Thoughtcraft 1.4: Aims and Motivations
The aim of a thinking process is not its motivation. If the puzzle to be solved is a crossword, the motive for solving it may be mental escape (to forget something else), mental maintenance (some people solve crosswords to maintain their recall of words), or high-stakes competition, in a formal contest. Whatever the motive, the thought process is still that of puzzle-solving, and its aim is to arrive at a correct answer to the puzzle. It is important to keep in mind the distinction between aim and motivation.
Aims themselves may be defined in various ways, but always, the aim of a thought is nearer in than its motivation, and in most thought processes, the thinker is more likely to be aware of the aim than of the motivation.
The aim of a thought process is frequently the service of another thought process. When a formal puzzle (that is, a game) requires logic, to solve it frequently calls on conscious explanatory processes. Many players of Sudoku, for example, may be heard muttering “therefore” aloud; they are explaining to themselves the applications of logical rules. This is an example of the explanatory mode called into the service of the puzzle-solving mode, and the best way to name the aim of the explanation is “the service of puzzle-solving.”