Vehicle for delivering skeptical message

[Skeptic Ginger]

I said we were operating with a different definition of critical thinking. Your posts reinforced that assessment. So before you start asking for a citation to support something and then complaining I didn't provide it, I can't give you a citation because you are arguing something I haven't said.

Blu: "does teaching critical thinking have significant and long-lasting effects on a student's application of critical thinking"

How can someone use critical thinking skills they don't have? How can you test if teaching critical thinking skills leads to critical thinking in a population that doesn't have those skills?

Blu: "Rhetoric was designed to be appealing by using legitemate syllogisms to direct the dialectic toward a specific conclusion. I can use Rhetoric to draw my opponent into Skepticism, and he is trying to use Rhetoric to draw me into, say, Creationism. This is different than sophistry or open debate formats."

Fine, but that isn't critical thinking, that is persuasion. The ideal critical thinker wouldn't be persuaded by the rhetoric you describe.

Blu: "Critical thinking is done in arts and humanities"

Well if this is your definition, I need examples. If you are talking about analyzing the symbolism in "The Old Man and the Sea" then we are not using the same definition. If you are talking about behavior science, then you have a common misconception that science is restricted to physical analyses.

Critical thinking means looking for the fallacies, the supporting evidence, the logical analysis. It means exactly what you are trying to ask if it leads to using it. Your own sentence belies your own interpretation of the meaning, "Does teaching critical thinking have significant and long-lasting effects on a student's application of critical thinking?"

How about we use some different labels here to overcome our different use of these terms?

Instead of critical thinking substitute scientific analysis, where scientific analysis refers to using the scientific process. What is the evidence and what conclusions can you logically infer from that evidence?

 

[blutoski]

I said we were operating with a different definition of critical thinking. Your posts reinforced that assessment. So before you start asking for a citation to support something and then complaining I didn't provide it, I can't give you a citation because you are arguing something I haven't said.

I detect obfuscation. All I ask is a citation to support what you did say:

As far as your second question, it is asking about the effectiveness of teaching methods. Lots of research has been done in this area.

This was about whether teaching critical thinking has real-world benefits. I'm sure it's true that there is lots of research. I inferred you believed that there were real-world benefits. However, I have found mixed results, and no meta-analysis by qualified professionals, upon which to hang my strategy hat, so I was asking if there was something important that I had overlooked.

How can someone use critical thinking skills they don't have? How can you test if teaching critical thinking skills leads to critical thinking in a population that doesn't have those skills?

People have critical thinking skills to varying degree, whether they've taken a formal course in the subject or not. It's a gradient skill, not a binary situation. There are standardized tests for measuring competence in critical thinking: the General Education Critical Thinking Rubric, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, and (my favourite) the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI).

I've never heard of somebody without noticeable mental problems - such as mentally delayed, autistsic, or psychotic - scoring zero on these tools, so I don't think it's credible to argue that there would be people with 'no critical thinking skills'.

Which brings me to your next statement:

Your own sentence belies your own interpretation of the meaning, "Does teaching critical thinking have significant and long-lasting effects on a student's application of critical thinking?"

I don't see this as a problematic question, regardless of interpretation. The studies that attempt to answer this question usually look like this: test students on their first day of the critical thinking course. Retest them on the last day of the course. Test them again after a year. This will address these exact questions: does teaching the content improve critical thinking skills, and does it last?

The second question - about real-world applications - would be measured like this: do people who score higher on critical thinking indices have lower incidences of fraud victimization such as healthfraud or pyramid schemes? Are they less likely to believe in alien visitations or paranormalism? &c. It's been done. The results were mixed, and therefore the hypothesis that there is a relationship is not supported.

Instead of critical thinking substitute scientific analysis, where scientific analysis refers to using the scientific process.

Not in a million years. They're not the same thing. That's my point! I agree we are using different definitions of 'critical thinking'. Yours is wrong. And borders on scientism.

'Critical thinking' is not the same thing as scientific thinking. Of course, scientific thinking is like all endeavours - it works best when it employs critical thinking skills.

I really don't understand why this is controversial. Randi made the point quite clear when he trumped the scientific investigations into paranormalism with magicians - the magicians were doing critical thinking, but the scientists were not. I furthered this example with citations from Randi's work that explained this in other ways: that psychologists carried more doubt about psi than scientists, for example. Their critical thinking was further buttressed by tacit knowledge, which may actually be the only thing that's important in real-world applications.

When I took the relevant philosophy courses, critical thinking was a first year course, a prerequisite for further courses, one of which in third year was 'the philosophy of science' and another called 'scientific thinking'. Critical thinking is a component of all academic analysis, and is regarded as a "domain-general skill" ie: not specific to any particular environment.

Note: this differs from McPeck's position that critical thinking in real-world applications is the result of tacit, context-specific knowledge. This started becoming meaningful in the mid-90s, as nursing accreditation started to require that all students achieve a minimum score in a standardized test in critical thinking, typically the CCTDI. This is what led to a flurry of research in how to boost scores in this index, and subsequent disappointing findings.

My personal interpretation from a layperson's review of the material so far is that the general skill of critical thinking has a personality predisposition that gives some people a head start, and can be taught to some people better than others.

The second interpretation I have so far is that critical thinking scores are so marginally elevated that at the end of the day, when the rubber hits the ground, a high-scoring critical thinker is rarely better equipped for new domains of decision-making than a low-scoring critical thinker with tacit knowledge.

My conclusion based on these interpretations is that teaching critical thinking in as a general skill is only marginally effective and not a good investment, whereas, teaching scientific knowledge and techniques will create a better base of scientific and - eventually - skeptical thinking.

What is the evidence and what conclusions can you logically infer from that evidence?

Eh? Actually, that was my question: everybody's convinced that teaching critical thinking is going to solve the problems of widespread credulity. I'm unconvinced and I have asked: "What is the evidence?" and received a lot of handwaving. For about ten years, now, as it happens.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I detect obfuscation.

Of your own making.

You are talking about advanced problem solving and more complex thinking than I had in mind here. That isn't what I meant at all. It's one thing to teach medical or nursing approaches to very complex assessments, it's quite another to teach primary school kids the basic skills of evidence and logic.

We have an entire school system that graduates kids from basic education without teaching them something as simple as recognizing a straw man argument. They don't know that temporal association doesn't equal causation or that one's brain naturally seeks out pattens and one must recognize when those patterns are coincidental.

I tried to get my son's teachers to teach a little about marketing techniques the kids are bombarded with daily. It wasn't in the curriculum, they felt it wasn't important enough to teach.

That is an example of what I mean by teaching critical thinking. Personally I think the advanced level you are talking about is extremely useful. But I haven't looked at any literature on it in particular.

And I still disagree that using critical thinking should have any outcome other than the correct one. If the scientists failed to detect a ruse, it would be they failed to think critically, not that critical thinking failed.

 

[blutoski]

Of your own making.

Mm. I ask a question, you have an answer. I ask you to support it, and I get 500 words of non-answer. This is not my imagination: you're obfuscating. If your claim was paranormal, the forum'd suspect you of being a troll.

You are talking about advanced problem solving and more complex thinking than I had in mind here. That isn't what I meant at all. It's one thing to teach medical or nursing approaches to very complex assessments, it's quite another to teach primary school kids the basic skills of evidence and logic.

These university-level courses are really introductory, and anyway, the standardized tests start easy and get more difficult, just like Fermat or Pascal. I'm really talking about the standardized tests and how they show us what systems work. This includes grade level programs, not just university level.

For example, an opening question on the CCTDI looks like this:
1. If it is sunny, we will go on a picnic.
2. It is rainy.

[a] We do not go on a picnic.
We go on a picnic.
[c] Not enough information.

This is not 'advanced problem solving'.

We have an entire school system that graduates kids from basic education without teaching them something as simple as recognizing a straw man argument. They don't know that temporal association doesn't equal causation or that one's brain naturally seeks out pattens and one must recognize when those patterns are coincidental.

That's more advanced than the university courses.

I tried to get my son's teachers to teach a little about marketing techniques the kids are bombarded with daily. It wasn't in the curriculum, they felt it wasn't important enough to teach.

That is an example of what I mean by teaching critical thinking. Personally I think the advanced level you are talking about is extremely useful. But I haven't looked at any literature on it in particular.[/quote]

Granted, but is that critical thinking or consumer education? In my school district, this is taught in a mandatory course called 'consumer ed'.

Likewise, when we tell children to accept a scientific explanation, we are not asking them to think critically: we are asking them to trust the teacher, or to trust scientists. Only at a more advanced level can a person really go to the local library and pull the journals and examine them critically. And frankly, I'm not even at that level with education - I still have to trust eduactors to interpret the research. Which was the purpose of my original question.

And I still disagree that using critical thinking should have any outcome other than the correct one.

That's wishful thinking, though. Politics, for example. Critical thinking can be applied, but individuals have different values and priorities, and right-thinking people can and do disagree. There is often no 'correct' answer.

If the scientists failed to detect a ruse, it would be they failed to think critically, not that critical thinking failed.

I'd say they failed to think 'cynically', but may very well have been thinking critically. They just lacked specific information to come to the same conclusion that magicians or psychologists would. Everybody's vulnerable to this, which is why science excels as an example of collaborative effort - critical thinkers engage in dialogues to expand their thoughtspace, and their models converge toward a favourite conclusion. But they aren't thinking *more* critically as they converge on the same answer: they are sharing facts.

What you're probably talking about is educating people on the specifics of alternative explanations. A kid isn't failing to think critically because he's never heard of sleight-of-hand - he's just inexperienced. We arm kids with consumer protection by exposing them to the techniques of these fraudsters as early as possible. This isn't teaching critical thinking, though. There is no 'technique' taught in telling a kid it's a scam. They will fall for another unrelated one for which they have not been given the 'inside' story.

We all see examples of this: people who scoff at alien visitation stories, but are convinced that their Amway dreams are credible. I have a friend who is a chiropractor, but says straight up that obviously homeopathy is a crock. There are a billion hardcore atheists in China who think you need to arrange the furniture in your office properly to keep the luck in.

 

[T'ai Chi]

So science, detective investigation, then magic, so far.
Very interesting.

 

[Darat]

So science, detective investigation, then magic, so far.
Very interesting.

Why is it very interesting?