August 17 Humanist Forum: Subjective and Objective Thinking
We are most aware of the act that we are thinking when we are doing objective thinking, when the principles of mathematics are most important. In addition, cognitive psychology has been able to identify some other thinking that occurs at a much less conscious level within the human mind. Peter Bishop, Ph.D., H.C., H.A., has been discovering more about the nature of this kind of thinking, which he is starting to call “subjective thinking”, as he has been teaching Humanist Philosophy to the older class in our Children’s Program. Peter will explain what he has discovered, its basis in cognitive psychology, and its relevance to life and to humanist philosophy.
The Humanist Community Forum will meet at 11am at Mitchell Park Community Center. The Mitchell Park Community Center is located at 3800 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, Just north of Charleston Road.
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I asked my two boys, 12 and 15, who had attended the Humanist Teens Philosophy class taught by Peter Bishop, if they wanted to attend a talk given by him. They asked what the talk would be about and I explained that it would be about “Subjective and Objective Thinking.” They said, “No, we’ve heard all that before. We know what Peter will be saying. We know all about objective and subjective thinking. We’ve heard all about this in Sunday school.” They said this with a great deal of certainty, as if what Peter was going to talk about was just old stuff.
It was interesting to see them refer to his ideas this way. For one thing, I think that this is a difficult concept to get across. Over a number of weeks, Peter was able to put these complex ideas into a language that they understood and took in. It is now something that is part of their model of the world. For another, I feel very fortunate that they have learned this without any effort on my part. I know that if I had attempted to teach them such a concept, they might have rejected it. After all, what do parents know anyway?
This last point was evidenced when I asked them to allow me to describe to them the same concept in a different language. What I meant was from an interpretive approach. My oldest son said he didn’t need to hear this because what he had learned was adequate. The youngest one, as usual, made a joke and said that he did not speak Armenian. But when I pushed a little, my oldest boy said, “You have five minutes to make your case.” So, I did. He heard my five-minute pitch and said, “Yes, that makes sense. I understand what you are trying to say.” I was really blow away, not because I was able to say what I wanted in five minutes (although that was a real surprise for me too), but because it seemed second nature now for him to understand such concepts. I attribute this to the year that he spent in Peter Bishop’s philosophy class. He now has the basis for learning about things that I know I didn’t think about at his age. These are things that most of us are exposed to at college.
Thanks Peter. I hope you realize that you are leaving a lasting effect on the children who go through your philosophy class. It’s a special window that you open in their minds.