Let's talk about 101

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Let’s talk about 101

Most colleges have a numbering system identifying the courses being taught. In the college catalogue you are apt to find that your freshman courses are Physics 101, Chemistry 101, Literature 101, Geography 101, etc. The introductory course to a particular domain of knowledge is likely to be numbered 101. This has led to the common usage of 101 as meaning an introductory course.

If elementary schools followed this format, which they do not, you would see first graders taking Reading 101, Writing 101, and Arithmetic 101.

Only recently have our (US) educational institutions come to the realization that teaching youngsters what to think is necessary but not sufficient. The educational community has decided that our schools and colleges must begin to teach young people HOW to think. Our schools and colleges must begin teaching Reasoning 101.

Twelve years after graduating with an engineering degree I took a night course, Logic 101 (i.e. Reasoning 101), from the physics department of a local college. I was amazed to discover that I had no knowledge about this fundamental human capacity of reasoning before I took this course. I pondered the unbelievable fact that after 16 years of education I had no comprehension of the science of reasoning. I recognized at that moment that my educational system had seriously short-changed me.

That this serious omission is still universal was once again brought to my attention recently when I posted this response to a fellow forum member: “Reading is fundamental. Writing is fundamental. CT (Critical Thinking) is fundamental. These fundamental elements of human knowledge appear constantly and in all matters because of their fundamental nature.” With the following reply: “…sleeping is even more fundamental than all of those… I don’t think everyone needs to study sleeping - practice seems good enough.”

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Yeah, I am going to make a post that includes the important point you’ve made.

The flaw with our educational system is that we teach people what to think, but not logically how to think, outside the realm of math and science. We’ve allowed it to be a free-for-all, and it’s clearly reflected in the unintelligent responses and counter-arguments by many users of the board. Not trying to be cruel, just stating what I believe to be fact.

Then, to add insult to injury, we tell people their beliefs or arguments are equally valid, no matter what it might be, which completely closes their door to even learning what they’re doing wrong. It makes me lie awake at night.

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Fundamental to what?

“All matters” seems a little over the top. “All matters concerning human knowledge” would still be an exaggeration, though, because neither reading nor writing is fundamental to human knowledge: speaking and listening would do just as well (and recording what is spoken might assure that it is preserved for posterity: think audiobooks).

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Sauwelios

We read and write to communicate and to learn. We use CT to make good judgments. All of which are part of our everyday life. All of which help to improve our life if we do them well.

They are perhaps not part of everything we do but they are fundamental to most. I guess we can eat an apple without any of these capacities.

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It’s fundamental to the accuracy of human knowledge. Speaking and listening certainly don’t work as well as reading and writing when it comes to preservation of the accuracy of the message, hence why we have reading and writing.

Audio books work too, but those are much too modern to include in what is essential to the preservation of human knowledge.

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Who is the judge? I am the judge for me and you are the judge for you. One cannot hide from this truth and it is a no brainier that each of us is well advised to become as proficient in this matter as possible.

The Catch-22 is that the person who has little learning regarding this matter is the person most in need of self-study of this subject. In other words, the person with the least ability in making good judgments is the person who will make the judgment as to whether to spend the effort and time in acquiring the knowledge required to make good judgments.

Each of us makes many judgments every day. Each judgment made has some effect on our life. There are bad judgments, good judgments, and better judgments. The more ‘better judgments’ we make in our life the better our life will be, generally speaking.

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indeed. ‘teaching how to think’ smacks of brainwashing and closing of minds. surely the richest, most valuable types of thinking happen under a free society where a plurality of methods are appreciated and taken into account.

moreover: we should define what we mean by ‘reasoning’; and why we think logical thinking is more likely to lead us to important truths than other types of thinking.

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just to add another layer here, if schools taught children how to think critically wouldn’t that mean that the children (or students in University) would then think critically about their instructors and demand change?

I am in University at the moment, and my faculty harps on critical thinking all the time, yet, they never actually teach us to do it, because they cannot afford to create a class of critical thinkers - we would immediately turn our critical thinking on them, exposing their weaknesses and demanding better.

It’s just a thought.

cheers,
gemty

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    I really agree with this proposition, as it would help the average unfortunate adolescent understand why they experience so many new feelings (especially in American high school). Such as love, being turned down, etc. Let's get rid of those everlong daydreamers and with some mental corporal punishment. "This is logical; what you have been thinking is not."
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At birth an infant has a minimal innate arithmetic ability. This ability to add and subtract small numbers is called subitizing. (I am speaking of a cardinal number—a number that specifies how many objects there are in a collection, don’t confuse this with numeral—a symbol). Many animals display this subitizing ability.

In addition to subitizing, the child, while playing with objects, develops other cognitive capacities such as grouping, ordering, pairing, memory, exhaustion-detection, cardinal-number assignment, and independent order.

Subitizing ability is limited to quantities 1 to 4. As a child grows s/he learns to count beyond 4 objects. This capacity is dependent upon 1) Combinatorial-grouping—a cognitive mechanism that allows you to put together perceived or imagined groups to form larger groups. 2) Symbolizing capacity—capacity to associate physical symbols or words with numbers (quantities).

At birth an infant and many other animals have the ability to reason in a minimal way. To reason is to infer and to infer requires that a neurological structuring conducive to inferring is necessary. Thus to reason is to conceptualize and to infer. Conceptualizing is the creation of neural structures that make inferring possible.

To infer is to make very simple ‘if then’ decisions. Two ‘if then’ examples are ‘if A is true and B is true than C is true’ and ‘if A or B is true then C is true’. You can think of these as ‘and’ gates and ‘or’ gates. These two very simple inferences make it possible for us to do the reasoning that we do. If you examined your computer you would discover that these two simple inference ‘gates’ makes up your computer. All of the complex things that your computer can do results from these two simple elemental inference terms.

An infant can do math and an infant can reason. Of course, we all know that our ability to do math can go far beyond this simple innate ability. Likewise, our ability to reason can go far beyond this simple innate ability.

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You are correct. Those who make public policy want us just as we are. They are interested in maximizing production and consumption and a critical thinking population are not as good at this as is a passive easily manipulate population. Only when the citizens become conscious that they are the bull in a bullfight and that the Matador easily handles them will they demand a better way.

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I agree with the reply. I think studying formal logic, as anything other than a novelty, is kinda a perversion. No offense, but you should be able to do logic naturally. If your critical thinking is a formal algorithm then you’re like a clumsy robot, a clockwork orange. If you gotta TEACH peoplke how to think, something is fundamentally wrong beyond the constituents of the school curriculum. Aristotelian logic is a plague on humanity anyway (see this and this). It’s bad enough on its own, we don’t need to teach it in schools.

I do believe schools need to teach more than just information. I’m not sure what, at this time… also I don’t have a lot of confidence in what the capitalist machine would come up with.

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At birth an infant has a minimal innate arithmetic ability. This ability to add and subtract small numbers is called subitizing. (I am speaking of a cardinal number—a number that specifies how many objects there are in a collection, don’t confuse this with numeral—a symbol). Many animals display this subitizing ability.

In addition to subitizing, the child, while playing with objects, develops other cognitive capacities such as grouping, ordering, pairing, memory, exhaustion-detection, cardinal-number assignment, and independent order.

Subitizing ability is limited to quantities 1 to 4. As a child grows s/he learns to count beyond 4 objects. This capacity is dependent upon 1) Combinatorial-grouping—a cognitive mechanism that allows you to put together perceived or imagined groups to form larger groups. 2) Symbolizing capacity—capacity to associate physical symbols or words with numbers (quantities).

At birth an infant and many other animals have the ability to reason in a minimal way. To reason is to infer and to infer requires that a neurological structuring conducive to inferring is necessary. Thus to reason is to conceptualize and to infer. Conceptualizing is the creation of neural structures that make inferring possible.

To infer is to make very simple ‘if then’ decisions. Two ‘if then’ examples are ‘if A is true and B is true than C is true’ and ‘if A or B is true then C is true’. You can think of these as ‘and’ gates and ‘or’ gates. These two very simple inferences make it possible for us to do the reasoning that we do. If you examined your computer you would discover that these two simple inference ‘gates’ makes up your computer. All of the complex things that your computer can do results from these two simple elemental inference terms.

An infant can do math and an infant can reason. Of course, we all know that our ability to do math can go far beyond this simple innate ability. Likewise, our ability to reason can go far beyond this simple innate ability.

The philosophy department in college offers a course called Logic 101. Logic means principles. Logic 101 teaches the principles of reasoning. Every person should know the knowledge contained in Logic 101 but since few people were taught this they need to learn this on their own. If our schools did not teach arithmetic all citizens would be well advised to get a book on arithmetic and learn it on their own. Such is true also about reasoning; Logic 101 is the principles of reasoning. Just like math reasoning has vast complexities and possibilities for helping us live our lives

Who is the judge? I am the judge for me and you are the judge for you. One cannot hide from this truth and it is a no brainier that each of us is well advised to become as proficient in this matter as possible.

The Catch-22 is that the person who has little learning regarding this matter is the person most in need of self-study of this subject. In other words, the person with the least ability in making good judgments is the person who will make the judgment as to whether to spend the effort and time in acquiring the knowledge required to make good judgments.

Each of us makes many judgments every day. Each judgment made has some effect on our life. There are bad judgments, good judgments, and better judgments. The more ‘better judgments’ we make in our life the better our life will be, generally speaking.

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i think much in this debate turns on what lessons in reasoning would be meant to achieve. would they be intended as tools to simply speed up straightforward thinking processes and achieve mundane tasks more efficiently? or would they also be brought in as equipment with which to solve the more important questions in life?

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Learning how to think in a logical manner has many facets but all are directed at helping a person deal with all manners of subjects. We are talking about fundamental processes. Put in a little time and effort and determine for yourself what it is about, it won’t bite.

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:smiley: no worries.

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I just happened to come across this link that I think’s relevant to the conversation.

atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/437/81/

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Here is the single best thing to come out of this thread so far…

Kudos! 100% accurate, and an absolutely essential observation. I find so many things about even professional academics to be amazing - well trained mathematicians who don’t apply the rigor of mathematical thinking to their philosophical beliefs. Why not??? It’s mind boggling.

Probably the worst example of this is Philosophers. There are very few philosophers today who are actually generating True and Useful philosophy.

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How can I know what I do not know? How can I trace that boundary between knowledge and ignorance?

In the dialogue “Apology” Plato writes about Socrates while in the dungeon just before drinking the hemlock that the citizens of Athens condemned him to be executed.

In the dungeon shortly before drinking from the hemlock cup Socrates spoke to his followers. He spoke about the accusations against him at the trial. He said that the sworn indictment against him was “Socrates is guilty of needless curiosity and meddling interference, inquiring into things beneath Earth and in the Sky…” Socrates further adds that he is accused of teaching the people of Athens, to which Socrates vehemently denies that he is a teacher. He points out that in matters of wisdom he has only a small piece of that territory; the wisdom that he does have is the wisdom not to think he knows what he does not know. Socrates conjectures that he has the wisdom to recognize the boundary of his present knowledge and to search for that knowledge that he does not have. “So it seems at any rate I am wiser in this one small respect: I do not think I know what I do not.”

For Socrates a necessary component of wisdom is to comprehend what one is ignorant of.

Am I wise? Do I know what I am ignorant of? I certainly know that I am ignorant of astronomy and psychology. There are many things about which it is obvious to me that I am ignorant of. Are there things about which I am not even aware of my ignorance? Are there matters about which I think I am knowledgeable of but which I am, in fact, ignorant of?

When I ask myself these questions I become conscious of a great number of things about which I am ignorant. Does this mean I am like Socrates in this matter? I do not think so. Socrates is speaking about two types of ignorance about which most people are unconscious of.

I think that Socrates is speaking of our ‘burden of illusion’. People are unconscious of the superficiality of much that they think they know and they are unconscious of a vast domain of knowledge that is hidden from the non critical thinker.

The uncritical mind has no means for discovering these illusions. CT (Critical Thinking) is the keystone for discovering these illusions. The Catch-22 here is how can one develop a critical mind when they are deluded into thinking they have a critical mind? When our educational system has not taught our citizens how to think critically how can our citizens ever pull themselves out of this deep hole of illusion?