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| An educator is one who, in the phrase of Robert Hutchins, "seeks to teach
people how to think for themselves." An educator wants
people to seek the truth. To this end he will present them
with facts; he will appeal to their reason; he will follow
an argument to whatever conclusions may be warranted by the
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Descartes
Why is that some men's opinion are certainly more sensible than
others, but that some of us conduct our thoughts along different
paths, and do not fix our attention on the same objects.
His answer here
is: to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the important
thing is rightly to apply our mind to what we are doing.
Descartes then goes on to say
that " the greatest minds, though they are capable of the high
excellences" are likewise subject to the greatest errors, and "those
who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided
they keep always to the straight
road, than those who, while they run, forsake it." For himself, he
adds (despite his magnificent achievements in founding analytical
geometry), he "never fancied his mind to be in any respect more
perfect than that of the average man." On the contrary, he had
often wished that he was "equal to some others in promptitude of
thought, or in clearness and distinctness of imagination, or in
fullness and readiness of memory." And these, he thought, are the
only qualities that contribute to the perfection of the mind. But
good sense, or reason, is the same in all of us.
To what, then, did Descartes owe
his great success as a thinker? He tells us: "It has been my
singular good fortune to have very early in life found a methodical
way of thinking. In this way I
have gradually augmented my knowledge, and raised it little by
little to the highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and
the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach." The method
he found so useful, he tells us, involves four simple precepts:
1. Never
to accept anything as true which you do not clearly know to be such;
that is, to avoid hasty judgments and prejudice.
2. To
divide each difficulty under examination into as many parts as
possible, or into as many as necessary for the solution of the
problem.
3. To
begin with the things that are simplest and easiest to understand,
and then to ascend to knowledge of the more complex.
4. To make
enumerations so complete, and reviews so comprehensive, that you
may be assured that nothing is omitted.
Let us briefly
sum up what Descartes is telling us in the remarks we have quoted
from his Discourse on Method.
By and large, he says, all men '"'
have reason (good sense) in equal degree. And so, though a man
may admit that another is cleverer than he, or more learned,
or possessed of wider knowledge, he will not admit that
the other has more capacity -for
distinguishing truth from error (when the facts
are clearly known). And, by and large, he is right in this. There
are of course enormous differences between one human being and
another in quickness of apprehension, power of imagination, and in
the fullness and readiness of memory. But the chief difference
between one person's
understanding and another's is
due to the fact that some people use the proper methods of thinking,
whereas others do not.
Now, whatever we may think of the usefulness of Descartes'
own simple precepts for attacking a problem (and the full
significance of these precepts in his philosophy is by no means
simple), his general conclusions do point to an encouraging thesis:
We are all capable of
understanding, and we may improve our understanding by using the
right methods of thinking. The right methods will help us to solve
our problems more efficiently. Our problems may be
"scientific"
ones, in the narrow sense of that term, but they may also arise in
business and social relations, in salesmanship (or
anti-salesmanship, that is, sales-resistance when we play the role
of consumer) and in politics or love.
But the reader may have been thinking of some further
objections to Descartes' assumptions. One may question his
assumption that all men are rational. That is not the story we get
from modem psychology, the reader may say, and certainly it does
not jibe with our own experiences with our fellow men. We all know
people who do not seem to be reasoning creatures, and, if they are
satisfied with their good sense, why, so much the worse for them.
And, the reader may go on: Don't
most people seem to be controlled by their emotions? Are people
really interested in the truth? Don't people always believe only
what they want to believe?
From "The Art of Making Sense ... A
Guide to Logical Thinking by Lionel Ruby |
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Applying Intellectual Standards to an Author's Reasoning
Clarity: Is the author clear (or is further
explanation needed)?
Accuracy:
Are the statements (or claims) of the author true or should
they be questioned?
Relevance: Does the author support his/her
views with relevant reasons and evidence?
Depth:
Do the author's answers address the complexities in the
questions at issue? Does the author's reasoning lead to
significant and far
reaching implications?
Logic: Does the author's reasoning make sense?
Do the conclusions follow from the information given?
Breadth:
Does the author approach the issues from multiple viewpoints (where
relevant) or is his/her
reasoning too narrow minded? Are opposing viewpoint
considered or presented?
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Critical
Reading
What key questions or problems does the author
raise?
What is the author's purpose?
What
information, data, and evidence does the author present?
What key concepts guide the author's reasoning?
What key
conclusions is the author coming to? Are those conclusions
justified?
What are the author's primary assumptions?
What is the author's viewpoint?
What are the
implications of the author's reasoning?
Foundation
for Critical Thinking
www.criticalthinking.org
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The Right Questions
... The answer is in the Questions..
To give you
an initial sense of the skills that Asking the Right
Questions will help you acquire, we will list the
critical questions for you here.
1. What are
the issues and the conclusion?
2. What are
the reasons? are beliefs, evidence, metaphors, analogies,
and other statements offered to support or justify
conclusions.
3. What words
or phrases are ambiguous? ... check the key terms
in the issues...
4. What are
the value conflicts and assumptions? ... values are
standards of conduct
5. What are
the descriptive assumptions? ...assumptions are
ideas that, if true, enable us to claim that particular
reasons provide support for a conclusion.
6. What is
the evidence?
7. Are the
samples representative and the measurements valid?
8. Are there
rival hypotheses?
9. Are there
flaws in the statistical reasoning?
10.
How relevant are the analogies?
11. Are there
any errors in reasoning?
12.
What significant information is omitted?
13.
What conclusions are consistent with the strong reasons?
14.
What are your own value preferences in this controversy?
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Propaganda;
Similar considerations apply to the other techniques of the
propaganda analysts. A "glittering generality" is a
statement like "Woman's place is in the home," or "What is
good for business is good for the country." There is a
wisecrack which says that generalizations are always false,
and statements like the ones just quoted undoubtedly ought
to be qualified. But certainly propagandists have no
monopoly on the use of such generalizations. And a
testimonial may be good or bad, depending upon its source,
on the competence of the testifier, and on his probable lack of prejudice.
Testimonials are not necessarily dishonest.
The analysis
of these "propaganda techniques" calls our attention to the
possibility that we may be permitting emotion to sway
us, and we are reminded that we ought to look into the
evidence. But language alone does not distinguish
propaganda from other forms of discourse. Propagandists may
avoid these techniques altogether, and non-propagandists may
use them.
What is meant
by propaganda in this discussion? Its nature may be made
clearer by contrasting the propagandist and the educator.
There are some, of course, who deny the distinction and who
tell us that "the advocacy of what we believe in is
education; the advocacy of what we don't believe in is
propaganda." But this is not what most of us mean by these
words. An educator is one who, in the phrase of Robert Hutchins, "seeks to teach
people how to think for themselves." An educator wants
people to seek the truth. To this end he will present them
with facts; he will appeal to their reason; he will follow
an argument to whatever conclusions may be warranted by the
evidence. An educator will, or ought to, have his own point
of view, his own preferences, and he will recommend his
personal beliefs to his audience, but he will state the
grounds on which he holds these beliefs, and he will state
the major objections to them. Thus his students will be able
to judge for themselves concerning the validity of his
arguments and the truth or falsity of his beliefs.
We have been
speaking of an ideal educator, a truth-seeker. But a
propagandist, in the strict sense, is not interested in the
truth for its own sake, or in spreading it. His purpose is
different. He wants a certain kind of action from
us. He doesn't want people to think for themselves. He seeks
to mold their minds so that they will think as he wants them
to think, and act as he wants them to act. He prefers that
they should not think for themselves. If the
knowledge of certain facts will cast doubts in the minds of
his hearers, he will conceal these facts.
It may be said
that there are no educators in this ideal sense, and that,
really, everyone is a propagandist. "The propaganda with
which we agree is called education; the propaganda with
which we disagree is called propaganda." If we accept this
notion, we are forced to deny the distinction between
tricksters and truth-seekers. This confusion of categories
may be fostered by those who are afraid of the truth and who
therefore want us to disbelieve whatever we read about them.
If they can get us to believe that "everything is
propaganda," we will believe nothing, including the truth
about them. But to accept the wholesale skepticism suggested
by the phrase "everything
is propaganda" is just as foolish an attitude as to be
completely un-skeptical.
There are two errors we ought to avoid: to be too trusting
and to be too skeptical. Some people believe everything
they read in the papers, and others believe nothing. We must
learn to be discriminating— to distinguish between what it
is reasonable to believe, what it is reasonable to doubt,
and what we ought to dismiss as probably false.
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To sum up.
We have
noted that there are three kinds of language, or purposes
in speaking, and we examined the distinction between neutral
and emotive words. We saw how emotion is employed in order
to get action. Propaganda, we saw, has a directive purpose,
for the propagandist wants us to act. The question, "What
shall we do in order to protect ourselves against
propaganda?" is misleading. The question assumes that
propaganda is bad, and we
cannot say that this is so without making certain
distinctions. Insofar as propaganda seeks to get us to act
by emotional appeals coupled with a concealment of
facts—facts that might make us think about the merits of the
proposal'-it is "bad"
as a method. It is
possible of course that the propagandist may have our best
interests at heart, so that his goal may be a good
one. An illustration of "good"
propaganda is found in some of the War Bond posters used
during the last war. These posters showed a Marine lying on
a foreign beachhead. Underneath the picture was an
exhortation to buy Bonds so that our armed forces would not
lack ammunition. The real purpose of buying bonds was to
avoid the inflationary effects of excess purchasing power.
This propaganda had a desirable goal, for inflation would
have impeded the war effort. And perhaps the truth would not
have been so effective, for "Avoid
inflation!" has little
emotional appeal. We can only hope that propaganda of this
sort will some day be unnecessary, even in good causes. This
will happen when the people can be trusted to know, and act
upon the truth.
Another reason why it is misleading to speak of
"protection against
propaganda^ is that this
implies that there is a special kind of defense against
propaganda. There is no magic amulet whereby one may
exorcise its evils. The only defense against propaganda
which seeks to hurt us is to add to our knowledge and to
sharpen our critical abilities. We shall then know
how to protect ourselves against the various forms of hokum.
The
Chinese' have a proverb
which says that there are three sides to every question: my
side, your side, and the right side.
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Critical
thinking overview