The Limits of Thought
I have been deep in thought most of my life. Yet there is an irony in that statement. How deeply can we really think? The depth available to us depends on what we know, what we are able or willing to learn, and our ability to understand or comprehend. We may spend considerable time contemplating something without possessing the information necessary to reach beyond our present conclusions. We recycle the same information over and over, without additional information, almost always drawing the same conclusions. The effort feels substantial, and perhaps it is, but effort alone does not determine how far thought can go.
Thinking can only reach the depth of what we know and understand. Experience gives us practical knowledge through doing, seeing, or feeling things, as well as through events or occurrences that affect our lives. We can connect ideas, recognize inconsistencies, and discover implications we had previously overlooked by seeking information we don't have. Those discoveries matter because they emerge from other people's experiences, are readily available to many of us and all we have to do is look for it.
If we don't, when information is missing, we may fill the space with assumptions, imagination, or unsubstantiated belief or feeling. Sometimes those assumptions are useful. Sometimes they simply give us an answer satisfactory enough to stop asking, leaving us short of answers that may serve us better. Other times they can take us completely of course of our intended goals. Leaving us disoriented, frustrated and confused.
Perhaps this is why people can think about the same subject for years and remain much where they began. Repeated consideration can make a conclusion more familiar without making it more accurate. We become comfortable with our explanations, and that comfort can be mistaken for understanding. A thought does not become deeper merely because we have lived with it longer, nor do our beliefs establish that we have considered everything necessary to support them.
When I look at human behavior, I sense that much of our basic thinking revolves around natural instinct. There is an inherent curiosity that drives many of us. Our primary needs are food, oxygen, and water. Beyond those come needs for shelter, security, companionship, and knowledge or understanding. Our capacities differ, but much of what fills us, as a species, is similar. As a way of thinking about capacity, it can be measured as small, medium, large, or even extra large. By any measure, it is the quality of the content that matters more than the quantity.
Like other creatures, we build nests and gather what we need. Human intelligence expands the possibilities. The arrangements become more complicated, but beneath them we can still recognize the desire to establish ourselves and protect what matters to us.
There is nothing insignificant about meeting those needs. Providing well requires attention, effort, and often considerable sacrifice. The question is how much of our thinking examines the life we are building, and how much remains occupied with maintaining or enlarging it. We may become highly capable at obtaining what we want while giving little consideration to why we want it, whether it serves us, or what we require from other people.
Beyond basic provision and some assurance that we can maintain it, many of of us want a place in the world. These concerns occupy an enormous portion of human life, regardless of how intelligently or elaborately we pursue them. It is the preoccupation with those things that drives our thoughts.
Who does not want some measure of success, some ability to shape their circumstances? Some people appear to find their way toward it naturally. Others work relentlessly, acquiring skills and accepting responsibilities that gradually expand their opportunities. Still others pursue it by whatever means seem necessary and will stop at little to keep it.
What looks similar from a distance can arise from very different intentions. For one person, security is found in having enough independence to provide without being subject to someone else's conditions. For another, it's the ability to build something worthwhile or guide a shared effort. For someone else, it means being obeyed, admired, or placed above others. Each may devote considerable intelligence to the pursuit. Yet, in the moment, none of these pursuits establishes an equally developed understanding of its consequences or the responsibility that accompanies it.
A person can understand how to influence people without considering if there is harm by doing so. They can become skilled at protecting their position while treating every challenge as a threat. Once preservation becomes the central concern, thought can be directed toward defending it. Intelligence begins to supply increasingly sophisticated reasons to continue. The thinking may be complicated while the purpose beneath it remains remarkably simple: keep what I have.
At the other end are people who make little attempt to improve their circumstances. Some consider greater responsibility someone else's concern. Some believe they are unworthy or incapable. Others decide that the effort required is more than they wish to give. I knew this life as a child. I was surrounded by people who did as little as possible to provide basic needs for themselves. What they considered sufficient shaped the circumstances in which others had to live.
That experience taught me that knowledge, effort, and responsibility are much the same thing. A person may understand that more needs to be done and still choose to do very little. When children or others depend on them, the consequences extend beyond their own satisfaction. Their willingness to settle affects someone else's beginning. That realization creates a pattern of avoidance thinking, influencing what that person sees, expects, and learns to regard as possible. As a matter of observational fact, the more intelligent a person is in that situation, the greater their awareness of their circumstances. That can have a significant emotional and mental impact.
Circumstances alone cannot tell us the whole story of someone's effort or understanding. People can work hard and still struggle, and a modest life can be a deliberately chosen, deeply considered life. But where avoidable neglect exists, we should be able to recognize it. Understanding hardship does not require us to overlook the decisions that contribute to it. Nor should intelligence be treated as an assurance that a person will use what they know responsibly.
This brings us back to the limits of thought. What we know influences the choices we can recognize. What we comprehend influences the meaning we can draw from that knowledge. What we are willing to examine influences whether either will be challenged. Someone may have the ability to understand an explanation but never encounter it. Another may encounter it repeatedly without grasping it. Still another may understand it well enough and turn away because accepting it would require a change.
Acquiring information therefore matters, but accumulation alone is insufficient. We can collect facts, repeat language, and become familiar with a subject without understanding how its parts relate. Knowing the name of a principle is different from recognizing it at work. Being able to describe responsibility is different from understanding what our actions require of us. Information extends the material available for thought only to the extent that we can make sense of it and take the correct action as a result.
There is also a difference between knowing a great deal in one area and understanding life broadly. Someone may be exceptional at construction, finance, leadership, or technology while possessing a limited understanding of matters outside that experience.
I recognize this limit in myself. Years of reflection do not place me beyond the need to learn, and certainty does not tell me what I have failed to consider. A conclusion may be the best one I can reach with what I presently know and still need revision when something more becomes available. Recognizing that possibility gives me a reason to keep acquiring information and to ask whether I understand it as fully as I believe I do. I have often stated that, in science, what is right is right until it is proven wrong, and then what proved it wrong is now right.
For Moral Science, this distinction matters because explanations of human behavior must reach beyond the point where they merely satisfy us. Calling someone successful tells us little about what their success serves. Calling someone intelligent tells us little about how responsibly they use their capacity. Calling a choice understandable does not settle whether its consequences are acceptable. Each judgment requires knowledge of the circumstances and enough comprehension to recognize what follows from them.
We may share many of the same needs while differing greatly in how we interpret them, pursue them, and account for their effects. Intelligence can expand our means without expanding our sense of responsibility. More knowledge can reveal consequences we once could not see, but we must still be willing to consider them. The limits of thought concern what is available to our minds, how well we understand what is there and the actions we take to prove it.
I may have spent most of my life deep in thought, but that does not tell me how deep my understanding has reached. It tells me that I have continued working with what I know. To reach further, I need something more to work with and the ability to comprehend what it reveals. Thinking can only reach the depth of our knowledge and our ability to comprehend it. The responsibility is to remember that the edge of our understanding is not the edge of what there is to understand. Point taken. There are some truths however that don't require more thought. Gravity is defined pretty well. After all, it keeps our heads out of the clouds and our feet on the ground, where the work needs to be done.
