15. SUMMARY.
(1) Knowing is a broader term than thinking as the former equals the latter plus intuition.
(2) Intuitive knowledge is that which comes to the mind immediately by direct observation.
Although intuitive knowledge comes to the mind without thought, yet such knowledge is essential to all thinking. Intuitive knowledge is the foundation upon which the thinking mind builds.
(3) Thinking is the deliberative process of affirming and denying connections. Thinking is a “thickening process,” the smaller units being pressed together to make a larger. Thinking is chiefly a matter of reducing plurality to unity.
(4) A notion is any product of the knowing mind.
An individual notion is the notion of one thing.
A general notion is a notion of a class of things.
A thing includes objects, qualities, relations or any existing entity. A thing is that which has individual existence.
(5) A bit of knowledge must have been a notion of some one’s mind, but may not necessarily be a notion of your mind. Knowledge may be found in books, but a notion is a mental product found only in the mind. Idea is ambiguous, though its meaning is usually restricted to an image, a meaning or a belief.
(6) The products of the knowing mind are the sensation, the image, percept, concept, judgment, inference.
The sensation, image and percept are individual notions, while the concept, judgment and inference are general notions.
A sensation is a vague, unlocalized product of the knowing mind.
A percept is a consciously localized group of sensations.
An image is a reproduced percept.
A concept is a mental product arising from thinking many notions into one class.
A judgment is a mental product arising from conjoining and disjoining notions.
An inference is a judgment derived from antecedent judgments.
The developed thought processes are the concept, the judgment and the inference.
(7) Just where the simplest form of thinking appears in the various activities of the knowing mind is still an undecided question. It is agreed that thinking in its developed and more complex form is found in conception, judging and reasoning.
(8) Thinking evolves from the simple to the more complex, just as life has evolved.
The child thinks in vague, indefinite wholes, while the adult thinks in clear, definite parts. The child discriminates very imperfectly while the adult discriminates accurately.
The sensation seems to be the connecting link between the feeling mind and the knowing mind, while the percept links together the knowing mind and the thinking mind.
(9) Conception is the process of thinking many notions into one class. The product of such a process is a concept. The concept stands for groups of all kinds of objects.
Conception has the two aspects of affirming connections and of building many into one. The first is the thinking side of theprocess and the second is the mark which distinguishes conception from the other thought processes.
(10) Judging is the process of conjoining or disjoining notions. Judgment is the product of judging.
Judgments conjoin and disjoin all kinds of notions.
Judging and thinking, though they closely resemble each other, are not synonomous terms. Thinking is a broader term in that connections may be established between a notion and a name for that notion.
Judging is the most fundamental of all thinking, as the concept is built from a series of judgments and an inference is simply a made-over judgment.
(11) Inference.
Reasoning is the process of deriving a new judgment from a consideration of antecedent judgments. This derived judgment may be called an inference. Sometimes the term inference denotes the process of reasoning as well as the product.
Reasoning often takes the form of a syllogism.
The concept, the judgment and the inference are products arising from conjoining and disjoining notions.
(12) Some give to the thinking mind the three aspects, apprehension, judging and reasoning. Apprehension is another word for the two processes, perception and conception.
(13) The three important stages in thinking are discrimination, comparison, integration; or analysis, comparison and synthesis.