Species Survival

Official Blog is Up and Running

2008-07-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

My official blog and website is now at

http://www.thinkingtowardsurvival.com/

"Critical thinking is..."

2008-07-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

From my travels online it is evident that people have very different ideas of what critical thinking is.
Some think CT is the same as scientific thinking. Others believe it is most important for citizens who are constantly bombarded by advertising, spin, and propaganda.
Some find it in debunking popular beliefs or pseudoscience.
Some define it in terms of formal logic, truth tables, and Venn diagrams--others in terms of informal logic and avoiding popular fallacies.
Some use the alleged lack of CT to bludgeon people they disagree with, even though their own argument is on shaky ground.
One concise definition of CT is this, by Richard Paul and Linda Elder in The Miniature Guide to Crtical Thinking Concepts and Tools:

"Critical thinking is that mode of thinking--about any subject, content, or problem--in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them."
(See more definitions at www.criticalthinking.org/aboutct/define_critical_thinking.cfm)

This puts the responsibility back on the thinker rather than the person the thinker is debating or making fun of. It emphasizes a conscious and perhaps continuous self-improvement. Is that too hard? Not enough fun? Does it give a full picture of CT?

In Memoriam

2008-07-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

Ron Rockwell, who wrote the guest post on June 15, left us on June 30.
Ron was a deep, reflective and divergent thinker able to draw on his experiences of several vocations--scientist, Navy commander, journalist, and more.
He will be missed.

Critical Thinking Definitions

2008-07-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

We need a good working definition of critical thinking. I used these in Models, Myths and Muddles:

"Thinking about your thinking while you're thinking in order to make your thinking better."
(Richard Paul, Think, http://www.criticalthinking.org/)
I like this one because it is a reminder to be aware similar to what we do in many other areas of our life. For instance, years ago a friend told me that I tended to lug the motor while driving--I think that's what you call it when you shift to the next higher gear too soon. So I made myself aware every time I started up the car that I'd wait until going 20 mph to shift to second gear. In the same way, you could make yourself aware that you tend to divide many issues into either/or and try to break the habit.

"A systematic process for separating truth from fiction. It bears many resemblances to the scientific method, but is more applicable to the vague and incomplete information one faces in daily life." (Adam Wiggins, http://dusk.org/adam/criticalthinking/whatis.php) I like the way this definition separates CT from the scientific method and gives it its own domain. Some blogs such as http://skeptoid.com/ apparently assume that everything is either science or it's pseudo-science, which is to say, complete nonsense. There are a lot of in-between areas of life that science doesn't touch and you can't exactly experiment with.

Another website about CT is: www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/06/define-critical-thinking-skills.html So far on this site posters are emphasizing logic courses as taught in college, including informal logic which is a lot more important for everyday and the average citizen than syllogisms or Truth Tables.

But Wikipedia's entry notes there's more to it yet: "Part of critical thinking comprises informal logic. However, a large part of critical thinking goes beyond informal logic and includes assessment of beliefs and identification of prejudice, bias, propaganda, self-deception, distortion, misinformation, etc."
This broader use of the CT term is what I have been writing about in my books. However, once you start to get into the areas of ideologies and politics, it is very easy to get off-track and think you are talking about logic and critical thinking when you are simply espousing your opinions. In another post I'd like to analyze a very long thread about critical thinking on http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/critical-times-for-critical-thinking/ which contains some good insights but also many examples of people getting off-track and ideological. It seems to be more fun to ride your favorite hobbyhorse and call it critical thinking than to actually think critically.

CT Blogs

2008-07-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've been journeying around the Web to see some sites billed as "critical thinking blogs." So far, most fall into these classes:

Skeptic/debunkers

People promoting college logic courses, Truth Tables and Venn diagrams
New Atheists
Ideologies defending themselves. Naturally they assume critical thinking is on their side and it is the other guy who doesn't use it.
Those actually talking about CT as it is most generally understood

People know that we need more critical thinking but part of the problem is that many of us are not sure what it IS.
So probably the first item on the agenda is to attempt to define critical thinking. (Anyone like to do a guest post on that?)

What Kind of Blog Is This?

2008-06-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

Somebody has asked me, "How come your blog is called "Species Survival" when it is evidently about critical thinking? Well, that's because I see an essential link between these two things and have been writing a series of books (one already published) about how we have to get our thinking up to speed if the species is going to survive. The species, that is, not just us 5% of the world's people who live in the United States.
http://www.thinkingtowardsurvival.com/
So I know everybody is totally immersed in the election campaign, the price of gas, the economy in general, and occupations, wars, and projected wars in the Middle East. However, please reserve a little of your attention for the whole human race and what is likely to happen to us in the next 5, 10, 20 years. The human race includes you and me and 6 1/2 billion others, including a lot of children.
Most people assume that we know what is really going on, because the media tell us so. But the media is very big business, interlocking corporations that often include military contractors. Television is a "hot" medium that builds on conflict when it is not full of distracting fluff. We don't get the full story. People need to be able to detect propaganda in its most sophisticated forms.
No matter who's elected, it's not going to be easy. Even having good leadership will not be enough. There will be more turbulence, of both weather and people. ..peak oil geostrategy...environmental refugees. We're going to have to lift ourselves up by our own mental bootstraps and reach out to retain our humanity.
We can't afford the luxury of wishful thinking, denial, projection, either/or, demonizing the other, or the rest of our ingrained habits that have brought us to the point of economic collapse, fascism, wars, and ecosystem failures such as global warming.
Let's say this blog is about critical thinking in the broadest and most urgent sense.
Posts so far have been about framing and definition, missing context, and sound-bite thinking, among others, the nuts and bolts of critical thinking.

Missing Context: Rev. Wright

2008-06-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

I hope that I can use the following as an example without its becoming an argument for partisan politics.
One of the main ways that the media can create bias is by leaving out part of the story. One recent example is the 30-second sound-bite treatment of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Three pieces of information that are never mentioned in the newspaper or on the air might give a more rounded picture of the man. First is the fact that he enlisted in the Marines in the early 1960s. That at least adds some complexity to the common notion in local letters to the editor that he "hates America."
Second is the fact that Wright later became a medical corpsman who was part of the medical team that cared for President Lyndon Johnson in the White House during the time of Johnson's surgery. Certainly he was trusted at that time by people at the highest levels of government. He received a commendation from the White House for his service there.
The third piece of information concerns the AIDS conspiracy theory. According to polls, a large number of African Americans believe that the HIV virus was man-made and a significant fraction think that it came from the biological labs at Fort Detrick. It may seem a totally bizarre idea to most middle-class white people, but the fact that so many black people give it credence suggests the degree to which blacks feel alienated and whites do not realize the racial inequities still remaining.

Define Your Terms: Economic Development

2008-06-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Another term that's thrown about is 'economic development' which is supposed to be a very good and essential thing for the poorer regions of the world. But what exactly does it mean? My hunch is it usually means that investors from some richer part of the world put money into mining or harvesting or refining some resource that the locals haven't had the wherewithal to mine or harvest or refine. Or maybe they didn't want to commodify it for various reasons such as potential pollution and environmental destruction, sacred areas, no sustainable way to exploit the resource.
The economic development very often does not benefit the locals directly. What benefits there are go to the country's leaders and elite, the rest to the West. This is why there is a greater flow of wealth from the poor world to the rich world than the reverse.
A very useful book for context on this is John Perkins, CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN.

When Is a War Not a War?

2008-06-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Names and frames do so much to channel our ideas. Here guest poster Ron F. Rockwell analyzes one of the most important words in current thinking, WAR:

Some six decades ago my journalism professors pounded me and my classmates with the idea that a good news person must always use the right word for the situation. With this in mind, I am continually dismayed and embarrassed that present day media almost universally use the word war when referring to the situation in Iraq.

Indulge my explanation that along with my status as a practicing journalist, I was educated and functioned as a professional etymologist. Now I am also a retired navy officer and a historian. In all these capacities, I studied warfare, not just wars as listed and maybe elaborated in the books from which most historians teach and students learn. The difference is that warfare deals with the causes, including those in the human psyche, the propensities of society from the most basic family and extended-family groups to the most complex toward war, the repercussions and recovery procedures of war.

The situation in Iraq IS NOT, and NEVER HAS BEEN, a war. It began as an assault, morphed quickly into an invasion and within a matter of no more than a few weeks became an occupation, its status to this day. None of these terms has the political or romantic appeal of the more glamorous, seemingly more important and urgent, term ‘war.’

For one thing, as part of the definition, occupations are initiated and can be terminated unilaterally. During WW II, for example, the German invasion of Poland did not begin to be referred to as a prelude to war at least until the evacuation of Dunkirk and not as a WW II battle until well after the war ended.

Politicians and other advocates seeking justification and funding naturally will label their handiwork in the most glamorous and easily sold term they can. I also had pounded into me by my journalism profs that a function of media is to keep politicians and advocates honest by keeping readers (voters) informed accurately.

Acquired Learning Disabilities

2008-05-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

I worry that we humans are an endangered species. It isn't only global warming or nuclear proliferation but a combination of half a dozen things that could do us in.
We were endangered once before about 70,000 years ago, when our numbers went down to a few thousand. Whether this was because of a drought or a volcanic winter isn't known. This time around our endangerment is mainly due to our own thinking patterns, prejudices and ideologies.
You could call some of these bad mental habits Acquired Learning Disabilities or ALDs. For example Soundbite Syndrome involves arguing from brief narratives seen or heard out of context. In severe cases an individual can think only in 30-second soundbites. This problem is of course induced by the broadcast media.
In Literalism or Metaphor Deafness a person assumes that any text has only one interpretation, no matter how old it is or how often translated. Some individuals with this disability are overly practical. For instance in this morning's paper a letter to the editor takes an environmental columnist to task for calling water "sneaky." She meant that you never know what water will do underground especially in the porous rock formations that characterize my region. But he said she was "emotional" and "sentimental" because after all water doesn't have a personality.
People acquire History Amnesia from being exposed to dull and sanitized history in school, and the lack of historical context in the MSM. We all know what happens when you forget history--you have to repeat a loop like a film that has missed its sprockets.
In Non-America Blindness, those of us in the United States view the other 95% of the world's people in terms of their disasters, wars, tourist attractions, and whether they resist or conform to "American values" and America's leadership.
Want to add to the list?
---Coralie