critical thinking_education_aims

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BERTRAND RUSSELL ON
CRITICAL THINKING
Language IV – Prof. Yamina Gava & Natalia Dalla Costa - 2013

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Russell's Philosophy
Intellectual and moral aspects:
- Knowledge as difficult but not impossible to
attain
- The importance of freedom and independence
of inquiry
Critical thinking
-The nature of educational aims
Chomsky
Woodhouse
Stander

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The threat of indoctrination
Critical thinking:
What does it entail?
Why does it matter in education?
Related terminology:
reflective thinking, straight thinking, clear thinking,
scientific thinking, thinking simpliciter.

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Critical thinking
The ideal of critical thinking is, for Russell,
embedded in the fabric of philosophy, science,
rationality, liberalism and education.
Critical thinking:
- A virtue
- Intellectual and moral aspects
- Skills, dispositions and attitudes

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The purpose of education
To prepare students to be able to form "a
reasonable judgment on controversial questions in
regard to which they are likely to have to act“.
In addition to having "access to impartial supplies
of knowledge," education needs to offer "training
in judicial habits of thought."

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Critical thinking skills
The ability to …
form an opinion for oneself,
find an impartial solution, and
identify and question assumptions.
CRITICAL JUDGEMENT implies …
1.weighing evidence and arguments (approximate
truth must be estimated),
2. being critical about our own attempts at criticism,
3. adopting an attitude of constructive doubt.

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Rationality in education
- Learning how to reach true conclusions on
insufficient data.
- Rationality is a matter of degree.
- Mental habits formation:
- impartial inquiry,
- weighing evidence,
- attempting to see things truly, and
- living from one’s own center (self-
direction).

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Rationality in education
A readiness to act and respond in various ways:
- to admit new evidence against previous beliefs,
- to discard hypotheses which have proved
inadequate,
- to adapt oneself to the facts of the world.

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Attitudes of the critical person
- A realization of human fallibility
- An open-minded outlook
- A refusal to think that our own desires and
wishes provide a key to understanding the world
- Being tentative

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Attitudes of the critical person
PRACTICAL ADVICE:
We can try to hear all sides and discuss our views
with people who have different biases, making
sure to face real opponents; we can stretch our
minds by trying to appreciate alternative pictures
of the world presented in philosophy, anthropology
and history; we can learn to recognize
our own biases by, for example, noting
when contrary opinions make us
angry.

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Attitudes of the critical person
- Thinking for oneself to avoid indoctrination
- Emphasis on feelings and relational skills:
“What is needed is not merely intellectual. A widening
of sympathy is at least as important.”
Detachment from those emotions which interfere with
intellectual honesty and which prevent the emergence
of kindly feeling.
The person who has no feelings, does nothing and
achieves nothing.

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The philosopher's fallacy
- Exaggerating the role of philosophy and logic in
the development of critical thinking to the neglect
of subject knowledge.
Russell does not equate critical thinking with
logical proficiency. Logic and mathematics are the
alphabet of the book of nature, not the book itself.

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Conclusion
Russell stresses access to impartial sources of
knowledge; without such access, our critical
abilities cannot function. He is not, therefore, to be
convicted of a simplistic view about the
generalizability of critical thinking.

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Vocabulary development
Task:
Look up the meaning of the following words and
phrases in a variety of bilingual dictionaries. Explore
their various shades of meaning, possible
collocations, and usage. Build word families (e.g. by
adding prefixes and suffixes) and write meaningful
sentences using each of the words given.

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Vocabulary development
Bigotry Trite
Point up Truism
Adept Unwarranted confidence
Ascertain Cocksure prophet
Facetious (facetiously,
facetiousness)
Dishonest charlatans
To be in the ascendant Disparage
Fallible (fallibility,
infallible)
The value of suspended
judgment
Indubitability (dubious,
dubitation)