Unit 2 critical thinking.docx

1、Unit 2 critical thinkingUnit 2 Critical Thinking 批判性思维 思辨Keynote Address July 23, 2007By Richard Paul, Director of Research and Professional Development at the Center for Critical Thinking,Chair of the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking The 27th Annual International Conference on C

2、ritical Thinking July 2326, 2007Berkeley, CAIn college education and in daily life, critical thinking is of vital importance. Richard Paul, in the following section, gives an enlightening discussion of the issue.What is critical thinking? There are many ways to define it. It is a system for opening

3、every existing system. It opens up business, chemistry, and sports like tennis and basketball. It opens up professional practice. It opens up ethnics and enables us to see through ideology. It enables us to put things into intellectual perspective它让我们以知识的眼光看待事物. A system that opens up systems is one

4、 way to think of critical thinking.开发各种系统的系统，这是看待批判性思维的一种方式。Here is the first definition of critical thinking. Or, critical thinking is thinking that analyzes thought分析思想, that assesses thought评估思想, and that transforms thought for the better升华思想的思维. Here is the second definition of critical thinking

5、.Theres a third way to talk about critical thinking overlapping and related to the other two.Its thinking about thinking while thinking in order to think better.Here is the third definition of critical thinking.Everyone thinks.We have no choice about that. But, not everybody thinks about their think

6、ing. And not everyone who thinks about their thinking thinks about it well. You can worry about your thinking.You can think badly of your thinking. You can be embarrassed by your thinking. You can focus on it in a dysfunctional way 你可以以功能失调的方式关注你的思维 that is not critical thinking. This morning, lets

7、think about it as a way of thinking that enables a thinker to think regularly at a higher level than most people are capable of thinking. In other words, critical thinking, as I am conceiving it, transforms thinking in two directions把思维导致两个方向. You think more systematically as a result. And you think

8、 more comprehensively as a result. And in thinking more comprehensively, you think at a higher level. Not because you are at a higher level as a person, but because you are able to put thinking into the background and see it = thinking in a larger, more comprehensive framework. For example, we needt

9、o discover the extent to which our thinking is bound by a culture受文化的约束. Cultures are good in many ways. But, to the extent that they lock us in to one way使我们局限于某一视角 of looking at the world, we need to transcend them我们需要超越文化. We need to think beyond them. Why is this important? Its important because

10、 we, as creatures, are deeply determined深深地受到（我们思维方式）的左右 in our life, and in our behavior, and in our character, and in other ways are determined by our thinking.We have no choice but to be governed by thought. The question is, do we govern the thought that governs us我们控制了那些控制我们的思想了吗? Ideas control

11、us.观念控制着我们 Do we control them?Ideas control our thinking. So in order to think critically, we need to get rid of ideas. Reversing the process so that were in the drivers seat 将这个过程倒过来，这样我们就坐在驾驶座上 so that were doing the thinking we need to do as well as we can is what critical thinking is about. Our

12、future as a species is dependent on whether we can develop the wherewithal方法 to raise our collective thinking激发我们的集体思维 so as to produce positive changes in societies across the world.The task before us collectively is a Herculean hkjulin大力神的，力大无比的，费力的one. The task of developing critical societies. T

13、he idea of a critical society dates back many hundred years, but it was very pointedly called for明确提出 in 1906, by William Graham Sumner, the great anthropologist, who emphasized in his seminal开创性的，种子的 book, Folkways,民俗论 that if a critical society existed that is, a society in which critical thinking

14、 was a major social value if such a society were to emerge, it would transform every dimension of life and practice. We are far from such a society, but we need to think about it. It needs to be part of our vision. The structure of this conference suggests some of the most important dimensions of th

15、is vision.If you think about the task of developing critical thinking, do not think that task is going to be accomplished easily without facing barriers to critical thought, amongst which are the following. Human egocentricity, our tendency to think with ourselves at the center of the world. Socioce

16、ntricity, our tendency to think within the confines of our social groups. Self-delusion, our tendency to create pictures of the world that deceive us and others. Narrow-mindedness, wherein we think of ourselves as broad, deep, and in touch with reality when, if only we understood, we would see ourse

17、lves as narrow and limited. Or, think of the barrier of fear. Fear undermines thinking, fear drives us to the lowest levels of thought, fear makes us defensive. It makes us little and petty. And then there is human insecurity. And, then human habits, our tendencies to go through the same old pattern

18、s of thought and behavior and be dominated by them; our inability to target our negative habits and replace themwith positive habits. Then there is routine: Ordinary routine.When you go back to your home environment, ordinary routine will click in and many of you will find that the things you intend

19、ed to do, the changes you intended to make, somehow are swallowed up in the ordinary routine of things. And connected to routine there is a huge obstacle: bureaucracy. We have created all kinds of levels of monitoring and testing and controlling and limiting and sanctioning, ordering, defining our b

20、ehavior and our thoughts. And, very often the bureaucrat forgets the purpose for which the institution exists. Then for us who are teaching, student resistance to critical thinking is an obstacle, because critical thinking asks those students to learn in a new way. And it is a way that is not comfor

21、table to most of them. Our thinking is limited by mistaken notions, by ignorance, by our limited knowledge, and by stubbornness, our activated ignorance. And finally, our resistance to doing the intellectual work necessary to critical thinking.We need hundreds of millions of people around the world

22、who have learned to take and internalize the foundations of critical thought.This can be done only person-by-person through a process, which we call intellectual work. Think of the Elements of Thought: Each element plays a crucial role in thought. What is our purpose? What questions are we raising?

23、What information are we using? What assumptions are we making? What data are we gathering? What data do we not have? Given the data that we have, what is it telling us? And, when we come to conclusions about the data, what do those conclusions imply? Within what point of view are we thinking? Do we

24、need to consider another point of view?Where can we get access to such points of view? Questions like this are questions that embody the elements in very important ways. They are crucial questions. But, are we in the habit of asking them?Theres a wonderful book on historical thinking by Carr. The ti

25、tle of the book is What is History? This book was written I think in the later 30s, or possibly 40s,of the last century and, in it, Carr argues that there is no longer such a thing as our history.There are only histories. To construct a history is to tell a story about the past, but, as Carr reminds

26、 us, there are infinite numbers of stories that could be told.Which story is important? The construction of history requires value judgments. It requires that we consider whose story needs to be told.And, when that story is told we need to critically consider what it is telling us; what is it teachi

27、ng us. In which case, then, if we understood Carr, we would realize that we are all historical thinkers.Were not all historians, but we all have a history. And the history can dominate us, or we can use it to our advantage. Our thinking produces it.Then what standards do you use to assess your think

28、ing and the thinking of others? Now Most will say, I dont know what youre talking about. What do you mean standards of assessment in thinking? Not many people respond with an answer like: “I use the standards of clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic and fairness.”Critical th

29、inking is not one isolated skill. It is not even a random list of skills. Its an orchestrated way of thinking that enables you to decompose your thinking at any moment. It encompasses basic structures integrated together into a whole.It assess thinking for its quality, for its clarity, for its accur

30、acy, for its precision,for its relevance.It raises thinking thereby to a higher quality.It makes it better. Critical thinking is a way of teaching, a way of learning, a way of being in the world in which the thinker self-monitors andself-assesses. The American Medical Association did a large study t

31、hat was published four years ago on unnecessary deaths due to the failure of medical practitioners to do what is called for in standard practice.How many Americans died unnecessarily because their medical practitioners their doctors and nurses did the wrong thing and people died as a result?Accordin

32、g to the American Medical Association, somewhere around 50,000 every year. Why are so many people dyingthrough malpractice? Theyre dying because of the way we have educated medical practitioners. They are not learning to think critically about what theyre doing.They are not learning to monitor their behavior accordingly.They are failing to follow basic good practice.They are oversimplifying, jumping to conclusions, making faulty inferences, misconceptualizing, etc. Some diagnosis is put into the record and then a patient is trapp