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Is stillness of mind an example of pure thinking? I'm not sure because it seems like i'm not thinking at all. It just seems like an empty stage. -J

We know that our mind can be out of focus. We know that an unfocused mind experiences disconnected flows of perceptions and thoughts. Thinking is an awakening activity that stops the flow of disconnected thoughts with attention upon an object or theme. The activity of thinking produces something: concepts. There are different kinds of concepts. Concepts that have perceptible content are mental pictures. Concepts without perceptible content such as the concept "cause" do not at first have content. These are "pure" concepts. Pure thinking is thinking in pure concepts.

Thinking perception has aspects of perception and thinking, in the sense that concepts are perceived in the thing one is thinking about. It is like the concepts are extracted. So there are a variety of experiences with thinking.

How can you take a quiz at the end of each section of the study course if the quizzes are at the end of the course and there is no easy way to get to them except by scrolling page by page? -G

That is a problem. The scrolling is slow the first time through as the program makes you stop at each slide. After that, the scrolling is fast, as you will no longer have to stop at the slides. I had the quizzes at the end of each chapter in my first course attempt, but many people didn't want to take the quiz. So I put them at the back as an option.

Can it all come down to meditation as the way to freedom, in thinking being and living? -J

Rather than meditation, I would use the term thinking contemplation. The key to free action is having developed the capacity of moral intuition, which involves using the ability to think freely without preconceptions and bias (pure thinking) to select the moral principle to be applied in a particular case from your whole world of ideas. (see chapter 13.0 MORAL IMAGINATION) This can be tried just by sitting down and reflecting upon the ethics of a decision that needs to be made. This ability can be further developed so it can work more quickly in the moment you need an answer.

With this key element in mind you could say it comes down to thinking being and living.

POF 10.4 when all other grounds that determine action take second place, then we rely, in the first place, on conceptual intuition itself. All other motives now drop out of sight, and the ideal content of an action alone becomes its motive.

POF 10.5 For such an action to be possible, we must first be capable of moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to think out for himself the moral principles that apply in each particular case, will never rise to the level of genuine individual willing.

Is pure thinking when you meditate and think of nothing and everything is blank and still in your mind, not letting other thoughts come into your mind at that moment? -J

POF Chapter 4 THOUGHT AS THE INSTRUMENT OF KNOWLEDGE explains thinking and pure thinking.

The first step in thinking is focus --but focus upon something, which can be an object or a past thought.

POF 4.3 As long as I think about the object, I am absorbed in it, my attention is turned on it. To be thus absorbed in the object is to contemplate it by thought.

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