I only opened this thread to share a video about open-mindedness…somehow it inspired me to solidify my ideas about philosophy.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI[/youtube]
There’s been a lot of talk about the value of reason, science, and open-mindedness, which all arise as outgrowths of critical thinking. Critical thinking is prior and more fundamental than any system of formal logic or any scientific method.
This is my conception of philosophy: critical thinking.
I’m also resistant to my own conception because I sense that it is too limited a representation of what I have known as philosophy. “Critical thinking” is what I will call the efficient view of philosophy, much like “neurochemical event type X” is an efficient view of the phenomenon love. An efficient conception aims for a universal scope and objective quality that deliberately excludes other aspects of the fullness of experience. Fundamentally, philosophy wouldn’t be philosophy without critical thinking; this is the necessary component of any conception of philosophy qua philosophy. Yet “critical thinking” does not convey the grand totality of meaning, i.e. the passion, wonder, worth, and value, that I ascribe to being a philosopher.
And what about wisdom? I want to defend the idea that critical thinking is wise in and of itself. Love of wisdom just is affinity for critical thought. I don’t think it’s an appropriate paradigm of philosophy to think of wisdom as true knowledge that one can possess; rather I think wisdom is the dynamic quality of thinking critically, which entails seeing possibilities. Wisdom is not static. It can’t be possessed like a fact or accrued like experience. It’s an activity.