What are the general categories of thinking?

Human thinking is divided into:

1. Concept

Concept is the most basic unit of thinking. It is an abstract image that selects appropriate attributes from the many characteristics of things. With concepts, people can use the same concept and the same symbol to represent some things and classify them. The function of forming concepts or classifications is to help people understand and predict things, so that people do not have to know all things, but first classify things, and after knowing one thing of a type, they can speculate on similar things.

2. Reasoning

Reasoning is a form of thinking, which is the derivation of new judgments based on one or several known judgments. In the process of reasoning, the known judgment is the premise, and the judgment derived from the known judgment is the conclusion. To ensure that the conclusion is correct, two conditions need to be met: the truth of the prerequisites and the correctness of the reasoning form. People cannot guarantee the correctness of all conclusions, which require the use of reasoning to verify.

Reasoning is divided into deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, which are reasoning from the premises of general knowledge to the conclusion of particular knowledge and the reasoning from the premises of particular knowledge to the conclusion of general knowledge.

3. Decision-making

Decision-making is a decision and an important aspect of thinking. Early economists once made the assumption that purely rational people would make decisions that maximize their own interests after full consideration.

People also make various decisions based on different situations in their daily lives. For example, when people think about what they can gain, they tend to choose what they are bound to get; when people think about what they will lose, they tend to take certain risks for gains.

4. Problem Solving

Problem solving is the most prominent expression of thinking. In life, people need to complete a series of activities under the guidance of certain goals. This is problem solving.

Problems have three characteristics: starting state, goal to be achieved, and obstacles encountered. Obstacles are important features of a problem. Without obstacles, it would not be a problem, and there would be no need for thinking. The thinking process of solving problems is very complex, and different methods can be adopted according to different problems. Usually people do not look for the optimal model, but choose the most appropriate path.