0.21 What is logical or rational thinking, and how does it relate  (Page 2/8)

Simons analysis was just referring to goals. However, if you think about it, all of someones thoughts might follow a similar logic - the logic being that the most emotionally relevant thought has the highest claim to priority.

So if someone wants something, then they are emotionally motivated to think certain things because thinking those things will generate more pleasurable emotions.

Computational components underlying intelligence

To begin, I ask the question - is thinking straightforward or is it complicated?

When people think, they are constantly making emotional assessments of various sorts. They think about their own motivations, i.e. how they feel about different things, and what their goals are going to be based on those motivations.

Individual thoughts also mean something emotionally. Anything someone thinks is going to be associated with different feelings and preferences.

Does this mean that thinking is simple and logical? People think all of the time, what guides their thoughts are emotional preferences that were formed from previous development or at birth.

Semantics versus cognitive representations

Louis Narens A New Foundation for Support Theory. (2004) Louis Narens. University of California, Irvine presents the idea that there is a difference between descriptive semantics (the words people use to describe something) and cognitive representations (which is basically the image or idea your mind makes up in your head (kind of like an abstract thought)) in evaluating evidence for judgments:

• Support Theory has an empirical base of results showing that different descriptions of the same event often produce different subjective probability estimates. Itexplains these results in terms of subjective evaluations of supporting evidence. It assumes that events are evaluated in terms of subjective evidence invoked by their descriptions, and that the observed numerical probability judgments are the resultof the combining of such evaluations of support in a manner that is consistent with a particular equation. The processes of evaluation are assumed to employ heuristicslike those of Kahneman and Tversky, and because of this, are subject to the kinds of biases introduced by such heuristics.
• This article provides a New Foundation for Support Theory. The New Foundation makes a sharp distinction between semantical representations of descriptionsas part of natural language processing and cognitive representations of descriptions as part of a probabilistic judgment. In particular, judgments of probability employa complementation operation that has no counterpart in the semantics. The complementation operation is used to construct cognitive events that are employed inthe computation of the estimated probability.

So when someone evaluates a piece of information, they describe it in their mind (unconsciously or unconsciously) with words. Then they probably come to a conclusion from the evidence that the description provided.