Does eastern meditation help with critical thinking? The connection between meditation and logical reasoning might seem weird. The former refers to religious mysticism; the latter to rationality. Of course, there are different kinds of meditation. A person can pray, sing mantras, think about divinity or concentrate on actions or ideas. But behind all of these practices lies the same phenomenon. It is called mindfulness. One needs to pay full attention to some object. Actually, there is nothing mystical at all. If you read an interesting book full attention is a very easy thing. But what if you need to concentrate on a boring topic? You will notice your mind wandering around. Different thoughts will fly through your consciousness. It is not meditation yet. But here is a crucial element of a meditation. You need to train your mind to stay in focus. In one form of a meditation, a person just concentrates on his own breathing. He tries to stop every thought that appears in his br
Sometimes one tries to stop a discussion saying that the argument of his opponent is old and known. “Well, well it is an argument from granny’s wardrobe. It smells of mothballs. Don't you have something new?”. In this case, the disputant is trying to discredit the argument as out of fashion. But is it a fair objection? Of course not! Arguments have no end date. Until someone proves that an argument is invalid, it keeps its strength. One needs to attack an argument, not its age. There are very good arguments since the days of ancient Greece.