RE: The Difference Between a Person and Everyone.
The full range of choices isn't about an unlimited range of choices because at most we have a handful of choices to make in any situation but because we aren't aware of one or two choices we've been limited severely by the lack of those choices.
Independent thinking and free thinking means the same thing, independent thinking could be construed to mean freedom from outside influences as much as free thinking can and obviously that's an extreme, what we're talking about is a critical rationalist, and freedom from external manipulation on our thinking would be an ideal that remains in the same realm as freedom from influence, because manipulation and influence is simply a matter of intent, one is done consciously while the other is done without conscious intent and to think we can be free from manipulation is to say we can spot it, but to spot it requires that the manipulator gives themselves away, yet the more skilful the manipulator the less of a chance we could have to spot it, so saying that it's in our power to discern manipulation is only wishful thinking, we can dupe ourselves in thinking we're protected but actually being protected is a matter of how much time and effort the manipulator puts into the scheme.
When I spoke of choices I did not call these unlimited, I said, "the range of possible choices." When I mentioned an unlimited range I spoke of "an infinite diversity of ideas," not choices.
Yes, "independent thinking" can be construed and generally is construed as "free thinking." It is maybe more clearly put as "thinking independently" but the term is what it is.
Nonetheless, the two are different and in my opinion it is not merely the intent but the manner in which one goes about thinking which matters. Actively influencing, i.e. programming a particular response by conditioning, we call manipulation. Passive influencing, i.e., conditioning without programming any response, is just influencing.
Independent thinking is most important and I consciously am not talking about rationalism. There is no independent thinking in rationalism; logic is dictatorial by nature; it can never be wrong.
A critical rationalist is a rationalist turned on its head not to rationalize for support but for criticism. Independent thinking may be only an abstraction or an extreme that never existed and couldn't exist since as you've said nobody is outside the influence of others. So "how" would an independent thinker go about "thinking"?
I understand "critical rationalist." This is besides the point, isn't it?
The independent thinker thinks independently. His thoughts are not free from the influence of his environment, yet in so far as he makes up his own mind, he has independence, or sovereignty, of thought.
There may be no free thinker but independent thinkers, there are many more of them than you believe - albeit many too few, which is a problem if they are to constitute a workable demos.
The point is that a critical rationalist is an independent or free or sovereign thinker as they don't accept knowledge as objective and strive to critique using logic/rationale so as to establish if the knowledge or theory is valid, invalid, both or neither, but that is why I think we disagree because you think that using logic is not "independent" of logic or dependent on logic.
So back to the question of how an independent thinker thinks, which isn't answered in the least with "independently" or "makes up their mind by themselves" or "sovereignty of though" especially since you contradicted that they aren't in the least "independent" since they are not free from the influence of others, so what is the difference between a Sovereign Thinker and a Free Thinker, and can you substantiate it with an example or something other than circular logic, which brings me back to the point you brought up that logic isn't ever wrong as if that is a contention for not an independent way to think or a free way to think because logic is "dictatorial" by nature.
It really doesn't matter if you label logic as Dictatorial by nature because without Logic there is only Error in thought. To think Correctly first and foremost you must use rationale, without it you cannot think correctly and despite thinking independently or freely if you cannot form correct thoughts all your thoughts are invalid and wrong, incorrect and amoral or immoral. Thoughts are birthed from Logic and Reason, they can be True, False, Both True and False or Neither True nor False, like paradoxes, but without logic what thought is there and does logic mean "no original thought" or that thoughts birthed from logic are authoritative?
You, I think, have discovered where our views diverge. Before, I wasn't aware critical rationalism was the touchstone for your conception of proper thinking. Maybe you will appreciate my view when I make the following answer.
Liberty has two aspects, as we know: the independence of self-government, and the freedom from subjection, which is another sort of independence (outward-looking, as opposed to inwardly). In the context of thought we may make the same categorization. One can think independently in the sense of thinking alone - in a vacuum, to take an extreme - with nothing but his own thoughts, no ideas that did not originate with him ("free thinking"); or in the sense of thinking of one's own accord with one's conscience and intellect judging, contemplating and deciding, rather than anyone else's ("independent thought").
A king is yet sovereign though always advisors whisper in his ear - that is, if there is not such undue influence on him that he is not the head that wears the crown, but its hand.
Logic is a kind of law. It similarly permits no wrong, no freedom from its authority, unless its rule is weak or overridden. Yet thought that cares nothing for logic is possible. Now, you suggest such thought is incorrect; really this thought is only by definition illogical thought, but when viewed from a rationalist perspective it appears wrong. This is the authoritarian streak in rationalism.
Illogical thought is born in the person whereas logic, which exists abstractly, must be imbibed or learned. So, if we were to consider its independence, we would observe that illogical thought has a natural right to sovereignty and that logic acts as usurper when it seeks to oust and banish illogical thought from its home. This is a silly imagining. But it goes to show how the influence of logic can be a welcome compromise of one's independence when it does not manipulate to have sway over illogical thought; which echoes what I've been trying to explain about independent thought and free thinking.
So you think that you think by your own accord and not by what others have influenced you to think and what they think in turn and you're not in a vacuum of defined as "inside" excluded from outside, because what else is OWN accord than what you think you think? You think you think is the keyword, and you base it all on that assumption even though on one's own accord is saying that you're not influenced by what others think or say or exactly what does it mean to "think on one's own accord" by not excluding everyone's else's accord which you go to uphold the absurdity of it as "if you think something that's already out there, if you question because you learned to question, then you are thinking with someone's elses thinking and not your own, because at home illogical thought is home and sense, and logic, in turn, are learned, and therefore it's a usurper of ones own way of thinking or one's source.
So the extreme of Independent Thought is Free Thinking, and anything that is learned acts as a usurper of independent thought, ergo even words and numbers are learned and therefore any conceivable thought is born of abstraction because all thought is abstractions non-the-less that's if there was any logic, because paradoxically you cannot even have the concept of independent thought without it's opposite Shared Thought. So what are the benefits to being an independent thinker again, other than excluding yourself as special in a quite redundant way because you are willing to exclude even foundational sense and who knows what else because it's learned?
I - since you address me personally - do think of my own accord b/c I don't seek the agreement (i.e. the accord) of others to make my mind; that is what "of one's own accord" means, does it not?
And I do NOT "think [...] not by what others have influenced [me] to think," since of course I'm influenced, just I'm vigilant of others making my mind for me. My head is full of ideas that I disagree with or are indifferent to, yet there they are in my mind.
What you call an absurdity is the absurdity of absolute free thinking. That does not describe independent thought, as independent thought admits outside influence (only not manipulation), which is the difference that I'm laboring to mark out for you.
You can think of free thinking as one extreme of independent thought. I think of the two as obverse and reverse of the same principle.
But you misunderstand me to say that "anything that is learned acts as a usurper [sic.]." You are aware of the difference between learning and indoctrinating (which I previously rendered as "imbibing")? Independent thought is to learning as free thinking is to indoctrination.
Say you had a demos of critical rationalists each with his own unique set of ideas. Once they shared their perspectives, do you think they would not all reach the same conclusion, in other words form the same opinion, given what they collectively know? So they would and thus act much as a mob, albeit an enlightened mob.
There is an advantage in this to the credit of rationalism. But don't you see the authoritarianism of its logic? If its conclusion turns out to be unpleasant, then it would be enormously horrible in the demos. Furthermore, deviation from the collective rational conclusion would be viewed as aberrant and illegitimate and dismissed.
You are clearly partial to critical rationalism. As I said before, that is not the only way one thinks, which shouldn't be discounted b/c it is the foundation of the independence in independent thought.
Why is independent thought desirable? We covered this earlier.
You cannot evade the point that what you think you think like and what you actually think like could be entirely different, you can think you made up your mind but what prompted you to make up your mind was probably what someone else said or did, and if they influenced you and you go along with them you can delude yourself all day that you think what they thought because you made up your mind about thinking what they thought, because you won't know if you're thinking that way because of indoctrination or in spite of it, which paradoxically results in you thinking because of indoctrination.
If you admit you're not free from the influence of others and you can't be sure about the manipulation happening, individual thought, in the way you describe it, could very well be completely and utterly dependent on those manipulations and especially influences in very much the same way that self deception makes the group think believe that they are individual thinkers.