In my book CT consists of knowledge, skills and attitude. A person who is a very good Critical Thinker makes very good judgements. I think that both intellectual matters and emotional or ideological matters affect judgements.
Assume we collect in a room twenty (if you can find them) randomly selected Critical Thinkers who we grade all to be level 9 (where CT ability is graded 0 to 10 with 10 being perfect).
We ask these individuals to spend four hours together discussing three topics.
I would argue that if we tested this group and compared them with a similar group with only a CT grade level of 3 we would find that the judgements on these three topics would be more uniform among the level 9 Critical Thinkers than for the level three.
The reason that I think this to be the case is because the judgements of the better Critical Thinkers are based less on emotion or ideology than are their counterparts.
Dear poster who cannot help but start new threads twice a day,
Sure, why not? Thursdays are slow in this part of the world
Psychologically everything can affect everything else. ‘Knowledge’ - as defined by whom? ‘Skills’ - as measured by what? ‘Attitude’ - what?
By what method of assessment?
I think that intelligence has strictly nothing to do with the chances of consensus and my prediction would be the opposite. It’s easier to convince stupid people to agree…
Emotion and ideology can be reasons for not reaching consensus as much as for reaching consensus so your argument doesn’t necessarily follow. Put a Marxist and a modern capitalist liberal in a room together and regardless of intelligence or critical thinking they are likely to argue and never reach points of agreement…
I am very much for learning CT skills. I know that they have helped me out a lot.
That being said, I think that making good choices goes well beyond the standard cultural norms of what is rational.
If we are approaching problems that have to do with objects then I’m fine with taking a purely rational concrete approach. That is to say if we are trying to clarify what a rock is, then we should ignore feelings about rocks and just stick to the facts about rocks that can be observed.
However, if we are presented with a “human” problem it then becomes irrational to not include emotion into the set of factors that need to be accounted for. Sometimes understanding the emotional weight of an issue can be key to solving the problem. How are people going to feel about this is a great question to ask, at times.
Someone says–“I think that intelligence has strictly nothing to do with the chances of consensus and my prediction would be the opposite. It’s easier to convince stupid people to agree…”
Oh please dear God control my response…delete, delete, delete,
Put it this way - regardless of intelligence people will disagree willfully because it upholds their sense of self to do so. If I disagree with the next person I can make some tenuous claim to individuality…
You make a very interesting point. I see that attitude constantly on these forums. It is unfortunate I think because it hinders learning. In the effort to be “independent” or an “individual” you severely restrict your ability to learn. It is a characteristic I have noted in my children when they were teens and I tried to convince them that they should try to create a more healthy intellectual attitude.