A common refrain I often hear from readers is that “there seems to be no way I can convince anyone to change their mind about anythingâ€. I am very sympathetic with that difficulty.
I would like to suggest that the positive thing we can do is to learn Critical Thinking and after we do so to challenge the other person to do the same thing. The more a person knows how to think the better that person will be in making good judgments.
Critical Thinking is now being taught in our schools and colleges. Our educational system has decided that teaching students what to think is useful training to get good jobs but is insufficient for later life. Since most adults have never been taught CT they must learn it on their own.
Those who are already Critical Thinkers can go immediately to step two and start the effort to convince others to become Critical Thinkers.
If you are not familiar with CT a good place to start is with Bertrand Russell @
. Everybody thinks that they are critical thinkers. That is why we need to differentiate among different levels of critical thinking.
Most people fall in the category I call Reagan thinkers—trust but verify. Then there are those who have taken the basic college course taught by the philosophy dept that I call Logic 101. This is a credit course that teaches the basic fundamentals of logic. Of course, a person need not take the college course and can learn the matter on their own effort, but I suspect few do that.
The third level I call CT (Critical Thinking). CT includes the knowledge of Logic 101 and also the knowledge that focuses upon the intellectual character and attitude of critical thinking. It includes knowledge regarding the ego and social centric forces that impede rational thinking.