What is Thinking?

Week 1

What is Thinking
What is Thinking Process?
Sensation- Eyes, Ears, Nose, Tongue, Skin provide our bodies with sensations which they pick up from the outside world. These sensations are transmitted by nerves to the biological structures which will translate them.
Biological-the sensations provided by the senses (eyes, ears, hands, fingers & skin, nose, tongue) are inputted by nerves to the Brain which then translates, decodes, and encodes messages and sends them out through the nervous system
Psychological-Takes the messages from the brain and translates them into perceptions and reactions.
Cognitive-Translations through the biological and psychological dimensions of the thinking process of the perceptions and reactions into concepts, ideas, assumptions, suppositions, inferences, hypotheses, questions, beliefs, premises, logical arguments, etc...
Communications-Takes the messages from the brain and translates them into verbal, non-verbal, and written language to communicate the thoughts and ideas which were generated.
Stages of Cognitive Development as defined by Jean Piaget:
1 Birth to 2 years old - no thinking structures (called schemas) and starts to develop such schemas through exploration of senses and experimentation with environment
2. Preoperational Stage: 2-7 years old - develop language skills and more sophisticated cognitive structures but still is pre-logical.
Not capable of conservation-ability to understand that substance does not change although it changes shape or form
Incapable of de-centering-ability to see things from another perspective
3. Concrete Operational Stage: 7 years to Adolescence - begin to grasp conservation and de-centering. Begins to question life. Solves problems but haphazardly.
4. Formal Operations Stage: Adolescence and onward - now capable of sophisticated logical thought. Can think in abstract. Can think hypothetically and solve problems using the logic of combinations
Note: Many theorists postulate a fifth Stage:
5. Dialectical Reasoning - stage beyond logic where critical thinking lies. Ability to perceive the frequent paradoxes in life and question and analyze the assumptions that underlie logic.