What is Thinking? A Brief Meditation

 

    I always stress the importance not only of thinking critically but thinking well. But what does that mean? What is thinking? I can’t really answer that question satisfactorily but here are some reflections that might be a good starting point.

     I would start with an idea important to two rather good thinkers, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch: the idea of thinking as attention (from the French attendre, and attention), or attending to something or someone is a focused, selfless, generous way. Not just calculating or solving problems but something deeper. Real thinking begins when we attend to the world as it is, rather than imposing our own categories, wishes, or fears onto it. For Simone Weil, attention is a kind of deep, focused waiting. It’s not about trying to solve a problem or quickly figure something out. Instead, it’s a patient openness to whatever is there: to another person, to a question, to the truth. Attention means not forcing your own ideas onto something, but letting it speak. It is a form of love: to pay attention is to care enough to truly see. Iris Murdoch builds on this idea. For her, attention is the opposite of selfishness. Most of the time, we are wrapped up in ourselves, in our desires, plans, fears, fantasies. But when we pay real attention, we look away from ourselves and toward something real: a person, a work of art, even an idea. Like Weil, Murdoch sees attention as the beginning of moral life. To see clearly, to understand others, to act justly to what you are thinking about – all begin with attention. To think well means to let things show themselves, to receive what is given before acting on it.

     To think, in this deeper sense, is to let what is present reveal itself rather than to impose our categories, desires, or plans onto it. A clear example of non-thinking can be seen in the case of a father who projects his own unrealized dreams onto his son. He sees not his child but an image of what he himself might have been. The child’s real interests, gifts, and needs are overlooked because the father is not attending; he is constructing. He is not letting the boy show who he is but instead reshaping him into an extension of himself. This is not attention but domination, and it reveals how easily love or care can become distorted when we do not let the other speak in their own voice. True thinking means allowing the other – whether a person, a work of art, an idea, or a situation – to appear on its own terms.

      Or this: Imagine your friend is grieving. They’ve lost someone they love. You sit with them, not to explain, not to fix, but just to listen. You don’t say, “I know exactly how you feel,” or try to make their pain disappear. Instead, you attend. This is thinking—not about what to do next, but about what this moment is. And through this attention, something real is revealed: not just emotion, but truth about loss, love, even being human.

      Or you’re reading a novel, and a character reminds you of someone in your life. Their struggle is not yours, but it’s close. You pause. You try not to judge too quickly. Instead of using the character to prove a point or defend your view, you wait. You let them become who they are. You attend to the world the author has created and allow it to expand your vision. This is not analysis. It is attention to meaning. It’s the opposite of using the story to confirm your own beliefs. It can reveal something true not just about the character, but about yourself and others.

    Or you’re listening to a piece of music. You’re not analyzing its structure. You’re letting it reach you. A certain phrase moves you. It holds something – a dignity, sorrow, hope. You attend. And in doing so, something is revealed not just about the music but about life, about what it means to be human, about what it is to be you. Projection would mean using the music as background or to fit a mood. Thinking means receiving what the music offers on its own terms.

     Or you’re teaching a student who is struggling. You could blame them or push harder. But you pause and listen to what they say and how they say it. You begin to understand not just what they’re missing but why. You adjust, not by a technique, but by attention. Teaching becomes the practice of seeing. Projection would mean treating every student the same; thinking means seeing the reality of this student now.

      Or you’ve wronged someone. Your remorse tells you that. You want to make it up to the extent you can. This requires attending to the nature of the wrong and the needs of the person you wronged relative to the harm. If a man has betrayed his wife, it might not be possible to restore the original relation of trust any time soon but he might resolve to be a true friend in whatever situation comes after as long as his wife is open to that. Over time he can do something to show a kind of fidelity and restore something of what was lost. This requires a kind of unsentimental thinking or attention to the reality of the situation his actions have brought about.

 

. . .

    When Heidegger said, "Science doesn’t think," he didn’t mean that scientists are thoughtless or unintelligent. He meant that science, by its very nature, is limited to a particular kind of rationality – instrumental or technical reason. Scientific rationality looks for causes, measures patterns, predicts outcomes, and tests hypotheses. It is incredibly powerful for certain purposes: medicine, engineering, physics, and so on. But it does not pause to ask what things mean, or what it means that things are at all. It does not attend to the particular. It is (rightly within science) not open to the being of things and indeed the world as a whole outside of the box of its method. It could not help the father think about his son or the husband who has betrayed his wife repair the damage or the reader of the novel remain open for its meaning. When Heidegger said, "Science doesn’t think," he meant science doesn’t attend to the being of things, to the things themselves. It explains how things work but not what they mean.  What does the being of this particular son require from his father. Science is powerful in that it makes possible a control over nature that was unimaginable in previous centuries but it cannot think in this deeper sense. It deals with facts and quantifiable regularities, not meanings. And meanings require attention.

       One essential dimension of thinking, especially in the tradition of Plato, is dialogue. Plato’s Socrates did not write treatises or deliver lectures – he asked questions. He conversed. He helped his interlocutors clarify their thoughts, uncover contradictions, and move toward deeper understanding. Thinking, for Socrates, was not a private act but a shared pursuit of truth. In genuine conversation, we are not merely defending opinions but seeking insight together. This means listening deeply, asking real questions, and remaining open to being changed. Such dialogue is not debate; it is cooperative exploration. It depends on the virtues we’ve already discussed: humility, honesty, courage, and the desire to understand rather than to win. When dialogue works, it becomes a form of attention: not just to what the other person is saying, but to what is coming to light between us. In this way, dialogue is both a practice of thinking and a way of honoring reality. Imagine the father talking to his wife or his own father about the needs of his son.

    I would go further. There is a kind of thinking that is also a kind of love. Not affection or liking, but the love that seeks to will the good of the other, as the classical Christian tradition puts it. This kind of love – caritas, or agape – is realistic. It doesn’t idealize or manipulate. It sees others as they are, in their truth, and asks: What is truly good for them? This love is not blind; it is attentive. It listens and waits. It resists the temptation to flatter or to please, just as it resists the temptation to dominate. Like the father who must learn to see his son truly – not as an extension of himself, but as another person –  so too must we think well about others. Real love is a form of attention. It is thinking with care. For those uncomfortable with the language of love, we might also speak of respect in the deepest sense, what Kant called treating others as ends in themselves, never merely as means. Whether we call it love or respect, the essential act is the same: to look upon another person (thing, world) with a readiness to understand and a refusal to use, project, construct.

    What I’ve been calling “attending” to reality was once called contemplation: a form of thinking that is receptive, rather than manipulative; loving, rather than dominating. In the classical tradition, contemplation is what allows us to see things in their truth, not because we control them, but because we let them be. To “see things in their truth” means to perceive them as they really are rather than as they serve our purposes, reflect our desires, or fit our categories. This was already shown in the example of the father and son: the father does not see the boy in his truth, because he projects onto him an image shaped by his own ambition. To contemplate his son would mean to see him as he truly is – his strengths, limitations, temperament, and longings – apart from what the father wants him to be. Contemplation is thus a kind of attention that is humble, patient, and open to being changed by what it sees. It lets the other speak. In this light, thinking and contemplation are not two separate acts, but two names for one essential human capacity: to allow the world, in all its richness, to speak to us. And this is the source from which all other forms of reasoning draw their meaning.

      If thinking is more than solving problems or calculating outcomes, then what is it for? What is its telos, its deepest purpose? The classical answer is: truth. But not just truth as correct information or getting the facts right. Rather, truth as disclosure: a letting-be of things so they can show what they are, at least from a certain perspective. In this light, the goal of thinking is not control but understanding. And real understanding is never just technical; it is personal. To think well is to be in relationship with reality: to attend to it, to be changed by it. At its deepest, thinking aims at wisdom, truth that is lived; and perhaps even communion, that is, being in right relation to the world, to others, and (for some of us) to what is greater than us.

 

. . .

 

    So how does critical thinking fit into this picture? Critical thinking is often taught as a set of neutral skills: spotting fallacies, questioning assumptions, analyzing arguments. These are helpful but on their own, they miss something essential. To understand what we must ask why we think critically in the first place.

      I think of critical thinking as a way of helping attention do its work. It helps us recognize where language obscures rather than reveals, where arguments manipulate rather than explain. This is especially important when we encounter narratives that reinforce unjust structures of power where aspects of reality are suppressed and certain truths are avoided. In these cases, critical thinking becomes a form of ethical discernment. I remember first realizing that some of the ways I thought and felt were programmed into me, as it were. I felt like a puppet dancing to other people’s strings. Still, critical thinking doesn’t aim to destroy authority as such. I remember learning a lesson from my grandfather about judging a person based on their character, not their skin color, that was so authoritative that further reflection only deepened it. I see no need to debunk that lesson. But when power disguises itself as truth, that needs uncovering. Thus the critical aspect of thinking helps us remain attentive to what is real and what is good, even when these are hard to see. It is most appropriate to the political realm.

      Dialogue is another form of this attentive thinking, one more at home at the university than critical thinking in the previous sense. In genuine conversation –not debate, not persuasion, but real dialogue – we are trying to make sense together. We are not just exchanging opinions. We are testing our views in the light of other people’s experiences and reasoning. We are, ideally, open to being changed. In dialogue, attention takes the form of listening not just to words but to what the other is reaching toward. Sometimes a thought is half-formed, hesitant, uncertain – and it is precisely there that something important begins to emerge. Attention in dialogue means staying with that uncertainty, not rushing to conclusions, and helping each other articulate what is not yet clear.

     This is why real thinking cannot be reduced to tools. The desire to make sense, and the willingness to be attentive, are deeper than any method. They involve the whole person. They are moral and intellectual at once. They are grounded in humility, patience, and care. Critical thinking and dialogue both belong to this larger movement: the attempt to see truly, to understand what is, and to live in accordance with it. That is why thinking begins with attention—and why attention leads us, in time, to truth. That is the sense in which Socrates believed that a thoughtless life could not be a good one – think of the father thoughtlessly imposing his vision on his son – and is unworthy of a human being.

. . .

    In traditional logic, thinking has often been divided into three acts: conceptualization, judgment, and reasoning. These are not wrong but when approached narrowly or mechanically, they can miss what we’ve been calling the deeper heart of thinking: attending to reality.

     The first act of the mind is forming concepts or ideas (synonyms): that is, grasping what a thing is. This isn’t just attaching a label or stipulating a definition. It means seeing into the nature of something: trying to understand a person, a phenomenon, an idea. When we do this well, we are not forcing things into preexisting boxes. We are attending to what is there. Think of a teacher trying to understand a student’s difficulty. She doesn’t categorize them according to standard clichés (“lazy,” “slow,” “unmotivated”) but looks closely at what is going on. What is this student like? What do they need? This is conceptualization as attention: we form truer ideas when we look closely and with care.

       The second act of the mind is judgment: putting concepts together to say something true or false. For example: This student is struggling. The Faure Requiem expresses a Christian view of death. This plane isn’t safe. Here again truth is not about correctness alone but about fidelity to what is. We make judgments all the time but they are good only to the extent that they are grounded in reality, and not projection. Judgment, in this deeper sense, is an act of truthfulness. It requires discernment: being careful with words, with what we say is or isn’t the case. To judge well is to allow something to be seen clearly – not just by us, but by others too.

       The third act of the mind is reasoning: classically understood as drawing inferences or seeing how propositions hang together. the activity of moving from premises to conclusions in a way that brings new truths into view. It’s the act of connecting judgments so that one can follow from another, revealing a deeper coherence in thought and reality. For example, suppose we accept two propositions:

 

1)   All just laws promote the common good.

 

2)   This new policy promotes only private corporate interests, not the common good.

 

From these two judgments, reasoning allows us to conclude:

 

    3) Therefore, this new policy is not a just law.

 

This is reasoning: not simply naming or judging but linking ideas to discover a conclusion that was not explicitly stated before. It sharpens our view of the world. It reveals an inconsistency or a truth we hadn’t noticed. This is an essential aspect of thinking. Without reasoning, we would have no way to organize thought beyond isolated facts or impressions. We would remain on the surface of things. But through reasoning, we trace implications, test coherence, and move closer to a fuller understanding of the truth.

 

 

 

     When the three acts of the mind – concept, judgment, and reasoning – are grounded in attention, they come alive. They stop being tools and become practices of humility, care, and truth-seeking. This returns us to the heart of thinking: not the manipulation of ideas, but the effort to understand what is, and to be faithful to it.