The Functions of Mind

Let’s now look at how the mind works.​ We'll suggest that there are three main functions: analyzing, synthesizing and imagining, and valuing.

 

Figure: The main functions of the mind

In the applied forms of effective thinking-decision making, roble solving, and creative or innovative thinking – all three of these functions are at word .it is their underlying health that largely determines the quality of your thought, few people have them in harmonious balance, as shown in the illustration above. Most of us are better at one rather than the other two.

Our differing mental strengths are a powerful reason why we need each other: effective thinking in all its forms is both a solitary and a social activity. You should always see yourself alternately as thinking alone (for yourself) and as thinking with others-other face to face or .as in this case. By reading or some other method of communication. Still, it is a good idea to seek to develop your skills in the weaker areas, like a person building up muscles in a limb through exercise: you will not always have the right people at hand to correct your bias towards a particular function.

Analyzing

The word ‘analyses’ comes from a Greek verb meaning ‘to loosen’ and it means separating a whole into its constituent parts. In tackling the ‘who owns the zebra’? Exercise you were using your analytical skills of dissection, trying to break down the task into its parts.

Analytical thinking is closely related to logical or step-by-step reasoning. You may have noticed the one of the skills you were using in tackling that particular problem was your power of deduction. 
Logic has two main parts: deduction and induction. Deduction means literally to subtract or take away. It is the process of deducing a conclusion from what is known or assumed.

More specifically, It is a question of inferring from the general to the particular. Al l swans are birds. This is a swan. Therefore…’ induction words the other way round. It is the process of inferring or beatifying a general law or principle from the observation of particular instances-the core of the scientific method.

It is not easy to give a single label the second function. Synthesizing - another Greek word-is putting or placing things together to make a whole. It is the reverse process of analyzing. You can synthesis things with your hands, which you do whenever you assemble or make anything .all products and services are the results of syntheses. But you can also do it mentally.

When that happens, another faculty is called into play-imagination. Now, imagination works in pictures, and a picture is a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. If you shut your eyes for a moment and think of your house or your car, you see a picture, in fact. It is almost impossible not to see a picture. Your computer-like, memory flashes it up on the inner screen of your mind very quickly. 

What you see is either a pile of bricks. in the case of your house, or a heap of car components. But in each case a whole. Clear when you contemplate how nature works. A baby arrives whole and it grows. Nature is holistic. A famous South African, field marshal fan smuts. Who was also a keen agricultural scientist, coined the word holism to describe nature’s way together, the essential rarities in nature, smuts argued, are these irreducible wholes. If anal used into parts, they lose their essential holistic quality. As the poet William word worth part it, we murder to dissect, your mind has a holistic dimension. It can think holistically in terms of wholes as well as analytically (taking wholes to bits).

Synthesizing

It is not easy to give a single label to the second function. Synthesizing - another Greek word - is putting or placing things together to make a whole. It is the reverse process of analysing. You can synthesize things with your hand, which you do whenever you assemble or make anything. All products and services are the results of syntheses. But you can also do it mentally.

    When that happens, another faculty is called into play - imagination. Now, imagination works in pictures, and a picture is a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. If you shut your eyes for a moment and think of your house or your car, you see a picture. In fact, it is almost impossible not to see a picture. Your computer-like memory flashes it up on the inner screen of your mind very quickly. What you see is neither a pile of bricks, in the case of your house, nor a heap of car components, but in each case a whole.

Valuing 

The third function comes into play in such mental activities as establishing success criteria, evaluating, and appraising performance .and judging people –as, for example. in a selection interview. Criticism (from The Greek word for a judge) is a form of valuing. 

Incidentally. Criticism, as commonly understood, most often suggests disapproval-some sort of a negative judgment. But in it more formal use it can suggest neutral analysis or even approving evaluation. Judgment is not always unfavorable. 

In all valuing, there is an objective (outside yourself) element and a subjective one. We are all born with the capacity to value, what we actually value-our values 0depends very largely upon our environment and its culture. The word value comes from market metaphor: it is what you have or give in order to receive something across the counter. The invention of money revolutionized bartering one merit of money is that it was a universal measuring stick. But there is plenty of others who enter into any form of decision-making especially in business today.