Imagine what a womans mental life is like, when deciding whether or not a girl should have her clitoris sliced off, feels compelled to refer to the collected claims made by some militant psychotic who died about 1400 years ago rather than assessing the claim on its merits alone. mwlusa.org/topics/violence&harrassment/fgm.html How to Think vs. What to Think: A good thing to know when considering the broader implications of human history, popular culture, infotainment, and various political appeals. • Critical thinking (sometimes called critical reasoning) is the set of skills and knowledge required to determine if claims are true, false, or indeterminate possibly due to insufficient data. o One half of critical thinking is a broad range of relevant knowledge. o The other half of critical thinking is formal logic, which by itself sans relevant knowledge is worse than useless except for math and games, perhaps. (That is because logic is not necessarily based on the real world and unreal claims can be logically analyzed just as readily as realistic claims.) The limitations of knowledge or the fallibility of one’s own mind is not at all obvious to many of us, I am sure. It is extremely difficult to evaluate culturally acquired claims sans rational cognitive schemas. Those sorts of schemas do not naturally develop in one’s mind simply by growing older and are not commonly taught in public education. Critical thinking can only develop by learning underlying principles, acquiring a broad array of relevant knowledge, and by practice applying critique to claims. • Haskins, Greg R. A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking skepdic/essays/Haskins.html • List of Cognitive Biases en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases • List of Fallacies en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:31:26 +0000
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