Good piece on critical thinking, very CR!

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A nice piece! Seven Habits.

1. Judge judiciously

2. Question the questionable

3. Chase challenges

4. Ascertain alternatives

6. Take various viewpoints

7. Sideline the self

 

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5 Responses to Good piece on critical thinking, very CR!

  1. From the link:

    > … abstain altogether from making any judgement, where there are insufficient grounds to decide one way or another

    But we never have “sufficient grounds”. That’s justificationism.

    > Third, when they do make a judgement, they will treat it as a matter of degree, or assign a level of confidence to it, avoiding treating any non-trivial issue as totally certain.

    I think this is completely wrong. If you disagree with my position on the matter, please criticize it. See also BoI.

    > they treat their judgements as provisional, i.e., made on the basis of the evidence and arguments available at the time

    This is standard non-Popperian epistemology. In Popperian epistemology we do not make judgments on the basis of anything.

    I think this is a lot of mistakes in just the first habit. (I also don’t think these things, even if they were correct, should be thought of as habits.) I don’t see how this piece is very CR or very good.

  2. Andrew Crawshaw says:

    “I think this is completely wrong. If you disagree with my position on the matter, please criticize it. See also BoI.”

    You have not stated your position in a form that is conducive to criticism. Furthermore, what page of BoI?

    “This is standard non-Popperian epistemology. In Popperian epistemology we do not make judgments on the basis of anything.”

    We obviously do make judgements: judgements on whether something has been criticised succesfully or not, these judgements are not conclusive or unquestionable, but they are judgements nonetheless.

    I think your conception of the word “judgment” here is an unfair reading of what the blogger is trying to say.

  3. Andrew Crawshaw says:

    I re-read what you said here: ““This is standard non-Popperian epistemology. In Popperian epistemology we do not make judgments on the basis of anything.”

    And I guess what you might be trying to say is not that we don’t make judgements, but that we don’t make it on the basis of anything, but I am not sure what you mean by this, because we do have some kind bases, like logic, or (what amounts to the same) reason or insight etc.

  4. > You have not stated your position in a form that is conducive to criticism.

    Yes I have. http://curi.us/1595-rationally-resolving-conflicts-of-ideas

    And specifically on this blog I stated a position very carefully and did my best to expose it to criticism: http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences (and the follow up: http://curi.us/1489-critical-preferences-and-strong-arguments )

    Regarding “basis”: what do you want? You’ve said what most people think without relating it to Popperian stuff. You haven’t used a question mark. What do you hope will happen now?

  5. Andrew Crawshaw says:

    “”Regarding “basis”: what do you want?”

    Can you be more explicit?

    “You’ve said what most people think without relating it to Popperian stuff. ”

    Okay.

    “You haven’t used a question mark. What do you hope will happen now?”

    I am not sure what your point is.

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