solved. Inclination concerns whether a person is inclined to invest effort in
thinking the matter through, because of curiosity, personal relevance (as in
the health case), habits of mind, and so on. Ability concerns the capability to
think effectively about the matter in a sustained way, for instance, to generate
alternative explanations for the supposed causal relationship. (Sensitivity
could be called an ability of a sort—the ability to notice—but in our nomen-
clature ability refers to thinking capabilities once the person is engaged in an
effort to think something through.) Sensitivity and inclination are the dis-
positional aspects of this triad, speaking to “When is good thinking?”
The three reflect a logic inherent not only in thinking but also other kinds
of behavior. Recall from the introduction the challenge of crossing the turbu-
lent river. To do so by rowboat, you have to notice conditions that recom-
mend a boat, including the boat itself, the state of the weather and such (sen-
sitivity), decide to try the boat, rather than say walking three miles to the
bridge (inclination), and be able to row the boat well enough to make it (abil-
ity). The same pattern plays out in many contexts. Sensitivity, inclination,
and ability are individually necessary and collectively sufficient to enable a
behavior.
Here this pattern gets applied to thinking. Its distinctive contribution is
the separation of sensitivity and inclination. Characteristically, dispositional
analyses of thinking either treat dispositions as a matter of motivation
broadly speaking—interests, commitments, values—or simply lump sensitiv-
ity and inclination together. However, the two need to be distinguished, since
one might notice an occasion that invites thinking but not care, or fail to no-
tice a situation about which one would care. Empirical research reported
later demonstrates that indeed these are separable aspects of thinking.
Although it is useful to examine thinking behavior with sensitivity, inclina-
tion, and ability in mind, they are not monolithic traits nor do they operate in
an acontextual way. Sensitivity, for example, may reflect a general alertness
or mindfulness (Langer, 1989), but also particular repertoire, such as know-
ing the risks of inferring causation from correlation. Moreover, such knowl-
edge needs not to be inert (cf. Bransford, Franks, Vye, & Sherwood, 1989;
Whitehead 1929), but active enough to get triggered on the fly while reading a
newspaper article.
Likewise, inclination on a particular occasion might reflect broad cogni-
tive traits like need for cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), goodhabits of
mind(Dewey, 1922), and attitudes such as curiosity and love of truth
(Scheffler, 1991). However, it will also reflect the pulls and pushes of the
moment—whether for instance the relationship between sleep and health
seems personally important and whether you have the time to think about it
right then.
Inclination also speaks to persistence. Whether you think something all
the way through will reflect broad traits such as curiosity and stubbornness
- WHEN IS GOOD THINKING? 359