Critical thinking everywhere
Critical thinking works in science through a number of channels - the most obvious of which is the experiment. If something disagrees with experiment then typically (not always) it means the idea being tested is false (it can also mean there is a flaw with the experiment, as said earlier). But experiments are not the whole story. Simply asking: what is the accompanying explanation serves a crucial purpose too. In mathematics: experiments are (typically) not needed (although there are exceptions to this). In mathematics a proof can serve as a refutation. Or a substitution where the result disagrees with the prediction of the theorem (a special case of a reductio-ad-absurdum). Criticism in mathematics amounts to computations (i.e: workings/calculations) that show some theorem - some guess - is wrong.
I say that again: it is about showing something is wrong.
This is the role of criticism. I feel I must labour the point. Criticism is about showing that, and how, something is wrong. And the criticism itself is accompanied by some explanation as well. In history - it works much as in science - a new idea about the past is put forth. We criticise. We test it against the evidence. In music: that a combination of sounds is less pleasing than another is a criticism. The waste paper basket of the composer is filled with criticisms - which may indeed be inexplicit - but they are real.
But how to come up with good criticisms? Here we find a crossover - and it is no accident. We are humans - not machines. We think. We do not simply follow an automatic algorithm like a computer. How to come up with good criticisms?
We must create them.
Yes - creativity is needed. Now, sometimes this creativity amounts to little more than recall and deployment. You recall a particular rule of thumb, or good explanation, or law or something else - and then you deploy it in the service of your criticism. But sometimes new criticisms are needed (new experiments, say - or new equipment and so forth). Criticism - showing how something is wrong, may take quite the act of creativity. But let us just keep in view, for the moment, that critical thinking is at heart about showing how something is wrong. To what end? To improve things, of course. It could be to improve ourselves - literally. Improve our own thinking. To get something right that was wrong. To create a better product - whatever that might be. This is the purpose - and what a wonderful purpose criticism serves - improvement and progress. Why it has such a bad name, I am not entirely sure. But I guess it has something to do with two mistakes: one the distinction make between "constructive and destructive" criticism. All criticism aims at destruction for the purpose of construction. It aims to destroy a less good idea to replace it with a newly constructed better, truer idea. So that distinction is confused. But there is also the concern that criticisms might be applied to people. And here I can understand some concern. I am always careful to focus solely on ideas. We are criticising ideas. Not people. People have ideas. But they are not identical to ideas. This is important. Of course some people are emotionally wedded, and deeply, to some ideas. If we value those people-their feelings-then yes. We must ask them if they care for us to continue to criticise their own ideas if such criticism is painful to them. But these issues are, in the broader scheme, details and not walls before us. When discussing progress in science, or mathematics or philosophy or whatever else is of academic value to us in the creation of knowledge we must as far as we possibly can, keep emotions in check. And not let ourselves be hurt when critical thinking is applied to our own ideas. Those who do not wish to participate in this growth of knowledge should never be forced. We need not include them in this. The ethics of critical thinking is thus, reasonably straight forward. It is about applying the method to ideas. Not to people. And that method: attempting to show the ideas as wrong for the purpose of making improvements is not well known.
The sketch I am making here has been what, essentially, critical thinking is. It is of course not an idea that originated with me - or entirely with one person. And yet we can name one person above all others who really defined the field: Karl Popper. Perhaps more than any other person this philosopher set out the scheme over a number of years in a variety of books on the topic. His books were never called “Critical Thinking” and perhaps that is why they are not as well known in educational circles as they should be. His books were titled “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” and “Conjectures and Refutations” - he has come to be known as a philosopher of science and politics - and certainly his contributions in those areas were as fundamentally groundbreaking and objectively progressive as Einstein’s were in physics, or Mozart's were in music. But for education - he explained how knowledge is created - that is - how learning can take place. And importantly for my purposes here: what the critical method actually is. His philosophy has come to be known as critical rationalism. And that is the philosophy of critical thinking.
So how can I use this to teach my students? Firstly - don't. Unless they ask. That is the philosophy I outline here. But if you must, and they ask, then just two principles guide you in thinking critically:
1. Assume that what you are asked to think about is false.
2. Now find out why.
That second part entails quite a bit of creativity. It requires one to create criticisms. Happily there are again well trodden paths worn by great thinkers who have gone before. Philosophy - the best sort - is a tool box of criticisms. Firstly, let us consider if the idea under review meshes well with all other important ideas. Does a law of epistemology contradict it? (So - if it is a scientific claim - is it testable?). Does a law of science contradict it? (Does it demand an infinite supply of instant energy? Does it assume the laws of thermodynamics are false?). Is it immoral? (On balance, would it force free and peaceful people to do other than what they want to? Would it, on average, lower the well being of all conscious creatures?). Does the idea rely solely upon an appeal to authority? Are we asked to believe it because some politician, priest, scientist, book or doctor just says it is true? Do you understand the idea? That itself is a criticism. This does not mean it is false, necessarily - but if you do not understand it - and you have tried hard - this is a criticism of the idea in terms of its expression: it has not been properly explained to you. It is not sufficiently clear - to you. So these are some of the way criticism works. There are many many more. One could consider the long and interesting list of "logical fallacies" that can be found in many places on the internet. Just consider as many ways as possible that the idea is lacking or false. If it survives all your attempts to criticise it - then it just might contain something worth knowing. It could still be false, of course. You just might not be imaginative (that is creative) enough to find out what its flaw is - but you have actually used a critical method to try to knock it down. You have thought critically.
This is what proper philosophers do as their business. Philosophy of course has a deservedly bad reputation. Much of what marches under the banner of “philosophy” is not really anything of the sort. Philosophy as a subject ranges from the focused study of all that is rational in the most careful and deliberate way, through to more esoteric matters - through to, yes, utter nonsense. Philosophy, most broadly considered, is a mess. In this subject it is as if we were to call astrology, creationism and ghost hunting science along with biology and physics. As if we were to call the sound of a soccer riot "music".
Such redefinitions would be a serious problem for the term "music" or indeed “science” but it would do nothing whatsoever to actually bear upon the question of what is true, or not in (say) physics. That would still be adjudicated by the critical methods of experiment and theory I have already outlined.
So - although you may hear that Karl Popper was a philosopher and that epistemology and critical rationalism are types of philosophy - this does not mean they are mere opinions. They are rigorous formulations and sets of intertwined ideas, themselves criticised and refined over many years and which explain, above all else, how knowledge grows and what techniques work best in sifting good ideas from bad. That is the topic of critical thinking. Critical thinking is about showing what is wrong with ideas so that better ones can be produced and we can get ever closer to the truth by discovering more of it. We understand much about this critical process. About critical thinking. That so many people who use the term “critical thinking” appear never to have even heard of Karl Popper let alone “critical rationalism” as a world view has absolutely zero bearing on what critical thinking truly is. It is what it is. As physics is what it is, even if some people who know next to nothing about it claim to. But we have so far concentrated on half the story. What about creativity? How does that work?
I say that again: it is about showing something is wrong.
This is the role of criticism. I feel I must labour the point. Criticism is about showing that, and how, something is wrong. And the criticism itself is accompanied by some explanation as well. In history - it works much as in science - a new idea about the past is put forth. We criticise. We test it against the evidence. In music: that a combination of sounds is less pleasing than another is a criticism. The waste paper basket of the composer is filled with criticisms - which may indeed be inexplicit - but they are real.
But how to come up with good criticisms? Here we find a crossover - and it is no accident. We are humans - not machines. We think. We do not simply follow an automatic algorithm like a computer. How to come up with good criticisms?
We must create them.
Yes - creativity is needed. Now, sometimes this creativity amounts to little more than recall and deployment. You recall a particular rule of thumb, or good explanation, or law or something else - and then you deploy it in the service of your criticism. But sometimes new criticisms are needed (new experiments, say - or new equipment and so forth). Criticism - showing how something is wrong, may take quite the act of creativity. But let us just keep in view, for the moment, that critical thinking is at heart about showing how something is wrong. To what end? To improve things, of course. It could be to improve ourselves - literally. Improve our own thinking. To get something right that was wrong. To create a better product - whatever that might be. This is the purpose - and what a wonderful purpose criticism serves - improvement and progress. Why it has such a bad name, I am not entirely sure. But I guess it has something to do with two mistakes: one the distinction make between "constructive and destructive" criticism. All criticism aims at destruction for the purpose of construction. It aims to destroy a less good idea to replace it with a newly constructed better, truer idea. So that distinction is confused. But there is also the concern that criticisms might be applied to people. And here I can understand some concern. I am always careful to focus solely on ideas. We are criticising ideas. Not people. People have ideas. But they are not identical to ideas. This is important. Of course some people are emotionally wedded, and deeply, to some ideas. If we value those people-their feelings-then yes. We must ask them if they care for us to continue to criticise their own ideas if such criticism is painful to them. But these issues are, in the broader scheme, details and not walls before us. When discussing progress in science, or mathematics or philosophy or whatever else is of academic value to us in the creation of knowledge we must as far as we possibly can, keep emotions in check. And not let ourselves be hurt when critical thinking is applied to our own ideas. Those who do not wish to participate in this growth of knowledge should never be forced. We need not include them in this. The ethics of critical thinking is thus, reasonably straight forward. It is about applying the method to ideas. Not to people. And that method: attempting to show the ideas as wrong for the purpose of making improvements is not well known.
The sketch I am making here has been what, essentially, critical thinking is. It is of course not an idea that originated with me - or entirely with one person. And yet we can name one person above all others who really defined the field: Karl Popper. Perhaps more than any other person this philosopher set out the scheme over a number of years in a variety of books on the topic. His books were never called “Critical Thinking” and perhaps that is why they are not as well known in educational circles as they should be. His books were titled “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” and “Conjectures and Refutations” - he has come to be known as a philosopher of science and politics - and certainly his contributions in those areas were as fundamentally groundbreaking and objectively progressive as Einstein’s were in physics, or Mozart's were in music. But for education - he explained how knowledge is created - that is - how learning can take place. And importantly for my purposes here: what the critical method actually is. His philosophy has come to be known as critical rationalism. And that is the philosophy of critical thinking.
So how can I use this to teach my students? Firstly - don't. Unless they ask. That is the philosophy I outline here. But if you must, and they ask, then just two principles guide you in thinking critically:
1. Assume that what you are asked to think about is false.
2. Now find out why.
That second part entails quite a bit of creativity. It requires one to create criticisms. Happily there are again well trodden paths worn by great thinkers who have gone before. Philosophy - the best sort - is a tool box of criticisms. Firstly, let us consider if the idea under review meshes well with all other important ideas. Does a law of epistemology contradict it? (So - if it is a scientific claim - is it testable?). Does a law of science contradict it? (Does it demand an infinite supply of instant energy? Does it assume the laws of thermodynamics are false?). Is it immoral? (On balance, would it force free and peaceful people to do other than what they want to? Would it, on average, lower the well being of all conscious creatures?). Does the idea rely solely upon an appeal to authority? Are we asked to believe it because some politician, priest, scientist, book or doctor just says it is true? Do you understand the idea? That itself is a criticism. This does not mean it is false, necessarily - but if you do not understand it - and you have tried hard - this is a criticism of the idea in terms of its expression: it has not been properly explained to you. It is not sufficiently clear - to you. So these are some of the way criticism works. There are many many more. One could consider the long and interesting list of "logical fallacies" that can be found in many places on the internet. Just consider as many ways as possible that the idea is lacking or false. If it survives all your attempts to criticise it - then it just might contain something worth knowing. It could still be false, of course. You just might not be imaginative (that is creative) enough to find out what its flaw is - but you have actually used a critical method to try to knock it down. You have thought critically.
This is what proper philosophers do as their business. Philosophy of course has a deservedly bad reputation. Much of what marches under the banner of “philosophy” is not really anything of the sort. Philosophy as a subject ranges from the focused study of all that is rational in the most careful and deliberate way, through to more esoteric matters - through to, yes, utter nonsense. Philosophy, most broadly considered, is a mess. In this subject it is as if we were to call astrology, creationism and ghost hunting science along with biology and physics. As if we were to call the sound of a soccer riot "music".
Such redefinitions would be a serious problem for the term "music" or indeed “science” but it would do nothing whatsoever to actually bear upon the question of what is true, or not in (say) physics. That would still be adjudicated by the critical methods of experiment and theory I have already outlined.
So - although you may hear that Karl Popper was a philosopher and that epistemology and critical rationalism are types of philosophy - this does not mean they are mere opinions. They are rigorous formulations and sets of intertwined ideas, themselves criticised and refined over many years and which explain, above all else, how knowledge grows and what techniques work best in sifting good ideas from bad. That is the topic of critical thinking. Critical thinking is about showing what is wrong with ideas so that better ones can be produced and we can get ever closer to the truth by discovering more of it. We understand much about this critical process. About critical thinking. That so many people who use the term “critical thinking” appear never to have even heard of Karl Popper let alone “critical rationalism” as a world view has absolutely zero bearing on what critical thinking truly is. It is what it is. As physics is what it is, even if some people who know next to nothing about it claim to. But we have so far concentrated on half the story. What about creativity? How does that work?