Imagining New Ways to Live: The Art of Thinking Critically

The quality of your life is determined by the quality

of your thinking

Discuss: To what extent do you think this is true? Explain.

The quality of my personal and professional life is determined by the thinking I do in my personal and professional life.

The quality of ________ is determined by the thinking I do about ___________.

To significantly improve the way we live, both personally and professionally requires that we take our thinking seriously.

The greater command we have of our thinking the greater command we have of our lives.

What do you know about thinking?

What do you know about the connection between thinking and living a rational life?

What have you learned about how you think?

Did you ever study your thinking?

What information do you have, for example, about the intellectual processes that occur as your mind thinks?

What do you know about how to analyze, evaluate, or reconstruct your thinking?

Where does your thinking come from?

How much of it is of “good” quality?

How much of it is of “poor” quality?

To what extent are you in control of your thinking?

How do you control your thinking?

Do you know how to test it?

Do you have any conscious standards for determining when you are thinking well and when you are thinking poorly?

Have you ever discovered a significant problem in your thinking and then changed it by a conscious act of will?

If anyone asked you to teach them what you have learned thus far in your life, about thinking, how explicit would your answer be?

To truly take command of the thinking that controls the quality of our lives requires that we understand thinking at a deep level.

This can be done only through many years of committed practice.

We should place the development of our thinking at the very center of our lives.

When you understand critical thinking,

you can take any part of the theory of critical thinking and, following out the implications of that theory, apply it to your personal or professional life in order to live more productively or effectively.

In this session, we will focus on some parts of the theory of critical thinking, and test this idea.

Webster’s Dictionary of synonyms, 1951

The term ‘critical’

“when applied to persons who judge and to their judgments, not only may, but in very precise use does, imply an effort to see a thing clearly and truly so that not only the good in it may be distinguished from the bad and the perfect from the imperfect, but also that it as a whole may be fairly judged and valued.”

In pairs – using 25 Days Book

Silently read p. xviii. Then discuss as many of these problems in

thinking that you can - in the time allotted for this activity.

Discuss examples of problems in life that result from these problems in thinking.

Discuss examples of problems in your own life that result from these problems in thinking.

critical thinking: disciplined, self-guided thinking

aimed at living a rational life.

Thinking thatanalyzes thinking

Thinking thatassesses thinking

Thinking thatdevelops within itself

intellectual habits

thinking thatcombats its native

egocentricity

standardselementstraits

Focus on intellectual standards as theory applicable to personal and professional life

Working in pairs. Read together pp. 22-23 in the Questions Guide.

After reading each section, discuss how you can begin actively bringing these standards into your personal and professional life.

Deeply probing thinking using the intellectual standards Working in pairs Person A and Person B Person B is the questioner

How and where do you tend to use the most critical thinking in your life?

Focus primarily on clarifying thinking and probing for depth.

Switch roles

Using the Elements of Reasoning Working in pairs Analytic Thinking Guide Work through pp. 14-21, two pages at a time. Read silently each page and then discuss how you

can actively bring the questions on each page, or questions like these questions, into your personal and professional life.

Developing Intellectual Traits, Dispositions or Virtues

Work in pairs Using the How to Study and Learn Guide Silently read each section, then briefly

discuss

1. your understanding of that trait, and

2. your answers to the questions in that section.

5 minutes per trait

Understanding Innate Human Pathologies that Impede Intellectual Development

Humans often engage in irrational behavior. We fight. We start wars. We kill. We are self-destructive. We are petty and vindictive. We act out when we don’t get our way. We abuse our spouses. We neglect our children. We rationalize, project, and stereotype.

We act inconsistently, ignore relevant evidence, jump to conclusions, and say and believe things that don’t make good sense. We deceive ourselves in many ways.

We are our own worst enemy.

And yet we are capable of developing as rational persons, of living an ethical life, of contributing to the creation of a just and critical world.

There are two overlapping and interrelated motivating impulses behind human irrationality.

Human egocentrism:

the natural human tendency “to view everything within the world in relationship to oneself, to be self-centered” (Webster’s New World Dictionary)

Human sociocentrism:

most simply conceptualized as group egocentricity. To define sociocentricity, we might take Webster’s definition of egocentricity, substituting group for self.

Consider: Sociocentric thinking is the natural human tendency to view everything within the world in relationship to one’s group, to be group-centered.

Human sociocentrism:

most simply conceptualized as group egocentricity. To define sociocentricity, we might take Webster’s definition of egocentricity, substituting group for self.

Consider: Sociocentric thinking is the natural human tendency to view everything within the world in relationship to one’s group, to be group-centered.

Irrational/Rational selves within each of us

Jekyll and Hyde

Discuss with a partner

Can you think of any instances of egocentricity in human life?

Discuss examples of selfishness and narrow-mindedness.

Human egocentricity is best understood as

having two basic tendencies.

One is to see the world in self-serving terms, to constantly seek that which makes one feel good, that which one selfishly wants, at the expense of the rights and needs of others.

The second primary tendency of egocentricity is the desire to maintain its beliefs, to see its views as the correct views.

It is manifest in rigidity of thought.

And it views its irrational beliefs as rational.

Think for yourself:

Beginning to understand egocentrism

Think of the most self-centered person you know. This may be someone who is fundamentally selfish or arrogant. Describe the person’s behavior in detail. Based on the person’s behavior, how would you describe her/his thinking? What types of feelings does s/he display? What is the person motivated to do? To what extent does the person use other people to get what s/he wants? To what extent does the person exhibit sincere concern for the thoughts and feelings of others?

Discovering Prejudices in Your Beliefs

As egocentric thinkers we see ourselves as in possession of the truth. At the same time, we form many beliefs without the evidence to justify them. In other words, we form many prejudices (judgments before the evidence). If this is true, using our rational capacities we should be able to begin to unearth some of our prejudices. In an attempt to begin this process, complete the following statements:

1. One of the prejudices I have is …(think of generalizations you tend to make even though you don’t have the evidence to justify them. It can be about anything you please: about a religion, about atheists, about men, women, homosexuals, heterosexuals, etc…Put your prejudice in this form: All x are y, as in all women are ??, or all men are ??.)

2.  A more rational belief with which I should replace this faulty belief is…

3. If I use this new belief in my thinking, my behavior would change in the following ways…

Recognizing When Other’s EgocentrismCalls Out Your Egocentrism

Think of a situation you were recently in where you felt yourself becoming irrational in reaction to someone’s else’s irrationality. Complete these statements:

The situation was … I reacted in the situation by … In thinking through the situation, I realize that a more

rational way to respond to the other person would have been …

Cartoon – agree with me or be wrong

Passive aggressive

The Truth

Personal responsibility

Headache

A Guide for Improving Every Aspect of Your Life

Review the Table of Contents:

25 Days Book

Working in pairs

Take turns reading and paraphrasing the quotes on p. xi – 25 Days Book.

(State)To me this means… (Elaborate) In other words… (Give example from real life)

To exemplify…

A How-To List for Dysfunctional Living25 Days Book

Working in pairs, take turns reading the list on

p. xxii. After reading each one:

1. Discuss the extent to which this is a problem for you, and

2. Articulate the opposite of each dysfunctional behavior.

3. Then, for each “opposite” behavior, discuss how a person would live differently when engaged in this opposite behavior versus the behavior on the list.

Focus on two intellectual standards:

Clarity Relevance

25 Days Book

pp. 16-18 Be Clear

pp. 19-21 Be Relevant

Read and teach to one another in pairs

Be Fair25 Days Book pp. 10-12

Begin to think about the extent to which you are fair.

Silently read and then discuss these two pages. How can you use this “idea” in your life and your work?

Taking Initial Ownership of the Ideas Working in pairs, Person A takes pp. 44-46 – Don’t Be a Top

Dog Person B takes pp. 47-50 – Don’t Be an

Underdog Study for five minutes, taking notes.

Add a Powerful Idea Working alone, design your own powerful

idea, using the format in the 25 Days Book. Include all of the main parts in the formula:“Be on the lookout for”…Summary of the concept/problemStrategies for internalizing and using this

strategy.

In pairs discuss:

How can you use this book in developing as a thinker – how do you plan to use it?

How might you use it with students to foster transformation of their thinking?

Coming Up With Your Own PlanWrite out a plan for developing yourself as a

thinker. Include:

A one-year process for development

Monthly Strategies

Daily Strategies

Work through the logic of a question

Take an important question you would like to address, or have been trying to address in your personal or professional life.

Write out the logic of the question using the template on p. 22 in the analytic thinking guide.