Categorizing thought
What are the ways people have come up with to divide what is going on in the mind?
Dichotomies
It is almost of the hallmark of Western thought to create dichotomies. They aren't necessarily descriptive of how things are, but they provide frames of reference through which to view the world.
Metaphysical:
Mind (non-physical) / Brain (biological/chemical)
>> Metaphysics is interesting to think about, but pretty much if you can design a verifiable experiment, it is science, not metaphysics. I'm a philosophy major, so I'll talk about the philosophy of science with folks, but this dichotomy isn't gonna get me any insight into the workplace.
"Brainedness"
Left Brain (Tends towards the rational) / Right Brain (Tends towards the creative/artistic)
>> I think this will only be fruitful to compare to another categorization to see how it correlates. More on this over time.
Sex and/or Gender
Male/Masculine / Female/Feminine
>> I'm thinking about stuff like Deborah Tannen here. Her writing is about communication and is probably more socialized than genetic. There is most likely a tendency for thought styles to be tied to genetic sex, but political correctness has pretty well squelched this line of investigation. Different means different, not unequal.
Personality Typing
Myers-Briggs, Jung, Enneagram, etc
>> I'm torn between picking up a book on "the 16 types" (MBTI), and seeing what it might say, versus writing it off as so much pop-psychology. It helps my cause at least in having drawn a lot of business-world attention to people being different in pretty fundamental ways that matter. I think it is at least interesting to consider how the four dichotomies they have chosen affect how people approach problems, communication, and other interactions.
Theories of learning
Rather than "what", this is "how". It is roughly what I want, but it is geared towards learning and children more than adults and thinking.
Multiple Intelligences
Google links
>> This gets aimed primarily at learning, so you have learning styles. It also means the writing is aimed primarily at how it applies in kids. I'm skeptical of the writings here as they seem to resemble the Personality Typing stuff a lot. Conceptually, this shouldn't be so different from Dr. Levine's thesis (see below), so if anyone knows of good writings in this area, I'm very open to checking them out.
Dr. Mel Levine's work
All Kinds of Minds
>> Dr. Levine lays out 8 different "systems of learning". This is the closest thing I've found yet to what I'm looking for. Some people have issues with Sequencing information -- don't ask them to lay things out in steps. Ideas like that.
How Brain's work regarding language
Best writing I've found here is from Stephen Pinker
>> I'm a very verbal thinker. So one of my first attempts to grok thought was to understand how the brain processes language. Of course not everybody's thought is so language based, but How the Mind Works is the best attempt I've been able to find to describe how cognition works. He's a linguist, so he's more aimed at the verbal side of things, but concepts lurk somewhere behind words, so it is all connected.
Dichotomies
It is almost of the hallmark of Western thought to create dichotomies. They aren't necessarily descriptive of how things are, but they provide frames of reference through which to view the world.
Metaphysical:
Mind (non-physical) / Brain (biological/chemical)
>> Metaphysics is interesting to think about, but pretty much if you can design a verifiable experiment, it is science, not metaphysics. I'm a philosophy major, so I'll talk about the philosophy of science with folks, but this dichotomy isn't gonna get me any insight into the workplace.
"Brainedness"
Left Brain (Tends towards the rational) / Right Brain (Tends towards the creative/artistic)
>> I think this will only be fruitful to compare to another categorization to see how it correlates. More on this over time.
Sex and/or Gender
Male/Masculine / Female/Feminine
>> I'm thinking about stuff like Deborah Tannen here. Her writing is about communication and is probably more socialized than genetic. There is most likely a tendency for thought styles to be tied to genetic sex, but political correctness has pretty well squelched this line of investigation. Different means different, not unequal.
Personality Typing
Myers-Briggs, Jung, Enneagram, etc
>> I'm torn between picking up a book on "the 16 types" (MBTI), and seeing what it might say, versus writing it off as so much pop-psychology. It helps my cause at least in having drawn a lot of business-world attention to people being different in pretty fundamental ways that matter. I think it is at least interesting to consider how the four dichotomies they have chosen affect how people approach problems, communication, and other interactions.
Theories of learning
Rather than "what", this is "how". It is roughly what I want, but it is geared towards learning and children more than adults and thinking.
Multiple Intelligences
Google links
>> This gets aimed primarily at learning, so you have learning styles. It also means the writing is aimed primarily at how it applies in kids. I'm skeptical of the writings here as they seem to resemble the Personality Typing stuff a lot. Conceptually, this shouldn't be so different from Dr. Levine's thesis (see below), so if anyone knows of good writings in this area, I'm very open to checking them out.
Dr. Mel Levine's work
All Kinds of Minds
>> Dr. Levine lays out 8 different "systems of learning". This is the closest thing I've found yet to what I'm looking for. Some people have issues with Sequencing information -- don't ask them to lay things out in steps. Ideas like that.
How Brain's work regarding language
Best writing I've found here is from Stephen Pinker
>> I'm a very verbal thinker. So one of my first attempts to grok thought was to understand how the brain processes language. Of course not everybody's thought is so language based, but How the Mind Works is the best attempt I've been able to find to describe how cognition works. He's a linguist, so he's more aimed at the verbal side of things, but concepts lurk somewhere behind words, so it is all connected.