Thinking is an object of study in various scientific disciplines. Sections of logic, philosophy, psychology, genetics, linguistics and other sciences try to understand the thought processes of a person and answer the questions of what thinking is, what its forms exist, etc.
Rational thinking concept
Rationality usually means rationality, a characteristic of knowledge, which is the opposite of sensual, emotional knowledge. There is no precise and clear definition of rational thinking and rationality. In general, we can say that rationality is a type of thinking in which optimal decisions are made based on a comparison of a set of facts, and not on the basis of feelings or emotional motives.
Logic is an important component of rational thinking. Logic, as a science, studies the forms of attaining truth through knowledge, and not from sensory experience. In rational thinking, conclusions must have a strict logical sequence. The process of rational cognition in logic includes several stages: concept, judgment and inference.
A concept is the simplest part of rational thinking, it is a thought about an object that expresses its main features. Judgment is a form of thinking about objects of reality in the context of their relationships and connections. On the basis of concepts and judgments, a person comes to conclusions that give a certain knowledge about the subject of reasoning. When creating inferences, each concept, judgment must be clearly verified, weighed and questioned.
Rational thinking is associated with sensory thinking, relies on it, however, unlike sensory thinking, it is not attached to images and sensations, but selects only the essential in the objects under study.
Principles of Rational Thinking
Rational thinking uses operations such as comparison, analysis, abstraction, synthesis, classification, formalization, modeling, idealization, generalization. To establish the truth by rational thinking, methods of deduction, induction, etc. are used.
Rational thinking uses the laws of logic: identity, consistency, excluded third, and sufficient reason. The process of rational thinking can be represented by the following chain: the establishment of concepts, the creation of judgments about concepts, i.e. identifying the connections between them, connecting judgments into inferences, comparing concepts, judgments and inferences within the framework of the proof.
Rational thinking is always controlled by consciousness. The subject of rational thinking is aware of and justifies each action by the laws of logic.
