"We need to teach kids how to think critically!" - a common call.

One result is perhaps the number of threads here that tell us how physics or mathematics has it wrong, while demonstrating a lack of knowledge of either physics or mathematics.

Critical thinking without context is dangerous. — Banno

Great stuff. Unfortunately, education trends are going in the exact opposite direction. We (to be fair, I only know the American system well) are abandoning content to teach "skills" like critical thinking. And very smart people (see the many in this thread) seem blind to the fact that you must have something to think critically about, and without a knowledge base, you might be thinking, but there is nothing critical going on.

And after my first read through the thread, every post that even slightly disagrees provides no example of how to teach critical thinking separate from content...unless I missed it.

Great stuff. Unfortunately, education trends are going in the exact opposite direction. We (to be fair, I only know the American system well) are abandoning content to teach "skills" like critical thinking. And very smart people (see the many in this thread) seem blind to the fact that you must have something to think critically about, and without a knowledge base, you might be thinking, but there is nothing critical going on.

And after my first read through the thread, every post that even slightly disagrees provides no example of how to teach critical thinking separate from content...unless I missed it. — ZhouBoTong

Good point. It reminds me of history education. There are theories now that history education can be a mish-mash hodepodge of time periods and events, as long as it is taught using "critical thinking" skills. In other words, the aversion to "grand narrative" history is so great, that the basic eras, periods, and change over time is lost to "thinking exercises" or collaborative projects, or whatever else is considered more important than content itself. However, without the basic narrative, there is no way to properly understand it, deconstruct, or do anything else meaningful with it. It is devoid of context. If you don't understand the Enlightenment, the American Revolution makes little sense. If you don't understand the Reformation, the Enlightenment makes no sense. If you don't understand the Silk Road, you miss out on the globalization that lead to Renaissance, etc. To take things out of context and to just use historical subjects as a means to some some ludicrous critical thinking goal, that has nothing to do with history itself is to create a real disservice.

@Banno Maybe you'd agree.

With the right parents CT can be cultivated at an early age, I suspect. Of course, such parents probably have the abilities by nature and thus impart them to children, by nature. All I can say is that students that don't have these skills when they enroll in college classes don't often develop them there.

I've no idea of what you are saying. — Banno

:rofl:

I think it is possible to think about the methods and obstacles that are present when one is using critical thinking and after reflecting on it. The whole post-positivist movement that was initiated by Popper as you have mentioned falls under that. But as you have seen with my discussion here, it is impossible to convince another person that there can be something wrong in the application of critical thinking in a highly critical field. People usually take that for granted, especially in science.

I don't think that is what Wittgenstein is saying. I think he is saying it is possible to be dogmatic, in the sense of holding some traditionally held "primary theses" about the world (Relativity is correct) and yet still be capable of advancing your knowledge by way of critical thought. Perhaps critical thought doesn't target dogmatic core beliefs initially or directly, but it can eventually penetrate them.

Thank God. Someone understands my point here finally. I was going to lose my mind and l was beginning to think whether l was spewing complete garbage.

Cognitive load theory assumes that, for example, critical thinking is biologically primary and so unteachable. We all are able to think critically if we have sufficient knowledge stored in long-term memory in the area of interest.

A car mechanic can think critically about repairing a car. I, and I dare say most of you reading cannot. Teaching us critical thinking strategies instead of car mechanics is likely to be useless.
— John Sweller

"We need to teach kids how to think critically!" - a common call.

One result is perhaps the number of threads here that tell us how physics or mathematics has it wrong, while demonstrating a lack of knowledge of either physics or mathematics.

Critical thinking without context is dangerous. — Banno

"We need to teach kids how to think critically!" - a common call.

One result is perhaps the number of threads here that tell us how physics or mathematics has it wrong, while demonstrating a lack of knowledge of either physics or mathematics.

Critical thinking without context is dangerous. — Banno

Everything is dangerous when you live under the yoke of tyranny whether that be a single powerful dictator or the so-called "democratic" majority.

I will get back to you with more examples of science undergoing a paradigm shift and removing fundamental axioms or assumptions that were taken for granted because of the the general consensus of the scientific community. Dogma in science is under the cover of a paradigm. The paradigm shift can not take place for a few centuries, yet scientists are still able to produce new science. The Newtonian physics and Einstein's physics are completely different in their fundamental principles. Even though they may reduce to the same nature when we apply them to daily life, the difference lies in the details.

Besides that, a religious doctrine can have a wide range of interpretations around it. Anyways l rest my point here. I have probably said all l had to say.

Critical thinking shouldn't only involve criticism but also an ability to correct the mistakes you have found. That aspect is largely missing and is not possible to cultivate in the minds. Certain people just happen to be more gifted and hit the targets we can't even see. Feynman did remarkably well in his Putnam tests without any preparation. An even better example would be Galois, who invented galois theory at the age of 18 and died an year later from a duel. His theory was so ahead of his time that even the mathematicians of the highest calibre struggled to understand its importance. One of the biggest lie that we are all told is that everyone is creative.

↪Valentinus
I've no idea of what you are saying. — Banno

It is not very complicated. The work of critical thinking reveals how assumptions shape various arguments.

So, how does one separate those various arguments?

That didn't help.

What does help look like?

There are theories now that history education can be a mish-mash hodepodge of time periods and events, as long as it is taught using "critical thinking" skills. In other words, the aversion to "grand narrative" history is so great, that the basic eras, periods, and change over time is lost to "thinking exercises" or collaborative projects, or whatever else is considered more important than content itself. — schopenhauer1

Ugh, you are so right here it hurts. I actually have my teaching credentials in history. They haven't driven me from education yet...but I sure have rolled my eyes during a few teacher's meetings.

However, without the basic narrative, there is no way to properly understand it, deconstruct, or do anything else meaningful with it. — schopenhauer1

I wish this was understood by more people (shouldn't it be obvious?)

If you don't understand the Enlightenment, the American Revolution makes little sense. If you don't understand the Reformation, the Enlightenment makes no sense. If you don't understand the Silk Road, you miss out on the globalization that lead to Renaissance, etc. — schopenhauer1

Why learn about the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, or the Silk Road when you can spend weeks learning about the Janissaries or Rasputin :roll:

To take things out of context and to just use historical subjects as a means to some some ludicrous critical thinking goal, that has nothing to do with history itself is to create a real disservice. — schopenhauer1

:cheer:

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who sees this.

One of the biggest lie that we are all told is that everyone is creative. — Wittgenstein

Who is saying that everyone is me?

Yeah, that's a big fat lie! My gawd, the world would be in a heap of trouble.

:yum:

I wish this was understood by more people (shouldn't it be obvious?)

Ironically in philosophy, the simple things are left unnoticed. The most cryptic philosopher is usually the one who is studied the most too cause it is easy to argue about topics that can be misunderstood easily.

:smile:
I apologize for any copyright infringement. Please don't press any legal charges.

Me?

Hah!

I voluntarily put what I think I know, even when I think I know it's novel, out there for all the world to see!

:wink:

My income doesn't depend so much on philosophy! Good thing too!

I just like puzzles.

Ironically in philosophy, the simple things are left unnoticed. The most cryptic philosopher is usually the one who is studied the most too cause it is easy to argue about topics that can be misunderstood easily. — Wittgenstein

That is certainly fair. I just don't want the "most cryptic philosophers" being taught in an introductory (or anything at the high school level) philosophy course. They need to know the basics BEFORE getting into the cryptic stuff.

And philosophy would be much trickier to define content for. Is philosophy taught/learned or practiced?

I wholly oppose what you’re saying here due to the choice of wording.

My point remains the same. Dogma is against critical thought because it doesn’t care about evidence. You’ve presented why you disagree with if you actually take the word for what it means. I doubt you do disagree. It seems you were just looking to ‘jab’ at me for no good reason.

Dogma simply isn’t the same as holding bias or psychological fixedness. When people only see the world as being explained via science that isn’t even ‘dogma’. That is ‘scientism’ - a term philosophers enjoy to use when they face scientific facts they don’t understand.

They need to know the basics BEFORE getting into the cryptic stuff.

Totally. l had a discussion a few weeks ago, where the other person wouldn't acknowledge that scientific statements are not a priori.

His theory was so ahead of his time that even the mathematicians of the highest calibre struggled to understand its importance — Wittgenstein

Indeed. I had trouble with it when I first encountered it in 1962. :yikes:

Before addressing anything else, l want to assure you that l didn't want to take a jab at you or anything like that. I felt what you wrote was really interesting and l couldn't resist attacking it. It was all done in good mood. Nothing to worry about.

I want to know what do you think on the assertion that a paradigm shift occurs in science after it has come to a halting point. Do you think that the paradigm shift removes "psychological fixedness" ? I have read on that and it does capture some aspects of why science comes to a halt but it doesn't capture the details. I think certain viewpoint are not due to psychological fixedness but due to a consensus among the scientific community. You can disagree with my opinion obviously .

That's a long time ago. I still have to learn a little more group theory before l can begin to appreciate it deeply. I wish he lived longer though. Who knows what he might have done later on had he lived.

I said ‘jab’ because I thought you may have been offended by my brief mention of ‘religion’. I wasn’t taking a ‘jab’ at religion at all.

I don’t really consider a paradigm shift to be anything other than a human item, so to refer to a paradigm shift in art, science, religious thought, aesthetics, political or anything else, is not something I can quite get my head around in the context of this discussion.

I guess a good Marxist would insist that such ‘revolutions’ are part of a necessary conflict of opinions. I think it was Schiller who said something along the lines of humans being a kind of creature likely to destroy perfection out of sheer boredom - we’re ‘anti-dogmatic’ in that sense, because I believe stagnation always instigates a revolution of some kind (by way of exploration and/or death). This makes sense in terms of a ‘paradigm’, as once everyone is pulling roughly in the same direction things go swimmingly, when things ‘halt’ - a term I’ve been very interested in regarding this subject matter - anyone can shift the momentum. Maybe that is a biased analogy though that adheres to strictly to Newtonian mechanics?

In the sense of a paradigm shift I’d relate this more to disrupting the axis mundi (or weltanschauung if you prefer) rather than just ‘psychological fixedness’ (which sounds too tame a term for a societal shift, but fitting for individual cases). For the individual we’ve learnt a fair bit about brain functioning and it doesn’t take much to see how IOR (inhibition of return) and neural priming effects our world views. The successful communication of a new perspective is what instigates the beginnings of an evidence based paradigm shift in terms of science.

Who is more likely to say “Wow! We were wrong. How fascinating!”, and who is more likely to say, “We’re not wrong! Evidence doesn’t matter, I just KNOW what the truth is.”

Paradigm shifts open up a whole new way of ‘viewing’ the world. Some are fearful of this for various reasons, including commitments to areas now deemed worthless, financial investment (the genome project is an example of that - pharma companies bought up genes to research for huge sums, but now few think such research into individual genes is of any significant use as the whole genome is far more complex and interactive than anyone had imagined). Is that ‘dogma’? Nope. That is politics, and politicking in science causes some people to deceive others - Feynman pointed this out with his famous words about ‘mother nature’ after the shuttle disaster. Newton was hardly a ‘scientist’ by any modern standard, but none of that matters to the OP as far as I can see?

How/Why do you see paradigm shifts as important to critical thought? I can see the relation, but not where you’re going. Keep in mind a ‘paradigm shift’ has adapted its use since Kuhn.

Karl Popper has highly-regarded and expansive epistemology called "Critical Rationalism" that is entirely based on the concept of critical thinking. — Pantagruel

Expansive means "can be expanded". So it can be shrinked. Because whatever is expansive, is elastic.

So Popper's expansive theories can be reduced and disregarded, if one shrinks them, instead of expands them.

----------

Does the book "Critical Rationalism" describe the process of critical thinking without any topic as the topic of the critical thinking, or does the discussion discuss critical thinking without any topic?

This is a question only you can answer, Pantagruel, since you are the only one who has read the book in these parts.

Please also be careful you read the passages in the book that are about critical thinking, not about merely critical rationalism. I wish you to avoid building an argument on a strawman.

One of the biggest lie that we are all told is that everyone is creative. — Wittgenstein

How do you measure the size of a lie? You put them side-by-side, and the taller lie is bigger? Or you put them on a scale, and the heavier one is the bigger lie?

"Dear, they do it with smoke and mirrors."

I don't know. I haven't been able to follow your line of thought. It feels like you are only posting half of what you are saying. As if I am missing half of the conversation.

It’s why they taught the trivium before the quadrivium in classical education. One needs the requisite understanding in order to grasp the more complicated topics. Most importantly, as with the liberal arts, one needs an education worthy of a free person. Without critical thinking I’m not sure that’s possible.

Indeed. I had trouble with it when I first encountered it in 1962. :yikes:

Assuming you were 20 year old back then, you are approximately 77 right now. You are probably the oldest user here then