Interbane wrote:


This is excellent. Tom, if you have a problem with the above statement, it may be a social problem you are experiencing.

Thomas Hood wrote:



He did! Tom, your words are like those of a convicted criminal on his way to the gallows. Maybe there are ghosts in this world because you hung yourself weeks ago.

Thomas Hood wrote:



Wrong

Thomas Hood wrote:


Keep going, this is getting fun now, dead man talking!

12 points for Suzanne.

I'm so pleased to see that Chris has advanced to a belief in spirits

What's wrong is that you didn't recognize it as an adaptation from Thomas Huxley, Darwin's bulldog. Medication can do that to a literate person

Suzanne received a new view of the The Life of Pi from Aussie_Lifter that changed her interpretation, and then says:



Yes, I agree. It is a fine example of the Seven Virtues of Critical Thinking, -- and also of its Seven Deadly Sins. Instead of turning to text and context autonomously and making up your mind independently, you are dependent upon another person for your views. Critical thinking replaces objective, independent thought with social dependence.

What I asked of Interbane was:



Views that you copy from others are neither your solution to a problem nor new knowledge. However pleasant the social activities of Critical thinking may be to some, they cannot replaces objective work -- personal investigation, research, and responsibility.

Tom

your so-called seven virtues of critical thinking are not in any way indicative of a cannon of thought for critical thinking.

would you be appeased, ye god of misinterpretation, if it were called something else? perhaps some dry crag of your brain has been snagged by this term?

have you taken note that you are the only person trying to defend critical thinking as some kind of institution? what has every person here said critical thinking is?

Geo summed it up most elequently:

Critical thiking = Thinking Critically.

There is nothing about it any more scandalous than this TH.

at this point it seems more like a defense of language against a very confused and hoplessly polarized assertion about what it is we are all supposed to be thinking. You want us all to belong to some boogey-man club where we recline in paper-mache sofas made from the tattered remnants of despoiled bibles. There is no scary conspiracy, no liberal agenda to confound your mind with deliberate thinking.

Why don't you do us all a favor and describe what it is you imagine is the process of critical thinking. Please include any description of critical thinking accoutrement that will be needed for the ritual.

i present the following example of how critical thinking was employed. feel free to ignore the contents of what follows, or twist it to mean something entirely besides what the intent was, as is your usual M.O.

The earth-centric solar system.
Aristotelian Cosmology contended that all objects in the night sky orbited the earth. this was the geocentric model.

With the invention of the telescope it was observed by Galileo that Jupiter appeared to have moons of it's own. 3 dim stars were seen to reside in the space near the colossal planet, when later observed one had disappeared.

Despite what everyone KNEW about the universe and it's workings Galileo could not escape the idea that the apparent stars were orbiting Jupiter. This conflicts, if you did not realize it yet, with the geocentric model. The Geocentric model, it so happens, was well supported by the established religion of the time and scripture, with such quotes as:


Psalms 19:4-6
yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.

Ecclesiastes 1:5
The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

1 Chronicles 16:30
tremble before him, all earth; yea, the world stands firm, never to be moved.

despite tremendous pressure from without, and the commonly held belief, and surely what he was taught, that the earth was the center and all revolved around it, Galileo confronted his own mis-conceptions about the workings of the universe to work out a heliocentric, or sun-centered, model.


To be specific: Critical thinking is clearly employed here to determine that the moons of Jupiter did not just disappear, as it seemed, but must be orbiting the planet. A discovery that went against common views of the times and was probably not a welcome bit of insight for him to consider telling the pope.

If you feel compelled to see if this scenario fits your "seven virtues of critical thinking" do try them on for size, but i assure you TH, they are not the be-all end-all of critical thinking.

You still are looking for a special yard stick to crack across our knuckles and prove to us that we practice a religion as surely as you do TH, but your tired assertions fall well short of truth, and indeed common sense.

Welcome aboard, Angela. I think it sounds like a great idea to use critical thinking as a theme in your class. I'd like to know, how does your teacher incorporate critical thinking into Eng 101? Is there a particular textbook you are using? I believe Eng 101 is essentially a composition class. Is that right? So does that mean you are going to incorporate critical thinking into your writing assignments? Thanks for any info you can provide.

Geo is back, yeah!

Hello and welcome Angela!

A breath of fresh air!

Is critical reading part of your classes as well?

That's true, Johnson, because critical thinking isn't thinking. It's emoting.



I don't care what it's call, but I would like for people to be more independent, creative, and productive, which some of them will be when they give up the critical thinking shortcut to thinking.



Gee, if I had a crowd behind me I'd feel so much surer of myself Did Alfred Wagener need a crowd? Did Ignaz Semmelweis need a crowd? Did Galileo need a crowd? . . . .



Alas, Johnson, that is scandalous:





Johnson, you are poorly informed about the history of science. Copernicus died before Galileo was born, and Galileo knew Copernicus's system. The earth was described as a sphere in the Tractatus de Sphaera of Sacrobosco (c. 1195 – c. 1256), the standard medieval textbook in its field. The educated knew that the earth was round and had a good idea of its size. Colombus had difficulty getting support because the scholars in Spain who examined his proposal for the king rejected it since his figures were fudged to minimize the length of the trip. People weren't as ignorant as you suppose.

If you imagine that the irrational groupthink fog that is critical thinking has anything to do with Galileo, you are mistaken.

Tom

I know I've been incommunicado for a few days. I'm on vacation and I'm doing fun stuff like biking, sailing, kayaking, eating crabs, etc. Also my internet hookup is not great.

This thread has taken off but seemingly not in a very constructive way. Many of us are trying to convince Thomas of the benefits and rewards of using critical thinking in our daily lives and johnson has provided some excellent historic examples of how critical thinking has helped to yield great advances in science. But Thomas is so convinced that critical thinking is a bunch of hooey (I'm paraphrasing here) and I am reminded of that saying that "you cannot reason people out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into."

Then it occurs to me that I don't really know what Thomas' criticisms of critical thinking are. I do suspect that Thomas is harboring precious beliefs that he feels are being threatened, but until he better articulates his position, I don't think it's going to be very useful to argue with him.

For example, Thomas has expressed concerns that critical thinking is part of a liberal agenda. But what does he base this on? Can we have some examples of this liberal conspiracy (if that is what is being alleged)?

That said, I'll have to agree that critical thinking has become a sort of buzz term used in many different situations. We've all expressed here what critical thinking means for us individually, but I wonder, in its general use has critical thinking become a vague sort of term that means think better? Is it possible that critical thinking is being used as a sort of meme?

meme: Richard Dawkins first introduced the word in The Selfish Gene (1976) to discuss evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, and beliefs (notably religious belief), clothing/fashion, and the technology of building arches. - Wikipedia

As such, is it possible that critical thinking is being used as a way to propagate group think, only instead of furthering religious ideas it is being used to advance an atheistic or liberal agenda?

I only ask this in the spirit of "Intellectual Courage" one of Ellis' "valuable intellectual traits. Here is that definition again:



So, yes, in a sense I'm thinking critically about the possibility of a larger and distorted use of the term, "critical thinking." Is there some truth there?

Drunk Driving = driving drunk

Oftentimes so do the unreasonable… you are sounding more and more like the latter.



And is in fact wrong… so wrong that you are embarrassing yourself and making yourself look like an idiot.



Critical thinking classes are not indoctrination but training… but you are correct that by resisting this training she would severely limit her career options… because she would think stupidly.



First of all that definition is just one more of many…

Here is one…



And another



Another…



Another…



Another…



Another…



That is just a few of the many I have found…

Do you have any idea why critical thinking has so many definitions?

Because it is a process, a tool that can be used many ways, there is no one way to think critically. I do think that Geo may have hit on an important point the term critical thinking may be a buzz term for any rational, logical thinking process that repeatedly yields accurate results.

This seems to be supported by the vast number of definitions out there.

There are of course rules and “virtues” that help a person better manage their thinking process, but those guidelines are not propaganda any more than learning the rules of algebra is propaganda.

Finally sharing my views with you on the virtues of critical thinking would be wasted effort… you have already made up your mind… however (for the rest of the participants) I think those are good guidelines to strive for when thinking… and I think Suzanne did a good job of showing how those “virtues” work when thinking critically.

Later

Great post Geo. A sociological decomposition of critical thinking will reveal its association with key liberal trends. Primarily, critical thinking is hostile to religious acceptance of received wisdom, preferring to assess all claims against scientific evidence. It is a movement originating with Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a main inaugural enlightenment text of critical thought, and very influential on enlightenment thought in the USA.

Social assumptions which flow from Kantian logic, such ideas as modernity, science, reason, liberty, are seen as intrinsically critical, while traditional reaction to these ideas of the enlightenment is seen as backward, ignorant and self-serving. Kant was known as the ‘all-destroyer’ for applying critical reason to assessment of religious claims, so this problem, essentially the merits of piety, is a central issue for philosophy and culture.

The critical attitude is good, but it can also calcify in an uncritical way into a sort of group view, for example the assumption that atheism is smart and theism is stupid. People holding this assumption will use it as a prejudice, seeing religious language as stupid and backward and scientific language as intelligent and progressive, and considering society as split between good (modern) and evil (traditional). The problem here is that such divisions are very unclear and dubious. There is a lot in traditional culture which is valid and adaptive, but modern culture has a tendency to want to sweep all tradition away. Of course this tendency is chastened by memory of the tumbrils and the terror, but revolutionary fanaticism remains beneath the surface in the condescending attitudes of moderns towards piety and ritual.

RT