Become A Critical Thinker
 |
|
|
|
Linda Elder is president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and executive director of the Center for Critical Thinking, based near San Francisco
|
Let me begin with a question that you yourself have posed: Can we collectively deal with accelerating change and complexity without revolutionizing the way we think?
If you look at the pressing problems we’re facing, there is clear evidence that we need to start thinking very differently as a species. People across the globe are interconnected as never before, and unless we start to routinely examine our thinking in explicit, systematic ways, we will continue to do what we’re doing now – which is a seemingly hopeless blend of both good and bad thinking.
Consider the oil that gushed uncontrollably in the Gulf of Mexico last summer – an accident primarily caused by the lack of critical thinking on the part of BP management and employees. The problem is that we have the technology to create such things deep in our oceans, but we apparently don’t have the technology to reliably cap them if something goes wrong. People are using available technologies without thinking through their implications, and the consequences can be far reaching and devastating. One hundred years ago, the skills people needed to survive and sustain the earth were far simpler than those needed today. It is imperative that we begin to think seriously about the thinking that drives us and that will – like it or not – determine the future of life on our planet.
You have said that to become a great thinker, we have to learn to do ‘moves’ with our mind that are analogous to what athletes do with their bodies. Please explain.
As we go through each day, everyone makes what can be called intellectual ‘moves’, at various levels of skill: we ask questions, we pursue answers to those questions, we make inferences, form theories and so on. But while people reason perhaps hundreds of times on any given day, most of us rarely – if ever – think about our reasoning in any sort of disciplined way. Sometimes our thinking is perfectly fine, but other times it isn’t, and we don’t often know the difference. When we make our thinking the object of our thinking, we routinely ask questions like: What am I assuming in this situation? Are these assumptions justifiable? From what point of view am I looking at this? Is there another reasonable way of looking at this that I haven’t considered? What are the most important implications of deciding to do this instead of that? All of these are examples of intellectual ‘moves’ that we should do much more often. If we did, our reasoning and the decisions that follow from it would improve significantly. .
Along the way, we have all picked up some bad thinking habits. What are some common ones?
A major one stems from our intrinsic egocentric orientation. We all come into the world with the point of view that it is here to serve us, and for as long as the world is serving us we’re fine; but the moment it isn’t, we get upset. To put it another way, we are habitually selfish. It’s not that we are always selfish, but selfish habits are quite natural to the human mind. You can pick up the newspaper on any given day and find numerous examples of selfishness, and if we are honest with ourselves, we will see our own selfishness playing a significant negative role in our lives.
Another set of habits of mind connected with egocentric thinking comes from our intrinsic desire to have our thinking validated. People mostly perceive their thinking to be both correct and true; otherwise they would change it (or so they think). As a result, when faced with alternative ways of looking at things, people often reject them as ‘illogical’ or ‘unreasonable’ simply because the viewpoints differ from their own. This leads to a kind of rigidity in thought and action. When people are in this modus operandi, they see their narrow thinking as perfectly reasonable, and as long as people validate them, they are happy. But if challenged, they often resist, retaliate or sulk.
A third common set of habits of mind comes from sociocentric thinking, which is essentially the view that ‘our group is the best’. This can be seen as an extension of egocentric thinking. Humans function in groups – we wouldn’t survive childhood if we didn’t. The problem is that, within these groups, people often thrust illogical belief systems and ideologies upon one another. Indeed, cultures are structured so that people go along with established group beliefs, however irrational those beliefs might be. We are expected to – and indeed do – habitually conform to ‘group think’, and this begins in childhood: children are not typically taught to question existing views of their culture or what their teachers or parents tell them. Indoctrination of this sort extends throughout higher education, and as a result, conformity of thought is manifest in a multitude of ways in human societies.
You have said that critical thinking entails the integration of three dimensions: being idealistic (capable of imagining a better world); realistic (seeing things as they are); and pragmatic (adopting effective measures for moving toward our ideals.) Which aspect is the most lacking in the current environment?
In truth, we are lacking in all three areas, but if I had to pick one, I would point to the idealistic dimension. For instance, we are not good at imagining what a ‘fair-minded critical society’ would look like, and therefore we are not working effectively towards creating one. While the term ‘critical thinking’ is widely used, it lacks currency: most people think they are already thinking critically, and that if others just thought like them, the world would be a better place. The concept of a critical society is rarely voiced in public discourse, so few people are discussing what it would take to create it. If we can’t envision fair-minded critical societies, we can hardly create them.
Single Page View
