Robert Burton, On Being Certain. This book tries to make us more aware of how the mind works. It affected me greatly because once one applies his mantra “But is what is suggested consistent with how the mind tends to work?” to policy proposals, one quickly realizes that much intellectual work suffers from a failure to realize the power of the limbic structures. Far more frequently than we wish it to be true, the emotions wear the pants in our decisions.

Burton is never deterministic and leaves plenty of room for CT to manage the brain better.

This book lays out just how enormous the need for CT is.

My experience with those who teach and write about critical thinking suggests an awkwardness around CT talk that moves away, even a little, from logic and empirical proofs. That awkwardness is as understandable as it is troubling. Yes, the use of concepts like emotion, values, attitudes, faith, hunches, and intuition to justify conclusions is a huge problem. However, logic and empirical proofs are frequently abused to justify outlandish conclusions. We know they are, but we have the good sense not to push back from their usefulness simply because as tools they can be misused.

In this blog I wanted to focus on the importance of careful thought about particular attitudes–ones that are primary in the sense that when they are not present, all the critical thinking training in the world will not encourage greater magnitudes of critical thinking. Anyone who has taught critical thinking knows that a subset of students are quite proficient in learning the critical thinking game for classroom purposes.

Such students earn A’s. Then you have the opportunity to see them in action after the class is included, and, gasp, you are shocked. How could my phenomenal teaching have been so ineffective? The same students might be able to demonstrate on command a satisfying array of critical thinking skills.

What happened?

The learner played the teacher’s game, but the learner saw no more need or efficacy for critical thinking skills than he probably saw for the algebra class in which he was the star pupil.

While what I am saying is impractical, a pre-CT course or experience in which the learner came to feel the depths of the problems caused by a lack of critical thinking would seem to provide the attitudinal framework such that CT is internalized and enjoyed as it is being learned. Providing learners with disaster scenarios resulting from the absence of CT was a major objective of the “Medical Mistakes” course that at one time was taught at the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona as a CT course. For some students, reading an outstanding book like Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan might so flood them with the dangers of sloppy thinking that they would be eager to acquire mental antidotes.

Later blog entries will focus on specific attitudes that are prerequisites for regularized CT. My single point here is—don’t overlook the mental frame the learner has toward CT in the rush to teach them a series of valuable CT skills.

When we teach, the temptation to talk while others dutifully listen is overwhelming. The teacher has experience that the students lack in the domain in question. She IS the teacher.

Multiple reasons justify the temptation. The community or someone with the authority to do so has designated one person to have a special role in learning. Someone has been told he or she is THE TEACHER. In addition, teachers understandably feel more in control, more efficient, more responsible when it is they who are active. Teachers see themselves understandably as the movers for the learning, the essential stimulus.

But learning is a participatory sport. At some level, teachers surely appreciate that reality. Even a teacher who performs his function solely as a speaker, lecturer, or demonstrator knows she needs to assign homework or practice activities.

But what if a statement is just a disguised series of questions that were we to ask them, or encourage our students to ask them, would not our fundamental role be to explain the necessity of those questions for deep learning, as well as the creation of a climate in which the fundamental question is regarded with more respect than the self-confident assertion, even when the latter is coming from the mouth of a knowledgeable teacher?
If this approach is generally valid for teaching, it is especially functional for teaching critical thinking. Nothing about critical thinking is natural; in addition, the general culture does not fawn over and elaborately reward those who practice critical thinking. Hence, someone learning critical thinking especially needs to learn the self-censorial skills of asking regular, proficient questions.

One can justifiably make important distinctions among various kinds of questions in terms of their comparative roles and efficacy as facilitators for careful belief formation. But initially, teachers must struggle with their internal demons that tell them that questions are an unwelcome interruption in the smooth flow of their teaching and then provide what will be strange and frightening for many learners—an environment that encourages questions, as a source of wonder and exploration of options.

Bob Seger in “Lock and Load” sings “I wish I had a nickel for every time I fell and blamed somebody else.”

The human tendency to be defensive, to protect the image of competence we would like to project to the world, leads us to give reasons for our behavior that make us look good. The self-enhancement bias is one way to study this phenomenon. In most walks of life we maintain a public image of being far better than average in whatever we choose to do.

One warning for critical thinkers when listening to the arguments of others should be: is the person putting forth the argument working extra hard to provide reasons that are consistent with our thinking more positively about the person making the argument? While there is certainly no good reason why such a reason is not a strong one, it needs to be consumed with special care because we know how tempting it is for any of us to destroy evidence and reasons to build up ourselves in the eyes of others.

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I cannot leave this lyric without pointing out that any wisdom it contains is modified by our wariness that part of American Exceptionalism is blaming individuals for what has complex social causation. In other words, Seger may be too harsh on himself in certain instances. When he says for mistakes I have made, he may well be absorbing responsibility in some instances where major elements of the responsibility are outside his control.