William Payne

Everybody thinks it’s good to be open-minded. But we don’t often think critically about just what it means to be open-minded. We might think that being open-minded means allowing that others’ opinio […]

Critical thinking is purposeful thinking. But just what is the purpose of critical thinking? Why think critically? As a branch of human inquiry, philosophy has a pretty clear view of the purpose of […]

The Philosophy Dept. (not just me, but most of us) will be running a Critical Thinking Curriculum Development workshop through the Faculty Commons this year and our first meeting is just two weeks from now. This […]

So I’ve been talking all year about how Philosophy is going to write this free Critical Thinking Text for the BC community. Meanwhile Mark Storey has actually done so. A complete draft should be ready to share […]

Why Climate Skeptics are in Denial
The fossil fuel constituency has long exploited popular misunderstanding of the logic behind the science of climatology and I think this calls for a re-appraisal of how we teach […]

Tim Linnemann on Intellectual Virtue
This time we feature a discussion of some intellectual virtues by our adjunct instructor Tim Linnemann. I really like the intellectual virtues. They aren’t half as annoying a […]

Critical Thinking Note 1
 

Here is a critical thinking problem that will be familiar to many instructors. We ask students to give a reason for believing something and they answer with a single sentence, […]