Critical Thinking as Discourse

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Abstract

Less than it is an individual ability or skill, critical thinking is a dialogic practice people engage in and commit to, initially interactively and then in interiorized form with the other only implicit. An argument depends for its meaning on how others respond. In advancing arguments, well-practiced thinkers anticipate their defeasibility as a consequence of others’ objections, in addition to envisioning their own potential rebuttals. Whether in external or interiorized form, the dialogic process creates something new, while itself undergoing development. This perspective may be useful in sharpening the definition of the construct of critical thinking and in so doing help to bring together the largely separate strands of work examining it as a theoretical construct, a measurable skill, and an educational objective. Implications for education follow. How might critical thinking as a shared practice be engaged within educational settings in ways that will best support its development? One step is to privilege frequent practice of direct peer-to-peer discourse. A second is to take advantage of the leveraging power of dialogue as a bridge to individual argument – one affording students’ argumentative writing a well-envisioned audience and purpose. Illustrations of this bridging power are presented. Finally, implications for assessment of critical thinking are noted and a case made for the value of commitment to a high standard of critical thinking as a shared and interactive practice.

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Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory.

Hugo Mercier, Dan Sperber (2011)

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.