This may already be obvious to the rest of you, but I've been trying to sort out precisely how Siegel distinguishes reason/rationality from critical thinking. Here's a first stab at it.
A capacity for reason seems to be natural to humans, and perhaps in varying degrees to some other social animals. Presumably we developed this capacity because it was some use to us in meeting our needs. Therein lies a limitation of our natural reason, for our normal habit is to use it instrumentally to determine means for attaining some end, putting the tool down when we've got what we want. (As a description of how we typically use reason, this mirrors Peirce's Doubt/Belief Hypothesis).
The interesting thing about most tools, however, is that we can use them for many things other than their original purpose. In the case of reason, Socrates (among many others) discovered that we can turn it back on itself to inquire whether the ends we seek are good, not just whether we are pursuing them effectively. With this discovery the non-moral, merely calculative aspect of reason is transformed into a normative quest, both for knowledge and for goodness -- possibly what Hegel means when he describes Socrates as the inventor of morality.
We might properly call this quest critical thinking, and so understood it is clear why it must have a characterological ("critical spirit") component in addition to the skill elements. It is also clear both why critical thinking as such is teachable (where bare reason is a pre-existing ability that we can only refine through instruction), and why teaching it is a difficult and delicate business, as is any instruction that seeks to change the habits and character of learners as well as the contents of their cognitive minds.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Explains also the common resistance to CT: no one likes his/her bad habits and faulty dispositions put on display.
I like your suggestion that reason, as a tool, has the power of reflection and judgment of means, ends, and the 'good'. This might suggest that the “virtue” of reason is to actualize our capacity for empathy, or “goodness”. I am hopeful that by nature all persons are good, and that we strive to understand what that means through the development and use of reason.
I’m reminded of Book I of Plato’s Republic (352-354), where Socrates is inquiring as to how one ought to live, and whether just persons also live better and happier than unjust persons.
Yes, and though we all perhaps want it to be the case that justice it it's own reward, and perhaps ought (as a matter of heuristic fiction and self-fulfilling prophecy) live as though it were, Socrates does not apparently succeed in showing that it is the case.
Post a Comment