Editing Thought (section)

===Entertaining, judging, and reasoning===
Thinking is often identified with the act of [[Judgment|judging]]. A judgment is a mental operation in which a proposition is evoked and then either affirmed or denied.<ref name="Crowell"/><ref name="Schmidt">{{cite book |last1=Schmidt |first1=R. W. |title=New Catholic Encyclopedia |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/law/judgment |chapter=Judgment}}</ref> It involves deciding what to believe and aims at determining whether the judged proposition is true or false.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sgarbi |first1=Marco |title=Theories of Judgment. Historical and Theoretical Perspectives |journal=Quaestio |date=2006 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=589–592 |doi=10.1484/J.QUAESTIO.2.302491 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/SGATOJ}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Robins |first1=E. P. |title=Modern Theories of Judgment |journal=Philosophical Review |date=1898 |volume=7 |issue=6 |pages=583–603 |doi=10.2307/2176171 |jstor=2176171 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/ROBMTO}}</ref> Various theories of judgment have been proposed. The traditionally dominant approach is the combination theory. It states that judgments consist in the combination of concepts.<ref name="Rojszczak">{{cite journal |last1=Rojszczak |first1=Artur |last2=Smith |first2=Barry |title=Theories of Judgment |journal=The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 |date=2003 |pages=157–173 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/ROJTOJ |publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/CHOL9780521591041.013 |isbn=978-0521591041 }}</ref> On this view, to judge that "all men are mortal" is to combine the concepts "man" and "mortal". The same concepts can be combined in different ways, corresponding to different forms of judgment, for example, as "some men are mortal" or "no man is mortal".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hanna |first1=Robert |title=Kant's Theory of Judgment |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=24 October 2021 |date=2018}}</ref>

Other theories of judgment focus more on the relation between the judged proposition and reality. According to [[Franz Brentano]], a judgment is either a belief or a disbelief in the existence of some entity.<ref name="Rojszczak"/><ref name="Brandl">{{cite web |last1=Brandl |first1=Johannes L. |last2=Textor |first2=Mark |title=Brentano's Theory of Judgement |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brentano-judgement/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=24 October 2021 |date=2020}}</ref> In this sense, there are only two fundamental forms of judgment: "A exists" and "A does not exist". When applied to the sentence "all men are mortal", the entity in question is "immortal men", of whom it is said that they do not exist.<ref name="Rojszczak"/><ref name="Brandl"/> Important for Brentano is the distinction between the mere representation of the content of the judgment and the affirmation or the denial of the content.<ref name="Rojszczak"/><ref name="Brandl"/> The mere representation of a proposition is often referred to as "entertaining a proposition". This is the case, for example, when one considers a proposition but has not yet made up one's mind about whether it is true or false.<ref name="Rojszczak"/><ref name="Brandl"/> The term "thinking" can refer both to judging and to mere entertaining. This difference is often explicit in the way the thought is expressed: "thinking that" usually involves a judgment whereas "thinking about" refers to the neutral representation of a proposition without an accompanying belief. In this case, the proposition is merely ''entertained'' but not yet ''judged''.<ref name="Mandelbaum2"/> Some forms of thinking may involve the representation of objects without any propositions, as when someone is thinking about their grandmother.<ref name="Crowell"/>

Reasoning is one of the most paradigmatic forms of thinking. It is the process of drawing conclusions from premises or evidence. Types of reasoning can be divided into deductive and non-deductive reasoning. [[Deductive reasoning]] is governed by certain [[rules of inference]], which guarantee the truth of the conclusion if the premises are true.<ref name="BritannicaThought"/><ref name="Vinacke">{{cite book |last1=Vinacke |first1=W. Edgar |title=International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-and-social-reform/sociology-general-terms-and-concepts/thinking |chapter=Thought}}</ref> For example, given the premises "all men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man", it follows deductively that "Socrates is mortal". Non-deductive reasoning, also referred to as [[defeasible reasoning]] or [[non-monotonic reasoning]], is still rationally compelling but the truth of the conclusion is not ensured by the truth of the premises.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pollock |first1=John L. |title=Defeasible Reasoning |journal=Cognitive Science |date=1987 |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=481–518 |doi=10.1207/s15516709cog1104_4 |doi-access=free }}</ref> [[Inductive reasoning|Induction]] is one form of non-deductive reasoning, for example, when one concludes that "the sun will rise tomorrow" based on one's experiences of all the previous days. Other forms of non-deductive reasoning include the [[inference to the best explanation]] and [[analogical reasoning]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Koons |first1=Robert |title=Defeasible Reasoning |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-defeasible/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=16 October 2021 |date=2021}}</ref>

[[Fallacies]] are faulty forms of thinking that go against the norms of correct reasoning. [[Formal fallacies]] concern faulty inferences found in deductive reasoning.<ref name="HansenFallacy">{{cite web |last1=Hansen |first1=Hans |title=Fallacies |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=18 March 2021 |date=2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Vleet |first1=Van Jacob E. |title=Informal Logical Fallacies: A Brief Guide |date=2010 |publisher=Upa |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/VLEILF |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> [[Denying the antecedent]] is one type of formal fallacy, for example, "If Othello is a bachelor, then he is male. Othello is not a bachelor. Therefore, Othello is not male".<ref name="BritannicaThought"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stone |first1=Mark A. |title=Denying the Antecedent: Its Effective Use in Argumentation |journal=Informal Logic |date=2012 |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=327–356 |doi=10.22329/il.v32i3.3681 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/STODTA|doi-access=free }}</ref> [[Informal fallacies]], on the other hand, apply to all types of reasoning. The source of their flaw is to be found in the ''content'' or the ''context'' of the argument.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dowden |first1=Bradley |title=Fallacies |url=https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=19 March 2021}}</ref><ref name="HansenFallacy"/><ref name="John Benjamins">{{cite book |last1=Walton |first1=Douglas N. |title=Informal Fallacies: Towards a Theory of Argument Criticisms |date=1987 |publisher=John Benjamins |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/WALIFT |chapter=1. A new model of argument}}</ref> This is often caused by ambiguous or vague expressions in [[natural language]], as in "Feathers are light. What is light cannot be dark. Therefore, feathers cannot be dark".<ref name="philpapers.org">{{cite book |last1=Engel |first1=S. Morris |title=With Good Reason an Introduction to Informal Fallacies |date=1982 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/ENGWGR |chapter=2. The medium of language|publisher=St. Martin's Press }}</ref> An important aspect of fallacies is that they seem to be rationally compelling on the first look and thereby seduce people into accepting and committing them.<ref name="HansenFallacy"/> Whether an act of reasoning constitutes a fallacy does not depend on whether the premises are true or false but on their relation to the conclusion and, in some cases, on the context.<ref name="BritannicaThought"/>