Critical Thinking aka Good Thinking

[kungfuhobbit]

kl.
first question in my head then please, the problem of:
in what sense of the word is critical used in the phrase 'critical thinking' though?
dont you find it ambiguous?
I find it odd how unhelpfully poorly-defined the word 'critical' is - it's almost ironic in context, no?!
This is just rewording what I put in the essay I suppose, but Im interested why you think my points on naming dont hit their mark please

 

[Jeff Corey]

Characterized by careful, exact evaluation and judgment, as in, "My critical evaluation of your arguments is something you don't want to hear."

 

[Careyp74]

Characterized by careful, exact evaluation and judgment, as in, "My critical evaluation of your arguments is something you don't want to hear."

tsk, tsk. Did you just copy from another source without citation?

KFH, the definition above is what I think of when hearing the word critical. There ARE other ambiguous definitions, like on dictionary.com, but they cover other uses of the word. The same problem can be seen with many words, where a large segment of the population may not truly know all of the definitions of a word, however, it doesn't seem to be a problem to me.

The problem with calling it good thinking, is that a general adjective like good does not lend itself well to a phrase, which is what the term 'critical thinking' is. That phrase means more together than the two words separately.

 

[Jeff Corey]

I wrote it and checked it to see if it agreed. And it did. I teach a course called, oddly enough, "Critical Thinking".

ETA: My original beta version was "and I find your points less than compelling", but that was too snarky.

 

[kungfuhobbit]

@careyp74
If 'critical' thinking is 'careful and precise' thinking (/judgement/evaluation), isnt this a trivially obvious intrinsic property of 'thinking' and the adjective 'critical' is reduntant? (the point I try to make by using the almost unnecessary word 'good' I suppose)
isnt the key word actually 'thinking' (and then defining how one should think 'well')?
If one isnt practising care and precision anyway (admittedly under contraints of time eg. satisficing, rational ignorance etc) then Id say someone isnt practising 'thinking' at all, no?

@Jeff
what do you think of what Ive written on ct please?
what do you cover in your class?

 

[Jeff Corey]

@careyp74
If 'critical' thinking is 'careful and precise' thinking (/judgement/evaluation), isnt this a trivially obvious intrinsic property of 'thinking' and the adjective 'critical' is reduntant? (the point I try to make by using the almost unnecessary word 'good' I suppose)
isnt the key word actually 'thinking' (and then defining how one should think 'well')?
If one isnt practising care and precision anyway (admittedly under contraints of time eg. satisficing, rational ignorance etc) then Id say someone isnt practising 'thinking' at all, no?

@Jeff
what do you think of what Ive written on ct please?
what do you cover in your class?

50 Geat Myths of Pop Psych (Lilienfeld, et al.
Gilovich, How We Know What Isn't So
Various handouts from SI, etc.
Visual illusions
Wason's Card Selection Task
How to write the sceptical paper due at the end of the semester and turn it in on a CD so I can check it for originality.
(One semester a vaxer turned in a paper that was totally lifted from McCarthy fan sites)

I still have a problem with thinking all thinking is good thinking. "Actions speak louder than words and thoughts are even harder to evaluate"
Concrete problem solving is measured by asking people to answer novel examples of the Wason task, for example.

 

[kungfuhobbit]

I still have a problem with thinking all thinking is good thinking. "Actions speak louder than words and thoughts are even harder to evaluate"
Concrete problem solving is measured by asking people to answer novel examples of the Wason task, for example.

Thanks for resource suggestions.

I obviously agree that not all attempts at practising thinking are model instances of 'good' thinking - 'thinking' is a skill and one's ability lies on a spectrum.
Implicit in the fact it is a skill though is that some ways are deemed better than others and it surely goes without saying we want to hone the skill ie. aim for the 'better' ways.
Maybe an analogy for my point would be 'doing arithmetic'.

We dont bother to label it 'doing arithmetic well' or 'doing arithmetic carefully' (or 'good ways of doing arithmetic!')
We all recognise that there is one understood aim of how to 'do arithmetic' - and that aim is to do better rather than worse - it is to not slip up

If somebody commits a logical fallacy without realising and so gets their arithmetic wrong , we would realistically still say they had 'done arithmetic' but just that they did it badly.

Does this seem a fair analogy?

in light of saying this I should note that obviously ideally I would call my 10 principles the "10 commandments of Thinking", but I think 'good' emphasises that thinking is a skill, a much needed emphasis imo.

 

[Careyp74]

Thanks for resource suggestions.

I obviously agree that not all attempts at practising thinking are model instances of 'good' thinking - 'thinking' is a skill and one's ability lies on a spectrum.
Implicit in the fact it is a skill though is that some ways are deemed better than others and it surely goes without saying we want to hone the skill ie. aim for the 'better' ways.
Maybe an analogy for my point would be 'doing arithmetic'.

We dont bother to label it 'doing arithmetic well' or 'doing arithmetic carefully' (or 'good ways of doing arithmetic!')
We all recognise that there is one understood aim of how to 'do arithmetic' - and that aim is to do better rather than worse - it is to not slip up

If somebody commits a logical fallacy without realising and so gets their arithmetic wrong , we would realistically still say they had 'done arithmetic' but just that they did it badly.

Does this seem a fair analogy?

in light of saying this I should note that obviously ideally I would call my 10 principles the "10 commandments of Thinking", but I think 'good' emphasises that thinking is a skill, a much needed emphasis imo.

If you were to make an analogy between thinking and math, perhaps a better one would be that thinking is the ability to count and add, while critical thinking is algebra. It is a higher skill set based on the original. This is the main concept. And yes, you can even try to use critical thinking and still suck at it.

With that, I refer to my statement about the word good.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Thanks for resource suggestions.

I obviously agree that not all attempts at practising thinking are model instances of 'good' thinking - 'thinking' is a skill and one's ability lies on a spectrum.
Implicit in the fact it is a skill though is that some ways are deemed better than others and it surely goes without saying we want to hone the skill ie. aim for the 'better' ways.
Maybe an analogy for my point would be 'doing arithmetic'.

We dont bother to label it 'doing arithmetic well' or 'doing arithmetic carefully' (or 'good ways of doing arithmetic!')
We all recognise that there is one understood aim of how to 'do arithmetic' - and that aim is to do better rather than worse - it is to not slip up

If somebody commits a logical fallacy without realising and so gets their arithmetic wrong , we would realistically still say they had 'done arithmetic' but just that they did it badly.

Does this seem a fair analogy?

in light of saying this I should note that obviously ideally I would call my 10 principles the "10 commandments of Thinking", but I think 'good' emphasises that thinking is a skill, a much needed emphasis imo.

I think that it glosses over the fact that some thinking is naive, gullible, misinformed or just stupid.
As an example of misinformed, take. "The best was to teach is to try to match the teaching style to the student's learning style."
This unsupported generalization is practically a holy writ preached by many Education professors. Students who learn it are not stupid, they have been victims of educational malpractice.

 

[kungfuhobbit]

the followup:
http://www.kungfuhobbit.com/2012/07/what-hell-is-critical-thinking.html

 

[Sideroxylon]

I think you never practiced science.
As to Popper and Evilution, mertsahinoglu.com/research/karl-popper-on-the-scientific-status-of-evolution
Oops, link not working. There's enough info in there to google it.

As Kant argued, “Observation without theory is blind, theory without observation is empty”. The theory has to come first in order to see things in what you are looking at.

 

[Careyp74]

As Kant argued, “Observation without theory is blind, theory without observation is empty”. The theory has to come first in order to see things in what you are looking at.

Is that how you interpret that? I don't. First you observe, then you create a theory on what you observe. The quote IMHO alludes to the idea that just observing things without creating a theory about it is 'blind' in that you just don't get any information from it, while a theory that was created without observation first is just an 'empty' idea.

 

[Careyp74]

the followup:
http://www.kungfuhobbit.com/2012/07/what-hell-is-critical-thinking.html

I find that blog somewhat pretentious. Whole lot of vacuous while we are at it.

As far as the definition of critical:

involving skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc.; judicial: a critical analysis.

from;

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/critical

There. That is a good enough definition for you to understand what we are talking about.

Thinking does not include this much of the time. You can wave your hand over all of it and say "yes, we should think this way all of the time" but no, you would be wrong.

If I asked you what you want for dinner, you better not stop and think critically about it, weighing all of the options, looking at the pros and cons from various philosophical ideas, before telling me what you would like. I would have already made my sandwich, put everything back away, and told you to take a hike.

But, in coming up with what you want for dinner, you ARE thinking about it.

WHAT? Thinking, without 'skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc.?"

Yes.

"If one isn’t practising care and precision anyway (admittedly under the constraints of time e.g. satisficing, rational ignorance etc) then frankly we’d say someone isn’t practising thinking at all."

No, we wouldn't.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Is that how you interpret that? I don't. First you observe, then you create a theory on what you observe. The quote IMHO alludes to the idea that just observing things without creating a theory about it is 'blind' in that you just don't get any information from it, while a theory that was created without observation first is just an 'empty' idea.

This is the way I understand Kant and I believe Kuhn was arguing along the same lines.

And what was the first observation? We approach any new observation already laden with theory. For example, when we look at the pin pricks of light in the night sky with the theory that they are planets and stars, this opens up new understandings of what we observe and the possibility of further theory.

All observation is theory laden and it must be so.

 

[kungfuhobbit]

@Careyp74
thanks. which other posts do you consider particularly vacuous please? I am eager to excise nonsense

 

[Careyp74]

This is the way I understand Kant and I believe Kuhn was arguing along the same lines.

And what was the first observation? We approach any new observation already laden with theory. For example, when we look at the pin pricks of light in the night sky with the theory that they are planets and stars, this opens up new understandings of what we observe and the possibility of further theory.

All observation is theory laden and it must be so.

Wait, we already suspected that there were planets and stars BEFORE seeing the pin pricks in the sky? I believe that the theories didn't come about UNTIL the pin pricks were noticed. Observation: Pin pricks in the sky. Theory: sheet of canvas with holes, our ancestors looking down upon us, stars and planets.

In the case of Gravity, we first noticed that things fall, and then made theories as to why. That theory was not created without first observing a phenomenon.

I think it could go both ways though. There are theories that are made to explain other theories, or to add to them, and then observations are taken to back up or refute the theory. It started with an observation though with those original theories. I can't imagine why a theory would be created to explain something that wasn't even observed first, or thought to be a phenomenon.

 

[Careyp74]

@Careyp74
thanks. which other posts do you consider particularly vacuous please? I am eager to excise nonsense

Well, the What Is Logic post doesn't seem to offer much substance. Just questions that you can find the answers to easily if you understood the concepts. There are courses available for that.

Did you see the comment on that one?

Understanding the world Meh.

The fundamental problem of inequality Meh.

Talking about Marx Interesting topic. If it was discussed. You posted more of a whine.

Simple "How do you know?"s I like this topic too. Why don't you go further into what you are talking about?

Have you ever come across the Toulmin Model of Argumentation? I know many don't feel like Blog's are essays, but if you are looking for intellectual followers, you might want to put more substance into your writing.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Wait, we already suspected that there were planets and stars BEFORE seeing the pin pricks in the sky? I believe that the theories didn't come about UNTIL the pin pricks were noticed. Observation: Pin pricks in the sky. Theory: sheet of canvas with holes, our ancestors looking down upon us, stars and planets.

In the case of Gravity, we first noticed that things fall, and then made theories as to why. That theory was not created without first observing a phenomenon.

I think it could go both ways though. There are theories that are made to explain other theories, or to add to them, and then observations are taken to back up or refute the theory. It started with an observation though with those original theories. I can't imagine why a theory would be created to explain something that wasn't even observed first, or thought to be a phenomenon.

A proto human would have looked at the pin points of light and perhaps may not have even registered them. Theories about what the existence of gods to look upon us may have drawn attention to them. And yes, claims that native Americans or Australians didn't see the European ships are silly.

We need theory to sort the massive amounts sensory observation that comes into our heads. Granted some/much of the sorting mechanism is already hard-wired into the brain through evolution.

Regardless of first observation origins, we have long been carrying a great deal of theory about with us that affects all observations that we make. Can any of our observations make sense without some theory to sort and inform it?

 

[Careyp74]

A proto human would have looked at the pin points of light and perhaps may not have even registered them. Theories about what the existence of gods to look upon us may have drawn attention to them. And yes, claims that native Americans or Australians didn't see the European ships are silly.

We need theory to sort the massive amounts sensory observation that comes into our heads. Granted some/much of the sorting mechanism is already hard-wired into the brain through evolution.

Regardless of first observation origins, we have long been carrying a great deal of theory about with us that affects all observations that we make. Can any of our observations make sense without some theory to sort and inform it?

ok, granted that I agree with all of that, let us get back to what I objected to.

The theory has to come first in order to see things in what you are looking at.

Let us try this way. We are talking about the scientific method, right? How about a link to anywhere that talks about creating the theory before making observations?

If you do not think we are talking about the scientific method, but of another way of creating theories, link to that source that does the same thing.

ETA: I noticed again that your original post was in response to Corey's talk about science, so yes, we are absolutely talking about the scientific method.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Let us try this way. We are talking about the scientific method, right? How about a link to anywhere that talks about creating the theory before making observations?

If you do not think we are talking about the scientific method, but of another way of creating theories, link to that source that does the same thing.

ETA: I noticed again that your original post was in response to Corey's talk about science, so yes, we are absolutely talking about the scientific method.

I am not saying that new theories are created for a given observation but many pre-existing theories inform all observations, scientific or otherwise. New theories of course do lead to new approaches to familiar observations, for example Arthur Eddington's eclipse observations to detect gravitational lensing as predicted by Einsteins general(?) theory of relativity.