Critical Thinker Habitually Pulls Back the Curtain

I guess, for all of us, a meme that gives impetuous to much of our behavior is the “capitalism is good” meme. This meme, with its closest suburbs, probably represents a fundamental element of the dominant ideology of western culture.

This cluster of memes contains the wonderful “doing good by doing well” meme. This is the rascal that allows us to follow our imperialistic impulses. This meme allows us to invade Iraq under false pretenses, it allows us to open our borders to those who will work cheap, it allows for the “trickle down” economic theory, it allowed the Nineteenth Century imperialism practiced by our European cousins, etc.

Most of the memes we live by have never been examined by any of us. I suspect this one, in particular, needs to be placed on the table for close individual examination.

We saw the Nineteenth Century birth of a new economic entity, the corporation. A recent delivery of a new economic entity has occurred. This is the corporation-state. The new supranational corporation is here and on a fast freight. I suspect all these things happened too fast for a liberal democracy to encompass; so much for liberal democracy.

CT is about analyzing and understanding.

One thing I have learned about playing chess is that for almost every move there is a bad judgment a good judgment and a better judgment. And I also learned that one pays a price for each bad judgment.

In life we are constantly making judgments. There is an art and science for judgment making and it is called Critical Thinking. Our schools and colleges have prepared us to make good judgments about special matters as it might pertain to our job but have done little to prepare us for the constant judgment making. CT is about learning how to think.


Perhaps philosophy should be an advocate of “lets take a meme out for examination” day.

“Weaken the nation state and you weaken liberal democracy.”

Critical Thinking: Art and science of good judgment /

The first step toward solving our problems is to learn CT (Critical Thinking).

CT is an acronym for Critical Thinking. Everybody considers themselves to be a critical thinker. That is why we need to differentiate among different levels of critical thinking.

Most people fall in the category that I call Reagan thinkers—trust but verify. Then there are those who have taken the basic college course taught by the philosophy dept that I call Logic 101. This is a credit course that teaches the basic principles of reasoning. Of course, a person need not take the college course and can learn the matter on their own effort, but I suspect few do that.

The third level I call CT (Critical Thinking). CT includes the knowledge of Logic 101 and also the knowledge that focuses upon the intellectual character and attitude of critical thinking. It includes knowledge regarding the ego and social centric forces that impede rational thinking.

Most decisions we have to make are judgment calls. A judgment call is made when we must make a decision when there is no “true” or “false” answers. When we make a judgment call our decision is bad, good, or better.

Many factors are involved: there are the available facts, assumptions, skills, knowledge, and especially personal experience and attitude. I think that the two most important elements in the mix are personal experience and attitude.

When we study math we learn how to use various algorithms to facilitate our skill in dealing with quantities. If we never studied math we could deal with quantity on a primary level but our quantifying ability would be minimal. Likewise with making judgments; if we study the art and science of good judgment we can make better decisions and if we never study the art and science of judgment our decision ability will remain minimal.

I am convinced that a fundamental problem we have in this country (USA) is that our citizens have never learned the art and science of good judgment. Before the recent introduction of CT into our schools and colleges our young people have been taught primarily what to think and not how to think. All of us graduated with insufficient comprehension of the knowledge, skills, and attitude necessary for the formulation of good judgment. The result of this inability to make good judgment is evident and is dangerous.

I am primarily interested in the judgment that adults exercise in regard to public issues. Of course, any improvement in judgment generally will affect both personal and community matters.

To put the matter into a nut shell:

• Normal men and women can significantly improve their ability to make judgments.
• CT is the domain of knowledge that delineates the knowledge, skills, and intellectual character demanded for good judgment.
• CT has been introduced into our schools and colleges slowly in the last two or three decades.
• Few of today’s adults were ever taught CT.
• I suspect that at least another two generations will pass before our society reaps significant rewards resulting from teaching CT to our children.
• Can our democracy survive that long?
• I think that every effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they need to study and learn CT on their own. I am not suggesting that adults find a teacher but I am suggesting that adults become self-actualizing learners.
• I am convinced that learning the art and science of Critical Thinking is an important step toward becoming a better citizen in today’s democratic society.

Questions for discussion//

Have you ever had a course in Critical Thinking in any educational institution?

Have your children ever had a course in Critical Thinking in any educational institution?




Perhaps you are not familiar with CT. I first encountered the concept about five years ago. The following are a few Internet sites that will familiarize you with the matter.

http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-notes.html

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:mkodBBrpMg0J:www.criticalthinking.o rg/TGS_files/SAM-CT_competencies_2005.pdf+critical+thinking+multi-logical&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=11

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/weinste.html

http://www.criticalthinking.org/resources/articles/glossary.shtml

http://www.doit.gmu.edu/inventio/past/display_past.asp?pID=spring03&sID=eslava

My children nor myself have attended formal CT classes. What would be the target objective of CT? It seems to simply be a title for Logic and Reason.

On government and and people or people and business CT can lead to many unknown outcomes. For example, one can complain about wage or costs of products or government services as compared to tax paid to support the government...

Wipe the blackboard clean and here you are hungry and there is a person with more food than he needs for himself... do you trade labor for some of his food, or do you provide him a service of some type for some of his food? In Korea when you shop on a street market there is no price on any item, all items are the "value" you are willing to pay for them. The CT in thinking about wages could say during the last eight years wages are stagnant but closer examination would reveal wages went up but they went up to cover increases in health insurance so the increase in wage was actually a transaction without you holding the money in your hand.

Money, what is it? It is a constant value to be matched to something you want that is in the possession of another person. In short it is stored barter tool for acquiring all that is not in your possession that you desire to have in your possession. So critical thinking would conclude you did in fact get a pay raise but your employer spent your money for you.

Are giant corporations better than trading a cow for a horse on an individual to individual level? What do you desire government do for you?

I think that Capitalism is a horrible idea. It encourages (or the meme that it is good encourages) people that are "successful" in "life" to hoard all of their money, or maybe give little pittly bits away to "charity" to make it seem like they are not as greedy as they really are. It causes people to think that they are "better" than others just because they can afford a 5 bedroom house in an expensive area of town, an expensive car (or cars) and a $3000 TV. I'm not saying those things are not desirable to the average person, but they don't make one person better than another for having them.

I spend money for my own evertainment just like everybody else, when that money COULD be spent to better other people's lives, so I guess I'm not immune the the Capitalistic impulse, but if I was "loaded", I would settle for the things in life I needed to be comfortable, then see what I could do to help others, probably starting with my family and friends, then moving to the public.

But I think people that make a certain amount should be REQUIRED to give a certain portion of it away to help others that do not have anything. Not really Communism, but more Social Capitalism. If someone like Bill Gates was happy living a middle class lifestyle, think of all the people that could have a home, food, and cars?

I think your above statement should be justification to limit voting rights to those owning property. If the mob decided to be fat dumb and lazy then the producers would have to care for them like pets.

I'd put people that think like you in a commune if you didn't want to work for your desires if you were my pet.

Edited to add: Limit voting to people that paid "real tax", tax above and beyond SS/Medicare... bring a tax return where you show you paid actual tax and then you vote, otherwise deal with what the producers say you should get.

That would be fine with me. I'd be one of the "producers". I wouldn't want to be anyone's pet. I'm just saying that those that make huge amounts of money should be required to give some of it to those that need it. Or maybe to starving kids in Africa or something. I know that's an ideal, though. Real people are more like you and want to keep everything they have no matter how much other people are suffering.

All that "caring for other people's suffering" is what got humans in the mess we are in now. Everything has to die. Just let it. Once you are dead, it'll be fine. "Other people suffering" is a personal problem.

So it would be ok if someone killed your family? That wouldn't be YOUR problem?

I have taken formal philosophy classes, but I was not able to do so until college. Most of high school constituted a stultification of creativity and critical thinking. Most of what I learned of value was on my own.

By the way, I enjoy your posts a lot. They lay out the importance of critical thinking and of philosophy very well.

What do you mean? Presumably, critical thinking leads to more logical outcomes than the absence of it.

Money is a form of capital, and capital is merely stored-up labor. Whether wages increase or decrease is irrelevant in an exploitative system where the worker is alienated from the product of his labor and his "species-being". It would be like arguing for slavery merely because the standard of living has increased (and indeed, Southerners did use such an argument).

Under what context are you saying wages have increased? In actuality the income gap has not only increased in the United States but it has also increased globally. Since the advent of capitalistic globalization, the poorest in the world are forced to live on less while the capitalists (i.e. those who are accumulating the capital [exploited labor]) have increased their profits.

If you're saying that America as a society has gained in capital then you're right. I think it's obvious, being the world economic super power. All that means is we're just exploiting more people. It would match the data too, considering the third world has gotten poorer. America is dealing with the absurdity of overabundance while the third world riots over a food crisis.


It depends. This is a source of debate with myself. In short, is it better to take your problems to the labor board or to your union? This is the main source of division among the left. I think it's circumstantial and particular to the country in question. To me, how it's done is irrelevant so long as a democratic society is secured where the workers own the means of production, non-exploitative property is available, alienation is a thing of the past to a degree as much as possible, and the necessities of life are shared.

Do you starve your kids out of fear they will turn fat, dumb, and lazy?