Social nature of human thinking. Types, properties of thinking

The organic, inextricable connection between thinking and language clearly reveals the social, socio-historical essence of human thinking. Cognition necessarily presupposes the continuity of all knowledge acquired in the course of human history. This historical continuity of knowledge is possible only if it is recorded, consolidated, preserved and transmitted from one person to another, from generation to generation. This recording of all the main results of knowledge is carried out with the help of language - in books, magazines, etc. In all this, the social nature of human thinking is very revealing. The mental development of a person necessarily occurs in the process of assimilation of knowledge developed by humanity in the course of socio-historical development. The process of cognition of the world by an individual is conditioned and mediated by the historical development of scientific knowledge, the results of which each individual masters in the course of training; it is like communication between man and humanity.

During the entire period of schooling, a ready-made, established, well-known system of knowledge, concepts, etc., discovered and developed by humanity throughout previous history, appears before the child. But what is known to humanity and is not new to it inevitably turns out to be initially unknown and new to every child. Therefore, mastering the entire historically accumulated wealth of knowledge requires a great deal of thinking and serious creative work from the child, although he masters a ready-made system of concepts, and masters it under the guidance of adults. Consequently, the fact that children assimilate knowledge already known to mankind and do this with the help of adults does not exclude, but, on the contrary, presupposes the need for independent thinking among children themselves. Otherwise, the assimilation of knowledge will be purely formal, superficial, thoughtless, and mechanical. Thus, mental activity is a necessary basis both for the assimilation of knowledge (for example, by children) and for the acquisition of completely new knowledge (primarily by scientists) in the course of the historical development of mankind.

Motivation of thinking.

Mental activity, like any other activity, is always caused by some human needs. If there are no needs, then there is no activity that they could cause.

When studying thinking, like any other mental process, psychological science takes into account and, to one degree or another, specifically studies:

Needs and motives that force a person to engage in mental activity;

Specific circumstances under which a person has a need for analysis, synthesis, etc.

The motives of thinking studied in psychology are of two types: 1) specific cognitive and 2) nonspecific.

In the first case, the stimulants and driving forces of mental activity are interests and motives in which cognitive needs are manifested (curiosity, thirst for knowledge, etc.).

In the second case, thinking begins under the influence of more or less external causes, and not purely cognitive interests.

For example, a schoolchild may start preparing homework, solving a problem, thinking about it not out of a desire to learn and discover something new, but only because he is afraid of falling behind his friends, etc. But whatever the initial motivation of thinking, as it is carried out, cognitive motives themselves begin to operate. It often happens that a student sits down to study lessons only under the compulsion of adults, but in the process of educational work he also develops purely cognitive interests in what he does, reads, and decides.

Thus, a person begins to think under the influence of certain needs, and in the course of his mental activity, increasingly deeper and stronger cognitive needs arise and develop.

Learning and development of thinking go in parallel and mutually stimulate each other. Thus, a child’s transition from objective thinking to visual-figurative thinking helps expand his horizons. At the same time, this transition becomes possible largely thanks to training.

The development of thinking and learning begins long before a child enters school. Initially, learning occurs in communication with adults, then play activities are included. By the beginning of school age, the child’s thinking and all mental development reaches a fairly high level. A first-grader is already well oriented in the world around him, knows how to guess riddles, solve problems, can quite coherently express his opinion on various events, knows how to draw, sculpt, design, etc. Thanks to educational activities, a transition occurs from visual-figurative thinking to verbal-logical thinking , conceptual thinking. This entails a radical restructuring of all other mental processes. The transition to verbal-logical thinking is associated with a change in the content of thinking, which is based on the operation of concepts. The child no longer operates with concrete ideas that have a visual basis and reflect the external characteristics of objects, but with concepts that reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena and the relationships between them. This new content of thinking is stimulated by learning. The main stimulating effect of learning is the ability to carry out operations that are the opposite of those performed, that is, the child masters the principle of conservation. So, he understands that liquid poured into another glass will not change its volume. At the same stage of development of thinking, under the influence of learning, children come to understand two most important logical principles:

the principle of equivalence, according to which: if A=B, and B=C, then A=C;

the principle that objects have several measurable characteristics, such as weight and size, which can be in different proportions: a pebble is small and light, a balloon is large but still light, and a car is large and heavy.

Education also contributes to the emergence of such new formations of mental activity as:

Analysis, the formation of which begins with the identification of various properties and characteristics in objects and phenomena. As children develop, expand their horizons and become familiar with various aspects of reality and special education, this ability is increasingly improved. To develop this skill, the technique of comparing a given object with others that have different properties is used. The practical use of this technique by the child himself leads to its consolidation. At the next stage of learning, the child is asked to identify the properties of an object without comparison with other observed objects. Gradually, during the learning process, the concept of general and distinctive (particular), essential and non-essential features is introduced;

The formation of an internal plan of action begins with a practical action with objects, then with its image, diagram, then the stage of performing the initial action in terms of “loud speech” follows, then it becomes sufficient to pronounce this action “to oneself” and, finally, at the final stage the action is completely absorbed and becomes an action “in the mind”;

New forms of thinking that arise at school age become the basis for further learning. Thus, the process of development of thinking and learning mutually complement and stimulate each other.

International University of Nature, Society and Human "Dubna"

Essay

in cultural studies on the topic:

“Primitive thinking according to L. Levy-Bruhl”

Completed by: Karmazina T.A.

Dubna, 2008

Introduction

Background of thinking

Primitive thinking

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The development of human society is the history of the development of human essence. The main component of this process is the development of human thinking.

Thinking, like the ability to work, undergoes a complex process of development from an ancient predecessor to the thought of modern man. Thought is the result and means of material labor, which transforms man himself and the natural environment. Thought goes through historical stages of development, otherwise its history will be represented by a sequence of paradigms.

The life of human society consists of the remnants of the former ways of life of mankind. The thinking of a person living today consists of fragments of experienced historical types of thinking: religious and mythological. The development of thinking is the core of the development of spiritual culture. The study of the processes of its development is the main condition for understanding the thinking of modern man and his further development.

The study of collective ideas, their connections, combinations in lower societies will help shed light on the genesis of modern logical principles.

To better clarify these features, I will compare them with our thinking in this paper. This way we run less risk of missing them.

The Nature of Human Thinking

Human intelligence is an important property. Man, from the position of scientific materialism, is the result of the endless development of matter. Man is the result of a single systematic world process, which is formed sequentially: biological, physical and chemical forms of matter. Man is the only formation in the world, the essence of which is the finale of the continuous creation of oneself. Containing within itself the enormous wealth of the material world, man has the ability to understand and transform the world, work, and think.

The meaning of human existence determines the direction of development of human essence, the meaning of its existence. Human development occurs in the process of creating a “second nature”. Consequently, it has “external reference points” - the exploration of the world in breadth and depth. But the actual human qualities in this movement lie in the development of the human essence itself, its movement in knowing itself. A person has no internal guidelines in his development other than the development of his essence and deepening into it. Specifically speaking, the meaning of human existence must be presented as an enrichment of the nature of work and the abilities of human thinking.

Background of thinking

The predecessor of human intelligence is “concrete thinking,” or, as it is also called, thinking in sensory images. The emergence of concrete thinking is still poorly understood. Scientists suggest that the psyche of higher animals is based on two types of reactions - instincts and associations (temporary connections). Instincts are innate, species-specific forms of behavior that are inherited and developed as a result of biological evolution. The formation of associations occurs during individual adaptation to the environment and are a reflection of external connections between different environmental phenomena perceived by animals.

Primitive thinking

The study of primitive thinking presents great difficulties, since the use of experiments is hardly possible here. An important indicator of the formation and development of primitive thinking are the means of labor of ancient man that have survived to our time. The movement of the human mind begins with the first achievement of man - the creation of the first tools. The human way of life has determined the first and most important paradigm of human thinking - the objectivity of the reflection of reality, the correspondence of thought to reality. The main condition for human development is the knowledge of the phenomenological manifestations of the laws of nature.

Ancient man needed to have extensive observations and knowledge of the system of natural phenomena. It must be assumed that human thinking during this period of development had the simplest logic. It was needed to trace the logic of natural connections on which human existence depended.

In the process of the formation of thinking, obviously, the four basic logical laws gradually took shape - identity, contradiction, sufficient reason, excluded middle. But these laws are characteristic only of a sufficiently mature and developed human intellect, but the time of their final formation in the human intellect is quite difficult to establish. Most likely, this should be attributed to the period of ancient intelligence. It can be assumed that at a relatively high level of development of the initial labor and intellect of man, ancient man was faced with the task of explaining a system of natural phenomena; in this regard, we can say that a new level of thinking appears - explanatory. The famous researcher of primitive thinking, Lévy-Bruhl, distinguished between individual and collective thinking. He believed that individual thinking is based on the general laws of formal logic, otherwise man would not survive the struggle for existence. However, collective thinking was paralogical. Its basis was the law of participation or complicity, according to which ancient man imagined that a perceived object could be simultaneously present in different places, i.e. the image of an object is identical to the object itself (therefore, influencing the image of an animal entails future success in hunting). Pre-logical thinking, as Lévy-Bruhl believed, was embodied in collective rituals and myths. The concept of this thinking was criticized by Soviet and foreign science.

An interesting point of view on primitive thinking was held by the French ethnologist K. Lévi-Strauss. He sought to reveal the originality of primitive thinking. The ethnologist is characterized by a high appreciation of the moral foundations of primitive society. He created the concept of “super-rationalism”, aimed at restoring the unity of the sensual principle, lost by modern European civilization. In his opinion, such unity was in the thinking of primitive society.

Levi-Strauss, politicizing with L. Levi-Bruhl, argued that ideas about a different way of thinking among peoples living in conditions of primitive cultures are not justified. He believed that their thought processes proceed in the same way as those of civilized living people, only the methods of generalization and ideas about the general differ, and the set of the most general concepts or categories is different. The works of C. Lévi-Strauss revealed the logical mechanism for creating and overcoming contradictions in the primitive consciousness with the help of mythological meditation, as well as the ability of primitive thinking for logical analysis. But despite this, for me, Lévy-Bruhl’s point of view is closer, in my opinion it is more detailed, and also seems more convincing. In the works of Levi-Strauss, in my opinion, the opinion of primitive society is exaggerated in terms of the level of intelligence and the course of thinking. But there is no need to overestimate the logical nature of primitive thinking, turning the laws of logic into an easy and quick gift of human thought. Logical thinking could not take shape immediately, but had to go through a series of certain stages, starting with immature, undeveloped logical thinking, a contradiction, an excluded third, a sufficient basis. Many people think that primitive thinking arose with such a phenomenon as the “logic of things”, stable, constantly repeating connections with natural phenomena. Thanks to this logic, formal logical laws were created. It is necessary to distinguish between a “layer” of thinking, which is associated with a chain of observed, constantly repeating natural phenomena, and another: an “explanatory” layer, in which the formation of logic occurred in a complex way. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between the processes of logicalization of the immediate (specific level of thinking) and other thinking - explanatory. “Pre-logical thinking,” according to Lévy-Bruhl, clearly belonged to the latter. In the thinking of ancient man, two main paradigms emerged: illusory and realistic. Realism consists of seeing things as they are in themselves, without any other phenomena. This paradigm had a very strong biological basis, because The animal's easily adaptable lifestyle determines the reflection of the environment. The second paradigm, the paradigm of realism, received much more confirmation with the advent of a social way of life, since the transformation of the natural environment requires adequacy of reflection, without which there would be no creation of a “second nature”. But the realistic paradigm can be observed at all stages of human history; it determines all the successes of human intelligence. At a certain stage of its development, it reaches its philosophical expression, mostly in the form of materialism, which elevates this paradigm to the level of a high and productive abstraction. Some properties of the realistic paradigm, of course, appeared in the field of idealistic concepts and turned out to be materialistic in content.

The emergence of the anthropomorphic paradigm with the emergence of a layer of explanatory thinking has become a necessary and irreversible step in human thinking. The ancient man could explain all natural phenomena, their regularity, and the time of occurrence only by the fact that nature has its own mind and thinking. The actions of nature were explained as deliberate, and began to be attributed to various spirits and beings. The human psyche is structured in such a way that one’s own meaningful actions, even in the early stages of development, become the subject of observation and awareness. The nature of human activity contains the beginning of an explanation of natural phenomena based on the model of one’s conscious actions. This is easily detected in the psychology of a child when he begins to attribute good and bad qualities to things. Since for primitive man a meaningful action seemed natural and ordinary, as a result natural phenomena were easier to explain by the presence of consciousness, will, and intentions.

As a result, they believed that nature needed to be respected and appeased, because it was on it that their lives depended. Let us give examples of such beliefs.

Animism. Faith in primitive human society was associated with primitive mythological beliefs and was based on such a concept as animism. Animism (from Latin anima - spirit, soul) - the assignment of human qualities to natural phenomena. E.B. Tyler first introduced this concept to define the first stage in the history of the development of religion.

Magic. It is the most ancient form of religion (and comes from the Greek megeia - magic). Magic represents a set of specific actions, with a special meaning, also including rituals.

The essence of magic is still undiscovered and unexplored in comparison with other religions. Some scholars, such as the ethnologist James Freder (1854-1941), consider it the parent of religion. And another ethnologist and sociologist A. Virkandt (1867-1953) considers magic the main means of developing religious ideas. And the Russian ethnographer L.Ya. Sternberg (1861-1927) believes that it is a product of early animistic beliefs. But one thing is likely - “magic brightened up, if not entirely, then to a significant extent, the thinking of primitive man and was closely connected with the development of belief in the supernatural.”

Fetishism. One of the types of magic (comes from the French fetiche - talisman, amulet, idol). Fetishism is the belief in the divine powers of inanimate objects that have supernatural powers. Objects of worship are stones, flowers, trees, any objects. Moreover, they can be both naturally created and man-made. Types of veneration: making sacrifices, driving nails into them to cause pain to the spirit and force it to fulfill a request.

Belief in amulets (derived from Arabic gamala - to wear). This religion is believed to originate from primitive fetishism and magic. Faith was identified with any object, which, according to the savage, was endowed with magical powers and the ability to protect the owner from various troubles.

Totemism. Among ancient people, the worship of animals and trees played a significant role. Ancient man imagined the world as animate. He believed that every object has a soul, like a person, and communicated with them as equals. When a savage named himself after an animal, considered it equal in blood, and refrained from killing it, then such an animal was considered totemic (derived from the northern Indian ototem - its genus). Totetism is the belief in blood ties between a clan and certain plants or animals, sometimes natural phenomena.

According to historical data, the first type of explanatory thinking was myth. It was an attempt to explain the world. Myth serves as a precursor to the scientific worldview. Myths tell about events of the past, future, the appearance of the world, God, and animals. There are cosmogonic myths, ethnographic ones, about the seasons, weather phenomena, heroes, etc. In most myths about the universe, the initial stage is considered as the emergence of the world from the initial chaos. Then we got the earth, people, gods, animals. In myths one can clearly distinguish elements of realism and materialism, because... the gods are the result of order emerging from chaos. But what remains in the myths is dominated by the work of the gods, and invented animals with human traits. The anthropomorphic paradigm forms the basis of the mythological type of thinking.

Myths contained the initial ideas of chaos, gods, animals, and people. They included the beginnings of later abstractions of law and regularity (the emergence of order from chaos), matter, gods, etc. Also clothed in the form of images. Myths include special laws that regulate people's behavior, define social prohibitions, and act as regulators of public life.

The mythological type of thinking entered the next, higher, form of thinking - the religious type of thinking. It has also been preserved in a rather independent form, although in new forms, in the structure of the intellect of modern man

Religion is a more complex phenomenon of the spiritual life of society compared to mythology. It contains a system of certain beliefs about supernatural forces - gods. Religion arose about 40-50 thousand years ago, but in its original form it differed little from mythology, because it absorbs a significant part of the myths. In religion there is the presence of an increasingly complex creed, a system of views that is becoming increasingly abstract in nature - one of the most important differences between religion and myth. At the same time, religion always retains a largely figurative character, expressing dogma in the form of images, which makes it accessible to all segments of society.

The cult of gods and saints is a characteristic feature; the ritual side is also very developed, which includes a lot borrowed from magical thinking and actions. Religion also includes a special social aspect - the church. Religion appears as a more developed form of thinking than mythology, based on the paradigm of fantastic explanation, or the anthropomorphic paradigm. “Consideration of the world in the image, likeness of man and conscious human action” acquires its most vivid character in religion, especially in ancient times. The heart of any religion is the gods or a single god, who have human properties enhanced many times over - reason, mercy, will, etc. The anthropomorphism of religion was noted by various thinkers, from the ancient philosopher Xenophanes to the philosopher of the 19th century. L. Feuerbach.

Back in the nineteenth century, it was believed that primitive religions were characterized by two concepts that distinguished them from other world religions. The first was that their main motive was fear (fear of punishment by spirits), the second was that representatives of primitive religions were an integral part of ideas about uncleanliness and unhygiene. Because almost all descriptions of primitive religions left by travelers included stories about the eternal horror and fear such people live in. It tells about beliefs in terrible misfortunes that happen to those who suddenly accidentally cross some forbidden barrier or deal with something unclean. Since fear covers the entire consciousness, it is useful to take this fact into account when considering other ideas of primitive consciousness, in particular, ideas about the unclean.

It is not known for certain how old the ideas of pure and unclean are in any non-literate culture: for its representatives they must seem eternal and unchanging.

A person who belongs to any culture from birth is more likely to believe that he only passively perceives the ideas of his world about the forces and dangers that exist in it, without noticing the small changes that he could make to them. In the same way, we believe that we are just passively perceiving our native language, and do not notice our involvement in the changes that occur in it during our lives. That is why I believe that the culture under study should not be considered as a long-established value system. True, the opposite is also possible.

The more we learn about any of the primitive religions, the more clear is the fact that in symbolic structures there is still room for the great mysteries of both religion and philosophy.

conclusion

To summarize this work, I can say that according to these data, for the most part, primitive thinking differs from ours. It has other guidelines. Modern people look for secondary reasons in any action, but primitive man sees exclusively mystical reasons, because everywhere it seems to him that otherworldly forces are at work. He can admit that a being can be in different places at the same time. He is absolutely indifferent to contradictions, while our mind cannot agree with them. This is precisely why we can call such thinking, in comparison with our prological one. Collective ideas (in general terms) can be determined by the following characteristics: transmitted from generation to generation; are imposed by individuals, who then awaken feelings of fear, respect, etc. These ideas do not depend on the individual, they cannot be understood by considering the individual. For primitive man there is no obvious physical fact in the way we attach to this word. Rain, wind, or any other natural phenomenon were not perceived by ancient people the way they are perceived by us (as complex movements that are in complex dependence with other phenomena). Physical properties, of course, are perceived by their senses, just like ours, and the entire psychophysiological process of perception is carried out in exactly the same way as in modern man. Primitive people see the same as we do, but they do not perceive with the same consciousness as we do. For our society, ghosts, brownies, etc. are something related to the realm of the supernatural: for us these are visions, magical manifestations, they are all on one side, and the facts known as a result of perception and everyday experience are on the other side, because in modern thinking there is a clear line separating these concepts. For primitive man, such a line does not exist. A religious and often superstitious person usually believes in two systems, in two worlds - one is the world of visible things, subject to the inevitable laws of motion, and the other - invisible, intangible things. But for the primitive consciousness there is only one world. Any reality is mystical, like everything else, which means that any perception is mystical. The mystical relationships that are so often captured in the relationships between beings and objects by primitive consciousness have one common basis. All of them, in different forms and to varying degrees, imply the presence of involvement between beings or objects associated with a collective representation. It is for this reason, on this issue, that I agree with Lévy-Bruhl and his “law of participation.” Collective ideas are not the product of intellectual processing in the proper sense of the word. And most importantly, instead of logical relations (inclusions and exclusions), they imply participles.

Bibliography

1. History of human intelligence / Perm. univ. – Perm, 1998. – Part 1,2. Prehistory – myth – religion. Education.

2. Lévy-Bruhl L. Supernatural in primitive thinking / Trans. Ed. VC. Nikolsky and A.V. Kisin M., 1999 p. 7-372

3. Vojvodina LN Mythology and culture Textbook. Manual M., 2002 p. 115-116

Knowledge of objective reality begins with sensations and perception. But, starting with sensations and perception, knowledge of reality does not end with them. From sensation and perception it moves to thinking.

The discovery of relationships and connections between objects constitutes an essential task of thinking: this determines the specific path by which thinking moves towards an ever deeper knowledge of existence. Thinking reflects not only relationships and connections, but also properties and essence; and relationships are reflected not only in thinking.

All thinking takes place in generalizations. It always goes from the individual to the general and from the general to the individual. Thinking is the movement of thought, revealing the connection that leads from the individual to the general and from the general to the individual. Thinking is indirect - based on the disclosure of connections, relationships, mediations - and generalized knowledge of objective reality.

Types of thinking

Types of thinking by content.

1. Visual-effective thinking. This thinking is most closely related to practice, since the solution to various problems here is carried out by actually transforming a given situation.
2. Visual-figurative thinking. The essence of visual-figurative thinking is that an individual can think only in specific images.
3. Abstract thinking. The essence of abstract thinking (verbal-logical) is that it occurs based on a concept without the use of concrete experience.

Types of thinking according to the nature of the problems being solved.

1. Practical thinking, as opposed to theoretical thinking, deals with real practice. Accordingly, the task of practical thinking is to transform reality.
2. Theoretical thinking consists of understanding the laws of phenomena.

Forms of thinking

As a rule, there are three forms of thinking.

1. Concept. A concept is a form of thinking that reflects the general and, moreover, essential properties of objects and phenomena. They all fall into two categories:

• essential (those that are required so that a certain object “does not cease to be itself”);
• insignificant (additional features that do not change the very nature of the object or phenomenon).

• general (there are provisions here that apply to all objects or phenomena);
• private (here we can only talk about a separate group of objects or phenomena that are united by a common concept);
• individual (here we are talking only about the individual concept).

Operations of thinking

Let us describe the main types of mental operations.

1. Comparison. The comparison operation is adapted to establish similarities or differences between objects or phenomena of the surrounding reality. The comparison operation can be performed in two ways:

• directly (with simultaneous perception of objects);
• indirect (in the case of using inference).

• perception;
• memory;
• representations.

Abstraction is usually used when mastering new concepts, since they reflect only the most important features of a number of objects, which give us the right to classify them into one group or another. The following types of abstraction are distinguished:

• practical (it is included in the process of activity);
• sensual (external);
• higher (indirect, expressed in certain concepts).

Let's reinforce our knowledge using Figure 1.

Figure 1. “Thinking”

Thinking - process cognitive activity individual, characterized generalized and indirect a reflection of reality.

The first feature of thinking- his mediated character. What a person cannot know directly, directly, he knows indirectly, indirectly: some properties through others, the unknown - through the known. Thinking always relies on data from sensory experience -sensations, perceptions , representation - and on previously acquired theoretical knowledge.

The second feature of thinking- his generality. Generalization as knowledge of the general and essential in the objects of reality is possible because all the properties of these objects are connected with each other. General exists and manifests itself only in the individual, in the concrete.

Generalizationspeople express throughspeech, language.

The results of people's cognitive activity are recorded in the form of concepts.

Concept- There is reflection of essential features subject. The concept of an object arises on the basis of many judgments and conclusions about it.

Judgment - This form of thinking , reflecting objects d reality in their connections and relationships X. Each judgment is a separate thought about something. Consistent logical connection of several judgments necessary in order to solve any mental problem, understand something, find an answer to a question, called reasoning.

Inference- This conclusion from several judgments giving us new knowledge about objects and phenomena objective world.

Inferencesthere are - inductive, deductive and analogical.

Thinking is the highest level of cognitiona man of reality. The sensory basis of thinking are sensations, perceptions and ideas . Through the senses - these are the only channels of communication between the body and the outside world - information enters the brain. The content of information is processed by the brain. The most complex (logical) form of information processing is the activity of thinking.

Thinking is not only closely connected with sensations and perceptions, but it is formed on the basis of them.

Transition from sensation to thought- a complex process that consists, first of all, of isolation and segregation an object or a sign of it, in abstraction from the specific, singular and establishing essential, general for many items.

For human thinking more significantly relationship not with sensory knowledge, but with speech and language.

In a more strict sense speech - the process of communication, language-mediated . If language- objective, historically established code system and the subject of a special science - linguistics, then speech is psychological process formulating and conveying thoughts means language.

Under inner speech psychology implies significant transitional stage between the plan and the expanded external speech Yu.

Thinking is also inextricably linked and with practical activities of people .

Any type of activity assumes: deliberation, taking into account conditions actions, planning, observation . By acting, a person solves some problems.

Practical activities - about main conditions e emergence and development of thinking, as well as truth criterion thinking.

Mental operations are varied. This is analysis and synthesis, comparison, abstraction, specification, generalization, classification.

Analysis - This is the mental decomposition of the whole into parts or the mental isolation of its sides, actions, and relationships from the whole.

Synthesis- the opposite process of thought to analysis, this is the unification of parts, properties, actions, relationships into one whole.

Analysis and synthesis - two interconnected logical operations. Synthesis, like analysis, can be both practical and mental.

Analysis and synthesis were formed in the practical activities of man. IN labor activity people constantly interact with objects and phenomena. Their practical mastery led to the formation of mental operations of analysis and synthesis.

Comparison- this is the establishment of similarities and differences between objects and phenomena.

Comparison based on analysis. Before comparing objects, it is necessary to identify one or more of their characteristics by which the comparison will be made.

Comparison may be one-sided, or incomplete, and multilateral, or more complete. Comparison as analysis and synthesis, can be of different levels - superficial and deeper. In this case, a person’s thought goes from external signs of similarity and difference to internal ones, from visible to hidden, from appearance to essence.

Abstraction - it's a process mental distraction from some signs, aspects of a particular thing in order to better understand it.

A person mentally identifies some feature of an object and examines it in isolation from all other features, temporarily distracting from them. Thanks to abstraction a person was able to break away from the individual, concrete and rise to the highest stage of knowledge - scientific theoretical thinking.

Specification- process, inverse of abstraction and inextricably linked with it.

Specification There is return of thought from the general and abstract to the concrete for the purpose of disclosing the content.

Generalization Thus, there is a selection of the general in objects and phenomena, which is expressed in the form of a concept, law, rule, formula, etc.

Divided into theoretical and practical .

IN theoretical thinking is distinguished conceptual and figurative thinking,

A in practical - visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking.

Conceptual thinking is the kind of thinking in which certain concepts are used .

Figurative thinking - is a type of thought process in which images are used. These images extracted directly from memory or recreated by imagination. In the course of solving mental problems, the corresponding images are mentally transformed t so that as a result of manipulating them we can find a solution to the problem that interests us

Most often this type of thinking predominates among people whose activities associated with any type of creativity.

Conceptual and figurative thinking, being varieties of theoretical thinking, in practice are in constant interaction . They complement each other, revealing to us different aspects of existence.

Visual-effective thinking -This is a special type of thinking, the essence of which is practical transformative activities carried out with real objects. - a type of thinking based on direct perception of objects. It is in this type of thinking the unity of thought and will is manifested to the greatest extent.

Presented by people employed production labor , result which is the creation of any material product.

Visual-figurative thinking -it is a type of thought process that is carried out directly when perceiving the surrounding reality And without this it cannot be carried out. - a type of thinking characterized based on ideas and images. - distracted thoughts generalizations a person embodies into specific images.

By thinking visually and figuratively, we are tied to reality, and the necessary images are represented in short-term and operative memory.

This form of thinking is dominant in preschool children and primary school age.

Verbal and logical thinking –type of thinking carried out using logical operations with concepts. It operates mainly concepts, broad categories, and images and ideas play a supporting role in it.

Highest level of thinking- abstract, abstract thinking. However, here too the thinking maintains connection with practice

It is formed over a long period (from 7-8 to 18-20 years old) in progress mastering concepts and logical operations during training .

Theoreticalthinking counts more perfect than practical, A conceptual represents higher level of development than figurative.

In the process of life in the same person Now one or another type of thinking comes to the fore.

The structural unit of practically effective (operational) thinking is action; artistic - image; scientific thinking - concept.

Depending from the depth of generality distinguish between empirical and theoretical thinking.

Empirical thinking(from Greek empeiria - experience) gives primary generalizations based experience . These generalizations are made at a low level of abstraction. Empirical knowledge is the lowest, elementary stage of knowledge. Empirical thinking should not be confused with practical thinking.

Feature practical thinking is thin observation, ability focus on individual details events,. Practical thinking associated with the operational setting priority goals, production of flexible plans, programs , greater self-control in stressful operating conditions.

Theoreticalthinking reveals universal relationships, explores an object knowledge of the system of its necessary connections. His result- construction conceptual models, Creation theories, generalization of experience, revealing patterns. .

Depending from standard/non-standard tasks to be solved and operational procedures There are differences between algorithmic, discursive, heuristic and creative thinking.

Algorithmic thinking focused on pre-established rules, a generally accepted sequence of actions necessary to solve typical problems.

Discursive(from Latin discursus - reasoning) thinking based on a system of interrelated inferences.

Heuristic thinking(from the Greek heuresko - I find) is productive thinking, consisting of solving non-standard problems.

Creative thinking- thinking that leads to new discoveries, fundamentally new results.

There are also reproductive and productive thinking .

Reproductive thinking- playback previously obtained results . In this case, thinking merges with memory.

Productive thinking- thinking, leading to new cognitive results.

Related information.

Thinking is the highest cognitive mental process, which is the generation of new knowledge, an active form of human transformation of reality. It is always associated with the presence

problematic situation, which needs to be solved and by actively changing the conditions in which this task is given. Thinking generates a result that neither in reality nor the subject has at a given moment in time.

exists. The essence of indirect cognition is that we can make judgments about objects and phenomena without contact with them, but by analyzing indirect information. Thinking occurs in generalizations, which is a specific characteristic that allows us to distinguish thinking from sensory and perceptual processes. Human perceives reality by influencing at her. Action is the primary form of existence of thinking. thinking as a separate mental process does not exist; it is present in all other cognitive processes: perception, imagination, memory, speech.

Thinking, according to A.V. Petrovsky, is a socially conditioned, inextricably linked with speech, mental process of searching and discovering something new, a process of indirect and generalized reflection of reality in the course of its analysis and synthesis. A specific result of thinking can be concept - a generalized reflection of a class of objects. Form of existence concepts is word. the way of forming concepts is movement

from the particular to the general, that is, through generalization.

One of the approaches to the nature of mental activity was proposed by A.V. Petrovsky, in his concept we are talking about social nature of thinking.:d For human mental activity, its relationship not only with sensory cognition, but also with language is essential. . Cognition presupposes the continuity of knowledge. This is possible if it is consolidated, preserved and transmitted. the results of cognition are recorded using language - in books, magazines, etc. All this clearly demonstrates the social nature of human thinking. Mental activity is a necessary basis for both the assimilation of knowledge and the acquisition of completely new knowledge in the course of the historical development of mankind.

Concept by S.L. Rubinstein involves consideration psychological nature of thought processes: the thought process is an act of activity aimed at solving a specific problem. This task involves goal for mental activity of a person, correlated with conditions, by which it is given. Directing itself towards one or another goal, the thinking act of the subject proceeds from one or another motive. A person begins to think when he has need something understand. Solving a problem is the natural conclusion of the thought process. Any cessation of it until this goal is achieved will be experienced by the subject as a failure. The thought process is connected with the entire mental life of the individual. It is not “pure” thought that thinks, but a living person. Therefore, feeling is also included in the act of thought. Emotional thinking, with more or less passionate bias, selects arguments in favor of the desired solution. Emotions, however, can not only distort, but also stimulate thinking. Thinking is carried out in the form of operations aimed at solving certain problems; the thought process is active, purposeful strong-willed act. Solving the problem requires significant volitional effort. Thinking correlates every thought that arises in the process of thinking with a task, on

the resolution of which is directed by the thought process. Those accomplished in this way verification, criticism, characterize thinking as conscious process.

Teachings of L.S. Vygotsky defines the motor nature of thought processes. Every thought associated with movement causes some preliminary tension in the corresponding muscles, expressing

the tendency to be realized in movement. And if this thought remains only a thought, then due to the fact that the movement is not completed, it remains in a hidden form. A strong thought about some upcoming action is voluntarily revealed in a posture or gesture, as if in preliminary efforts that we are about to make. That the stronger and more intense the thought, the clearer and more complex its motor nature. A hard-thinking person is not content with the words he speaks to himself. He begins to move his lips, sometimes switches to a whisper, and sometimes begins to talk loudly to himself. If you offer a person

If you walk on a board lying on the floor, it will pass calmly, but if you imagine that the board lies at a height of 10 meters, the number of successful passages along this board will drop to a minimum. The difference in both cases is explained by the fact that in the second case the person passing by will have a completely vivid and distinct awareness of the possibility of falling, which is actually realized in nine cases out of ten. Thus, the system of our thoughts, believes L.S. Vygotsky, as it were, pre-organizes behavior. And if I first thought and then did it, then this means that the internal reactions of thought first prepared and adapted the body, and then the external reactions carried out what was established and prepared in thought. Thus, thought acts as

the preliminary organizer of our behavior.