In discovery of the detailed connections of our activities and
what happens in consequence, the thought implied in cut and try
experience is made explicit. Its quantity increases so that its
proportionate value is very different. Hence the quality of the
experience changes; the change is so significant that we may call
this type of experience reflective -- that is, reflective par
excellence. The deliberate cultivation of this phase of thought
constitutes thinking as a distinctive experience. Thinking, in
other words, is the intentional endeavor to discover specific
connections between something which we do and the consequences
which result, so that the two become continuous. Their
isolation, and consequently their purely arbitrary going
together, is canceled; a unified developing situation takes its
place. The occurrence is now understood; it is explained; it is
reasonable, as we say, that the thing should happen as it does.
Thinking is thus equivalent to an explicit rendering of the
intelligent element in our experience. It makes it possible to
act with an end in view. It is the condition of our having aims.
As soon as an infant begins to expect he begins to use something
which is now going on as a sign of something to follow; he is, in
however simple a fashion, judging. For he takes one thing as
evidence of something else, and so recognizes a relationship.
Any future development, however elaborate it may be, is only an
extending and a refining of this simple act of inference.
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