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Critical Thinking: Basic Principles and TechniquesКатегория: Psychoanalysis and analytical psychology » Articles on psychology | Просмотров: 123
Название: Critical Thinking: Basic Principles and Techniques
Формат: HTML Язык: Русский Methods of handling information that will help to correctly assess other people's claims and defend their position reasonably.
In order to act sensibly and to talk about anything, one should not limit oneself to own experience. The argument "so they always did" quickly went out of fashion with the spread of general literacy and mass printing, so it does not work as well as before. Today, our actions are largely determined by what we have somewhere heard or read. But even experts are always mistaken, not to mention the fact that there are always many people who want to take advantage of our trustfulness: from enterprising merchants with healing bracelets and unique healing techniques to unscrupulous politicians who need public support. Therefore, each of us, to the best of our ability, tries to filter the surrounding information, to separate the true from the false and inaccurate. The golden rule of journalism is "first simplify, then exaggerate." According to one bike, in the 50s this rule was issued to its employees by the editor-in-chief of The Economist. Today it is used more than ever, and not only journalists use it. Everyone is trying to develop rules of conduct for themselves that would allow him to maneuver in the information flow, not picking up too harmful mental viruses along the way. Some do it carefully and constantly, others do not pay much attention to such protection and prefer to drift smoothly with the flow. But it would be wiser to be guided by at least a primitive technique of security - the rules of thinking, which can be used consciously and systematically. Safety rules haunt us all my life, but we still concern ourselves with the thought process with negligence. Source: wikimedia.org Very often we meet with statements in which there is a flaw. "There's something wrong here" - we think, and we decide that it's better to stay away from these statements. To understand what exactly is wrong with questionable reasoning, critical thinking skills help to substantiate their criticism and put forward their own arguments. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CRYTICALLY THINK AND CAN IT LEARN? Critical thinking is one of the basic academic disciplines in higher education in many English-speaking countries. Students are taught to read texts carefully, to show methodical doubt (that is, according to Descartes, to find out what is "logically possible to doubt"), find weaknesses in both others' and their own arguments, work with concepts, clearly and reasonably express their thoughts. An important component of such training is the ability to ask the right questions. Issues can be given much more attention than is customary for the domestic education system. One of the tasks on the history of literature can be, for example, to come up with 50 questions for Shakespeare's Hamlet, a situation which most Russian students would not have dreamed of in the worst dream. Critical thinking as an academic discipline is based on the rules of formal logic, theory and practice of argumentation, rhetoric and scientific epistemology (a section of philosophy that deals with instruments and limitations of cognitive activity). One of the prominent theoreticians in this field was Karl Popper, who considered critical thinking the basis of all rationality. Knowledge, according to Popper, does not exist without the practice of putting forward hypotheses, their justification or refutation. The question of the source here does not matter at all: it is the method and the relation to the original data that is important. From this point of view, the scientific journal, the yellow press or the RenTV channel should be treated with equal caution. Source: pixabay.com In one of the main manuals on critical thinking, called "The Art of Asking the Right Questions," the authors describe two ways of thinking that any person with reason uses. You can, like a sponge, absorb all the surrounding information. This way is simple enough and necessary for everyone: only after having obtained a sufficient number of facts, it is possible to make the world around itself meaningful. A person who is closer to the first way of thinking will try to memorize any material as correctly as possible, without missing a single detail. He reproduces in his head the thought path of the author, but does not assess and does not consider them critically. This does not necessarily lead to a dumb jerk and retelling without retreat from the source text: this approach can also be quite meaningful. But he lacks critical distancing: you stay within the given initial frames, instead of expanding them and moving on. Another way is similar to sifting sand in search of gold. This requires active interaction with the knowledge that you absorb. Independent thinking without this mechanism would be impossible, all your opinions would be determined by what was last heard and read. A person who has fully mastered the art of sifting sand understands that arguments are needed not to remember them, but to assess their strength. For this, it is necessary to translate this problem from the unconscious to the conscious plan. What do we actually do when we try to argue and disagree with someone else's position? Argumented argument can be something like a duel, but definitely not for a fight in a kindergarten. Source: wikipedia.org REAL AND NON-RISK CRITICISM The basic structure of any argument is given by the following model: things are X, because Y. There is something that we are trying to prove, and there is something with which to do it. To treat the material critically is to learn to separate one from the other and to pay attention to their relationship. Can you draw other conclusions based on the same data? To what extent do the reasons justify the author's conclusion? To reject another's reasoning simply because we do not like it - does not mean to treat it critically. It means just do not understand its essence. Sometimes even the most intelligent and enlightened people succumb to the temptation to look at things simplistically. This is often associated with stigmatization and division into "one's own" and "others" - this is the basis for building a significant part of our everyday social experience, in which there is room for both domestic racism, gender discrimination, and intellectual snobbery. Another mistake that often underlies our false conclusions is the myth of "right answers". Many questions really do have a single relatively accurate answer. For example, there is no need to debate about the distance to the moon - you can just find it in the directory. But most questions require reflection, and the answers to them can be very different. Therefore, it is not enough just to make inquiries in an authoritative source: it is necessary to assess how convincingly the given data are justified and try to build its own chain of reasoning. HOW TO READ TEXTS: THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE DISCUSSION Any text - written or oral - must contain some basic elements, without which the author risks not to deliver his message to the addressee. Of course, in the texts of the media or our everyday conversations, we easily manage without them. But if we want to conduct a meaningful conversation, from which certain conclusions follow, we should at least pay attention to how the reasoning is built. Below are the main of these elements. This list can be used as a grid, which can be superimposed on any detailed reasoning. And it really makes life much easier. goal Any text is written or pronounced with a specific purpose. To whom does the author address, in what does he try to convince the audience? If you write the text yourself, check to see if you have deviated from the specified goal. And to begin with, understand if it has any real meaning for you, and whether it is worth the effort. Problem The problem is not what the author gave away, but the questions that he intends to answer. It is necessary to separate those issues that have a clear solution, from those that need to be considered from different points of view. In addition, major issues need to be divided into smaller parts so as not to go into empty abstractions. Assumptions These are the prerequisites that the author takes for granted. Unconscious assumptions can put an author or an audience in an embarrassing situation, which is illustrated by a well-known anecdote, in which a person is asked if he stopped drinking brandy in the morning. When we write or read something, we need to think about what these assumptions are and how fair they are. Awareness of their own prerequisites is a stage, after which it is much easier to move forward. Source: metmuseum.org Point of view We all look at things from a limited and private point of view. Achieving absolute objectivity is impossible not only because we are all people with their own characteristics, but also because any thing can be interpreted from different sides. "The Trick of God," that is, the claim to complete and unbiased knowledge, remains precisely an unfair trick: no one will simply have enough resources to achieve knowledge of this level and quality. Data Any statement should be supported by relevant, that is, topic-relevant data. For example, when talking about the harm of GMOs, it is necessary to refer to scientific research or their popular scientific transcriptions, and not to the opinions of neighbors on the entrance. We also need to check whether the data cited refers to the problem that we are considering - are we going somewhere far away from it? Concepts and ideas Concepts are thinking tools, without which we can not do without. No matter how we want to talk about "real things", for this we need artificial models and fictitious concepts in any case. The only problem is that they must be chosen correctly and clearly defined - this is the key difference between objective knowledge and opinions and subjective observations. Conclusions and Interpretations These are the ways in which you extract meaning from the data. Note that there is often another way to comprehend the same information. If so, then the data may simply not be enough to make a meaningful conclusion. In this case, it is better to say about it directly than to put forward unreasonable assumptions. Consequences What will happen if we take the author's main points and conclusions seriously? What are the positive and negative consequences of them? It can often be seen that, at first glance, reasonable arguments cause contradictory or meaningless consequences - this is the basis for building a rhetorical "getting to the point of absurdity". The Flying Macaroni Monster, like Russell's teapot, is a vivid example of bringing to the point of absurdity. Source: wikipedia.org Bertrand Russell in the "Philosophical Dictionary of Reason, Matter, Morality" gives only three rules, which, in his opinion, can improve the intellectual climate of the planet many times, if they are accepted by a significant number of people who are trying to think and reason about something. if the experts agreed, the opposite opinion can not be considered correct; if they do not agree, non-experts should not consider any opinion to be true; when all the experts decided that there is not sufficient reason for a certain opinion, it is best for an ordinary person to refrain from judging. These rules would really save us from the huge amount of what Russell calls "intellectual garbage". But is not there something unfair in such strict regulations? As we have already said, experts can also make mistakes, and far from any situation there is a clear position based on the reinforced concrete truth. As for the third point, life often forces us to act in conditions of uncertainty: not always we can simply stoically refrain from judging, waiting for wise experts who will put everything in their place. To rely only on expert opinions, from the threshold sweeping aside everything else, is to welcome the intellectual passivity of all but a handful of elite who have "true knowledge". It would be much more sensible to use the skills and principles of critical thinking that everyone can really master. Связаться с администратором Похожие публикации: Код для вставки на сайт или в блог: Код для вставки в форум (BBCode): Прямая ссылка на эту публикацию:
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