ThoughtAmps - Thinking about Thinking

ThoughtAmps

An exploration of ways to breakdown meaning and build up an understanding of the ways of thinking.

Welcome to 'ThoughtAmps'. This is really a philosophy blog, examining the thoughts I've had for many years but not found many others to discuss and pick them apart. I hope with a broader reach than my local circle I can find kindred spirits.

Growing up I was the annoying kid who asked "why" all the time. But I didn't get many answers, because it seemed most people I encountered weren't interested in "why" and others didn't have the patience or discipline to drill down into concepts in a structured way, to pick apart the thoughts and hold them up to the light one by one and examine them this way or that objectively.

For many, thoughts are emotional things and words are short-hand tokens to quickly refer to a argument position and emotion. I say "peace" or "freedom" or "motivation" and it's a nice little package of emotion and personal history, tossed around in debate. And if you try to pick one apart, to question it or break it down further, I've often found people get defensive, saying "A word means what it means!"

Now that I'm 64 years old, I'd like to put down my thoughts, build up a structured approach to thinking and engage with others to better define them and solicit new thoughts to examine together.

One category of thought I like is contrasting two words, pitting them against each other. This balancing of forces I've found clarifies conceptual meaning beyond dictionary meaning, which is often circular.

• "motivating another" versus "manipulating another"