Understanding Thought Processes: Problem Solving and Reasoning

Posted on Mar 20, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Thought is associated with mental activity, comprehension, the ability to remember, and communicate. When we think, we form concepts, establish relationships, make decisions, and solve problems.

Phases of Problem Solving:

  • Preparation: Analysis of data related to the problem.
  • Production: Involvement of different processes, including memory, to reach a solution.
  • Evaluation: Checking if the solution has been successful based on our experience to validate it.

Tactics in Problem Solving

  • Trial and Error: Testing solutions without considering the most appropriate approach.
  • Algorithm: A methodical, systematic, and logical rule or procedure that guarantees the solution to the problem.
  • Heuristic: A quick, automatic process to solve problems through memory and attention automatically.

Problems That Hinder Problem Resolution:

  • Confirmation Bias: The tendency to seek information that confirms preconceived ideas.
  • Fixation: The inability to see the problem from a different point of view:
    1. Mental Fixation
    2. Functional Fixedness: The tendency to think of things focusing on their normal function.

Inductive Reasoning:

  • Based on repeated observations, we generalize that if something is true in several instances, it is true in all instances, even if not directly observed. This moves from the particular to the general.
  • Many philosophers have questioned this reasoning process because it is not a logical procedure and can be misleading.
  • Solution: Probable use in everyday life and is highly adaptive. Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky suggest that people make decisions using a very limited number of heuristics rather than algorithmic procedures.

Representativeness Heuristic: A rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent prototypes, which makes relevant information obvious. The probability of two distinct events is less than the probability of just one (the conjunction fallacy). Other fallacies include:

  • Rejection of prior probabilities due to misconceptions.
  • Regression to the mean.
  • The law of small numbers.

Availability Heuristic: Estimation of the probability that something takes place based on its availability in memory. The more frequent, the more available in our memory. What is most available is considered most likely, but sometimes what is most remembered is the most recent, strange, or particular.

Simulation Heuristic: Involves performing duties, having expectations, impressions, and emotional experiences as a function of the ease with which one imagines an alternative scenario to the current one (e.g., missing a flight). The simulation heuristic can lead to errors in reasoning; however, it is easier to imagine an alternative hypothetical scenario to get to a destination on time.

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic: The strategy is to express an opinion based on some initial value that is later adjusted to produce a final response. The final response seems to be biased towards the initial value. It is wrongly assumed that this initial value is always relevant to the problem (e.g., NATO countries).

Part of Deductive Reasoning involves using general categories to make statements about individual cases (from the general to the particular).

  • It is a form of argument where a conclusion is inferred from one or more premises.
  • The philosopher Aristotle, in order to reflect rational thinking, pioneered establishing the formal principles of deductive reasoning.
  • Logic is arbitrary and is a formalism that does not reflect the laws of thought, leading to obvious contradictions many times.
  • People do not always reach the conclusions that follow from the premises.
  • The processing may be influenced by the plausibility of the conclusions; the problem is that the conclusion may be valid without being true, and vice versa.
  • Another procedure to explore the process of deductive reasoning is that posed by conditions of ‘if p then q’ type problems.

Biased Beliefs: People hold biased beliefs and show more logic when considering findings that confirm their views.

  • Tendency for preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, either by making erroneous conclusions seem valid or by making valid conclusions seem erroneous.