Does the content of the quote you include not lead you to think that I am not making anything like a strong claim?
Nothing did.
In fact, your highlighting that aspect of your position was what I liked most about your post. I'm just saying if you want top marks in my book, you'd have to do more. But--as we've been discussing--it's really up to you how much you care about 'top marks.' If you care enough, you'll do some research and come back better informed. If you don't, you'll not.
Up to you.
I wasn't presenting an argument, that was my whole point. I was merely noting something. It is tangential to my point to discuss in any detail, and that's one of the reasons I didn't, the other being that, as I said, I don't think there is a clear answer because of the limitations on getting one. I'm not going to go out and do study to determine the answer to something I was not even arguing, especially given these difficulties I have mentioned, and you rating it as someone degrading my responses seems utterly ridiculous. Just because I mention that I suspect something, doesn't in any way obligate me to research it. My opinion is open, I merely suspect.
I am curious to hear your evidence for this claim. The most up-to-date cognitive psychology (that I am aware of, anyway) indicates that the typical human mind is riddled with crippling cognitive biases that obstruct rational thought. Training in critical thinking consists first and foremost of holding in abeyance the ideas that first pop into one's head by instinct, because those are precisely the thoughts most likely to be wrong and in need of refinement.
so teaching good practice of using it can be done without indoctrination by presenting the position as an argument more than a fact and the instinctual part of it allows for critique.
The "instinctual part" is precisely the part that's wrong staggeringly often and in often subtle ways. A lot of cognitive traps that people fall into start right here.
That's the way I think people should be taught how to think (generally, circumstances can make this impractical enough to warrant abandoning it temporarily), where they are given sufficient room to decide for themselves whilst still presenting valuable models of thinking in a persuasive manner.
I'm all about letting people decide for themselves, but only after they've been equipped with the proper machinery for making decisions. And that decision-making machinery has to be bootstrapped in its own absence, for reasons of ontological circularity. One can't rightly decide whether or not to accept the criteria of right decision.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I am curious to hear your evidence for this claim. The most up-to-date cognitive psychology (that I am aware of, anyway) indicates that the typical human mind is riddled with crippling cognitive biases that obstruct rational thought. Training in critical thinking consists first and foremost of holding in abeyance the ideas that first pop into one's head by instinct, because those are precisely the thoughts most likely to be wrong and in need of refinement.
I didn't say we are instinctively good at it, but we do instinctively do it.
Yes, there is ontological circularity. My point was that critical thinking is a natural way of thinking, and that allows you to teach it, to enhance it, without indoctrination.
I'm all about letting people decide for themselves, but only after they've been equipped with the proper machinery for making decisions. And that decision-making machinery has to be bootstrapped in its own absence, for reasons of ontological circularity. One can't rightly decide whether or not to accept the criteria of right decision.
As long as some of the 'proper machinery' is instinctual, we've got something to work with. There is certainly problems in always maintaining an open teaching of critical thinking, and I don't expect, or think that anyone should, always maintain it. It's simply not practical, I agree. But the principle should be maintained, that is, only deviating when practically necessary and doing so carefully. I classify indoctrination as when the principle is not maintained, not simply when critical thinking isn't properly applied, because of this distinction.
I didn't say we are instinctively good at it, but we do instinctively do it. Yes, there is ontological circularity. My point was that critical thinking is a natural way of thinking, and that allows you to teach it, to enhance it, without indoctrination.
There's still a problem with what you're saying here, but I'm not entirely sure how to explain it. Let me put it this way: instinctive modes of thought can equally well underpin both rational belief systems and irrational ones.
As an example, consider the arguments of the theologian William Lane Craig. Without getting too specific and going off on a tangent, I can tell you that a significant portion of his arguments begin with the phrase "It seems intuitively reasonable that..." -- and he's usually absolutely right (about the "intuitively reasonable" part). But he's actually trying to indoctrinate his audience by slipping the "intuitively reasonable" proposition past the critical thinking process. A careful analysis of his arguments (of which you can find several on this very forum) always shows that the intuitively reasonable propositions he relies on are anywhere from suspect to outright false when subjected to a fully critical analysis.
So the point is this -- if William Lane Craig, the indoctrinator, can use the same instinctive thought processes in the name of indoctrination that you, the honest teacher, can use in the name of honing reasoning skills, then the instinctive processes were completely insufficient on their own. It's not just that they're a little flawed, or they're missing some pieces, or they're underdeveloped -- it's that they are utterly incapable of underwriting the distinction you want to create between that which is indoctrination and that which is not. On the other hand, critical, rational thinking is capable of making these distinctions. Therefore it is not a natural mode of thinking.
I don't know if that's clear or not, but it's the best way I can think to say it.
I didn't say we are instinctively good at it, but we do instinctively do it. Yes, there is ontological circularity. My point was that critical thinking is a natural way of thinking, and that allows you to teach it, to enhance it, without indoctrination.
There's still a problem with what you're saying here, but I'm not entirely sure how to explain it. Let me put it this way: instinctive modes of thought can equally well underpin both rational belief systems and irrational ones.
As an example, consider the arguments of the theologian William Lane Craig. Without getting too specific and going off on a tangent, I can tell you that a significant portion of his arguments begin with the phrase "It seems intuitively reasonable that..." -- and he's usually absolutely right (about the "intuitively reasonable" part). But he's actually trying to indoctrinate his audience by slipping the "intuitively reasonable" proposition past the critical thinking process. A careful analysis of his arguments (of which you can find several on this very forum) always shows that the intuitively reasonable propositions he relies on are anywhere from suspect to outright false when subjected to a fully critical analysis.
So the point is this -- if William Lane Craig, the indoctrinator, can use the same instinctive processes in the name of indoctrination that you, the honest teacher, can use in the name of honing reasoning skills, then the instinctive processes were completely insufficient on their own. It's not just that they're a little flawed, or they're missing some pieces, or they're underdeveloped -- it's that they are utterly incapable of underwriting the distinction you want to create between that which is indoctrination and that which is not. Therefore critical, rational thinking, which is capable of making these distinctions, is not a natural mode of thinking.
I don't know if that's clear or not, but it's the best way I can think to say it.
I agree with what you are saying. The difference is that proper critical thinking is highly intellectually defensible, Craig on the other hand is a weasel. What's relevant about the instinctual element of critical thinking is it allows a safety barrier against indoctrination, it's should never be used to justify what is being taught, it just makes teaching it properly, easier.
I don't think there is a clear answer because of the limitations on getting one. I'm not going to go out and do study to determine the answer
Right. You don't think there is an answer, and you're not going to check.
But, since I've already done my own literature search and gotten info I am satisfied with, I guess I shouldn't let your Argument from Ignorance bother me.
Right. You don't think there is an answer, and you're not going to check.
But, since I've already done my own literature search and gotten info I am satisfied with, I guess I shouldn't let your Argument from Ignorance bother me.
*sigh*
"I wasn't presenting an argument, that was my whole point."
"My opinion is open, I merely suspect."
How's that strawman going? Seriously, Taylor, how the actual f*** can you miss a point as clear as I'M NOT MAKING AN ARGUMENT, I'M NOT EVEN CONVINCED OF AN ANSWER. Because that's what I have been saying the whole time, since the original f***ing post where I mentioned it. You responded to StairC criticising him for criticising you for not justifying a claim by saying that it wasn't relevant to the point you were making and now you have just spent several posts doing something that seems far worse given I've repeatedly told you that I am not advocating a position, but you still attack it on the grounds of me being intellectual dishonest or something, completely tangential to the point and blatantly false because you are attacking a position I have said I do not hold but merely mentioned my considerations toward that position. It is quite possibly the purest form of horses**t to attack a position that somebody not only has said they aren't arguing but has also said they don't even hold. Your first few responses were reasonable, and I could see were you were coming from, so I responded making it clear the intention and nature of my comment but you seem to have ignored any semblance of knowing what the hell I am saying by repeatedly arguing that I am arguing from ignorance/not being willing enough to substantiate my beliefs when neither is true because,as I have said again and again, I am not arguing anything, I am not even convinced of a position. Are you going to argue now that I shouldn't have suspicions, even when those suspicions are not related to me forming a position? Seriously, there is nothing more to be said, you are fighting shadows.
Can we move on now please?
In fact, if by an indoctrinated belief one means "a belief accepted without critical thinking," then one could only ever be indoctrinated into thinking critically. You're not going to start thinking critically until you've been bootstrapped with the tools required to do so. This is just an effect of the ontological black hole at the center of all thought.
This is an interesting argument, but it runs into problems when held under a magnifying glass.
1) Even if this is true, it doesn't change whether the minimum possible amount of indoctrination is still a desirable end.
2) Even if this is true, it doesn't preclude the possibility of critical thinking being turned back on itself. You can examine whether the process of critical thinking produces good results or makes sense. Other forms of indoctrination specifically tell you that you shouldn't doubt or question them. This is the equivalent of using a temporary splint until you can get a cast ready. Then the splint comes off.
3) It's possible to apply critical thinking experimentally and to accept ideas for the sake of argument without accepting them wholesale. This argument presupposes complete belief is required before an idea can be applied. This isn't the case. You can explore the consequences of thinking critically before you accept the belief that it's a good idea. I assume that this is the belief you're talking about, because "critical thinking" isn't a belief anymore than "brown" is a belief. "Critical Thinking is good" is a belief though. If you mean something else, I apologize.
Example:
Person A: "It's a good method of decision-making to flip a coin and do whatever the outcome supports."
Person B: "Huh. Not sure I believe that. Let's see it in action."
Unless you believe that everyone automatically believes everything they're told until they get formal instruction in critical thinking, this type of scenario is a solid demonstration of how you can use a method and test it without fully believing it's a good idea.
4) Where is this definition that shows an indoctrinated belief is a, "belief accepted without critical thinking"? Here's the definition for indoctrination I found on dictionary.com. The "especially" part seems to hit with what we're talking about here. If we just go with the broader "to instruct" deal, there isn't much to talk about. I agree that you can't teach something without teaching it. Anyway, here's the definiton:
"to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view."
An indoctrinated belief would, grammatically, seem to be a belief induced via the process of indoctrination. If I tell you that I have proof life came on mars and you accept that before listening to my evidence, that isn't an indoctrinated belief even though you accepted it without critical thinking. If I tell you that I have a method of thinking that produces good results, and here's how it works... Not indoctrination under the full definition (including the "especially" clause).
I'd also say that definition is incomplete in terms of how the term is colloquially used, because usually indoctrination is associated strongly with attempting to undermine the subject's ability to doubt or critically think about the claims. But that just narrows it further from what we already have.
5) People can develop a process of critical thinking without an outside instructor. After all, someone had to originally. So either it's inherent (invalidating the argument) or it's not true that one can only ever be indoctrinated into critical thinking (invalidating the argument).
There's some other stuff, but those points seem solid for now.
At least you can leave religion if it no longer carries meaning for you. You can't really undo missing portions of your genitals.
Actually, you can. Foreskin can be restored without even reconstructive surgery. You can induce mitosis in the skin cells of the shaft simply with prolonged tugging on the skin. It's not fast (in the neighborhood of 5mm additional skin per month), but it is possible.
1) Even if this is true, it doesn't change whether the minimum possible amount of indoctrination is still a desirable end.
I'm happy to agree that things should be presented in such a way as to require the fewest number of unjustifiable assumptions. This is not contrary to the position I'm taking.
2) Even if this is true, it doesn't preclude the possibility of critical thinking being turned back on itself. You can examine whether the process of critical thinking produces good results or makes sense.
Correct. After you've learned rationality, you can see, using rationality, that rationality "produces good results." However, the bootstrapping has to be done in the absence of rationality. You can't know what a good result is, or what it means for something to make sense, until after you've accepted the methods.
Other forms of indoctrination specifically tell you that you shouldn't doubt or question them.
Some do, sure. But I think in most cases this is an exaggeration. Even William Lane Craig is willing to listen to doubts and questions.
3) It's possible to apply critical thinking experimentally and to accept ideas for the sake of argument without accepting them wholesale.
True, it's possible to do this. However, where did you get the idea of doing this from?
This argument presupposes complete belief is required before an idea can be applied.
Of course it doesn't. This simply has nothing to do with the argument at all. Yes, humans are generally innately capable of imagination and hypothesis -- what they aren't innately capable of is discerning which among multiple hypotheses is the true one. William Lane Craig (e.g.) can and does ask his audience to compare and contrast alternative hypotheses. He just happens to be able to make religious hypotheses look more appealing, and he fools lots of people this way.
The ability to consider different hypotheses doesn't magically confer on people the ability to engage in critical, rational thinking.
I assume that this is the belief you're talking about, because "critical thinking" isn't a belief anymore than "brown" is a belief. "Critical Thinking is good" is a belief though. If you mean something else, I apologize.
"Critical thinking" is a name for a process consisting of many parts. Some of those parts are beliefs. For instance, if you don't believe that all contradictions are false, then you're not able to participate in critical thinking. I'm speaking of these beliefs. I don't think "critical thinking is good" is one of the beliefs you need to start this process -- in fact, it would be circular. You might, however, need something like "not killing literally everyone is good."
Person A: "It's a good method of decision-making to flip a coin and do whatever the outcome supports."
Person B: "Huh. Not sure I believe that. Let's see it in action."
There are a lot of Person A's out there who will lose their entire life savings at the blackjack table because they believe in exactly that kind of decision making -- that they'll hit the big one if they just keep going. Person B's attitude is the result of training and education, and is not the natural state of human affairs.
Unless you believe that everyone automatically believes everything they're told until they get formal instruction in critical thinking,
4) Where is this definition that shows an indoctrinated belief is a, "belief accepted without critical thinking"? Here's the definition for indoctrination I found on dictionary.com. The "especially" part seems to hit with what we're talking about here. If we just go with the broader "to instruct" deal, there isn't much to talk about. I agree that you can't teach something without teaching it. Anyway, here's the definiton:
"to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view."
Semantics. In fact, this definition makes everything into indoctrination.
An indoctrinated belief would, grammatically, seem to be a belief induced via the process of indoctrination. If I tell you that I have proof life came on mars and you accept that before listening to my evidence, that isn't an indoctrinated belief even though you accepted it without critical thinking. If I tell you that I have a method of thinking that produces good results, and here's how it works... Not indoctrination under the full definition (including the "especially" clause).
What I'm interested in is the process by which the belief gets into the mind of the subject. If you introduce a post hoc condition that says that only "partisan or biased" beliefs can be the objects of indoctrination, regardless of the techniques by which you get people to believe them, then nothing you like or agree with is ever going to count as indoctrination, because we don't think things we like are partisan or biased. (Itself a bias.)
5) People can develop a process of critical thinking without an outside instructor. After all, someone had to originally. So either it's inherent (invalidating the argument) or it's not true that one can only ever be indoctrinated into critical thinking (invalidating the argument).
This is a bad argument. It reminds me of creationists debating about how the eye couldn't have evolved. "How did the eye get there?" asks the creationist. "You either have it or you don't, so some creature must have been the first to have an eye." Well, no. The eye as we know it today is the result of an evolutionary process that traced out a long chain of "proto-eyes." There was no one specific individual creature that had the first eye; it's more of a Sorites grain/heap thing than anything else. Same thing with rational thinking. The history of philosophy is strewn with people trying figure out how to do little pieces of this stuff, most of them failing. In fact, cognitive psychology only became a thing 60 or so years ago, and rational thinking has been radically transformed by its influence.
You're seeing the end-result of a process involving a lot of parts developed by a lot of people with a lot of failures in between. There wasn't one guy whose light bulb suddenly flicked from off to on. That's ridiculous.
Unfortunately I don't think it'd be feasible to go into your whole post. It would take forever to clarify all the individual points and so on. I'm going to try a different tactic that hopefully should resolve this on its own.
You seem to believe that it's impossible to evaluate whether something produces good results without instruction in critical thinking. Okay then. Mice, rats and more evaluate whether going down different paths or pushing a lever produces good results all the time in experiments. It's how animals in general get trained. You teach your dog that coming when you call produces a positive result (a treat) and so on.
When did they get formal instruction and indoctrination into a critical thinking belief system?
If mice and puppies can do it, so can humans. I'd hope. And if you can evaluate the results of a thing, however seemingly arbitrary (like a dog rolling over in response to a hand sign) as useful - then you can indeed apply the same evaluation process to critical thinking to examine its usefulness.
As a History Major I had to study the Torah by myself when I was in college. Had I received adequate education in the law earlier I would have excelled much more. Having a child now I find it mandatory to teach her historical facts and the beliefs of all religions so that she can be knowledgeable and also prevent her from living in a state of sin. Sharia is divine law and is not man made, to observe it is enlightenment and truth. I am currently studying Hinduism which has greatly influenced the "big 3" judaism/christianity/islam and remains to be the only polytheistic pantheon that is still in use.
All roads lead to damascus.
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I wasn't presenting an argument, that was my whole point. I was merely noting something. It is tangential to my point to discuss in any detail, and that's one of the reasons I didn't, the other being that, as I said, I don't think there is a clear answer because of the limitations on getting one. I'm not going to go out and do study to determine the answer to something I was not even arguing, especially given these difficulties I have mentioned, and you rating it as someone degrading my responses seems utterly ridiculous. Just because I mention that I suspect something, doesn't in any way obligate me to research it. My opinion is open, I merely suspect.
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I am curious to hear your evidence for this claim. The most up-to-date cognitive psychology (that I am aware of, anyway) indicates that the typical human mind is riddled with crippling cognitive biases that obstruct rational thought. Training in critical thinking consists first and foremost of holding in abeyance the ideas that first pop into one's head by instinct, because those are precisely the thoughts most likely to be wrong and in need of refinement.
The "instinctual part" is precisely the part that's wrong staggeringly often and in often subtle ways. A lot of cognitive traps that people fall into start right here.
I'm all about letting people decide for themselves, but only after they've been equipped with the proper machinery for making decisions. And that decision-making machinery has to be bootstrapped in its own absence, for reasons of ontological circularity. One can't rightly decide whether or not to accept the criteria of right decision.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I didn't say we are instinctively good at it, but we do instinctively do it.
Yes, there is ontological circularity. My point was that critical thinking is a natural way of thinking, and that allows you to teach it, to enhance it, without indoctrination.
As long as some of the 'proper machinery' is instinctual, we've got something to work with. There is certainly problems in always maintaining an open teaching of critical thinking, and I don't expect, or think that anyone should, always maintain it. It's simply not practical, I agree. But the principle should be maintained, that is, only deviating when practically necessary and doing so carefully. I classify indoctrination as when the principle is not maintained, not simply when critical thinking isn't properly applied, because of this distinction.
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#Defundthepolice
There's still a problem with what you're saying here, but I'm not entirely sure how to explain it. Let me put it this way: instinctive modes of thought can equally well underpin both rational belief systems and irrational ones.
As an example, consider the arguments of the theologian William Lane Craig. Without getting too specific and going off on a tangent, I can tell you that a significant portion of his arguments begin with the phrase "It seems intuitively reasonable that..." -- and he's usually absolutely right (about the "intuitively reasonable" part). But he's actually trying to indoctrinate his audience by slipping the "intuitively reasonable" proposition past the critical thinking process. A careful analysis of his arguments (of which you can find several on this very forum) always shows that the intuitively reasonable propositions he relies on are anywhere from suspect to outright false when subjected to a fully critical analysis.
So the point is this -- if William Lane Craig, the indoctrinator, can use the same instinctive thought processes in the name of indoctrination that you, the honest teacher, can use in the name of honing reasoning skills, then the instinctive processes were completely insufficient on their own. It's not just that they're a little flawed, or they're missing some pieces, or they're underdeveloped -- it's that they are utterly incapable of underwriting the distinction you want to create between that which is indoctrination and that which is not. On the other hand, critical, rational thinking is capable of making these distinctions. Therefore it is not a natural mode of thinking.
I don't know if that's clear or not, but it's the best way I can think to say it.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I agree with what you are saying. The difference is that proper critical thinking is highly intellectually defensible, Craig on the other hand is a weasel. What's relevant about the instinctual element of critical thinking is it allows a safety barrier against indoctrination, it's should never be used to justify what is being taught, it just makes teaching it properly, easier.
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But, since I've already done my own literature search and gotten info I am satisfied with, I guess I shouldn't let your Argument from Ignorance bother me.
*sigh*
"I wasn't presenting an argument, that was my whole point."
"My opinion is open, I merely suspect."
How's that strawman going? Seriously, Taylor, how the actual f*** can you miss a point as clear as I'M NOT MAKING AN ARGUMENT, I'M NOT EVEN CONVINCED OF AN ANSWER. Because that's what I have been saying the whole time, since the original f***ing post where I mentioned it. You responded to StairC criticising him for criticising you for not justifying a claim by saying that it wasn't relevant to the point you were making and now you have just spent several posts doing something that seems far worse given I've repeatedly told you that I am not advocating a position, but you still attack it on the grounds of me being intellectual dishonest or something, completely tangential to the point and blatantly false because you are attacking a position I have said I do not hold but merely mentioned my considerations toward that position. It is quite possibly the purest form of horses**t to attack a position that somebody not only has said they aren't arguing but has also said they don't even hold. Your first few responses were reasonable, and I could see were you were coming from, so I responded making it clear the intention and nature of my comment but you seem to have ignored any semblance of knowing what the hell I am saying by repeatedly arguing that I am arguing from ignorance/not being willing enough to substantiate my beliefs when neither is true because,as I have said again and again, I am not arguing anything, I am not even convinced of a position. Are you going to argue now that I shouldn't have suspicions, even when those suspicions are not related to me forming a position? Seriously, there is nothing more to be said, you are fighting shadows.
Can we move on now please?
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This is an interesting argument, but it runs into problems when held under a magnifying glass.
1) Even if this is true, it doesn't change whether the minimum possible amount of indoctrination is still a desirable end.
2) Even if this is true, it doesn't preclude the possibility of critical thinking being turned back on itself. You can examine whether the process of critical thinking produces good results or makes sense. Other forms of indoctrination specifically tell you that you shouldn't doubt or question them. This is the equivalent of using a temporary splint until you can get a cast ready. Then the splint comes off.
3) It's possible to apply critical thinking experimentally and to accept ideas for the sake of argument without accepting them wholesale. This argument presupposes complete belief is required before an idea can be applied. This isn't the case. You can explore the consequences of thinking critically before you accept the belief that it's a good idea. I assume that this is the belief you're talking about, because "critical thinking" isn't a belief anymore than "brown" is a belief. "Critical Thinking is good" is a belief though. If you mean something else, I apologize.
Example:
Person A: "It's a good method of decision-making to flip a coin and do whatever the outcome supports."
Person B: "Huh. Not sure I believe that. Let's see it in action."
Unless you believe that everyone automatically believes everything they're told until they get formal instruction in critical thinking, this type of scenario is a solid demonstration of how you can use a method and test it without fully believing it's a good idea.
4) Where is this definition that shows an indoctrinated belief is a, "belief accepted without critical thinking"? Here's the definition for indoctrination I found on dictionary.com. The "especially" part seems to hit with what we're talking about here. If we just go with the broader "to instruct" deal, there isn't much to talk about. I agree that you can't teach something without teaching it. Anyway, here's the definiton:
"to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view."
An indoctrinated belief would, grammatically, seem to be a belief induced via the process of indoctrination. If I tell you that I have proof life came on mars and you accept that before listening to my evidence, that isn't an indoctrinated belief even though you accepted it without critical thinking. If I tell you that I have a method of thinking that produces good results, and here's how it works... Not indoctrination under the full definition (including the "especially" clause).
I'd also say that definition is incomplete in terms of how the term is colloquially used, because usually indoctrination is associated strongly with attempting to undermine the subject's ability to doubt or critically think about the claims. But that just narrows it further from what we already have.
5) People can develop a process of critical thinking without an outside instructor. After all, someone had to originally. So either it's inherent (invalidating the argument) or it's not true that one can only ever be indoctrinated into critical thinking (invalidating the argument).
There's some other stuff, but those points seem solid for now.
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I'm happy to agree that things should be presented in such a way as to require the fewest number of unjustifiable assumptions. This is not contrary to the position I'm taking.
Correct. After you've learned rationality, you can see, using rationality, that rationality "produces good results." However, the bootstrapping has to be done in the absence of rationality. You can't know what a good result is, or what it means for something to make sense, until after you've accepted the methods.
Some do, sure. But I think in most cases this is an exaggeration. Even William Lane Craig is willing to listen to doubts and questions.
True, it's possible to do this. However, where did you get the idea of doing this from?
Of course it doesn't. This simply has nothing to do with the argument at all. Yes, humans are generally innately capable of imagination and hypothesis -- what they aren't innately capable of is discerning which among multiple hypotheses is the true one. William Lane Craig (e.g.) can and does ask his audience to compare and contrast alternative hypotheses. He just happens to be able to make religious hypotheses look more appealing, and he fools lots of people this way.
The ability to consider different hypotheses doesn't magically confer on people the ability to engage in critical, rational thinking.
"Critical thinking" is a name for a process consisting of many parts. Some of those parts are beliefs. For instance, if you don't believe that all contradictions are false, then you're not able to participate in critical thinking. I'm speaking of these beliefs. I don't think "critical thinking is good" is one of the beliefs you need to start this process -- in fact, it would be circular. You might, however, need something like "not killing literally everyone is good."
There are a lot of Person A's out there who will lose their entire life savings at the blackjack table because they believe in exactly that kind of decision making -- that they'll hit the big one if they just keep going. Person B's attitude is the result of training and education, and is not the natural state of human affairs.
They do.
Semantics. In fact, this definition makes everything into indoctrination.
What I'm interested in is the process by which the belief gets into the mind of the subject. If you introduce a post hoc condition that says that only "partisan or biased" beliefs can be the objects of indoctrination, regardless of the techniques by which you get people to believe them, then nothing you like or agree with is ever going to count as indoctrination, because we don't think things we like are partisan or biased. (Itself a bias.)
This is a bad argument. It reminds me of creationists debating about how the eye couldn't have evolved. "How did the eye get there?" asks the creationist. "You either have it or you don't, so some creature must have been the first to have an eye." Well, no. The eye as we know it today is the result of an evolutionary process that traced out a long chain of "proto-eyes." There was no one specific individual creature that had the first eye; it's more of a Sorites grain/heap thing than anything else. Same thing with rational thinking. The history of philosophy is strewn with people trying figure out how to do little pieces of this stuff, most of them failing. In fact, cognitive psychology only became a thing 60 or so years ago, and rational thinking has been radically transformed by its influence.
You're seeing the end-result of a process involving a lot of parts developed by a lot of people with a lot of failures in between. There wasn't one guy whose light bulb suddenly flicked from off to on. That's ridiculous.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
You seem to believe that it's impossible to evaluate whether something produces good results without instruction in critical thinking. Okay then. Mice, rats and more evaluate whether going down different paths or pushing a lever produces good results all the time in experiments. It's how animals in general get trained. You teach your dog that coming when you call produces a positive result (a treat) and so on.
When did they get formal instruction and indoctrination into a critical thinking belief system?
If mice and puppies can do it, so can humans. I'd hope. And if you can evaluate the results of a thing, however seemingly arbitrary (like a dog rolling over in response to a hand sign) as useful - then you can indeed apply the same evaluation process to critical thinking to examine its usefulness.
Done and done.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
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All roads lead to damascus.