What is the motivation behind analytical thought? In humans, it seems there is frequently an intense need to understand the world, which presumably means looking at it accurately. Every human feels this need on different levels and in different arenas. But this point begs the question, what is “the world”? And what exactly do we mean by “looking at it accurately”?
Surely, definitions and descriptions of “the world” change with each person. One description might be that the world constitutes all the phenomena of our experience, including ourselves, which includes all internal and external events. We thus can't conceive of a world separate from us, as experiencing entities.
Accuracy is an interesting concept. Perhaps accuracy alludes to objectivity, stripping away as many preconceptions, ideologies and assumptions as possible and comprehending “the thing in itself”, whether it be a psychological state or physical phenomena, as purely as possible. I think of quantum mechanics here, which suggests that, from our conscious human perspective, we’ll never fully grasp “the thing in itself”, for it will hide from us when looked at directly (look up the double slit experiment for more on this).
When people debate, I think they often neglect that individuals have vastly different temperaments and personalities, with vastly different conceptions of how the world works and vastly different ways of communicating such conceptions, none of which are necessarily more “right” or “true”. This is where Carl Jung’s work becomes enlightening, whose book Psychological Types was a systematic attempt to analyse the various personalities that exist in the world, in an "objective" way. Jung introduced the widely used concepts introvert and extravert into modern usage and laid the basis for much personality understanding that has taken place in the 20th century.
People are often so quick to attack each other in a debate, which is the result of clinging to an ideological position and not genuinely engaging with what the other person has to say, among other things. I think it is so much easier, but ultimately harmful, to hold fast to a position, than it is to be sensitive and humble and to realise our lack of knowledge in the face of complexity and mystery. “I alone don’t know”, says Lao Tzu; this is the hardest position to attain, but also the most beneficial and, for me, admirable and heroic.
