According to the general scheme of development from syncretism to syntheticity through analyticity, one could consider three types of reasoning as both the aspects of any thought and personal characteristics.
Syncretic thinking is the earliest to form as an integral style of mental activity. It implies no separation of one thought from another, and the grounds for one may well be considered as valid for the other. The external world is perceived by syncretic thinking as a whole (a picture), with no attempts to distinguish the important from unimportant. The results of such reasoning are vague enough, and they can lead to quite different (and even opposite actions). There are no fixed rules of combining ideas—principally, because they are no separate entities to combine. Still, syncretic thinking is definite enough to support activity and communication, provided the partners can share its syncretism. That is, the comminicative focus is on co-involvement in anything, rather than on transmitting or receiving any messages.
Analytical reasoning could be called reasoning in the restricted sense, a sequence of distict mental operations obeying certain rules. The world is treated as a collection of distinct things and relations, and the person's behavior is well structured too. There can be innumerably many kinds of analytical reasoning, since the principles of such thinking cannot be inherent to it, and one mentality is no worse than another. This may hinder communication between the analytically thinking persons, though they are still much closer to each other than to the carriers of the syncretic or synthetic style, which they often refuse to understand (or even treat as a kind of thought).
Synthetic style of thought is characterized by integrity resembling that of syncretic thinking—however, different ideas do not merge in this style, and it is their interaction and development that binds them together and makes the aspects of the same. Synthetic reasoning is focused on bringing things together, demonstrating their commonality, so that the very their distinction gets explained by relating to the same domain. The behavior of such persons may well seem too inefficient, since they can rarely concentrate on a local task, encountering numerous objective and subjective obstacles. However, they can support communication with both syncretic and analytical thinkers, being a kind of link between them in some cases; personally, they do not feel too much satisfaction from this communication, since the other's thoughts may seem “primitive” to them. But it is the synthetic thinkers who need that communication most, while the two earlier styles are much more self-contained.
As usual with hierarchical development, the highest level accept the form of the lowest—thus synthetic reasoning becomes folded in a syncretic thought of a higher level, which also has the old syncretism and analyticity immersed into it. The different levels of intuition form in this way.
To certain extent, the three levels of reasoning are present in the behavior of higher animals, and they can be identified with the stages of the development of human intellect. Thus, the early thinking in complexes is related to the syncretic style, while the formation of concepts after the age of 6-7 years means the transition to the analytical level, which dominates in most humans for a major part of their lives. Mass transition to the synthetic style would require specific social conditions, overcoming the division of labor that has objectively formed on the stage of civilization. However, there may be individuals thinking synthetically, and most people experience mental synthesis once in a while. Inability to have such an experience would cause a severe mental disorder manifesting itself in abnormal behavior, low socialization and lack of purposefulness.
Education system must train people to employ different styles of reasoning, depending on the task. However, there may be preferable styles forming the core of personality. Such preferences influence the choice of activities, depending on the common attidues of the current society. Thus, art is often associated with syncretism, science with analyticity, and philosophy is thought of as an essentially synthetic activity. This division reflects the distinction of the primary forms of ideas (products) of the respective level of spirituality: art is working with images, science is concept-based, philosophy produces categories. However, such an attribution can only be relative to a specific culture, and their may be philosophical art, syncretic science etc.
