THINKING is also a form of acting. It’s the brain in action. But it has a de美国GREe of supervisory function to it. It organizes experience. A naturalist walks through our world of plants and animals and interacts with them. But thinking looks out on that experience of nature and begins to classify plants and animals. Further action may then use that classification to work with the relationships discerned between the plants and animals that share commonalities. In the sciences, thinking not only serves classification, but observes reactions and makes guesses as to why that led to this. Newton makes the leap of understanding that connects the fall of an apple to earth with the orbiting of the moon around the earth, and he names the explanatory force, gravity. Halley guesses that the same force of gravity will govern the movement of the comet named after him even when it has moved in its orbit out of our range of sight, so that he can calculate when it will return to be seen by viewers on our planet. Thinking has discerned the law involved in motion.
In the human realm, behavior happens, but it has also been ordered to create pleasant and useful and necessary relationships between members of society. The mind reflects on behavior and begins to put together what we would call ethical theory. Certain principles are seen as underlying guidelines for all human behavior. And so we get“laws”of human behavior forbidding taking life and sexual trespass and theft and lying, on the negative side, and promoting responsibility and respect and righteousness, on the positive side. Some of these principles are so clear and well established that there is no need to sit and think about them. We need to get on with it, and to act in accordance with them.
However, since acting involves choice, there are numerous occasions when we need to think through the right choice. Is abortion permissible or not? And if so, when, and on what grounds? And if not, why not? On what grounds do we deny it? Is war ever a right choice? If not, what are the alternatives in face of evil? If it is permissible, under what conditions, and how conducted?