The Miniature Guide to The Human Mind

by Linda Elder, Richard Paul

This guide deals with two primary ideas: 1. that the mind entails three main functions – thoughts, feelings and desires. 2. that our thoughts, feelings and desires can at any moment be under the direction of our cultivated rational thought processes, or, conversely, our native egocentric tendencies. Authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul introduce the idea that all thoughts have a related emotional and motivational component, in other words, that when we think there are feelings and desires that accompany our thoughts. Similarly, the authors point out that emotional states have both a cognitive or “thought” component and a motivational one. In this guide, Elder and Paul illuminate how to take command of one’s feelings and desires by taking command of the thoughts that give rise to them. The authors also explain and exemplify the problem of egocentricity as a barrier to reasonable, fairminded thought.

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and a prominent authority on critical thinking. She is President of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and Executive Director of the Center for Critical Thinking. Dr. Elder has taught psychology and critical thinking at the college level and has given presentations to more than 20,000 educators at all levels. She has co-authored four books, including Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life and Twenty-Five Days to Better Thinking and Better Living. She has co-authored eighteen thinker’s guides on critical thinking and co-authors a quarterly column on critical thinking in the Journal of Developmental Education.

Dr. Elder has also developed an original stage theory of critical thinking development. Concerned with understanding and illuminating the relationship between thinking and affect, and the barriers to critical thinking, Dr. Elder has placed these issues at the center of her thinking and her work.

With experience in both administration and the classroom, Dr. Elder understands firsthand the problems facing educators. She is a dynamic presenter who reaches her audience on a person-to person level.

To contact Dr. Linda Elder, email: elder@criticalthinking.org

Reviews

[David Layton]

When assessing this little book, it is important to keep in mind the audience the book is for. This book is not for persons already well read in philosophy and critical thinking. It is for the intelligent beginner, the person who wants to understand better how the mind functions. Thus, this book is mostly an exercise in definitions. Rather than using abstruse terminology from philosophy, Elder and Paul have crafted their arguments from plain language. The definitional exercise is to select relevant words from everyday speaking and writing, and to give these terms a precision that they do not have in common use. The book has great educational value for the person entering into critical thinking as a field of thought because it does not overwhelm the reader with specialized vocabulary and methodologies. The authors assume that anyone with sufficient education (equivalent to first or second year college) and reading skills can understand the fundamentals of how human minds interact with the world and with themselves. The writers spend more time on the second part of the subtitle, on how the mind mislearns, than on the first, on how the mind learns. The culprit in mislearning as they see it is egocentric thinking. This is thinking that is directed solely to satisfying one's immediate wants and needs. They do not take up the matter of egocentrism as a moral proposition. Rather, they characterize it as a bad thinking strategy. As they describe it, egocentric thinking is 1) antisocial, and thus degrades a person's interactions with others and with one's own social position, 2) unrealistic, in that it involves distorting reality rather than understanding reality, and 3) unyielding, in that it does not change with changing circumstances, new information, or even the idea that one could possibly be wrong. These 3 descriptors are my terms, not theirs, but do get to the heart of the problem they discuss. The book follows the Paul and Elder model for understanding a subject, using the State - Elaborate - Exemplify - Illustrate pattern to make their points. The illustrations are often in the form of charts or pictograms. This book is useful to have around, as something to come back to every couple of years for a refresher course in how thinking goes off the rails, and on what one can do prevent that.

[Charles]

this very short book lays out some interesting thoughts but there are several things I disagree with. One statement is that it is wrong to believe that "Emotion and Reason often conflict with one another." They often do conflict and one of the struggles that humans fight as we mature is to increase the harmony between our thoughts and emotions. I also don't like the term "rational emotions," though I do see it used quite a bit. Rational emotions are those that correspond with reality, such as being afraid when you are walking and see a snake in the grass. But I'd prefer to use the term realistic emotions and save "rational" to specifically refer to thinking/cognitions rather than feeling. I'm sure I've lost that battle, however.

[Shanika]

It is a misconception to think that emotions are reasoning are like oil and water. Rational people are not cold and mechanical while emotional people are lively and energetic.

This book demonstrates how our thoughts and emotions are connected.

[hank]

My only disagreement with this is looking at Egocentric Dominance as a bad thing. What if I want to control how other people think?