There is a line of thinking that seems to lead some faculty on campus to think that philosophers, well perhaps mainly myself, are pushing a “philosophy centric” view of critical thinking in our efforts to build a new program of institutional learning. The complaint is based on something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Philosophy has just one among many equally good ways of understanding and teaching critical thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something close to this opinion has been the source of some pushback to the articulation and definition of critical thinking<\/a> crafted over the past year or so by the critical thinking ILO working group. Most recently, this was the main objection raised in a CAC meeting on 5\/20, where the minutes record committee members as concerned that the current draft “feels philosophy-centric.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I have yet to hear is any clear explanation or argument in support of this opinion. So, I want to consider what it would take to reasonably support this opinion. I’m looking for a sympathetic interpretation and argument for this concern, so do let me know if I miss that mark. A few pertinent questions stand out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clarification and support for the “feels philosophy-centric” complaint will require answers to each of these questions. We aren’t in a position to take up the second two questions until we have decent answers to the first two. But I struggle with both of these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m not really sure philosophy has a discipline specific perspective on critical thinking. Philosophers do have discipline specific methods, but these are not the subject matter of courses in critical thinking. Critical thinking as it is understood and taught in critical thinking courses like PHIL&115 is focused on general reasoning skills. There is a well-developed curriculum for courses like this and a whole genre of textbooks taking various approaches. But while these courses are usually taught in philosophy programs, philosophy is not part of the critical thinking curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A quick survey of the exercises used to instill various critical thinking skills and qualities of mind in standard Critical Thinking texts will reveal lots of different everyday reasoning scenarios. So, being well acquainted with the curriculum taught in critical thinking courses, I struggle with the notion that this curriculum represents a specifically philosophical way of understanding critical thinking. This notion just doesn’t hold up to the evidence that can be readily examined in any critical thinking textbook. And so, I worry that the “feels philosophy centric” complaint betrays a lack of familiarity with well-developed critical thinking curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, what are the alternative conceptions of critical thinking utilized in disciplines other than philosophy? The Critical Thinking ILO group started out by collecting lots of data from faculty across campus about this. By and large we got brief discussion of discipline specific applications of some of the critical thinking skills that are already part of the broader curriculum taught in critical thinking classes. Where the supposed alternative ways of conceptualizing critical thinking turn out to be just special focus on some specific skills rather than others, we aren’t looking at competing conceptions of critical thinking. The relation is rather one of part to whole. In various disciplines faculty often adopt narrower conceptions of critical thinking that focus on the specific problems and methods of their discipline. What gets left out is the broader whole, the full range of reasoning skills that are applicable across many disciplines, careers, and aspects of leading a becoming life. A more developed critical thinking curriculum, as we teach on PHIL&115, introduces students to an integrated suite of general reasoning skills, rather than an approach specific to philosophy or any other discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, are there alternative conceptions of critical thinking that aren’t already part of standard critical thinking curriculum? I would be eager to learn about these. I have yet to hear much about any. But clarifying how any alternative ways of understanding critical thinking are really in competition with established critical thinking curriculum would require a good understanding of the existing critical thinking curriculum. I haven’t seen much inclination to develop this on the part of those who complain that our current Critical Thinking ILO draft feels philosophy centric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, we can’t offer a fully developed critical thinking curriculum in context of a campus wide ILO. We need to try to distill the broader curriculum down to some vital core that does apply broadly across disciplines. Even at that, it may take some effort for people unfamiliar with that broader critical thinking curriculum to see how that vital core applies in their own discipline. Along the way we will continue to deliberate about just how we should frame that vital core for a campus wide outcome. But it would really help if we would all get familiar with the broader more comprehensive understanding of critical thinking that constitutes standard developed curriculum in critical thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if this is on the right track, then the argument for pushing back on pesky philosophers who are always advocating for their <\/em>approach to critical thinking is misguided and based on a certain prejudice. Namely that there is some “philosophy centric” way of understanding critical thinking that is in some sort of tension with other ways of understanding critical thinking. Perhaps “prejudice” seems a loaded term in this context since this word is often associated with weighty matters of social justice. But the term does have a literal meaning which is illuminating across many other contexts. Prejudice is literally pre-judging, which in the context of critical thinking means judging some idea or argument prior to fully understanding it. This, of course, often spills over into judging people in the absence of understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A basic principle of critical thinking is that we aren’t in a position to reasonably evaluate a view until we understand it (please note how this is embodied in the SEE model<\/a>). I hope this helps us see how critical thinking is opposed to prejudice generally. Of course, beyond understanding we also want to make sure that we are applying appropriate standards in order to evaluate ideas and arguments on their own merits. Inquiry into what these are and how to apply them is a substantial part of the critical thinking curriculum. Understood literally, “Critical thinking” means thinking according to criteria. Familiarity with the critical thinking curriculum should make it clear that the criteria for thinking critically are things people have figured out through inquiry, not things that anyone just gets to decide on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think there is a powerful tendency on this campus (and probably many others) to sidestep the kind of critical thinking-based inquiry I’m trying to engage us in here and treat the matter how to understand critical thinking as simply one of “who gets to decide.” When we do this, we close down space for inquiry in favor of a power struggle. Our arguments no longer serve as arrangements of ideas we can learn from but instead are transformed into mere rhetorical bludgeons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the power struggle path, we can expect faculty to vie for ways of understanding critical thinking that fit their established practice. The conversation about critical thinking has taken this track on a few occasions, most recently at the above-mentioned meeting of the CAC. Personally, I find the power struggle path to be very stressful and unproductive. But aside from this personal complaint, the “who gets to decide” approach is ultimately a faculty centered approach. A student-centered approach would take a different path, first inquiring into what critical thinking skills students can benefit from the most and then thinking about how we can teach these effectively across the curriculum, ultimately building our program of institutional learning around this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I suspect there are many issues on campus where less power struggle and more inquiry would be helpful to us all. I really hope that we engage in some inquiry into critical thinking in developing our critical thinking ILO. And I hope we will incorporate some of our improved understanding of critical thinking into how we treat each other. This could be a big step towards replacing some of the discord that pervades our lives both on campus and beyond with more productive and humanizing discourse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a line of thinking that seems to lead some faculty on campus to think that philosophers, well perhaps mainly myself, are pushing a “philosophy centric” view of critical thinking in our efforts to build a new program of institutional learning. The complaint is based on something like this: Philosophy has just one among … Continue reading Critical Thinking Note 38: “Feels Philosophy Centric”?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1337,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions\/1337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n