p.2-3 Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence - a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors.
p.3 Even when thinking is used in a broad sense, it is usually restricted to matters not directly perceived... A note of invention, as distinct from faithful record of observation, is present.
p.4 thought denotes belief resting upon some basis, that is, real or supposed knowledge going beyond what is directly present. It is marked by acceptance or rejection of something as reasonably probable or improbable.
p.5 Thoughts that result in belief have an importance attached to them which leads to reflective thought, to conscious inquiry into the nature, conditions, and bearings of the belief.
p.6 Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought.
p.6 There are, however, no sharp lines of demarcation between the various operations just outlined. The problem of attaining correct habits of reflection would be much easier than it is, did not the different modes of thinking blend insensibly into one another.
p.8 This function by which one thing signifies or indicates another, and thereby leads us to consider how far one may be regarded as warrant for belief in the other, is, then, the central factor in all reflective of distinctively intellectual thinking... Reflection thus implies that something is believed in (or disbelieved in), not on its own direct account, but through something else which stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as ground of belief.
p.8-9 Thinking, for the purpose of this inquiry, is defined accordingly as that operation in which present facts suggest other facts (or truths) in such a way as to induce belief in the latter upon the ground or warrant of the former.
p.9 Further consideration at once reveals certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation. These are: (a) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (b) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief.
p.9 the meaning of the word problem... whatever - no matter how slight and commonplace in character - perplexes and challenges the mind so that it makes belief at all uncertain
p.10 The act of looking was an act to discover if this suggested explanation held good... The purport of this act of inquiry is to confirm or to refute the suggested belief. New facts are brought to perception, which either corroborate the idea... or negate it.
p.11 Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation, a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives... Demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection.
p.12 The problem fixes the end of thought and the end controls the process of thinking... the origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt... There is something specific which occasions and evokes it.
p.13 the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in the mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry - these are the essentials of thinking.
p.14 Thought affords the sole method of escape from purely impulsive or purely routine action. A being without capacity for thought... does not see or foresee the end for which he is acting, nor the results produced by his behaving in one way rather than in another... Where there is thought, things present act as signs or tokens of things not yet experienced. A thinking being can, accordingly, act on the basis of the absent and the future.
p.15 To a being who thinks, things are... prophetic of their future... Upon the function of signification depend all foresight, all intelligent planning, deliberation, and calculation... By thought man also develops and arranges artificial signs to remind him in advance of consequences, and ways of securing and avoiding them.
p.16 All forms of artificial apparatus are intentionally designed modifications of natural things in order that they may serve better than in their natural estate to indicate the hidden, the absent, and the remote... thought confers upon physical events and objects a very different status and value from that which they possess to a being that does not reflect.
p.18 "To draw inferences," he [John Stuart Mill] says, "has been said to be the great business of life. Every one has daily, hourly, and momentary need of ascertaining facts which he has not directly observed: not from any general purpose of adding to his stock of knowledge, but because the facts themselves are of importance to his interests or to his occupations.
p.19 [John Locke] the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all, universally, pay a ready submission... great care should be taken of the understanding
p.26 Thinking is important because, as we have seen, it is that function in which given or ascertained facts stand for or indicate others which are not directly ascertained. But the process of reaching the absent from the present is peculiarly exposed to error; it is liable to be influenced by almost any number of unseen and unconsidered causes... The exercise of thought is, in the literal sense of that word, inference; by it one carries us over to the idea of, and belief in, another thing. It involves a jump, a leap, a going beyond what is surely known to something else accepted on its warrant... The very inevitableness of the jump, the leap, to something unknown, only emphasizes the necessity of attention to the conditions under which it occurs so that the danger of a false step may be lessened and the probability of a right landing increased.
p.27 Such attention consists in regulation (1) of the conditions under which the function of suggestion takes place, and (2) of the conditions under which credence is yielded to the suggestions that occur.
p.27 But the thing that has come out victorious in a test or trial of strength carries its credentials with it; it is approved, because it has been proved. Its value is clearly evinced, shown, i.e. demonstrated.
p.30 a statement of the factors essential to thought... Thinking involves... the suggestion of a conclusion for acceptance, and also search or inquiry to test the value of the suggestion before finally accepting it. This implies (a) a certain fund or store of experiences and facts from which suggestions proceed; (b) promptness, flexibility, and fertility of suggestions; and (c) orderliness, consecutiveness, appropriateness in what is suggested. Clearly, a person may be hampered an any of these three regards
p.30 The most vital and significant factor in supplying the primary material whence suggestion may issue is, without a doubt, curiosity.
p.31 The curious mind is constantly alert and exploring, seeking material for thought... Eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found. Such curiosity is the only sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which inference must base itself.
p.31-32 The most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity. Objects are sucked, fingered, and thumped; drawn and pushed, handled and thrown; in short, experimented with, till they cease to yield new qualities. Such activities are hardly intellectual, and yet without them intellectual activity would be feeble and intermittent through lack of stuff for its operations.
p.32-33 Curiosity rises above the organic and the social planes and becomes intellectual in the degree in which it is transformed into interest in problems provoked by the observation of things and the accumulation of material.
p.33 Bacon's saying that we must become as little children in order to enter the kingdom of science is at once a reminder of the open-minded and flexible wonder of childhood and of the ease with which this endowment is lost.
p.33 With many, curiosity is arrested on the plane of interest in local gossip and in the fortunes of their neighbors; indeed, so usual is this result that very often the first association with the word curiosity is a prying inquisitiveness into other people's business.
p.34 The common classification of persons into the dull and the bright is made primarily on the basis of the readiness or facility with which suggestions follow upon the presentation of objects and upon the happenings of events.
p.36 A conclusion reached after consideration of a few alternatives may be formally correct, but it will not possess the fullness and richness of meaning of one arrived at after comparison of a greater variety of alternative suggestions.
p.37 Sometimes slowness and depth of response are intimately connected.
p.38 The depth to which a sense of the problem, of the difficulty, sinks, determines the quality of the thinking that follows
p.39 Thinking... is a power of following up and linking together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse... any subject... is intellectual... in its power to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection.
p.48 Most persons are quite unaware of the distinguishing peculiarities of their own mental habit, and unconsciously make them the standard for judging the mental processes of others.
p.57 Thoughtfulness means, practically, the same thing as careful attention; to give our mind to a subject is to give heed to it, to take pains with it.
p.57-58 the intellectual... end of education is entirely and only the logical in this sense; namely, the formation of careful, alert, and thorough habits of thinking.[JLJ - wrong. It is the acquiring of a high score on an educational assessment test. Or at least today that is the way some see this]
p.64 Every vital activity of any depth and range inevitably meets obstacles in the course of its effort to realize itself
p.75 Suggestion is the very heart of inference; it involves going from what is present to something absent. Hence, it is more or less speculative, adventurous. Since inference goes beyond what is actually present, it involves a leap, a jump, the propriety of which cannot be absolutely warranted in advance, no matter what precautions be taken... The suggested conclusion so far as it is not accepted but only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea. Synonyms for this are... hypothesis, and (in elaborate cases) theory.
p.76 Conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out.
p.81 The idea is accepted as a working hypothesis, as something to guide investigation and bring to light new facts, not as a final conclusion.
p.95 Except there there is a system of principles capable of being elaborated by theoretical reasoning, the process of testing (or proof) of a hypothesis is incomplete and haphazard.
p.108 an idea is a meaning that is tentatively entertained, formed, and used with reference to its fitness to decide a perplexing situation, - a meaning used as a tool of judgment.
p.108 if we treat what is suggested as only a suggestion, a supposition, a possibility, it becomes an idea, having the following traits: (a) As merely a suggestion, it is a conjecture, a guess, which... we call a hypothesis or a theory. That is to say, it is a possible but as yet doubtful mode of interpretation. (b) Even though doubtful, it has an office to perform; namely, that of directing inquiry and examination.
p.109 Taken as a doubtful possibility, it affords a standpoint, a platform, a method of inquiry.
Ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are tools in a reflective examination which tends to solve a problem... Logical ideas are like keys which are shaping with reference to opening a lock.
p.109-110 Animals learn (when they learn at all) by a "cut and try" method [JLJ - Tolman prefers "trial and error"]; by doing at random first one thing and another thing and then preserving the things that happen to succeed. Action directed by conscious ideas - by suggested meanings accepted for the sake of experimenting with them - is the sole alternative both to bull-headed stupidity and to learning bought from that dear teacher - chance experience.
p.135 all dealing with things... is immersed in inferences; things are clothed by the suggestions they arouse
p.161 When things become signs, when they gain a representative capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental factor.
p.162 play is the chief, almost the only, mode of education for the child in the years of later infancy.
p.162 Playfulness is a more important consideration than play... When things are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the thing.
p.162-163 it is necessary that the play attitude should gradually pass into a work attitude... the person is not content longer to accept and to act upon the meanings that things suggest, but demands congruity of meaning with the things themselves... The interest may still center in the meanings, the things may be of importance only as amplifying a certain meaning. So far the attitude is one of play. But the meaning is now of such a character that it must find appropriate embodiment in actual things.
p.164 In play activity, it is said, the interest is in the activity for its own sake; in work, it is in the product or result in which the activity terminates.
p.166 The healthy imagination deals not with the unreal, but with the mental realization of what is suggested. Its exercise is... a method of expanding and filling in what is real.
p.171 Thought deals not with bare things, but with their meanings, their suggestions; and meanings, in order to be apprehended, must be embodied in sensible and particular existences... In the case of signs we care nothing for what they are in themselves, but everything for what they signify and represent.
p.176 Symbols... are symbols only by virtue of what they suggest and represent, i.e. meanings... They stand for these meanings to any individual only when he has had experience of some situation to which these meanings are actually relevant.
p.177 Lazy inertness causes individuals to accept ideas that have currency about them without personal inquiry and testing. A man uses thought, perhaps, to find out what others believe, and then stops.
p.177-178 words that originally stood for ideas come, with repeated use, to be mere counters; they become physical things to be manipulated according to certain rules, or reacted to by certain operations without consciousness of their meaning. Mr Stout (who has called such terms "substitute signs") remarks that "...a substitute sign is a means of not thinking about the meaning which it symbolizes." ... In many respects, signs that are means of not thinking are of great advantage; standing for the familiar, they release attention for meanings that, being novel, require conscious interpretation.
p.190 Without a constant and alert exercise of the senses, not even plays and games can go on; in any form of work, materials, obstacles, appliances, failures, and successes, must be intently watched. Sense-perception... is an indispensable factor of success in doing what one is interested in doing.
p.192 Scientific men institute observations not merely to test an idea (or suggested explanatory meaning), but also to locate the nature of a problem and thereby guide the formation of a hypothesis.
p.193 Observation is exploration, inquiry for the sake of discovering something previously hidden and unknown
p.193 Alertness of observation is at its height whenever there is "plot interest." Why? Because of the balanced combination of the old and the new, of the familiar and the unexpected. We hang on the lips of the story-teller because of the element of mental suspense.
p.194 Vicissitude, alteration, motion, excite observation; but if they merely excite it, there is no thought. The changes must (like the incidents of a well-arranged story or plot) take place in certain cumulative order; each successive change must at once remind us of its predecessor and arouse interest in its successor if observations of change are to be logically fruitful.
p.207 The best, indeed the only preparation is arousal to a perception of something that needs explanation, something unexpected, puzzling, peculiar... It is the sense of a problem that forces the mind... to discover what the question means and how it may be dealt with.
p.217 In play, interest centers in activity, without much reference to its outcome. The sequence of deeds, images, emotions, suffices on its own account. In work, the end holds attention and controls the notice given to means.
p.218 To be playful and serious at the same time is possible, and it defines the ideal mental condition. Absence of dogmatism and prejudice, presence of intellectual curiosity and flexibility, are manifest in the free play of the mind upon a topic.
p.220 harmony of mental playfulness and seriousness describes the artistic ideal.
p.222 Thought must be reserved for the new, the precarious, the problematic... Where there is thought, something present suggests and indicates something absent.
p.223 When fractions have become thoroughly familiar, his perception of them acts simply as a signal to do certain things; they are a "substitute sign," to which he can react without thinking.
p.223 The need for both imagination and observation in every mental enterprise
p.224 Let the facts be presented so as to stimulate the imagination... The imaginative is not necessarily the imaginary; that is, the unreal. The proper function of imagination is vision of realities that cannot be exhibited under existing conditions of sense-perception. Clear insight into the remote, the absent, the obscure is its aim... Imagination supplements and deepens observation
