But, how do I decide?

But, how do I decide?

For a 12 to 18 years period from the age of 6 to our mid twenties we have lived constantly in an educational system wherein we seldom if ever learned to function intellectually independent of outside direction. We have never learned how to learn!

How is it possible for such an individual to develop the internal processes (bootstrap) that allow him or her to become an independent critically self-conscious thinker? Bootstrap is defined as: designed to function independently of outside direction—capable of using one internal function or process to control another.

Like the PC setting in front of us we seem to have an automatic default position. Our default position is ‘reject’ when encountering any idea that does not fit in our already learned patterns and algorithms.

Somehow the individual must find a way to change that default position from ‘reject’ to ‘examine critically’. Of course—how do we every not reject this message?

These following definitions come from: criticalthinking.org/resourc … sary.shtml

critical listening: A mode of monitoring how we are listening so as to maximize our accurate understanding of what another person is saying. By understanding the logic of human communication-that everything spoken expresses point of view, uses some ideas and not others, has implications, etc.-critical thinkers can listen so as to enter sympathetically and analytically into the perspective of others. See critical speaking, critical reading, critical writing, elements of thought, intellectual empathy.

critical person: One who has mastered a range of intellectual skills and abilities. If that person generally uses those skills to advance his or her own selfish interests, that person is a critical thinker only in a weak or qualified sense. If that person generally uses those skills fairmindedly, entering empathically into the points of view of others, he or she is a critical thinker in the strong or fullest sense. See critical thinking.

critical reading: Critical reading is an active, intellectually engaged process in which the reader participates in an inner dialogue with the writer. Most people read uncritically and so miss some part of what is expressed while distorting other parts. A critical reader realizes the way in which reading, by its very nature, means entering into a point of view other than our own, the point of view of the writer. A critical reader actively looks for assumptions, key concepts and ideas, reasons and justifications, supporting examples, parallel experiences, implications and consequences, and any other structural features of the written text, to interpret and assess it accurately and fairly. See elements of thought.

critical society: A society which rewards adherence to the values of critical thinking and hence does not use indoctrination and inculcation as basic modes of learning (rewards reflective questioning, intellectual independence, and reasoned dissent). Socrates is not the only thinker to imagine a society in which independent critical thought became embodied in the concrete day-to-day lives of individuals; William Graham Sumner, North America’s distinguished anthropologist, explicitly formulated the ideal:
The critical habit of thought, if usual in a society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators and are never deceived by dithyrambic oratory. They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens. (Folkways, 1906)
Until critical habits of thought pervade our society, however, there will be a tendency for schools as social institutions to transmit the prevailing world view more or less uncritically, to transmit it as reality, not as a picture of reality. Education for critical thinking, then, requires that the school or classroom become a microcosm of a critical society. See didactic instruction, dialogical instruction, intellectual virtues, knowledge.

critical thinking:

  1. Disciplined, self-directed thinking which exemplifies the perfections of thinking appropriate to a particular mode or domain of thinking.
  2. Thinking that displays mastery of intellectual skills and abilities.
  3. The art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible. Critical thinking can be distinguished into two forms: “selfish” or “sophistic”, on the one hand, and “fairminded”, on the other. In thinking critically we use our command of the elements of thinking to adjust our thinking successfully to the logical demands of a type or mode of thinking. See critical person, critical society, critical reading, critical listening, critical writing, perfections of thought, elements of thought, domains of thought, intellectual virtues.

critical writing: To express ourselves in language requires that we arrange our ideas in some relationships to each other. When accuracy and truth are at issue, then we must understand what our thesis is, how we can support it, how we can elaborate it to make it intelligible to others, what objections can be raised to it from other points of view, what the limitations are to our point of view, and so forth. Disciplined writing requires disciplined thinking; disciplined thinking is achieved through disciplined writing. See critical listening, critical reading, logic of language.

A child is often seen as an assimilatable unit…
If not by the religion, then by the state.

I dunno if critical-anything is good enough to overcome a whole culture.

Becoming a hermit would work best, I figure.

Come on, you spoony bards! Be cheerful!

Anyway…I think the dampening effect of religions can only play so much upon a person’s natural inquisitive nature. Especially as the ideals aren’t found in all religions.

Likewise, although society on the whole teaches rejection, if you come from a more liberal (which usually translates to poorer) area, you generaly come out biased in favor of change, as opposed to stasis.

In the words of my grandfather, a roofer of 50 years:

“The guy with the biggest nuts takes the riskiest shots.”

…granted, he was talking about boxing, but still. it sums up as this: There’s something, whatever it may be, that makes some people immune, or at least highly resistant, to indoctrinization…and others that will find a cult and throw their life away like morons.

I’d argue the following:

  1. Those with a desire for learning will develop these traits anyway, and that the education system can be used quite effectively by those who do. If you put no effort into your education, well holy smokes! you get nothng out of it. It is designed to let you coast by, should you so choose.

  2. A well selected college education demands critical thinking. Sadly, I’ve learned from talking to liberal arts majors that this seems to be more confined to the sciences in the modern world (what every happened to a liberal education?!?). Most liberal arts majors I’ve spoken too said that many of their classes were the same regurgitation-style courses that they’d experienced in High School.

I agree with this a lot. Being an Educational Psychology major, I’ve found that most of my reading had to come from my own studies…and that most classes could actually be skipped, while still maintaining an A average.

I think the problem is that most of the learning done (in the US and Canada, anyway…haven’t studied elsewhere) seems to be done by rote memorization—with no rewards for anything but the exact points taught.

See, I don’t really have a problem with memorization. Learning to think is something that can’t really be taught, but giving someone the building blocks for thinking is essential. It’s like fertilizer.

But, it is about smart memorization.

If I didn’t have the Krebs cycle memorized, I couldn’t figure out the anabolism and catabolism of amino acids. But, with the Krebs cycle memorized, I don’t need to memorize those pathways. If I didn’t have the genetic causes for hematopoietic differentiation more-or-less memorized, I wouldn’t be able to spot inconsistancies in the literature. If I didn’t have large parts of the Analects memorized, I wouldn’t be able to apply passages to one another as easily. If I didn’t have parts of the Shijing memorized, I wouldn’t know the context of the fragment Confucius quotes.

One of the reasons I became a scientists was because during my high school advanced chemistry course there were these things called, “marathon problems”. They were the most convoluted, difficult, rat-bastard tough problems I think I’ve ever done. I’d get together with five to ten friends and we’d all try to solve them together. They really required a lot of thinking. I remember being impressed because that was the first time a class forced me to think. It felt real good.
But to do those problems, you needed a lot of formulae memorized. You can’t make that next logical leap unless you have the tools handy.

Although I haven’t the foggiest about what the Krebb Cycle is, I’ll take your word for the use.

The problem I have with the memorization is that its ALL thats taught…and thinking for yourself tends to be discouraged, even in classes that mistakenly label themselves as “critical thinking” Courses.

I think that critical thinking comes in three forms:
*Reagan form–trust but verify
*Logical form–learn the fudamentals of logical reasoning
*CT (Critical Thinking)–combine the logical thinking with an understanding of the irrational tendencies to which we are all subject.

Hi coberst,

I’d like to think that there is a way to escape the dumb-down side of education and become free thinkers. I’ve met a few who declared themselves as such, but I really couldn’t see much difference other than their declaration.

The problem is perhaps like dealing with an artichoke. You keep peeling away those leaves each time thinking you’ve arrived at the heart only to find…

For me, the best I could do is to remain aware that no matter all my knowing, there was always more behind that, and that the process was never ending. It seems to me that all the methodologies, all the definitions and qualifiers are dependent one one simple thing: curiosity. As long as curiosity is there then thinking will follow automatically. The form and content of that thinking will never get “outside” itself, and so there is never completion. An uncomfortable state of being? Only to the extent that you aren’t aware of the process.

tentative

I would just add to the curiosity–caring and study.

@ Coberst

I think that you have posted some really accurate definitions for critical thinking. I want to memorize alot of those ideas and the concepts. Great job!

Thank you! I seldom receive a ‘thumbs up’ and it is appreciated. Generally if I post ‘X is true’ most everyone answers ‘X is not true’.

Why would you want your obedient workers to have opinions and think? How does that make you more wealthy? I posted the really long George Carlin quote in another thread, I’ll post the relevant part here (about half).

“That’s the answer to everything, more money for education. More teachers, more schools, more testing for the kids. You say, well, we’ve tried that, but the kids still can’t pass the tests. They say don’t worry about that, we’ll lower the passing grade. And that’s what a lot of them are doing. They do that, the IQ of the country slips a few points. Pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a fucking pencil. Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there, it’s physics. Education. Politicians know that word; they’ll use it on you. Traditionally politicians hide behind three things, the flag, the Bible, and children. No child left behind. Oh really? Well, not too long ago you were talking about giving kids a head start. Head start, left behind. Someone’s losing fucking ground here. But there’s a reason education sucks, there’s a reason it’s never going to get any better. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners, now. The big wealthy business interest that controls things and makes all the big decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant, politicians are there to give you the feeling you have freedom of choice. You don’t, you have no choice. You have owners, they OWN YOU. They own everything, they own all the important land, they own and control all the corporations, they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, State Houses, City Halls, they’ve got the judges in their back pocket. And they own all the big media so they control what you see and hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year, lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for you. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want; they don’t want a nation capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking, they don’t want that. That doesn’t help them, that’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly their getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty years ago. Know what they want? Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines, and just stupid enough to passively accept the increasingly shittier jobs, lower pay, longer hours, reduced benefits, end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. Now they want your social security money. You know what? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all. Because they own this country. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. It’s the same club they use to beat you over the head all day when they tell you what to believe. All day, their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and how to act. The table is tilted, the game is rigged, and no body seems to notice, no body seems to care. Blue collar, red collar, doesn’t matter what collar shirt you wear, good honest hard working people, continue to elect these rich cock suckers, who don’t care about you. They don’t care about you, they don’t give a fuck about you, at all! Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care, that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will remain willingly ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes all day. Because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

I think it’s a view you might find interesting, and perhaps sympathize with. I know I can.

Daniel

Rejecting ‘X’ after comprehending’X’ is proper and good for both parties.

Rejecting ‘X’ without comprehending ‘X’ is harmful to the individual.

It appears that many young people consider negativity to be cool but negativity can do harm. When we reject in public something our ego thereafter has a stake in that rejection. If at another time we learn something about ‘X’ and wish to accept it as true our ego will struggle against such a flip’flop. Flip-flops are considered to be negative and our ego does not like such things.