Philosophy 391,
Issues in Critical Thinking and Educational Reform

Summer 2004, 3 credits, Credit/No Credit Only, CRN 30629
MTuWTh 10:oo-12:20 in Founders Hall Room 204, Session II, July 6 through August 6
Dr. J.W. Powell, Office 110 UANX, phone 5753, www.humboldt.edu/~jwp2
Office hours: after class Mon, Wed, and by appt.
email: jwp2@humboldt.edu

 Description:

This course will introduce students to some approaches to teaching critical thinking and to some of the controversies and problems in the field. I'll summarize some of the questions I'm most interested in, but we won't be able to investigate them all in this course--students will help choose those which seem most urgent to the class.

Is there any such thing as critical thinking?

John McPeck has claimed that there are only little disciplines--critical thinking of business planning, critical thinking of physics, critical thinking of sociology, and so on--and that there is no such thing as a general or abstract discipline of critical thinking. We will look at this problem framed by philosophical issues regarding definition.

Can Critical Thinking be taught?

This comes up partly because of problems about impartiality and teaching independence. If you teach someone to think as you think, haven't you done something other than teaching independence? And even if you are an independent thinker, isn't it open to all your students to learn to imitate you rather than to think independently? Further, there are challenges to the idea that arguments are really independent of the ideologies of the people who produce them. If arguments are only offered in support of the ideology of the speakers, is it possible even to do critical thinking, much less teach it?

What are the standards?

Supposing there is such a thing, and that it can be taught, what are the criteria to be met by critical thinking? We will take this question up in terms of arguments: what are the criteria for a good argument? We will look at various proposals offered by theories, such as theory of logical validity, theories of scientific reasoning, of inductive argumentation, the fallacy approach, and communication theories regarding rhetoric and persuasion.

What choices have we as teachers?

What approaches are currently offered and what are their strengths and weaknesses? Each student will summarize for the class an approach from among the following schools of thought, using current textbooks: Then we will as best we can devise an approach which meets our needs.

What do case studies show regarding theory and application?

What does the application of critical thinking look like in contexts of live issues? Here we will work in a non-theoretical way to investigate some examples of controversies in which we can contrast critical thinking with non-critical approaches.

What are the limits of critical thinking?

What are the relationships among critical thinking approaches and other non-critical or less-critical approaches, such as those endorsing intuitive judgments and mysticism? Are limits of critical thinking things that can be articulated?

Why use it?

Are there arguments for using critical thinking? What are they?

See the Key to the final exam, below, for answers to the course's main questions.

  Text and Materials:

There will be no textbooks to buy. Some materials will require students to use access to the Internet, for Blackboard or other websites. Some materials will be handed out in class or sent to the class via e-mail. Some materials may be put on two-hour reserve at the Library. Please make sure that I have your preferred e-mail address, and check your e-mail regularly.

  Exams, Grading, Other Requirements

Each Tuesday, I'll hand out questions for 500-750 word assignments due on Thursday. Each assignment will be graded and commented on, though the class is Credit/No Credit only. Each assignment will be in the form of three questions, from which students will pick one to write an essay. Typically, one of the questions will be from the list of course questions on this syllabus and the other two will involve responses to that question from the readings. Grading criteria will be outlined in class, summarized in a handout, and available on my website. In brief, they run as follows: Articulate the relevant arguments regarding the question, clarify the issue or problem to which the arguments are directed, take sides and reply to objections, and you get a B. Don't, and get a lower grade. Do so with wit and insight, personalized examples, a distinctive voice, hard work and paranoia, and get a higher grade.
    Attendance is required. Each class period is equivalent to a week in a semester session course. The readings are less central to the course content than are the discussions. More than one absence will result in a grade of No Credit.

  Schedule:

We begin by reading argumentative essays on different topics, so we may have those as examples to which we may apply various approaches, and to help us think through the philosophical or theoretical problems.
    We will next take up McPeck's challenge to the existence of the discipline, reading from his essays and responses to them. This and the associated issues regarding the definition of critical thinking may be finished early in the second week. After that, we'll look at some of the main different approaches in current texts and critique them. Then the class will help choose the remaining problems for us to work on, by voting on choices offered in class. (Students are welcome to lobby for other issues, to be found in current journals.)
    In general, the course will proceed at a mad, headlong pace, with brief opportunities to pant and think.

  Key to the final exam:

Abbreviations of answers to the main course questions above:
These answers are of course a trick, even though they are correct--if you accept them without narrowed eyes, skepticism, and worry, then you've not learned the lessons of the course. The basis for each answer, most of which is unstated, is more important than the answer.

Is there any such thing as critical thinking?

If McPeck were right, then his claim that there are no general truths about critical thinking would be a general truth about critical thinking, and so if he's right then he's wrong, and of course if he's wrong then he's wrong, and so he's wrong. More substantively, we can learn and teach how to recognize arguments in ways which generalize to new contexts and to different contexts. To that extent, there's a subject matter.

Can Critical Thinking be taught?

Teaching is the wrong word, possibly, though good teachers can help. They help through dares, double-binds, modeling, nagging, intimidation, suspicion--all those are more important than instruction.

What are the standards?

There are none. What we have to do with every argument and every issue is the following: The only criteria are those which arise in connection with each issue, in the form of the relevant arguments.

What choices have we as teachers?

All the choices among the standard approaches are seriously defective and display the main occupational disease of philosophers (unless, as J. L. Austin suggests, this is not the occupational disease so much as the occupation), namely oversimplification. We must not adopt any of them.

What do case studies show regarding theory and application?

They demonstrate that critical thinking does not involve application of any theory (and, tangentially, therefore the Piagetian and Bloomish approaches and probably others are guilty of begging questions). They show that worrying about particular cases is one way to learn and to teach critical thinking. And they show what critical thinking looks like, and how critical thinking works.

What are the limits of critical thinking?

It is crucial as we work on this question (whether intuition or mysticism or some such shows limits of critical thinking) that we watch out for our desire to know or to think we know when we do not. Every alleged example of thinking, knowledge, wisdom, insight, truth derived by means other than critical thinking has to be investigated and cannot simply be laughed away or discounted. But the means by which those examples must be investigated cannot be intuition or mysticism disconnected from arguments, or any other noncritical means. There are truths or insights or profundities which are not derivable by critical thinking, but as soon as there is any issue about their status or about how we know them, we have no other choice but critical thinking. When we know things but do not know how we know, it does not make the how any more known to call it intuition or mysticism. It's arguments and critical thinking all the way down.

Why use it?

There are several arguments for critical thinking. One of the most general (thinking of McPeck again) can be learned from Socrates, as follows: We sometimes think we know when we do not. Questioning or examining ourselves and our own beliefs, articulating the relevant arguments and objections, investigating and clarifying the issues, sometimes will reveal that we have been fooling ourselves. Sometimes we can do better than we have done up til now.

Note: If we are to be consistent and critical, we must also investigate arguments against critical thinking. We'll do that too.