The Miniature Guide to The Human Mind (Thinker's Guide Library)

This guide deals with two primary ideas: 1. that the mind entails three main functions – thoughts, feelings and desires. 2. that our thoughts, feelings and desires can at any moment be under the direction of our cultivated rational thought processes, or, conversely, our native egocentric tendencies. Authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul introduce the idea that all thoughts have a related emotional and motivational component, in other words, that when we think there are feelings and desires that accompany our thoughts. Similarly, the authors point out that emotional states have both a cognitive or “thought” component and a motivational one. In this guide, Elder and Paul illuminate how to take command of one’s feelings and desires by taking command of the thoughts that give rise to them. The authors also explain and exemplify the problem of egocentricity as a barrier to reasonable, fairminded thought.