes your response is maybe less than what the person wanted. You know, that's a classic example of paying attention, but not focusing. Our focus is the intensity in which, like I said, is the intensity in which we pay attention to what it is that our attention and our awareness are engaging with. So these three facets, these kind of three phenomenological facets of our human beingness are what

11:39create the foundations for our thinking. And this is important because the different kinds, or the different degrees of awareness, attention, and focus that we have will determine some of the ways in which we think. So oftentimes, if you are just marginally aware of something and it affects you suddenly, you may not even think about your reaction, right? We may not have any volitional effects. So let's say there's a mosquito that comes buzzing in and it lands on my ear. And the buzz in the land are very abrupt. It goes from outside of my awareness directly to my awareness. And without thinking about it, I will probably react and try to do like this because my body has been trained through repeated associative sensations that buzzing insects usually bite and create itchy results. And so I don't want that. So my body, even without my personal volition,

12:49will react or respond or I'll go like this or do something like that. Now if we focus, if we have some attention and we focus on the fact that there are bugs around, it is possible for us to sit still and to let the bugs land on us and to not react and to not move even when they itch because we have the capacity to do that when we provide focus and attention on our sensations. Now there's two different kinds of thinking if you want to get into the ways in which we think there's two different kinds of thinking that can happen there. So there is a ego and survival center thinking when we just react. And one of the parts of the definition of thinking that I think is important is that thinking is not necessarily volitional. It is not under our conscious control at all times. Our bodies think our brains think without us directing it consciously because we have accumulated

13:50a number of experiences and associations and cause and effect chains that have our body react in certain ways. So we think without being volitional in that thinking and yet we can also think in a volitional way. So when we talk about our thinking and what it means to think in an appropriate way or in the right context and thinking in an inappropriate way in the wrong context, a lot of that has to do with non-volitional thinking and not engaging in a reflexive process or reflexive practice to think what is the right type of thinking that I want to engage in in this particular context. And instead we will just use what we have learned before, whether right or wrong in this particular instance, to enact the kind of thinking that we want. So for a simple example with these mosquitoes, it could be that there are certain kinds of buzzing insects

14:57that are not mosquitoes and do not bite and yet and they're buzzing all around us. If we were to use our ingrained reactive thinking pattern that buzzing insects cause discomfort, we would be very active in trying to swat away these bugs. But if we were to think, okay, I know something, I know a fact about these particular bugs and I know that they're not going to bite me and I know they're not going to bother me. And so I'm not going to react in that way that I often react. That's a different kind of thinking. It's a it's using a causal chain of understanding a fact, understanding a context and understanding one's own positionality to make a choice about how you are going to wait me, for example, is going to interact with my own bodily reactions to that context. And this is the point where I think the kinds of thinking really gets interesting. So

16:02in this particular example, we have a certain empirical fact. So we're thinking empirically. And when we think empirically, we think what's the current state of affairs in terms of the information that I can gather through my five senses? And what are those particular facts? In this case, you know, this hypothetical situation, we have a bunch of buzzing insects that are not going to bite. So that's going to be with the assumptions that I know a particular I know enough data to know what's going to affect me. And I'm thinking empirically. Then there's the there's a contextual thinking that happens. So in my particular space, you know, this relational contextual thinking, in my particular space, I know that my biological being is not going to be affected, you know, my survival, my comfort is not going to be affected by these particular bugs. That's a contextual way of thinking

17:08because if we just use the principle or principled way of thinking that buzzing insects, which is what most of my experience has been, buzzing insects will bite and will be unpleasant for me. That principle would apply to this context if I was not thinking more contextually and empirically. So when we use principled thinking and it doesn't connect to the context, then we have problems. And I would say a lot of our problems in thinking actually have to do with the fact that we use principled thinking, such as if there's a buzzing insect, it's going to bite me when we may want to use contextualized thinking more. The strength of principled thinking is that it gives you a quick and ready decision making point when you encounter particular instances or particular inputs.

18:08The problem with principled thinking is that it is often not accurate for a particular, for many contexts. And so we tend to use principles beyond the context or the scope that those principles are actually for. Contextualized thinking is great and we use a lot of contextualized thinking and in fact a lot of our decision making happens in context when we are encountering new experiences or when we have different emotions. But what's great about contextualized thinking is if you have enough information in the context, you are able to adapt appropriately to that context. So for example, in this hypothetical with the buzzing insects, knowing enough information allows us to react differently and allows us to calm our bodies so that we are not overreacting to these buzzing insects. That kind of contextualized knowledge requires a level of awareness and observation

19:12and empirical knowledge to adapt and enough reflexivity to adapt to a context and create a a new principle for that particular context or a new action for that particular context. The separation between principle and principle thinking and contextual thinking is really one of the areas that I think is most challenging right now in our particular moment as people. And then there's a third kind of thinking that's reflexive thinking. So you can think about a context and you can think about making a decision in a particular context. But that could be relevant to another person or it could be relevant to yourself. It could be within your own sense of values

20:13or attitudes when you have a reflexive capacity to think. You may be able to distinguish or differentiate principles versus contextual thinking and place yourself within that. So in this example, if I'm thinking that it doesn't make sense in terms of my own value system and my own biological well-being, my reactivity to swathing at buzzing insects is as negative for my sense of well-being. Then I can call my body and I can adjust to the new context. If I have a reflexive awareness and I think, well, you know, I have a lot of energy and I rather just not have buzzing bugs around me, then that's a different decision point. But the reflexive awareness of what is it that I am doing in this particular context and what is my value system in purpose in that particular context

21:17gives me another sense of decision points that allows me to use the information from contextual thinking and or principle thinking to make a wise decision. And I think this is so important because right now all what you mentioned, awareness, attention, focus is really, really high in the man even though we, the very fact is that we lose this very capacity because things move on so fast and especially when it comes to complexity as you mentioned, we are dealing here with humanity, right? Things, problems, things to address or in this sense very complex. Therefore, principle thinking can work only to a certain point. Situational thinking also can only work to a certain point. It's good if you incorporate both of them but ultimately we also need reflexivity in order to make sense of the complexity that we face. And now the question is how do we in an age that is so

22:23fast that even though we think we are aware because we have so much data but the most of the time we can't actually translate this data in information and therefore we can't even dissect the information properly in order to contextualize it and to reflect upon accurately. So what do you think is from an educational perspective the biggest challenge in order to increase real awareness and to that point you can even go a little bit deeper what you actually mean by real awareness because there is one thing being aware but there is not a thing to actually be truly aware of something and then also to be able to actually have this attention and then see for true and to decide on what they have to focus on in this particular moment.

23:23Right and and this is I think the unique moment that we are confronting. So in human history the the receiving of stimuli the awareness that we have had has been much at a much lower volume and much less intense. You know let's just even pre television but even at the television age when it was a black and white television or radio the most of our existence was with physical inanimate objects and other living beings. You know we had simple machines we but we mostly engaged with you know papers and pencils and hammers and nails and the other living beings who were around us. That meant that our

24:24environment our context was a space where volitional attention was easier to enact. Right so let's say you're sitting at a table and you have a bunch of tools in front of you and you have a task that you have to do and there's a non speaking inanimate manual that is telling you the kinds of activities that you need to participate in in order to let's say build a table. Our attention has to go volitionally from the text that we're reading to the actual materials to the tools and then we have to volitionally use that attention to carefully place the nail in the right space and put the two pieces of wood together and nail it in. That was most of our existence in various different ways whether it was farming whether it was writing by hands whether it was

25:24engaging in different kinds of painting or arts activities whether it was sports most of our attention was volitional to a degree. You know there were obviously let's say social interactions that were that caused non volitional attention and there were you know like the insects there were other environmental factors that may affect our awareness but we did not need to learn how to filter out as much stimuli as we do today. So we went from having the kind of time and space to have volitional attention develop and even you know I think even in our generation you know when I was driving on long trips with my parents as a young child there was no you know there was a radio but there was no other kinds of activities besides reading a book or staring out the window and that gave you time to spend volitional attention thinking about different things right like there

26:28was just no other nothing else to do so you look out the window and that was a little bit of stimuli but the amount of attention that you had to use for your own purposes to think about or reflect on life to come up with different stories to come up with whatever kinds of imaginative activities you wanted to think about there was a lot of time for that. That is an uncomfortable place for a lot of us to be in if we do not develop strategies and approaches. Because our bodies are geared towards seeking different kinds of stimuli it's just part of our you know biological impulse to seek out experiences and to seek out different kinds of engagement with our awareness you know our awareness is passive but is also an impulse to seek new experiences and attention is one of the ways in which we can do that as well as focus and so a lot

27:34of people talk about flow and you know this the conversation we're having has a lot of connection to various forms of meditation or heightened experiences or concepts like flow or human thriving where a lot of the most peaceful moments in humans lives are paying very close attention and having very high focus on a particular activity of meaning where your one's awareness is completely absorbed by that particular activity and so attention is something that varies according to the amount of focus but the more focused it's you can get the more your brain and your body are able to relax and engage in that activity and we even though it takes a lot of volition and it can be a little bit difficult to enter into that state it is a state that many of us find to be the some of the most peaceful and meaningful states that we can be in.

28:39Now that requires volition that requires you know the direction of attention. What we how we live today is kind of the opposite of that so instead of having a lot of space and time to develop volitional attention most of our lives are inundated with stimuli visual audio interactive stimuli that pull our attention into various different ways into various different directions that is one of the major causes of our sense of disease or discomfort that happen in our kinds of ways of thinking our ways of doing things because instead of having volitional focused attention we can have dispersed awareness and lots of stimuli will

29:42come to us and our brains will process it and we'll have a dopamine reaction because it is something that gives us a dopamine reaction to have these kinds of stimuli but it basically takes the full volition in our own agency which is to be able to pay attention and focus on something and disperses it so that other people can then basically use that to get what they want from it so when we are less focused and less attentive we're more reactive we are less likely to make volitional choices we're less likely to have reflexive thinking we're less likely to have contextual thinking and we will instead use principled thinking which is the easiest to manipulate us by while principles are helpful and useful and important they are also the easiest ways to get people to do something that may not be in their interest in that particular context so you know if you are distracted and there is a shiny bright thing that says hit this button and you will win a

30:44reward and you don't think about that you hit the button and then money goes out of your pocket right I mean these are the things that happen often with the ways in which advertisements come about on our smartphones on our screens on our touch screens if you're not paying attention and shiny lights pop up and the principle is shiny lights reward associated with positive feelings I'm gonna hit that button and even though the reward is another shiny light and a screen your actual interests are being manipulated to take your money from you and this can happen in various different ways right that's one of the simplest ways that happens these days which is we are interacting with pop ups we are interacting with screens regularly and there's just an inundation of stimuli of shiny lights of other dopamine and this is why outreach for example it's

31:46so easy to get because if you have dispersed attention and focus and awareness then everything just will amplify and you get you know what you want that is an emotional reaction that you know makes you think that you you might work towards something higher but eventually you're actually doing the very opposite and that's really the destruction of you know humanity itself so how does this play out if we as you laid out given the destruction given the environment we are growing up that we are less and less likely to actually think straight because of all this what you just laid out what does this tell us about us and really the future that lies ahead yeah I think outreach that's a great example of outrage where if we're not thinking contextually if we're not thinking reflexively

32:50if we're just basing it off of the kind of principles that somebody is highlighting to create outrage and distracting you then outrage is a very easy way to to get people to to react and what this means for humanity and means for us is that we are in a time where instead of needing to seek out stimuli we actually need to create a new way of thinking which is not necessarily completely new but it's a way of engaging in our attention and our focus that is fairly novel because it's changing some of our biological impulses from seeking stimuli and to filtering and protecting ourselves and our attention and awareness from stimuli so it's a reversal of our tendencies that is very hard to do because of the evolutionary role that

34:00awareness attention and focus have played in our past in our prior context but it is now instead of having volition to focus in and do something we need to have volition to be able to understand and filter out either actively through turning off our screens or through being able to focus on certain components of our lives with a lot of other stimuli going around that is a it's a very difficult activity you know there have been other like sports psychologists have shown you know have had practices for athletes where they ask you to stare at the point of a pencil while the TV is playing with sound on and not take your eye off of the eraser or the point of the pencil and actually to analyze that and to see where are some chips where some discoloration and see if you can focus on that for 10 seconds for 30 seconds for a minute

35:04for high-level athletes the focus attention that is required to do high level or high-skilled activities makes that valuable but for the rest of us and I would say more importantly for the for everybody else this is the kind of focus and attention that we need more and more of because we need to be able to develop our volitional capacities in the face of heightened distraction and heightened strategies to distract us from our own capacities to be attentive and focused you know our awareness is our probably our most important and most valuable resource capacity part of ourselves and yet we give it away very easily these days because people have become very adept at giving away you know at taking our awareness and attention from us

36:06so if we're thinking about our skills and the skillsets that we need how to protect ourselves from this it is to develop this ability to have volitional focus in the face of distractions is to not succumb to the almost biological impulse to have novelty and flashing lights and variety and outrage or comedy and actually spend time you know volitional time in focusing on a physical book or an in-animate object you know there's an increasing focus on doing arts

37:06mandala's paint by numbers things that are inanimate because of their importance for well-being focus and attention and it does support the ability to not be so reactive all the time because of the distractions that we have in our day-to-day lives what does this entail for the future of humanity one of the I think we're in this paradoxical time where we have more ability than ever to do really good contextual thinking and we have the greatest amount of distractions to pull us away from being able to do the contextualize the reflexive and the principle thinking so we have more information at our hands than ever and AI is another space where if you ask a question you get

38:09information some of that information is erroneous some of that information is downright false but you have the opportunity to get more information about particular context than ever before right at your fingertips without independent investigation this is a great support for a lot of the thinking that we engage it but it's also a risk because if we take the information and AI is basically an inductive thinking machine so it uses induction basically takes the likelihood and the patterns of the internet and feed you back whatever it is that you have asked it using pretty advanced inductive reasoning with a moderate sense of with some moderate deductive reasoning and then the feedback of the kind of thumbs up or thumbs down gives the training which is abductive so most of

39:13it is inductive which is why it often gets math wrong you know if you ask it to count to 100 it's very difficult for example or it doesn't work but for AI the and just the vast amount of information on the internet the amount of facts that we have the amount of information we have the amount of erroneous facts that we have is now higher than ever in our history and so we have this opportunity to if we can start to train ourselves to do contextualized and reflexive thinking quickly as well as thinking about the principles and the ways in which principle thinking can be applied to context we're capable of making really great decisions in ways that we didn't have the opportunity to but the danger is all of that information in fact needs to be filtered needs to be engaged

40:14with in a different way then we generally do because of the monetization of all of this information and the distractions you know when we talk about the most valuable resource that we have and then not necessarily resource the most valuable component of our human humanness is our awareness and our attention and yet we give that away very very easily we need to be very thoughtful and we need to be very volitional about our attention and our awareness rather than looking for constant stimulation and reaction and that is a very difficult thing to do when the environment is pulling your way from that but if we can do that and we can have a mastery over our informational environment we have more information than ever to make really great decisions and to come to really useful and important conclusions the ways in which AI can enhance and help

41:21support contextualized principle and reflexive thinking is only bested by its ability to give erroneous dependency creating distracted and awareness sucking information at the same time so if we can harness the potentiality and protect ourselves from the downsides we have the capacity to be doing some of the most amazing human engagement that we can do with our awareness attention and focus intact but we have to be training ourselves and we have to be working consciously to focus to become aware and to have our attention be our own volition rather than giving it away when it comes to education this is also one of the things that we need to prepare

42:22our students for you know students are regularly distracted education is regularly considered boring or not interesting and that's you know that's been an issue since education began but there's also there are also great teachers that make the same material interesting and engaging and allowing students to focus their attention one of the things that I always tell my students and my students are generally graduate students or who are more mature students but what you you get which you make out of your classes whether the you know but most people like to disperse responsibility to others for their own you know sense of well-being or their own sense of quality of learning and who's responsible for their learning one of the things that this current kind of social moment has fostered is that nobody has responsibility and yet are

43:28only and our main responsibility is our attention our awareness and our focus and if you are able to volitionally engage your awareness attention and focus to what it is that you're learning whether it's you're learning what not to do or you're learning what to do you can find learning in anything you know especially if you reflect on that whether the teacher is you know an excellent teacher or the teacher leaves something to be desired the ability to engage attention and focus to have your awareness be engage in productive activities is your responsibility and teaching and thinking through that capacity with students I think is one of the most important parts of this now there are a lot of nuance to this right like a teacher who is actively harming you know through you know verbal abuse or who is giving hateful speech there are

44:31things where that this is not the case right like we need to think about this contextually but for most of our for many of us in education and in higher education the danger of bad teaching is that it is not interesting or it's not clear or that it's confusing there's a mutual responsibility for teachers and students to both be able to harness their awareness attention and focus to do the best they can but if a teacher is saying something that a student who is rightfully paying attention who is focused is not understanding a student should be able to raise her hand and ask for the clarification and the teacher with that same level of responsibility for attention awareness to focus should be able to respond in kind so that the student can understand when there is distracted awareness distracted attention a student may just not be paying attention and be confused because they haven't actually been paying attention and then when the teacher asks the question they don't

45:34have the answer because they have not been focused on the right things um likewise teachers may not be as attentive and um focused on their students when they're explaining things so that they don't pick up on the cues of um you know confusion these are some of the points that I think get lost in our debates on education so our responsibility to ourselves to be having our attention directed the way that we see is valuable through our reflexive thinking through saying that my awareness is the most important part of my human beingness myself and so I should be the one directing that to the activities and the meaningful and engagements that I want and that when I'm in a space like a classroom where I'm learning my focus is my responsibility and if I focus I can learn regardless of

46:39um what's being said in terms of what to do what not to do uh in terms of what do I know and what do I not know in terms of what is going on in this classroom that I think is useful and helpful and what may not be now there's a responsibility for the teachers well to develop quality content to make it clear to show which relevance and meaning for the people who are engaged in the class but the responsibility is is mutual you know there's a responsibility on the students to have and there's a responsibility on the teachers to have and recently it has been that responsibility has been trying to be passed off to other people rather than being owned and engaged with in each individual so if we can get responsibility back and we can get responsibility back in terms of our own deepest um personal engagement in life that would be really helpful

47:44because it will allow us to utilize the information the facts the technologies that we have to make decisions that are helpful for our thriving um so that AI is not does not become the kind of putting our decision making into the hands of AI and it does not you know in our um decision making is not reactive because of all of the impulses that are coming at us because we continue to distract ourselves with flashing lights and uh emotionally charged content but instead we are responsible for our own emotions and we're responsible for our own attention and then we see this information and we reflect on it and we focus on it in a ways that allow us to um think about it in relation to our lives and our own well-being I think it's so important it reminds me of a Chinese proverb actually who says that if you see a good man imitate him and if you see a bad man

48:50examine your heart and I think that's really the core and especially in it reminds me of what Jung said that oftentimes we think like we have ideas but the problem is that by and large ideas really have people and we are today we live in a society where people are literally determined by by also false ideas dangerous ideas and I'm curious what you think about the distinction between thoughts and ideas and if there is a distinction or they are the same and how we actually know if an idea or thought is good and if a thought or idea is bad. Yeah so that's a lot to unpack but we can unpack it for sure. So there's a distinction between a thought and an idea. The ways in which there's a philosopher of education David Hanson who's at the teacher's

49:57college who writes a lot about the difference between a fact and a thought and an idea and the difference between a thought and an idea is that an idea is a generative act. So an idea is not something that like a fact can be given from one person to another an idea comes from within the individual but it is sparked by the ideas of other individuals. So an idea you know I forget who you quoted but you know a lot of people think they have an idea but in fact ideas have people there's another way of looking at it which is that ideas are only generated by individuals to guide their decision making in their lives. Now thoughts or opinions because I think I would say opinions is what most people think they

50:58have and in fact opinions are what have people. That would be my reformulation of that. But opinions are what people feel in a particular moment and what they receive from others as a sense of what is good or bad right like somebody gives their opinion on your shirt. That is a judgment on how they feel your shirt aesthetically is appropriate or not appropriate for a given context or a given moment. We live more in the world of opinion than in the world of ideas and we live more in the world of opinion than in the world of thoughts. So I like to think of thoughts as the kind of a moment in time of a process of thinking and so like we mentioned we have principle thinking we have a contextual thinking we have reflexive thinking we have inductive

52:01abductive we have associated thinking we have causal thinking there's all kinds of ways of thinking and a thought is one of is like a frozen moment that we use to communicate that thinking but it's also one of the things that we have as we continue to think right so if I have a thought that I am hungry and I have and I think about what is it that I should do about this hunger you know I would have the sensation of let's say a gurgling in the stomach or I'd have the sensation in my body of a slight discomfort those two sensations lead me to associate with my body the thinking process that I am hungry it could be that I'm not actually hungry could be I'm dehydrated it could be that in fact I just have eaten something that has made me uncomfortable but let's just say that I'm well attuned enough and I've had enough association between

53:03the different feelings the different sensations my awareness of those sensations that based on the feelings that I've had I make a usually subconscious association that I'm hungry so that's a thinking process now my thoughts is okay I'm hungry then I think what should I do about my hunger that's another process of thinking so there are ways of thinking about this contextually, reflexively and principally and an in principle so if I think okay I'm hungry my principle is that I'm a vegetarian so I'm going to eat a particular kind of food because I'm hungry that's a principle way of thinking contextually it could be you know what else am I feeling you know are my muscles feeling weak am I feeling thirsty should I have a particular kind of protein what should I

54:05eat based on the context of my body or thinking reflexively as you know right now in this particular moment I am speaking to somebody so even though I'm hungry I can wait another few minutes or even an hour or two before I need to eat and in fact it's better for me to be a little bit hungry because it helps me be more alert so there's lots of different ways to think about one's hunger the thoughts that I have you know some of the conclusions that relate to this these different thinking processes are decision-making moments for me to choose a course of action an opinion is something that puts a quality on that or a good or bad label on that so you know a principle is vegetarianism is better for x, y and z reason and somebody has said this to me and

55:09so now vegetarianism is something that becomes a principle and becomes you know also a opinion you know if I thought about it in a different way I may not think that that opinion is valid based on reflexivity or contextualized thinking you know other opinions you know for example is it rude to eat well giving or having a dialogue with somebody online right that would be an opinion that somebody has you know maybe it's not appropriate or maybe it is appropriate these are different opinions that float around in our heads in terms of what is socially acceptable and what is also understood as good practices an idea however would take all of these different consideration all these different thoughts and think about them and say you know what in this

56:10particular moment it would be very interesting if I had for example you know you have a logo of an apple right for why not knowledge matters it might be interesting as an idea to think okay there's lots of different other facts going on I have this idea that maybe it would be interesting to take a bite out of an apple because I'm a little bit hungry during this conversation with why not it matters and put this as a little funny piece of evidence in this particular dialogue so then I could do something like this I could take an apple I could bite and we can see how this idea of plays out the ways in which opinions thoughts and ideas intersect are really the centerpiece of what it means to do deep thinking and you can do deep principle thinking you can do deep contextualized thinking and you can do deep reflexive thinking we also do accurate and thoughtful deductive reasoning

57:18and abductive reasoning but all this is going to depend upon the volition and the engagement of your awareness attention and focus you know if you are engaged aware and attentive to all of these different factors your brain is able to process all these different thoughts some of that through kind of active reasoning some of that through learning patterns of behavior some of that more autonomously and the the way in which one approaches their life through awareness attention and focus allows for the flow of these different kinds of thinking to happen in the brain and in the body and then have these decision making points arrive in clarity at you know in executive functioning what's the best way to really start this process of having

58:21true awareness attention and focus in an age of AI would you recommend for just starting for example reading a book so again because to me if you really want to have a focus a attention and a warness you can you simply can't really use AI and think like it somehow will magically it will help you to truly be able to think straight in this day and age in other words it really there is an effort a concerted effort that you have to take in order to get from point A to point B and this only goes really when we do an intentional effort and really go back to the roots and then we can it can help us in one way or away out in for example testing our ideas but to short cut to cut the

59:26process short it's just according to what I see it's I think it's impossible so what's your view on that yeah so I think we need to get back to certain kinds of practice not necessarily get back and in fact I think these practices have proliferated greatly through the internet through people sharing different ideas but there are certain practices that really help with intentional pollution with agency with the ability to focus ones you know become aware of ones awareness to focus ones attention to have ones focus be part of their daily abilities and so there are different kinds of activities that one can do and the variety is great so you know there are people who maybe more kinesthetic or more interested in movement doing a skilled movement where it requires awareness

1:00:32attention and focus you know it could be juggling it could be whittling it could be drawing it could be you know painting it could be any activity could be cooking there are lots of things that if one is paying attention and focusing and looking at the details and the quality and doing it even though it becomes uncomfortable and you push through that discomfort and then it becomes fun that is the kind of you know like similar to exercise it's different but it's similar to exercise where you know if you exercise enough for it to hurt and then you you know not so much that you're injured but you get a burn for the exercise but then you keep going a little bit and then that burns subsides that's where you get the growth the same thing is true for some of these attentional and focus oriented activities you know but then there's also ways that are more efficient than others to do that so you know different forms of sitting still different forms of meditation

1:01:38different forms of thought exercises can help so just having you know a focus on the breath and sitting still for 10 minutes will help with that you know if you are saying no matter what happens no matter if there's a fly that lands on me no matter if I'm hot or cold I'm going to sit still for 10 minutes because I can survive and unless you know something is life threatening I can survive 10 minutes with whatever discomfort that um the Lichonal Act gives you more capacity in other spaces other kinds of activities where you can start to have a focus of a kind of problem-solving you even if it's just mathematics spending five minutes doing a variety or 10 minutes doing a variety of mathematical calculations in your head can help you because the more complex they get the more

1:02:40focus you need to tend to more focus you need to have the more attention you need to have and you need to be able to keep all these numbers in your brain all of those kinds of activities can be very helpful for um then bringing that to things like AI right so if AI becomes a tool that is a checkpoint for different things or if you're looking for particular information that has been decided and then you can check it against then AI can be an enhancement tool the internet can also if you're looking for information and you understand um what good information is and you don't get distracted by advertisements or you don't get distracted by a erroneous websites being able to become aware of the impulse and the reaction you know when you have clickbait you know clickbait does it hijacks certain kinds of emotions that we have to create curiosity to click it you know

1:03:47experts say this you should never do this the best you know these are the best five best places to eat etc etc um you know having that sense of urgency having a little bit of sense of mystery um engaging in you know you want to hear this uh you know this is scandalous information you know all of those kinds of grabbing the emotions and pulling the awareness away if you can be aware that you feel those things when you see that you can then be immunized against that because you can say oh I feel this I see this I understand that this is not part of my particular point today if it's something that is actually interesting I can save it for later when I have time for it but I'm actually going to stay focused and I'm not going to let myself get pulled and carried away by extraneous or superfluous information um these are actions that really help with our sense of well-being our decision making and our ability to thrive in these very different times where we have

1:04:54more capacity and access to information than ever more capacity and access to various kinds of activities and experiences than ever um and yet we have lower senses of well-being and uh lower senses and higher anxieties and higher challenges with our uh interpersonal interactions than ever and this is really why responsibility really is so important it's really up to each of us to do what you just said in order to increase awareness attention and really focus doctor Joe Levitton it's always a great pleasure to have you yep great to talk to you again and um yeah looking forward to further conversations and doctor Joseph Levitton that's why knowledge matters