Critical Thinking #1: What is Critical Thinking?

Promo code: PAKMAN

-Donate via Bitcoin: 15evMNUN1g4qdRxywbHFCKNfdCTjxtztfj

-Donate via Ethereum: 0xe3E6b538E1CD21D48Ff1Ddf2D744ea8B95Ba1930

-Donate via Litecoin: LhNVT9j5gQj8U1AbwLzwfoc5okDoiFn4Mt

-Call the 24/7 Voicemail Line: (219)-2DAVIDP

-Timely news is important! We upload new clips every day, 6-8 stories! Make sure to subscribe!

[suzannebennett]

Thank you for creating this mini-series. Critical thinking used to be taught in schools but has been suppressed over the last several decades. You are performing an important public service! :)

[EinSophistry]

I teach critical thinking, and one of the skills I really work on helping my students develop is the ability to reconstruct the arguments they're evaluating in a standardized "premise 1, premise 2, .... conclusion" form. This makes it much easier to check (1) Whether the premises, if true, really would support the conclusion, and (2) Whether any of the premises, and which ones, are open to challenge. It also helps prevent two debating parties from talking past or strawmanning each other if they can agree on a common argument construction.

[jpurple]

No, no, no. My beliefs are above any facts...

[guitartuba]

Critical thinking should be taught in school

[seeker.]

What's missing from this introduction to a course on epistemology? Inductive reasoning, and meta-ethics. I say everyone needs to act in the pursuit of some values and goals. What are a person's most basic values and goals to which the rest of his values and goals are subservient, as the means to their ends? How does one discover those basic values and goals? The way people answer these questions determines a lot about the rest of their epistemology. Most people take an at least partially subjective, arbitrary, or "faith-based" approach to these questions, as they don't see how they can be answered any other way. Then they will bend and distort the rest of their epistemology to justify the use of those arbitrary methods in ethics, which can distort their whole thinking. It doesn't help that politics seems to be the primary interest here, which epistemology is appealed to as the means of understanding, and politics is particularly closely related to ethics, so people's epistemological excuses for arbitrariness in ethics will have an especially big impact in politics. And a huge part of the objective means of answering meta-ethical questions (such as "What is a value?" and "What is the purpose of morality?" and "What is the relationship of values to objective reality?") is in inductive reasoning, something which is especially poorly understood, to the extent that it is understood at all by anyone, being a somewhat famously elusive philosophical problem. What induction is and how to do it properly are two very important epistemological questions. Not answering them will make objective thinking FAR more difficult.

It is also true that epistemology is only one half of the underlying problem in our difficulties with politics. Understanding epistemology can help you to think about politics more objectively, but as much as it is important for you to understand politics yourself, you are only one person, and politics involves not just your understanding, but the convictions of everyone in society. You can't hope to accomplish a political goal if you are the only one who sees how it is based in reality, and why it is important. Epistemology can also help you to persuade people, to reach consensus. But there is more to politics than consensus. Consensus is rare because it is usually difficult to achieve, and sometimes impossible. So, much of politics is about accepting differences, and knowing how to deal with people with whom you have a persistent disagreement. Even if you could teach the whole population of a country how to think properly, including lessons on inductive reasoning and meta-ethics, which is unlikely, you would still not have consensus on most political issues. To have a successful society, you would still need to practice *diplomatic negotiation*. I think that Pakman understands this point fairly well, but it is worth pointing out anyway.

[anubisdo]

Please advertise these videos or mention them in current videos. I just found them and they are GREAT.

[TheAoide]

This is an amazing thing. It’s so needed

[DerAua]

I'm a simple man. I see epistemology, I click!

[bunnie]

I’ve never understood why these things needed to be taught. As in I think they should be common knowledge at this point. But then again, so many people are incapable of it.

[Danzigx]

David Sir I'm 69 years old and I love your show! My grandson loves the Walmart gift cards I frequently send him 10 to 15 times a year.

[JeffRebornNow]

Thank you, David, for offering this series.

[moisesmariano]

Thank you for creating this mini-series!

[kenjikawakami]

Shouldn’t epistemology be at the top of the priority list for schools?

[CustomTies]

The vast majority of Europeans think like this automatically, its part of their environment, upbringing and education. Even when they don't agree with each other they can generally see the other persons point of view. In the US the vast majority are uneducated and seem to have utterly bizarre ideas about their own views and beliefs none of which stand up to any form of logic.

[Nonquack]

I have to commend you on this David. Im always critical of the number of anti- Trump videos on your channel. This looks like it's going to be an interesting miniseries that adds something new to the channel. Great idea.

[agentorangecb]

Wish i could give this multiple likes!! What a good concept

[markgreen]

Your mini-series on critical thinking will be extremely valuable to the Trumpanzees who watch your videos. When PT Barnum stated that there's a sucker born every minute, he knew that there were about 30% of the population who would either drop out of school or be subjected to home schooling by fundamentalist Christians and who would never learn critical thinking skills.

[bettyveronica]

Been watching/listening to David's show for a little over two years...and I find this now?! Better late than never.
🙂🧠

[Aritul]

Love this series. I learnt a lot. Thank you for producing it.

[bph]

This is awesome!! Wish more people would build critical thinking skills!