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CRITICAL THINKING: Dedicated to the humble pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
Location: #philosophy
Members: 74
Latest Activity: Dec 5, 2022
Why, you may ask, did I say that this group was about the humble pursuit of knowledge and understanding? What is humble about it?
Well, the reason I wanted to create this group was because of my extreme disappointment with the lack of critical thinking around us today—even among intelligent people. This is not due to a lack of available information. It is not because of a lack of education. And it is certainly not due to a lack of rational thinking, because even ignorant people can be rational within the confines of their own mistaken beliefs.
No! It is because that in order to understand the world, and even to understand ourselves, we must first admit our ignorance. We must first admit that there are things that we do not know, that there are things that are worth learning, and that there is an inherent uncertainty in our beliefs and our perceptions.
Humility is the whetstone that sharpens our dull intellect. Intelligence is nothing without it.
The practice of critical thinking should be made in a spirit of humilty.
Here we will explore how to think. We will examine why we believe. We will challenge our assumptions.
There will undoubtedly be some crossover between this group and my other group THE NAKED APE, especially when it comes to the brain, perception, and cognition. But I think I’d like to make attempts to confine the discussions here to the methodology of thinking, and keep posts on biology and psychology on THE NAKED APE.
Threads on woo, stupid beliefs, and other nonsense belong more appropriately to my group WHEN PIGS FLY.
Threads on cognitive biases, skeptical thinking, logical fallacies, and general knowledge and comprehension are welcome here.
ONGOING THREADS
The CRITICAL THINKING Repository
EXTERNAL LINKS
Critical Thinking Web
Foundation for Critical Thinking
Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies
Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory
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Nice Comment
I remember that one Chris. Thank you for showing it to me again. Very interesting.
Really interesting, Chris, thanks.
An nice oldie in NASA APOD today; https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0
A splendid set of questions and responses today and ones that concern me greatly. Critical thinking should be taught in the home from day one of a child's life. Such learning is not Impossible, nor is it easy.
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Excuse me, old-timers, you read this story before.
Students need to learn life skills. From a teacher's point of view, they have teaching requirements set by the state Board of Education. With 35 kids in a classroom, heavy teaching requirements, lack of funding for supplies, and parents who do not want their children to learn certain things, the teachers carry a heavy load.
Graduating seniors in Washington, D.C., did not know how to read, write, or speak, nor were they able to write resumes or go for interviews; they couldn't get jobs and had no skill sets.
At Valley Green Housing Project in Washington, D.C., a program for single mother heads of households with dependent children on welfare, the project manager assigned me an apartment to use as a classroom.
As an experiment, 13 girls volunteered to learn how to read, write, speak, write a resume, think critically, solve problems, assertiveness, active listening, and conflict resolution without using violence. After 27 weeks of training, all 13 girls successfully got jobs and got off welfare. All of their cohorts did not learn essential life skills and were unsuccessful in getting jobs. They remained on welfare, as were their mothers.
We can no longer depend on ignorance and brute force to get through life. We need life skills to be successful. Public schools must do the job if one does not learn these skills at home.
Thanks, I like that.
One of the biggest problems, Piantadosi says, is that someone’s IQ score can change based on the context. “IQ tests are known to be sensitive to things like motivation and coaching. This makes a lot of sense — if you try less, you’re not going to score as high. Or, if you don’t know strategies that people do, you won’t score as highly as them,” he says. “I think it’s a mistake to say that your true ability can be summarized by how much you’re willing to put into a test.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/do-iq-tests-actually-measure-...
If teaching facts were the best education, then mankind is in dire trouble.
Kids must be taught to think evaluate and have the ability to make use of the facts.
Libraries are full of facts , which are totally useless unless someone has need of the facts and is seeking to evaluate and use that knowledge.
Even playing games and social media on the mobile phones the kids are taught to evaluate and think online without seeming to having been educated. (mostly for the sole benefit of the game/ social media company .) They are "guided " to read the EULO (which everyone just clicks accept ) This explains the legal and working of the game/ SM, then encouraged to explore, learn,evaluate and play the game.
I would like to respectfully disagree with the following statement:
"The average teacher teaches kids facts.
The outstanding teacher teaches kids to teach themselves."
It's true that all real education is self-education, but to start out, we need teachers. These teachers need to teach facts. They should also teach things like how to find information (and other skills), but children need to learn facts, and, especially in their early years, they learn these from, among others, teachers.
I don't see how anyone can disagree with this, but perhaps we're using our words differently.
So, would anyone like to comment on my assertion: teachers should teach factual knowledge. (I'm basically making the argument for 'Cultural Literacy', as argued for by E.D. Hirsch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_literacy ... a more extended exposition of 'cultural literacy' is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._D._Hirsch )
The average teacher teaches kids facts.
The outstanding teacher teaches kids to teach themselves.
Stephen
I hypothesise that the only sure fire way to teach our future citizens to think will be forced on them by necessity.
A calamity that threatens our present way of life. An adapt or die situation.
Hang on , maybe we are already at the very beginning of it?
Blind Freddy can see that the present global crises will have far reaching dramatic consequences and repercussions .
A child will only start to walk when it is forced/ needs too. It will start to speak when it needs/ forced to. BUT learning is inherent in the biology.
So the question remains. Nature or Nurture? Is intelligence (ability to think and reason) Nature or the cumulation of learning??
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