what is critical thinking important to philosophical inquiry

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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• The Nature of Critical Thinking: An Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities , by Robert H. Ennis

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Philosophy: What and Why?

Find a job in philosophy, what is philosophy.

Philosophy is the systematic and critical study of fundamental questions that arise both in everyday life and through the practice of other disciplines. Some of these questions concern the nature of  reality : Is there an external world? What is the relationship between the physical and the mental? Does God exist? Others concern our nature as rational, purposive, and social beings: Do we act freely? Where do our moral obligations come from? How do we construct just political states? Others concern the nature and extent of our knowledge: What is it to know something rather than merely believe it? Does all of our knowledge come from sensory experience? Are there limits to our knowledge? And still others concern the foundations and implications of other disciplines: What is a scientific explanation? What sort of knowledge of the world does science provide? Do scientific theories, such as evolutionary theory, or quantum mechanics, compel us to modify our basic philosophical understanding of, and approach to, reality? What makes an object a work of art? Are aesthetic value judgments objective? And so on.

The aim in Philosophy is not to master a body of facts, so much as think clearly and sharply through any set of facts. Towards that end, philosophy students are trained to read critically, analyze and assess arguments, discern hidden assumptions, construct logically tight arguments, and express themselves clearly and precisely in both speech and writing.

Here are descriptions of some of the main areas of philosophy:

Epistemology studies questions about knowledge and rational belief.  Traditional questions include the following: How can we know that the ordinary physical objects around us are real (as opposed to dreamed, or hallucinated, as in the Matrix)?  What are the factors that determine whether a belief is rational or irrational?  What is the difference between knowing something and just believing it?  (Part of the answer is that you can have false beliefs, but you can only know things that are true.  But that’s not the whole answer—after all, you might believe something true on the basis of a lucky guess, and that wouldn’t be knowledge!)   Some other questions that have recently been the subject of lively debate in epistemology include: Can two people with exactly the same evidence be completely rational in holding opposite beliefs?  Does whether I know something depend on how much practical risk I would face if I believed falsely?  Can I rationally maintain confident beliefs about matters on which I know that others, who are seemingly every bit as intelligent, well-informed, unbiased and diligent as I am, have come to opposite conclusions?

Metaphysics is the study of what the world is like—or (some would say) what reality consists in. Metaphysical questions can take several forms. They can be questions about what exists (questions of ontology); they can be questions what is fundamental (as opposed to derivative); and they can be questions about what is an objective feature of the world (as opposed to a mere consequence the way in which creatures like us happen to interact with that world). Questions that are central to the study of metaphysics include questions about the nature of objects, persons, time, space, causation, laws of nature, and modality. The rigorous study of these questions has often led metaphysicians to make surprising claims. Plato thought that alongside the observable, concrete world there was a realm of eternal, unchanging abstract entities like Goodness, Beauty, and Justice. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz claimed that the world was composed of tiny indivisible souls, called monads. Even today contemporary metaphysicians have been known to doubt the existence of ordinary objects, to deny the possibility of free will, and to argue that our world is just one of a plurality of worlds.

Logic is the study of the validity of patterns of inference. Logic is not a branch of psychology: It does not concern how people actually reason or which kinds of reasoning they find intuitively compelling. Rather, logic concerns the question of when a claim is conclusively supported by other claims. For instance, the inference from the claims “it is raining” and “if it is raining then the streets are wet” to the claim “the streets are wet” is logically valid – the premises conclusively support the conclusion. The validity of this specific inference, and of other inferences of the same form, is tied to the nature of the concept “if … then”. More generally, the notion of logical validity is closely connected to the nature of concepts such as “and”, “or”, “not”, “if … then”, “all”, and “some”. In studying the notion of logical validity, logicians have developed symbolic languages. These enable us to state claims clearly and precisely, and to investigate the exact structure of an argument. These languages have turned out to be useful within philosophy and other disciplines, including mathematics and computer science. Some of the questions about logic studied by members of the philosophy department include: Given that logic is not an empirical science, how can we have knowledge of basic logical truths? What is the connection between logic and rationality? Can mathematics be reduced to logic? Should we revise logic to accommodate vague or imprecise language? Should we revise logic to answer the liar paradox and other paradoxes concerning truth? 

Political philosophy is the philosophical study of concepts and values associated with political matters. For one example, is there any moral obligation to do what the law says just because the law says so, and if so on what grounds? Many have said we consent to obey. Did you consent to obey the laws? Can one consent without realizing it? Are there other grounds for an obligation to obey the law? Another central question is what would count as a just distribution of all the wealth and opportunity that is made possible by living in a political community? Is inequality in wealth or income unjust? Much existing economic inequality is a result of different talents, different childhood opportunities, different gender, or just different geographical location. What might justify inequalities that are owed simply to bad luck? Some say that inequality can provide incentives to produce or innovate more, which might benefit everyone. Others say that many goods belong to individuals before the law enters in, and that people may exchange them as they please even if this results in some having more than others. So (a third question), what does it mean for something to be yours, and what makes it yours?

The Philosophy of Language is devoted to the study of questions concerned with meaning and communication. Such questions range from ones that interact closely with linguistic theory to questions that are more akin to those raised in the study of literature. Very large questions include: What is linguistic meaning? How is the meaning of linguistic performances similar to and different from the meanings of, say, gestures or signals? What is the relationship between language and thought? Is thought more fundamental than language? Or is there some sense in which only creatures that can speak can think? To what extent does the social environment affect the meaning and use of language? Other questions focus on the communicative aspect of language, such as: What is it to understand what someone else has said? What is it to assert something? How is assertion related to knowledge and belief? And how is it that we can gain knowledge from others through language? Yet other questions focus on specific features of the languages we speak, for example: What is it a name to be a name of a particular thing? What's the relationship between the meanings of words and the meanings of sentences? Is there an important difference between literal and figurative uses of language? What is metaphor? And how does it work?

Ethics is the study of what we ought to do and what sorts of people we ought to be. Ethicists theorize about what makes acts right and wrong and what makes outcomes good and bad, and also about which motivations and traits of character we should admire and cultivate. Some other questions that ethicists try to answer are closely related to the central ones. They include: What does it mean to act freely? Under what conditions are we responsible for our good and bad acts? Are moral claims true and false, like ordinary descriptive claims about our world, and if they are what makes them so?

The History of Philosophy plays a special role in the study of philosophy. Like every other intellectual discipline, philosophy has of course a history.  However, in the case of philosophy an understanding of its history - from its ancient and medieval beginnings through the early modern period (the 17th and 18th centuries) and into more recent times - forms a vital part of the very enterprise of philosophy, whether in metaphysics and epistemology or in ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy.  To study the great philosophical works of the past is to learn about the origins and presuppositions of many of the problems that occupy philosophy today.  It is also to discover and to come to appreciate different ways of dealing with these problems, different conceptions of what the fundamental problems of philosophy are, and indeed different ways of doing philosophy altogether.  And it is also the study of works—from Plato and Aristotle, through Kant and Mill and more recent writers—that have shaped much of Western culture far beyond academic philosophy. Many of the most creative philosophers working today have also written on various topics in the history of philosophy and have found their inspiration in great figures of the past. 

Why Study Philosophy?

This question may be understood in two ways: Why would one engage in the particular intellectual activities that constitute philosophical inquiry? And how might the study of philosophy affect my future career prospects?

Philosophy as intellectual activity may have a number of motivations:

• Intellectual curiosity: philosophy is essentially a  reflective-critical inquiry  motivated by a sense of intellectual “wonder.” What is the world like? Why is it this way, rather than another? Who am I? Why am I here?
• Interest in cultural and intellectual history: as a discipline, philosophy pays a great deal of attention to its history, and to the broader cultural and intellectual context in which this history unfolds.
• Sharpening thinking skills: the study of philosophy is especially well suited to the development of a variety of intellectual skills involved in the analysis of concepts, the critique of ideas, the conduct of sound reasoning and argumentation; it is important to emphasize that philosophical inquiry also fosters intellectual creativity (developing new concepts, or new approaches to problems, identifying new problems, and so on).
• Sharpening writing skills: the writing of philosophy is especially rigorous

Philosophy might affect future career prospects in a number of ways:

• Some philosophy concentrators go on to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy. Most of those become professors of philosophy, which means that their professional lives are devoted to research and teaching in philosophy.
• A philosophy concentration is not limiting: in fact, the skills it develops and sharpens are transferable to a wide variety of professional activities. Obvious examples include the application of reasoning and argumentation skills to the practice of law; less obvious examples include the application of analytical and critical skills to journalism, investment banking, writing, publishing, and so on; even less obvious examples include putting one’s philosophical education to work in business entrepreneurship, political and social activism, and even creative arts.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The role of philosophical inquiry in helping students engage in learning.

• College of Foreign Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

Studies have characterized high school students as bored, alienated, and disconnected with their class and the learning process. In order to address this problem to improve student learning engagement, this study explores the impact of philosophical inquiry (PI) on the development of adolescents’ academic engagement and adds to the scholarly research on Philosophy for Children (P4C). In determining an appropriate and holistic approach to investigating students’ learning engagement and motivation from the perspective of psychology, this study involves multiple forms of data collection, specifically including surveys, student work, focus group interviews, classroom discussions, and reflective notes. Applying a qualitative method, this multiple case study developed a deeper understanding of the classroom contexts, conditions, discourses, tools, and practices that promote positive adolescent learning experiences. The study developed a conceptual framework of student academic engagement in a PI class and summarized reasons why the participants engaged in learning. First, students believed that maintaining a safe and positive classroom environment is a fundamental condition for learning. Second, they reported that asking questions, sharing ideas, listening attentively, thinking deeply, and making connections are the manifestations of an engaging classroom. Third, students reported that they transcended their learning experiences by living a new philosophy that was acquired in the process of the community of inquiry. The study found that PI enhanced social inclusion and active participation of the participant in the learning process.

Introduction

Philosophical inquiry (PI), or the practice of “thinking together” and “thinking about thinking together,” is an educational approach that originates from philosophical pragmatism. It upholds that knowing is not merely an acquisition of knowledge that is external to the knower, but arises from a community of inquiry that students engage with and construct together. This pedagogical approach involves logical questioning and broad discussions among students and their teachers. The teacher is the students’ coparticipant. In the process of constructive dialog, students and their teacher clarify thinking, raise questions, record discussions, explore meanings, listen carefully, and respond to the ideas of others respectfully and non-judgmentally ( Millett and Tapper, 2011 ). Considering the benefits of PI, the Hawai‘i State Department of Education developed a standards-based social studies course called PI that helps students understand and gain knowledge in transforming what they learn into daily practice and problem solving. In this PI course, students will build an intellectually safe place ( Jackson, 2001 ) where students and teachers use dialog, gentle Socratic inquiry, responsible thinking, and empathy to examine questions and issues that arise from their genuine wonderings about the study of history, psychology, contemporary society, economics, political science, geography, and social interaction. During the inquiry, students learn tools for thinking philosophically, critically, and ethically across the wide range of interdisciplinary topics and issues introduced in each area of scholarship ( Hawaii public schools course description catalog, 2019 ).

The PI course is grounded in the Philosophy for Children Hawaii (p4cHI) approach to education and helps students and teachers to create a more thoughtful, compassionate, and ethical educational experience. p4cHI is an outgrowth and unique expression of Matthew Lipman’s (1988 , 2003 ) original Philosophy for Children (P4C) movement. p4cHI is an innovative approach to education that transforms the schooling experience by engaging students in intellectually safe communities of inquiry where students and teachers continue to develop their ability to think for themselves in responsible ways ( p4cHI website, 2020 ). p4cHI has now become the namesake of the educational movement associated with doing philosophy with K-12 and university students in the Hawaiian islands ( Miller, 2013 ). The PI course was piloted in the Hawaii State Department of Education (HI DOE) at Kailua High School (KHS) in the fall of 2013. This research will examine the effects of the PI course on students’ learning engagement.

Research Purpose

The purpose of this qualitative research is to explore how a PI course that utilizes p4cHI educational approach featuring a community of inquiry, philosophical thinking, and reflection contributes to adolescents’ engagement to learning. It is hoped that the theoretical and academic engagement frameworks developed from this project will be able to assist educators to develop curriculum and pedagogy, and classroom practices and learning environments that foster increased academic engagement and intrinsic motivation in a social studies classroom and beyond.

Significance of the Study

Academic engagement decreases significantly from the early grades of elementary to high school. One reason for disengagement is that adolescents do not fully appreciate the value of academic achievement and successful schooling experiences ( Eccles et al., 1998 ; Marks, 2000 ). Many high school students abandon their sense of wonder when they step into their history, psychology, civics, or philosophy classrooms. They often stop asking questions, make fewer connections with their prior learning and personal experiences, and fail to find meaning. Although teachers work extraordinarily hard to provide their students with the practical uses and meaningfulness of their lessons, and use various teaching strategies to motivate and engage their students to participate in class activities, young students still tune out and disengage from their studies ( Toshalis and Nakkula, 2012 ). Figuring out what motivates and engages high school students is a critical question that needs to be addressed.

Although there has been a growing awareness of the significance of adolescents’ engagement in education, there has been little scholarship documenting p4cHI or PI’s effects on student learning engagement and motivation. To fill the void, this research examines how the PI course and p4cHI approach to education promote involvement of economically disadvantaged youth in academic engagement.

Adolescence is a critical psychological stage between childhood and adulthood that deserves particular attention. The onset of adolescence is a time of rapid physical growth, sexual maturation, and social and emotional changes, and it also implies a wide range of behavioral and emotional health problems. Pubertal development and brain maturation shape adolescent development and presumably later behavior ( Erikson, 1963 ; Board of Children Youth and Families, 2004 ; Forbes and Dahl, 2010 ). This work will extend adolescent research to students’ academic engagement in the association of PI. The investigation and description of various factors that contribute to adolescents’ academic engagement in the PI course from the perspective of students themselves will provide educators, researchers, and policy makers with important insights into the practicalities of PI course design, revision, and implementation, especially in regard of the complex educational and psychological development of adolescents.

Research Questions

The major research question driving this study is: In what ways does the PI course influence high school students’ learning engagement? Do students feel more engaged in their learning during and after taking the PI course? If so, what reasons for this do they report?

Theoretical Framework

Vygotskian and Deweyan educational theories are used to support this study. It informs the research questions, methodology, and data analysis of this study. Over the last 30 years, research on p4cHI has been viewed through a variety of theoretical perspectives: multicultural educational theory, social constructivism learning theories, learner-centered ideology, identity exploration theories ( Makaiau, 2010 , 2013 ), constructive grounded theory ( Miller, 2013 ), social cognitive theory, community of inquiry theory ( Jones, 2012 ), and Deweyan and Vygotskyian theories ( Bleazby, 2007 ; Makaiau and Lukey, 2013 ). Those previous studies provide the rationale for the selection of Dewey’s theory of education and Vygotsky’s social constructivism theory for this study.

Graham et al. (2007) argued, “the idea that students must be actively engaged in the learning process in order for it to be effective is not new. The roots for active learning reach back in the literature to John Dewey” (p. 233). In the 1930s, Dewey proposed the radical transformation of schools that contributed to the creation of career and technical education courses in order to promote student engagement ( Fletcher, 2020 ). According to Dewey, first, academic achievement is positively influenced by the amount of active and collaborative participation in the learning process ( Dewey, 1997 ; Coates, 2007 ). Second, authentic interest can be best achieved when teachers are able to find the students preferences, needs, and skills in the subject matter. The planning and teaching, studies, and topics included in the course of study should enrich students’ lives and consider their direct interest . Third, one way to reinvigorate schooling is to make more use of students’ out-of-school experiences , as they are more likely to encourage reflection. Engagement occurs when students engage in activities related to their interests and competence ( Lam, 2013 ).

In the context of the KHS PI social studies curriculum, students actively engage in their discussion and take the major responsibility for their learning. Learning by doing, or the incorporation of activity and experience in the classrooms, is at the heart of PI class. PI students can “grow in their own natural self-actualizing ways” rather than get trained by imposed knowledge and skills ( Schiro, 2008 , p. 98). The goals of the PI class are to integrate students’ experiences, consider their interests, support active participation, deepen their thinking, and encourage multiple opinions, which are closely connected with Dewey’s educational philosophy.

Vygotsky’s (1962) sociocultural theory also develops a construct of academic engagement in classrooms. First, academic engagement requires intellectual and affective involvement . Students’ cognitive development occurs with social, emotional, and motivational investment during activities. Second, a social constructivist classroom is a highly literate place where students and teachers can exchange ideas effectively. Third, the activities designed in the classrooms, no matter if it is reading or writing, are shared socially ( Palincsar, 1998 ). When students participate in challenging activities, the more capable peers and teachers will guide and support the learners’ learning and thinking. Social interaction thus plays a fundamental and inseparable role in the process of cognitive development ( Oakes and Lipton, 1999 ). Fourth, since environmental factors affect students’ learning experiences, it is necessary to create a safe and supportive environment in the classroom.

The main Vygotskian theory at work in the PI classroom is the idea that a student’s cultural development appears in two levels. First, they raise their own questions in the individual level. Then, they vote and discuss the questions on the social level. Lastly, they internalize the new knowledge and reconstruct their understandings from interpsychological to intrapsychological level ( Cam, 2006 ). As Philip Cam (2006) writes, “it would be a natural extension of Vygotskian psychology to suggest that children come to think for themselves through the internalization of social practices” (p. 45). In conclusion, Dewey and Vygotsky’s theories provide scholars and practitioners with a common language and a frame of references for understanding this research.

Literature Review

Over 30 years of U.S. and international research, including recent studies done in Hawaii, indicate that the use of PI with a group of students who are supported by trusted facilitators and peers to interact respectfully and critically as they explore intellectually challenging questions, known as an intellectually safe community of inquiry, sharpens students’ abilities to “think for themselves” ( Lipman et al., 1980 , p.53). This activity also positively affects students’ cognitive and social–affective abilities, engagement, moral dispositions, and self-confidence ( Lukey, 2004 ; Jones, 2012 ; Toyoda, 2012 ; Yos, 2012 ; Makaiau, 2013 ). Even so, there has been very little written about the intersection between students’ academic engagement and p4cHI in the education of adolescents at a Hawaii public high school. The following section will introduce the meaning of engagement and demonstrate p4cHI researches on adolescents’ academic engagement.

Academic Engagement

Engagement is “the student’s psychological investment in and effort directed toward learning, understanding, or mastering the knowledge, skills, or crafts that academic work is intended to promote.” Students show engagement by seeking out activities and displaying their curiosity, a desire to learn, and positive emotional responses to the process of learning ( Newmann, 1992 ). Authentic, meaningful engagement, though observable, is an internal action. Zyngier (2008) reviews the psychological definition of engagement as a combination of student behaviors, emotions, and cognitive abilities: Psychological definitions are commonly a mix of (i) behavioral aspects of the student as doing the work, following the rules, persisting, and participating, while (ii) the emotional aspects center interest, value, and feelings (negative and positive) toward the school, the class, and the teacher, and (iii) cognitive engagement (psychological investment) includes motivation, effort, and strategy use of students. These views see student engagement as something students do and that teachers can organize for them (p. 1769).

This means that in addition to being interested in the academic needs of the students, teachers are deeply concerned with the social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physical state of learners. Teachers are acutely aware of the emotional aspects of learning ( Goleman, 1995 ) and design classroom practices that cultivate the making of meaningful relationships. Learner-centered teachers view building relationships of care and trust as a prerequisite to academic engagement ( Bluestein, 2001 ), including higher levels of cognitive thinking ( Noddings, 1992 , 2002 ). However, it is often believed that schools tend to be impersonal spaces that fail to individually and personally engage students ( Kohn, 2004 ). Often, they become “institutions of isolation” ( Delpit, 2006 , p. 179) that discourage individual development.

The National Research Council published a comprehensive study concerning the lack of engagement in today’s public high schools. Many of the students who are retained at schools attend irregularly, exert modest effort on schoolwork, and learn little. This situation can be changed if schools “help the young make sense of life, of experience, and of an unknowable future” ( Brady, 2006 , p.47). Students are more likely to show both short- and long-term commitment to learning if the class activities are consistently personally relevant, enjoyable, and appropriately challenging ( Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993 ; Csikszentmihalyi and Schneider, 2000 ). When students learn subjects that they are interested in and have autonomy in making choices, they tend to perform better ( Pintrick and Schunk, 2002 ; Stipek, 2002 ). If students pursue an activity out of genuine interest, their commitment will be both more persistent and more successful than those who do not ( Armes, 1992 ). Research has shown that the more educators give their students choice, control, challenge, and opportunities for collaboration, the more their motivation and engagement are likely to rise ( Toshalis and Nakkula, 2012 ).

Three empirical studies on adolescents’ learning, motivation, and reaction to the p4cHI were conducted in the past 10 years. Miller’s (2013) research showed that an overwhelming majority of KHS students thought school had no meaningful connection to their lives outside of school. They believed that school was boring and disconnected, but it is necessary to go to college and “make a lot of money.” While Miller integrated p4cHI in his English curriculum, students started to personally construct meaning through the practice and improvement of their thinking and reasoning. They were able to discuss and weigh ideas about philosophical issues and contents beyond the English texts. More significantly, the students not only recognized their intellectual growth but also took ownership of their learning process. Jones’ (2012) study found that the implementation of a student-centered curriculum that utilizes the p4cHI approach improved student cognitive, social, and emotional engagement, especially student’s perception of self as a learner. The findings of this study revealed that there is a strong connection between the level of student personal engagement and student academic and personal success. From 2005 to 2007, Makaiau (2010) worked together with the Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa to conduct a large−scale qualitative study that involved 89 KHS ethnic studies students. The study found that applying PI in the course, students not only appeared to grow academically but also personally and interpersonally. Academically, the students developed their abilities to construct philosophical questions, gather relevant information for an inquiry from a variety of sources, analyze data, construct a well−reasoned thesis, write, reflect, and participate in a philosophical community of inquiry.

Philosophy for Children Hawaii (p4cHI)

Since the PI course is grounded in the theory and practice of P4C, it is important to introduce the conception of P4C in this part.

Philosophy for Children began around 1969 when Matthew Lipman (1993 , 2003) , a Columbia University philosophy professor, became disenchanted with the educational system. He observed that children did not think as well as they could or should in a democratic society. He observed and was concerned that schools encouraged children to have a negative view of their own intellectual abilities. To address these issues, Lipman created a curriculum that incorporated the skills of logic and reasoning found in the practice of philosophy to improve students’ thinking in the K–12 setting. In an effort to extend Lipman’s original curriculum and vision to a variety of geocultural contexts, a number of P4C Centers have been established worldwide. The Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education is one of them, which was located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and was established by the initiator of p4cHI movement, Dr. Thomas Jackson (2012 , 2013) . Jackson and his colleagues are cultivating a K–12 philosophical schooling experience that encourages students to think collaboratively about meaningful topics and questions that arise from their interests, experiences, and learning contexts.

Jackson’s p4cHI has been adapted and expanded Lipman’s original P4C to serve the various populations in Hawaiian Islands. It provided a more flexible approach than Lipman’s P4C, whose P4C emphasized to incorporate the skills of logic and reasoning found in the practice of philosophy to improve students’ thinking ( Miller, 2013 ). Jackson (2017) branched his viewpoints of bringing the primal wonderment of philosophy from opportunities to move away from Lipman’s novel and teacher manuals to put more emphasis on the building of an intellectually safe community influenced by the Aloha culture, the “little p” philosophy , the activity of coinquiry between the teacher and students, the context and content sensitive ( Makaiau, 2010 ) learning experiences, and self-corrective reflection . In Jackson’s (2017) words, his p4c Hawaii views

philosophical activity as grounded in inquiry, not argument, and to view our content as arising from the interests of the community, highly sensitive to the culture and norms of that community, as well as, in some classroom contexts, discipline specific content such as science, math, language, arts, and social studies. (p. 33)

An Intellectually Safe Community

The concept of intellectual safety is the most important feature of p4cHI approach to education. Jackson (2001) states:

In an intellectually safe place there are no put-downs and no comments intended to belittle, negate, devalue, or ridicule. Within this place, the groups accept virtually any question or comment, so long as it is respectful of the other members of the circle. What develops is a growing trust among the participants and with it the courage to present one’s own thoughts, however tentative initially, on complex and difficult issues. (p. 460)

The p4cHI way of building up a community includes an application of the Hawaiian spirit of aloha . Aloha in the Hawaiian language means affection, love, peace, compassion, mercy, goodbye, and hello, among other sentiments of a similar nature. It is this spirit that students can mediate multicultural tensions and build a sense of community between diverse groups of people in the islands ( Makaiau, 2017 ). It is also this sense of intellectual safety that makes participants’ interests, cultures, languages, histories, socioeconomic backgrounds, and other aspects of their identities are included and validated during the community development and serves as a basic foundation for PI ( Makaiau et al., 2017 ).

“little p” Philosophy and p4c Inquiry

Agreeing with Plato and Aristotle, Jackson (2004) believed that philosophy begins in wonder. However, he also argued that in the classroom, philosophical thinking associated with wonder did not need to be based solely on the Western academic perspective of philosophy, which he called “Big P” philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and practice, that is grounded in the Western model of argument such as reasons, premises, and conclusions. There was also what Jackson (2017) called “little p” philosophy that stems from the wonder, questions, and thinking of the students with which we all begin our life. Thus, the two important particular features of p4cHI inquiry are the inquiry arises out of the interests of the students and begins where students are in their understanding . Because of the “little p,” the P4C Hawaii is abbreviated as p4cHI. It enables the students to “properly, rightly, compassionately participate in our diverse worlds with the rich varieties of sounds and actions of those around us” (p. 35).

Content- and Context-Sensitive p4c Hawaii

Although, in the beginning, the Hawaiian P4C practitioners used Lipman’s theories and concepts, soon, they found that Lipman’s model of using specific novels and his version of P4C made teachers very difficult to teach content-specific classes in regular classroom practice. It was not easy for teachers to move from the text to “Leading Ideas” to the use of “Exercises” and “Discussion Plans” provided in the manuals. Thus, they adopted a more concretely designed and flexibly implemented p4cHI approach, responding to Lipman’s insightful analysis of critical thinking, the “context sensitivity.” This approach takes the stance that philosophy is an instructive element of classroom pedagogy and a way of responding to “content” that begins with the questions of the students while it is sensitive to the content being taught and the cultural context of the learning environment ( Makaiau and Miller, 2012 ).

The Good Thinker’s Tool Kit

A p4cHI approach to education encourages teachers and students to brainstorm, implement, and reflect on new ways of incorporating community, inquiry, philosophy , and reflection into a wide array of subject areas and diverse community contexts. It is based on a set of teaching strategies that can guide teachers to translate those theoretical foundations into classroom practices ( Jackson, 2012 , p. 6). The entire process of the Plain Vanilla 1 , the posing of questions using the Good Thinker’s Toolkit, the use of the Community Ball, a sharing of different perspectives including that of the instructor as a coinquirer, and reflecting and evaluating at the end, provides a concrete procedure to transform philosophy and thinking into real classroom practice. The Good Thinker’s Tool Kit consists of seven indicators for critical thinking, which is an essential component of the Kailua students’ p4cHI practice.

W—What do you mean by that?

R—What are the reasons?

A—What is being assumed? Or what can I assume?

I—Can I infer ___ from ___? Or where are there inferences made?

T—Is what is being said true and what does it imply if it is true?

E—Are there any examples to prove what is being said?

C—Are there any counter-examples to disprove what is being said?

A considerable number of empirical studies into the effects of P4C have been conducted ( Sutcliffe, 2003 ; Trickey and Topping, 2004 , 2006 , 2007 ; Garcia-Moriyon et al., 2005 ; Topping and Trickey, 2007 ), and they have produced strong support for the practice of P4C or philosophical community of inquiry, in terms of cognitive, social, and emotional benefits. Yet many of the studies have been more focused on reading, critical thinking, and mathematical abilities than on academic engagement, social, and affective benefits. Additional rigorous studies are needed to examine the psychological benefits of using p4cHI in the classroom.

Materials and Methods

This case study is “interested in uncovering the meaning of a phenomenon” for the PI participants ( Merriam, 2009 , p. 5). The phenomenon in question is participants’ learning engagement in the PI classroom. Do students report feeling more engaged in their learning through p4cHI, and if so, what are the reasons they attribute to this?

Setting: Kailua High School

Kailua High School was founded in 1955 and was moved to its present location in 1962. With its beautiful views of the Ko‘olau mountain range, KHS is one of four public high schools that serve the Windward (eastern side) District on Oahu. The rural communities of Kailua and Waimanalo each provide about 50% of the population of just under 1000 students at KHS (2014 total enrollment = 750), among those just under 60% of the students are native Hawaiian. As more than 40% of the student population comes from low-income families, KHS receives Title I funding. Many students are faced with domestic violence, discrimination, and substance abuse ( Makaiau, 2010 ). The school utilizes programs such as p4cHI and Habits of Mind to prepare mindful, philosophical thinkers who will pursue their life goals and create positive changes in the world ( Kailua High School, 2013 ).

Participants

Students were recruited from the PI course at KHS in Fall, 2014. Pseudonyms are used to protect the identities of the four girls and two boys. Their ages range from 15 to 17. Five of them are mixed race, and one is Japanese ethnicity.

Data Sources

This multiple case study uses multiple sources of evidence. The following documents help “uncover meaning, develop understanding, and discover insights relevant to the research problem” ( Merriam, 2009 , p. 163).

Class Discussion

The PI class ran for 8 weeks. Five classes were held each week, for 65 min each in the late mornings, except on Wednesdays when class was only 45 min for a total of 35 classes. Students engaged in philosophical inquiries using the Good Thinker’s Toolkit and Plain Vanilla ( Jackson, 2013 ) on topics such as racial politics (i.e., race and ethnicity in Hawai‘i; what if there were no governments), and gender and society (i.e., Bel Hooks—feminism is for everyone; what is it like to be somebody else). Twenty student class discussions (CDs) out of 35 classes were recorded. The full length of the video-recordings is about 21 h.

Student Work

Besides CD, additional student work was collected throughout the semester including student handwritten responses in class to a set of open-ended questions or sheets provided to them in the workbook named The Daily Record, PI Student Resources, and Workspace ( Makaiau et al., 2014 ). The following section will describe student work in detail.

Philosophical inquiry daily reflection

Students used the PI daily reflection (DR) in every class. In the DR, they reflected on the prompt of the day (POD), which was a quote, a short video, a song, a poem, or movie related to the class. They needed to “use textual evidence and/or self-knowledge/experiences to support” their responses (p. 63).

Philosophical insight paper

Students used philosophical insight paper (PIP) to continue thinking about the topic they philosophized about after each unit (e.g., what is the meaning of life? Am I the same person that I used to be?). The PIP was organized into five sections: (a) Evaluation of the Community of Inquiry; (b) Lenses of PI; (c) Constructed Response using Claims, Assumptions, Supporting Evidence, and Counter-example; (d) Personal Reflection and Action; and (e) References (p. 225). At the end of the semester, each participant submitted two PIPs.

Inquiry memos

During each Plain Vanilla discussion, students used inquiry memos to record their questions and thoughts, as well as those of their peers. The inquiry memo data were collected after each Plain Vanilla discussion.

Final take-home reflection paper

In the final take-home reflection paper (FRP), students reflected on their experiences in the PI course at the end of the semester.

Focus Group Interview

A follow-up focus group regarding student academic engagement with four PI participants (originally there were six participants, but two of them did not continue in the class after mid-term) using a semistructured interview approach ( Merriam, 2009 ) was conducted by the end of the semester.

Data Analysis

Data from student written work, classroom discussions, and field notes were analyzed, as they were collected. While organizing and analyzing data, NVivo software, Mac trial version, was used.

Analysis of qualitative data occurred in three phases. In phase 1, all qualitative data were entered into the NVivo software, and initial open codes were developed to highlight major themes occurring in each individual case study. The analysis made use of all of the relevant evidences, considered major rival interpretations, and addressed the most significant aspects of each case study. Salient themes that appeared in each individual case study are reported in the format of concept maps and narratives based on the occurrence frequency that was shown in the NVivo software.

In phase 2, using the method of constant comparison ( Strauss and Corbin, 1998 ; Merriam, 2009 ), similarities, differences, and complementarities across and within participants were examined in a cross-case study analysis. The six cases were studied collectively in order to inquire into similarities and differences in students’ learning engagement ( Denzin and Lincoln, 1998 ). A categorical analysis strategy was utilized to break down the narrative data and rearrange those data to produce bigger categories that facilitated comparisons. In order to provide intuitive data analysis results, flow charts were created to tabulate frequency of themes. Concept maps were used to categorize and recombine data.

During phase 3, three types of qualitative data, the CD, daily written reflections, and observation notes; focus group interview; and PIP and final reflection paper were triangulated in order to increase the trustworthiness of the study. The final themes were refined and reread with critical friends.

This multiple case study consists of six individual case studies of students in the PI class (see Table 1 ). Each student has an individual perspective about an engaging PI classroom that is anchored in his or her life context, but there were several common themes emerged in the cross-case analysis. Based on the frequency count in the NVivo software, the reasons that six participants felt engaged in learning in the PI course are (a) the PI class created an intellectually safe environment that fostered students’ learning and development; (b) participants inquired together into the topics and questions that they are really interested; and (c) participating in communities of philosophical inquiries broadened their understandings of themselves and others. Besides that, listening attentively and carefully to their peers and teacher’s ideas benefited both themselves and others. Building up a strong community helped them engage in their learning as well. Each participant has their own understanding of an engaged PI classroom. Kalani appreciated how an intellectually safe environment promoted his learning experiences.

Table 1. PI participant demographics.

Not being scared or worried that others will judge you. You can express your thoughts or feelings with others who will support you and listen to you. It’s a feeling like being with someone you trust or like being with your family who listen to you and hold you up. I see this class as a family and I know I can express myself freely. (CD, 10/16/2014)

Nahele shared in the focus group that he was more engaged in learning in the PI course. The most important reason is that the PI course was interesting, and he could be able to say how they feel about the subjects they learned. For instance, he expressed that:

I think we are more engaged [without doubt]. Because in other social studies classes, you are not allowed to say how you feel about certain things, you just learn it, you are supposed to read about it, and just accept what you read. While in this class…you get to make connections to your life, you get to listen to other people’s saying. (FG, 12/18)

Nahele commented after the PI course, he still wondered about the topics discussed in the classroom. He was motivated to come back to the classroom to talk about it again. Peleke believed that communications made learning engaging. Liko thought she was more motivated to learn in the PI course: “I think this class motivates me by like I am never challenged to think outside my own thinking, so yeah [I like this class].” She felt that History was boring, but in the PI course, she could “get to reflect how we feel about it [subjects]” (DR, 12/18). Makali liked the PI course, “because there are actual community” (DR, 10/30). He used a counterexample to describe a class he disliked: “In ethnic studies, last year I didn’t know anyone and I hated that class” (DR, 10/20). Kanani’s data indicate that peer acknowledgment and support had a strong positive impact on her academic engagement. She appreciated that the PI course inspired to her to think outside of the box.

Based on the cross-case analysis, a conceptual framework of student perceptions of academic engagement in the PI class is presented in Figure 1 . This was created based on each student’s salient themes counted in the NVivo software. In general, the six participants’ perceptions of an engaging PI classroom can be categorized into three main themes, which correspond to the three parts of this conceptual framework of a house.

Figure 1. The philosophical inquiry student academic engagement framework.

Social Cultural Context of Learning

Maintaining a safe and positive classroom environment is a fundamental condition for learning. In the conceptual framework, this part is colored in green, representing that a positive classroom culture creates a nurturing foundation for learning. The intellectually safe environment developed a constructive, creative, and methodological culture of thinking and communication. For example, Kalani shared in the classroom that it was his own responsibility to maintain an intellectual safe environment. The intellectual safety set a foundation for a supportive and collaborative learning environment. Kalani explained that in the PI course, “No one was really putted down or felt unsafe, everyone gets along while in the discussion” (CD, 11/6). Peleke realized that even though he had a disagreement or argument against an idea or one person, he could still examine its benefits. He learned to be open-minded and think critically.

In the PI course, the students and teacher cocreated a social–cultural learning context that ensured a deep PI could occur. Prior to the PI class, the students and teacher coconstructed a definition of intellectual safety and made a community ball to facilitate their turn taking. While making the community ball, they began to know each other personally. Participants considered the community ball as a tool that helped them to manage the classroom and engage in coinquiry with their teacher. According to Nahele, the uniqueness of the community ball was that students became respectful and attentive while sharing thoughts. “Because of this, not only does it represent our community, but it also represents the power to speak so that during inquiry, each person who receives the ball is allowed to express their opinion hopefully without interruption” (DR, 10/20).

While engaging in a number of reflective activities and readings that reiterated the importance of intellectual safety and community building, the students began to build up a strong community and a good relationship with their teacher. For instance, the biggest takeaway for Kalani was “just making a bond, and making a strong community” (FG, 12/18). Like Kalani, Nahele appreciated that the class participants built up a strong community that encouraged the gifts and strengths of every participant and promoted a sense of belonging and purpose. He suggested that his peers “strengthen the community further…. we can keep it up. So it’s not boring” (CD, 10/21).

Living the concept of intellectual safety, students transformed their learning into an art of democracy. They respected each other’s ideas, interests, and needs. They listened attentively to what others had to say, and shared their thoughts genuinely. They were continuously working on cultivating and nurturing a sense of belongingness and connectedness in and out of the class. This social context of learning sets a psychological foundation for students’ further learning in the PI.

Learning Process in Philosophical Inquiry

The learning process in the concept model is colored in yellow, representing the “aha” and mind “sparkling” moments that students experienced. Because the community ball is a symbol of empowerment, it is painted an orange color. The challenges take the shape of a cloud, which means that although the students experienced confusion and struggles, these could nurture new realizations. These activities are in the living area of the house model, representing the daily work of learning and realizing.

The PI class worked to create a learning environment that maximized each learner’s ability to interact with each other, especially with the teacher. Kalani expressed his gratitude to his teacher and described that, “I feel good [studying in this classroom]. I love her [the teacher]” (CD, 12/19). Nahele reported that he built a better social relationship with his teacher, and described,

I guess I feel afraid my teachers in a social level. Because you just walk in the class, you tell them, they just tell you this this, and then you go home, you don’t talk them. Miss Shiroma is like, I don’t know, you kind of like on a social level, because we know how she thinks and feels about certain topics. And I think it really helps with the whole community building thing. (12/18)

Students were seated in a circle and engaged in PI through social interaction and communication. The class puts a premium on students’ inner interests and needs, so students were able to raise questions that they genuinely wondered about. Although there was not always a definitive answer to each question, students were eager to explore the solutions and think alongside each other, appreciating peers who were more able to articulate ideas and explain thoughts. Taking Nahele as a typical example, he explained, “It’s good to ask questions and strive to ask more, but even better if everyone make an attempt to answer them” (CD, 11/6). He enjoyed using Good Thinker’s Tool Kit to ask questions and used it beyond the classroom. He commented, “Within our community of inquiry, we get more by giving to expand on our discussion” (DR, 10/29). As a fortuitous byproduct of this newfound expanded perception, Nahele was more engaged in his thinking. He demonstrated new connections with his learning as he questioned: “Why does racism exist? Where did racism originate from?” (DR, 12/10). He showed insight into his own thinking when he said, “I’m taking away that maybe everything we do is subconsciously selfish, even if to the smallest degree. Is it purely for other people? Does altruism really exist?” (DR, 10/24) On another day, he explored ideas around morality. “We teach children certain rules of morality growing up. At what point do they become irrelevant in our lives? What are the reasons we disregard them in life?” (DR, 12/18). These internal dialogs indicated that the student had internalized good reasoning skills and were learning to think for themselves.

Using the community ball to issue the invitation, students were empowered to share their personal stories, challenges, raw thoughts, and not clearly formulated ideas. Students enjoyed the academic freedom to explore meaningful and controversial issues that arose from their life and context. Peleke thought he actually was rewarded with more knowledge and more strength. He positively commented that, “From that it actually helps yourself and other people, you are not being one sided, relying that one information” (CD, 10/30). Their discussions were connected with their prior experiences, thoughts, feelings, and ideas, and learned through these experiences in the classroom. Because of this encouraging and safe community of learners, Liko was able to overcome her experiences of insults in other classes.

The PI participants were sometimes confused by their own questions and by those of others during their discussions. They experienced challenges in organizing their thoughts and articulating their ideas. Peleke shared,

I am walking away with that I need to try to understand more terms. I need to make people understand what I am saying. I just want to have clarification, examples, probably I have to look up some new words to understand and to figure out. (CD, 11/6)

Some students initially lacked confidence in sharing their thoughts. For instance, Kanani exhibited low self-efficacy in her thinking. “I wrote it, but…because I…I wrote it, I don’t think it’s a good reflection. I don’t understand” (CD, 10/16). She felt it was a risk to share her ideas in the classroom. She explained,

“I said we need to take certain risk in order for us to move forward. When I didn’t wanna share, I think this is the first day in our class, I didn’t wanna share, but then I also feel I have to take the risk in sharing in order for our task to move on. (CD, 11/17)

Kanani had a unique challenge that other participants did not share in the PI course, which was that she had to work almost 10 h each day instead of focusing on studies. She appreciated that the PI course inspired to her to think outside of the box. Yet she also experienced many challenges she could not handle during the course, such as articulating her ideas and thinking deeply. All these challenges may result in Kanani’s absence from school.

By the end of the semester, students all learned certain reasoning skills (i.e., to raise questions, to make assumptions, to use evidences, to apply the Good Thinker’s Tool Kit), as well as to make decisions and solve problems. Students expressed that they appreciated the multiple perspectives gained from their peers, teachers, and guests because they developed an understanding of ideas from a range of areas and obtained the skills, knowledge, and attitude to interpret these ideas and to live their lives better.

Application of Learning

When engaging in discussions, participants were exposed to multiple perspectives, which inspired them to reflect on their own thinking, examine personal beliefs, and then make changes in their lives. The class awakened students’ inner selves and helped them realize their own unique potentials. Peleke increased his confidence in expressing personal beliefs. For example, he wrote,

I am starting a personal change from taking this course due to the interaction and participation in what p4c feels on a daily basis and also I have become less anxious due to me participating within in the community and sharing my opinions and ideas on the work we are given and at times on my own personal life. (12/18)

They began to think about the purpose and meaning of their lives. Each student actively chose his or her own way to construct the meaning of his or her particular life. They created a living philosophy and applied new learning in how they made decisions and lived their lives. For example, they engaged in PI with friends, and brought the concept of intellectual safety to their family and community. For instance, Makali was involved in p4cHI activities outside of the classroom.

I would say that this was the fun of this class in order to be able to take this outside.… my friend…started to really use all the terms, like what are the reasons, can I assume…. We ended up having this kind of discussions after lunch after school. It’s really interesting….That makes me think deeply about anything. (CD, 11/6)

The PI participants not only took into account their own inclinations and options for a meaningful life but also took into consideration the need for a more humane and democratic society. They started to build a more holistic and integral understanding of themselves and the society. They learned to put their engaging and dynamic reflections into practice. For instance, after learning ethical egoism and altruism, Liko asked, “What I realized is that talking about benefiting ourselves. We talked about having good or bad intentions. I thought, what makes you have these good or bad intentions, and why you act upon them?” (CD, 10/17) Liko began to question human nature and her self-knowledge; she asked, “When I heard everyone, I have more values. What I think is right? What makes me happier? What would I think human nature is?” (CD, 10/28) She also thought about “What is morally right and wrong?” (DR, 12/5) She related her learning to the world problems, and questioned, “Is there really a way to get rid of racism? WATRs [What are the reasons] why we can’t get rid of racism?” (DR, 12/10) She showed her care to the environment, and asked “WATRs [What are the reasons] people are so cruel to the environment?” (DR, 12/16)

They were interested in personal happiness and wanted to lead balanced and peaceful lives. They were inspired to strive for ideals of social justice, democracy, and multiculturalism, and to contribute to the public good. In class, they interrogated the social, political, economical, and moral imperatives of society, which helped them through the developmental transition period of adolescence. They discovered the hidden voices of women, children, minorities, nature, and of those who are marginalized. Many of them continued to think about the questions posed in class when they went back home and looked forward to coming back to this class again. These characteristics are placed just under the roof of the house, the highest place. The roof is shaped like a triangle, similar to Maslow’s (1968) hierarchy of needs. These skills and purposes will hopefully help students to develop increased self-esteem and self-actualization. This is also one goal of education, making students use the new knowledge and resources around them, and helping them transcend their thinking and living. The color is purple, commemorating royalty, or the best in each of us.

Applying qualitative methods, this study developed a deeper understanding of what classroom contexts, conditions, discourses, tools, and practices promote adolescent learning experience. Referring to the PI Student Academic Engagement Framework ( Figure 1 ), the six participants’ perceptions of an engaging PI classroom can be categorized into three main themes: First, maintaining a safe and positive classroom environment is a fundamental condition for learning. Second, asking questions, sharing ideas, listening attentively, thinking deeply, and making connections are the manifestations of an engaging classroom in the PI process. Third, students transcend their learning experiences by living a new philosophy.

In the student qualitative data, the most important reason for students to engage in learning, or the most salient theme that appeared, was that the PI class created an intellectually safe environment that fostered students’ learning and development. Echoing Vygotsky (1935/1994) ’s theory, the context of a social–historical environment can significantly influence students’ learning. Maintaining a positive classroom environment is a fundamental condition for students to thrive in learning. Each individual is a socially grounded self, and is “in the ongoing process of living in a social environment” ( Campbell, 1995 , p. 40). It is necessary for students and teachers to create an intellectually safe environment in the classroom. This understanding gives way to a respect for opposing viewpoints and claims that often arise out of an inquiry. Rather than having differences divert the direction of the inquiry into an argument or popularity contest, an intellectually safe class will recognize, examine, and celebrate them. This awareness is necessary to create a less intimidating classroom environment, allowing for all students to be active contributors to the community of inquiry process.

Participants indicated that the circular seating format and smaller class size helped establish an environment that could free them from some social and emotional stresses. The intellectually safe community provided them with ongoing opportunities to build up connections and relationships among each other. The removal of judgment and fear created a space where, despite their different ethnic backgrounds, beliefs, and worldviews, they could openly share their personal experiences and explore controversial issues with their peers ( Makaiau, 2010 ; Miller, 2013 ). In the PI classroom, Nahele and Makali often raised their voices and frequently volunteered to contribute. Kalani and Peleke were more reflective learners who typically developed ideas and questions in their minds before speaking. Liko was a shy student who felt uncomfortable speaking in front of groups, at least initially in the first week of the class. Kanani was not confident in sharing her ideas. These differences may be due to learning preferences as well as personalities. However, a strong community enabled Liko and Kanani and other students with different learning styles and personalities to contribute. Active participants such as Nahele and Makali were able to use the community ball to invite Liko and Kanani to share.

Research showed that “persons with significant difficulties relating to others interpersonally often have related academic struggles in the classroom particularly as they get older” ( Winner, 2011 , p. 4). Freire (1970) wrote, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher–student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students” (p. 72). The teacher added an important dimension to students’ social relationships. Teachers were often the more capable peers ( Vygotsky, 1978 ) in the classroom, especially in the beginning that pushed students to think deeper and broader. Teachers are not only facilitators through asking questions such as, “What do you mean by…” or “Could you use a specific example to explain…,” but also participants by contributing their own thinking and ideas to the inquiry. As a coparticipant, teachers become “real” with their students, so an atmosphere of trust is built ( Purkey and Novak, 1996 , p. 50). As the community matures, the role between teachers and students began to blur, as students’ opinions increasingly influenced their teacher or changed their teacher’s thinking. Through social interaction, participants, teachers, and students actively created, interpreted, reorganized, and reconstructed knowledge in individual and meaningful ways. The fundamental norms and culture of a classroom were transformed because the PI classroom has achieved a new pattern of teacher-and-student relationship and interaction, making students and teachers more connected.

Described in the foundation part of the house model, when students’ basic psychological needs of safety, belongingness, and esteem are satisfied in the classroom, they developed better socially and cognitively in the PI class ( Maslow, 1968 , 1987 ). In the p4cHI PI process, participants thought and inquired alongside their peers and their teacher into the topics and questions that they genuinely wondered about. Participants criticized other social studies classes, like history, where they had to memorize facts and events. Knowing students’ concerns and motives, the PI course was designed to include, but not limit, and to integrate students’ experiences and prior knowledge, consider their interests and needs, support active participation and discussion, deepen their thinking and inquiry, and encourage multiple perspectives. The class created opportunities for students to wonder, discover, explore, and imagine and allowed students to experience what that feels like. They simply found their chosen topics and learning interesting.

Student academic achievement is positively influenced by the amount of active and collaborative participation in the learning process ( Coates, 2007 ). The level of engagement and collaboration, and the excitement among the PI participants while engaging in Plain Vanilla activities reshaped their learning into an esthetic experience because it was full of life and its own form of beauty and spontaneity. They transformed from passive participants to active agents of thought and change in their class and life.

One current crisis in education is that students lack real interpersonal connections. Although contemporary formal education helps students gain tremendous external knowledge, accumulate skills and wealth to become good citizens, and become members of the working force, emphasis on the basics of human life and existence such as health, happiness, and human values is too often overlooked or entirely missing throughout the worldwide educational systems ( Ozmon and Craver, 2007 ). While education and schooling increasingly strive to integrate technology into teaching and learning, high-speed Internet and social communication tools do not seem to strengthen the internal and physical connections among students and communities ( Xu, 2013 ). Younger generations experience this lack of intimacy to a much greater extent. Many adolescents are out of touch with themselves, with others, with nature, with the environment, and with the time they live ( Roberts et al., 2009 ).

Many teachers now cannot fully satisfy students’ psychological and social needs in the class. That’s one reason that students do not feel engaged in their schooling, or cannot even construct meaning that guides and motivates their future development. Deci and Ryan’s (1991 , 2008 ) research summarized that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are the conditions that nurture intrinsic motivation. In the traditional idea of the school, the student’s personhood is often ignored; their interests, questions, thoughts, personal experiences, beliefs, and curiosity have been disregarded in the process. Yet in the PI environment, students awakened their spirit to wonder, to question, to explore, and to experiment. In addition to being interested in the academic needs of their students, p4cHI teachers are also deeply concerned with the social, emotional, behavioral, and psychological state of learners. The class moved from the notion that their answers, thoughts, and questions were only “right” if students aligned with those of their teacher or textbook, and that only authority figures had correct answers and would explain “what is text about” and “how to answer this question” once they had finished reading ( Miller, 2013 ). As the students were able to overcome these assumptions and realize that their personal experiences, genuine thoughts, once supported by solid evidences and reason and taken seriously by the teacher and the community, they began to intrinsically engage with their learning.

Imagining a world, wouldn’t it be nice if educators could make classroom environments grounded in our human curiosity for exploration, own enthusiastic desire to construct our own self-defined meaning? The p4cHI community of inquiry creates the space and the opportunity for students to make fundamental connections within their individual selves and with other people. It assists students in making connections in their own thinking, between their emotions and their thinking, and other aspects of their self. It fosters better student-and-teacher connections as they participate in cooperative learning. The students were able to use the thinking tools practiced in the community of inquiry as a way to examine their own lives and frozen thoughts, and challenge their beliefs, which allowed them to create personal significance to the academic content.

The study proved that education would cultivate a better self if we provide students with a time and space to reflect and reconnect within themselves, and with others and the world. Such insights may provide suggestions and implications for teachers to implement more effective P4C education in and beyond the Hawaiian Islands.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

LL conducted the research and wrote this manuscript.

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 19CZX049.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Amber Makaiau, Thomas Jackson, Di Xu, Katherine Ratcliffe, and Cheriesse Shiroma-Ming for help with the research and the reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

• ^ Plain Vanilla is a strategy for organizing classroom discussion, dialog, and inquiry. It follows five steps: (1) READ: Students read or are exposed to some sort of stimulus, such as text, art, music, or video. (2) QUESTION : Each student creates a compelling question that was stimulated by the stimulus. (3) VOTE : Students vote on a question they want to discuss. (4) DIALOG, INQUIRY, and DELIBERATION : During this time, participants are able to provide insights, examples, and counterexamples, and ask questions in order to inquire deeply into the topic behind the question. It is not an argument or debate, but considering and exploring multiple perspectives. (5) REFLECT and EVALUATE : Closure is created at the end of the inquiry by having each student write or orally share her or his responses to a set of reflective questions.

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Keywords : learning engagement, Philosophy for Children Hawaii, adolescent academic achievement, philosophical inquiry, motivation

Citation: Leng L (2020) The Role of Philosophical Inquiry in Helping Students Engage in Learning. Front. Psychol. 11:449. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00449

Received: 11 December 2019; Accepted: 26 February 2020; Published: 24 March 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Leng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Lu Leng, [email protected]

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Chapter 1. Introducing Critical Thinking and Philosophical Inquiry

§1 Understanding Critical Thinking

1.1 what is “critical thinking”, some definitions.

• Critical thinking is the careful application of reason in the determination of whether a claim is true.
• Critical thinking is the systematic evaluation or formulation of beliefs, or statements, by rational standards [1]

Critical thinking is an essential cognitive process that involves the deliberate and meticulous use of reasoning to evaluate the validity and truthfulness of a claim. It is a systematic approach that enables individuals to analyze information, assess arguments, and make informed judgments based on evidence and logical reasoning.

What makes critical thinking…

• Critical ? The thinker is exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation
• Systematic ? Involves distinct procedures and methods
• Evaluative and formulative ? Used to both assess existing beliefs (yours or someone else’s) and devise new ones
• Rational ? Beliefs are judged by the reasons and reasoning that support them

1.2 The Importance of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking plays a crucial role in various aspects of our lives, including education, decision-making, problem-solving, and communication. It empowers individuals to question assumptions, challenge biases, and develop a rational and well-informed perspective on complex issues.

1.3 Characteristics of Critical Thinkers

Developing critical thinking skills involves cultivating specific characteristics that enhance one’s ability to engage in rigorous and objective analysis. These characteristics include open-mindedness, intellectual curiosity, skepticism, logical reasoning, and the ability to evaluate evidence objectively.

1.4 The Relationship between Critical Thinking and Philosophical Inquiry

Critical thinking and philosophical inquiry are closely intertwined. Philosophy, as an academic discipline, encourages individuals to question fundamental assumptions, explore abstract concepts, and engage in rigorous analysis. By employing critical thinking, philosophers examine arguments, evaluate theories, and seek to understand the nature of knowledge, reality, ethics, and other philosophical domains.

• Vaughn, Lewis. The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning About Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims. 3rd ed. (OUP, 2009). Chapter 1. ↵

How to Think For Yourself Copyright © 2023 by Rebeka Ferreira, Anthony Ferrucci is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Philosophical issues in critical thinking.

• Juho Ritola Juho Ritola University of Turku
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1480
• Published online: 26 May 2021

Critical thinking is active, good-quality thinking. This kind of thinking is initiated by an agent’s desire to decide what to believe, it satisfies relevant norms, and the decision on the matter at hand is reached through the use of available reasons under the control of the thinking agent. In the educational context, critical thinking refers to an educational aim that includes certain skills and abilities to think according to relevant standards and corresponding attitudes, habits, and dispositions to apply those skills to problems the agent wants to solve. The basis of this ideal is the conviction that we ought to be rational. This rationality is manifested through the proper use of reasons that a cognizing agent is able to appreciate. From the philosophical perspective, this fascinating ability to appreciate reasons leads into interesting philosophical problems in epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy.

Critical thinking in itself and the educational ideal are closely connected to the idea that we ought to be rational. But why exactly? This profound question seems to contain the elements needed for its solution. To ask why is to ask either for an explanation or for reasons for accepting a claim. Concentrating on the latter, we notice that such a question presupposes that the acceptability of a claim depends on the quality of the reasons that can be given for it: asking this question grants us the claim that we ought to be rational, that is, to make our beliefs fit what we have reason to believe. In the center of this fit are the concepts of knowledge and justified belief. A critical thinker wants to know and strives to achieve the state of knowledge by mentally examining reasons and the relation those reasons bear to candidate beliefs. Both these aspects include fascinating philosophical problems. How does this mental examination bring about knowledge? What is the relation my belief must have to a putative reason for my belief to qualify as knowledge?

The appreciation of reason has been a key theme in the writings of the key figures of philosophy of education, but the ideal of individual justifying reasoning is not the sole value that guides educational theory and practice. It is therefore important to discuss tensions this ideal has with other important concepts and values, such as autonomy, liberty, and political justification. For example, given that we take critical thinking to be essential for the liberty and autonomy of an individual, how far can we try to inculcate a student with this ideal when the student rejects it? These issues underline important practical choices an educator has to make.

• critical thinking
• rationality
• epistemic justification
• internalism
• public reason

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Philosophical Inquiry in Education

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• Félix García Moriyón 2  

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Introducing philosophy as a subject matter in formal education ; The practise of philosophical dialogue in educational settings

Introduction

Philosophy has been highly important throughout the history of Western education. It was clearly present during the period of Classical Greece, led by the sophists, but also by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It regained its importance throughout the Middle Ages, most especially with the rise of the European renaissance – starting around 1000 A.D. – in schools and universities. Philosophy continued and was maintained, at least in some countries, with the implementation of obligatory formal education.

Over recent decades, we have found ourselves in an apparently contradictory situation. On the one hand, there is a notable awareness of the decreasing importance of the humanities, among which many people (mistakenly, in my opinion) include philosophy. The damage done to education by this abandonment of the humanities in general – and...

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Biesta, G. J. J. (2013). The beautiful risk of education . Boulder/London: Paradigm Publishers.

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Golding, C. (2013). We made progress: Collective epistemic progress in dialogue without consensus. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47 (3), 423–440.

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Moriyón, F.G. (2016). Philosophical Inquiry in Education. In: Peters, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_162-1

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Philosophical Issues in Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is active, good-quality thinking. This kind of thinking is initiated by an agent’s desire to decide what to believe, it satisfies relevant norms, and the decision on the matter at hand is reached through the use of available reasons under the control of the thinking agent. In the educational context, critical thinking refers to an educational aim that includes certain skills and abilities to think according to relevant standards and corresponding attitudes, habits, and dispositions to apply those skills to problems the agent wants to solve. The basis of this ideal is the conviction that we ought to be rational. This rationality is manifested through the proper use of reasons that a cognizing agent is able to appreciate. From the philosophical perspective, this fascinating ability to appreciate reasons leads into interesting philosophical problems in epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. Critical thinking in itself and the educational ideal are closely connected to the idea that we ought to be rational. But why exactly? This profound question seems to contain the elements needed for its solution. To ask why is to ask either for an explanation or for reasons for accepting a claim. Concentrating on the latter, we notice that such a question presupposes that the acceptability of a claim depends on the quality of the reasons that can be given for it: asking this question grants us the claim that we ought to be rational, that is, to make our beliefs fit what we have reason to believe. In the center of this fit are the concepts of knowledge and justified belief. A critical thinker wants to know and strives to achieve the state of knowledge by mentally examining reasons and the relation those reasons bear to candidate beliefs. Both these aspects include fascinating philosophical problems. How does this mental examination bring about knowledge? What is the relation my belief must have to a putative reason for my belief to qualify as knowledge? The appreciation of reason has been a key theme in the writings of the key figures of philosophy of education, but the ideal of individual justifying reasoning is not the sole value that guides educational theory and practice. It is therefore important to discuss tensions this ideal has with other important concepts and values, such as autonomy, liberty, and political justification. For example, given that we take critical thinking to be essential for the liberty and autonomy of an individual, how far can we try to inculcate a student with this ideal when the student rejects it? These issues underline important practical choices an educator has to make.

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Introduction

Inquiry: a new paradigm for critical thinking, the project.

This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still evident in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments.

While acknowledging the value of “logical self-defense,” we see the critical thinking project as having a much more expansive educational goal – that of critical inquiry. Students need to be equipped to critically investigate issues of significance, actively seek and identify credible information, and make judgments based on a critical evaluation of reasons and evidence. Thus the alternative conception of critical thinking which we have been developing, while including fallacy identification and argument critique, focuses primarily on inquiry, which we view in terms of arriving at reasoned judgments on issues, frequently of a complex nature.

We believe that this approach offers a new paradigm for critical thinking because it differs from more traditional conceptions in a number of fundamental ways. First, it is primarily epistemological rather than logical. The traditional approach focuses on the evaluation of arguments according to the norms of logic, informal as well as formal, examining, for example, whether the conclusion of an argument follows from its premises or whether logical fallacies have been committed. The inquiry approach, on the other hand, appeals to the range of epistemological norms used to justify and critique claims in a variety of areas, including, for example, criteria for evaluating sources, judging causal claims, or evaluating statistical arguments.

Second, the inquiry approach differs from the traditional approach in being dialectical. It does not focus simply on individual arguments but rather on the comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments necessary for coming to a reasoned judgment.

Finally the inquiry approach is contextual. The consideration of context has traditionally been viewed as irrelevant to the evaluation of an argument. In contrast, the inquiry approach, focusing as it does on issues rather than individual arguments, takes as an important aspect of evaluation the consideration of the context in which the issue has been developed, including its dialectical, intellectual, and historical contexts.

We have implemented this inquiry approach in our textbook, Reason in the Balance: An Inquiry Approach to Critical Thinking (Hackett 2016; McGraw-Hill Ryerson 2010). The text uses dialogues among an ongoing cast of characters involved in realistic situations as a context for discussing the various aspects that go into the practice of inquiry, including identifying issues, identifying the relevant contexts, understanding the competing cases, and making a comparative judgment among them. These aspects are instantiated in inquiries on topics such as vegetarianism, vaccination, prostitution, conspiracy theories, the evaluation of a film, the legalization of marijuana, and the right of hate groups to speak. These various aspects are also applied to inquiry in specific contexts, including science, social science, philosophy, and the arts. There is also considerable emphasis placed throughout on the habits of mind which are essential for inquiry, including (among others) open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, the desire to act on the basis of reasons, the acceptance of uncertainty, and respect for others in dialogue – habits of mind which we characterize as the spirit of inquiry.

The present volume can be seen as a theoretical companion piece to the textbook. What we have done here is to collect the various papers that reflect the development of our approach, highlighting its foundation, theoretical elaboration, and diverse applications. These papers were written over a period of time and reflect the development of this approach historically as well as conceptually. The papers have all been published previously and are presented, for the most part, in their original form. As such, they draw on the research and literature available at the time of their creation or publication and reflect the dialectical context in which the ideas were initially developed. Our ideas have, to be sure, developed over time in response to a changing dialectical context. We have revisited issues, developing them in what we hope is a more robust and nuanced way, and explored implications and applications of the approach. While we have added some more contemporary references to several of the earliest papers (chapter 1, 2, 3, and 11), we have endeavoured to remain faithful to the original purpose and context of each paper and to the developmental nature of the project as a whole.

The issues reflected here are ones which we have been thinking about and writing about for many years. We were each, independently, over the years, coming to the view that there were problems in basing critical thinking instruction strictly on the evaluation of individual arguments and in the fallacy approach; and we were both developing alternative ways to conceptualize critical thinking.

Mark’s 1989 paper, “Critical Thinking as Applied Epistemology: Relocating Critical Thinking in the Philosophical Landscape,” is an early elaboration of such an alternative conception. The paper argues that the appropriate philosophical heritage of critical thinking is not in logic, as is implied by the term ‘Informal logic,’ but rather in epistemology, involving as it does the application of epistemological norms to common problems. It also argues that, just as applied ethics contributes to the enhancement of normative ethics, so also should applied epistemology contribute to the enhancement of traditional epistemic norms.

Sharon’s 1992 “Argumentation as Inquiry” also addresses the issue of how argumentation should be conceived. The paper contests Blair’s contention that all argumentation can be construed as instances of two person dispute-resolving argumentation and argues that, from both an epistemological and a pedagogical perspective, argumentation is best conceived as inquiry.

Sharon’s 1999 paper, “The Problem with Percy: Epistemology, Understanding, and Critical Thinking,” further develops the argument for the centrality of epistemology for critical thinking. The paper argues that the requisites for critical thinking cannot be fully encompassed by the notions of skills and dispositions and that the additional dimension is an epistemological one: an understanding of the nature of inquiry.

The ideas regarding the centrality of epistemology and of inquiry for critical thinking initially proposed in these three early papers have been foundational for the conception of critical thinking which we subsequently jointly developed and elaborated.

“Reason Appreciation,” an early joint paper, explicates the notion of reason appreciation, which involves a respect for reasoning based on an understanding of its nature, role and significance. Appreciating reason involves, centrally, valuing its processes and outcomes, honouring its normative demands, and thus being committed to acting according to its dictates. This notion is at the heart of our subsequent idea of the critical spirit, which we argue is central to the process of inquiry.

It is in our paper, “Inquiry: A Dialectical Approach to Critical Thinking,” where we lay out our basic approach and its rationale. In this paper, we argue that the central goal of critical thinking is the making of reasoned judgments and that arriving at reasoned judgments is, in most cases, a dialectical process involving the comparative weighing of a variety of contending positions and arguments. Recognizing this dialectical dimension means that critical thinking pedagogy should focus on the kind of comparative evaluation and weighing of reasons which we make in actual contexts of disagreement and debate.

Scholarly interest in the kind of dialectical or pro and con reasoning which is at the heart of the inquiry approach has grown considerably in recent years with the renewed interest in conductive reasoning. As a contribution to this discussion, our paper, “Guidelines for Reaching a Reasoned Judgment,” addresses the contentious issue of the evaluation of conductive arguments by offering some general guidelines for reaching a well-reasoned judgment through conductive reasoning and a set of criteria which arise from these guidelines for identifying inadequate conductive argumentation.

One of the guidelines proposed in “Guidelines for Reaching a Reasoned Judgment” is that arguers should make a judgment at the appropriate level of confidence, apportioning their judgment to the strength of the reasons. Our paper, “Conductive Argumentation, Degrees of Confidence, and the Communication of Uncertainty,” takes this line of reasoning further by arguing that arguers also have an obligation to communicate their judgments with the appropriate level of confidence, expressing the degree of certainty or uncertainty warranted by the strength of the evidence and arguments.

A number of the papers develop various aspects of our approach and examine its implications for a variety of issues in critical thinking and argumentation theory. An early paper of Mark’s, “Assessing Expert Claims: Critical Thinking and the Appeal to Authority,” argues that the evaluation of authoritative information has been given insufficient attention in critical thinking instruction. The paper goes on to offer a revised set of criteria for assessing appeals to authority which recognize the role of expert consensus and of the explanation and justification of claims offered by experts. These criteria, aimed at fostering an appropriate balance between rational trust and appropriate skepticism, play an important role in the critical evaluation which is integral to the inquiry approach.

The role, in inquiry, of identifying fallacies is another subject of investigation. In “Fallacy Identification in a Dialectical Approach to Teaching Critical Thinking,” we put forward a conception of a fallacy that departs from many standard accounts, characterizing a fallacy as an argument pattern whose persuasive power greatly exceeds its probative value. We go on to argue, however, that the identification of fallacies in individual arguments usually cannot, in itself, constitute an adequate evaluation of the strength of the argumentative support for a claim and that such an assessment must be based on the completion of the inquiry and a comparative evaluation of the arguments. Thus, given the dialectical nature of inquiry, fallacy identification can play only a preliminary, prima facie role in argument assessment.

The significance of considering the context surrounding an issue is underestimated and often overlooked in approaches to critical thinking theory and instruction based on informal logic. Our paper, “Critical Inquiry: Considering the Context,” argues, in contrast, that considering the context of an issue is an important component of the inquiry process. The paper elaborates on our view about the importance of considering context by examining in detail the role of a number of different aspects of context for inquiry: dialectical context, the current state of belief or practice, intellectual, political, historical and social contexts, disciplinary context, sources, and self.

The implications for critical thinking theory and instruction of the research on cognitive biases is the subject of “Critical Thinking and Cognitive Biases.” The paper details what this psychological work can add to the philosophical understanding of reasoning errors and also highlights how some aspects of the inquiry approach can help to counter some of these biases. These include: 1) the identification of the persuasive power of fallacies; 2) the use of strategies such as a set of guiding questions and the conscious monitoring of our thinking processes to slow down our thinking and make it more deliberate; 3) the deliberate seeking out of counter-evidence and alternative views to counter myside bias; and 4) the requirement to examine the full range of arguments on all sides of an issue in order to make a judgment with the appropriate degree of confidence, which can act as a counter to the bias of overconfidence.

Our paper, “DAMed If You Do; DAMed If You Don’t: Cohen’s ‘Missed Opportunities’,” is written in response to a paper by Cohen in which he highlights an apparent tension between a collegial practice of argumentation in which arguers help each other and the Dominant Adversarial Model in which the specification of roles precludes such mutual assistance. Our paper, developing a theme initially raised in “Argumentation as Inquiry,” argues that the tension is resolved by rejecting the characterization of roles inherent in the DAM account and recognizing that the epistemological structure of argumentation necessitates inquiry, which is a collegial, non-adversarial enterprise.

Several of our papers examine the application of our approach in various contexts. “Beyond the Boundaries: The Epistemological Significance of Differing Cultural Perspectives” focuses on an aspect of critical thinking which is central to our dialectical conception, the consideration of alternatives, addressing the question of whether and to what extent the requirement to consider alternatives extends to the beliefs and practices of other cultures . The paper explores this question in the context of a number of examples, including conceptions and practices of art in other cultures, aboriginal justice, traditional Chinese medicine, and religion and hydrology, and offers some guidelines for delineating the appropriate realm for serious considerations.

“Teaching Critical Inquiry in Science: The Role of Dialectical Context in Scientific Reasoning” explores the role of dialectical context in scientific inquiry and science pedagogy. Building on the conception of dialectical context explicated in “Critical Inquiry: Considering the Context,” the paper details several examples from the history of science which show how the history and the state of the controversy in which a scientific theory is put forward play a crucial role in the evaluation of a theory. The paper also argues that having students conduct inquiries using such historical cases, as well as contemporary debates, can give students a sense of the dialectical and evolving nature of scientific inquiry.

The teaching of critical thinking is the subject of our textbook and is never very far from our sights in our theoretical papers. But there are also several of our papers where it is the explicit focus. Mark’s early paper, “The Competent Layperson: Re-envisioning the Ideal of the Educated Person, ” argues that educating the competent layperson should be the central goal of undergraduate education. The paper explicates this notion, detailing the kind of breadth of understanding, ability to evaluate claims and explore specialized areas, and appreciation of the natural, social and artistic worlds that comprise this ideal. The paper goes on to show how engaging students in the process of critical inquiry is the best way to achieve this goal.

“Critical Thinking as Inquiry in Higher Education” outlines the shortcomings of both conventional critical thinking courses and traditional disciplinary teaching for developing critical thinking in higher education and argues that an inquiry approach is a more effective means for achieving this goal. The paper shows how the process of comparatively evaluating competing arguments is central for arriving at reasoned judgments in disciplinary as well as in everyday contexts. In emphasizing both the aspects common to inquiry across a range of areas and the modes of argumentation that are specific to an area, the inquiry approach can be used to foster critical thinking both in separate course and within disciplinary instruction.

Our paper, “Fostering the Virtues of Inquiry,” expands on our notion of the critical spirit, elucidating the virtues necessary for inquiry, which include an overarching commitment to rational belief and action and a set of sub-virtues such as open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, concern for truth and accuracy, which are grounded in that commitment. The paper argues, further, that these virtues are best acquired through an immersion in the practice of inquiry within the context of a community which instantiates the norms and virtues of rational inquiry.

The relationship between critical thinking and creative thinking is the topic of Sharon’s paper, “Is Argument for Conservatives? or, Where Do Sparkling New Ideas Come From?” In it, she addresses Rorty’s claim that argument can only be a means for criticizing existing ideas and so cannot result in innovation whereas an imaginative envisioning of new ideas is necessary for intellectual progress. The paper argues, on the contrary, that intellectual progress proceeds through the process of inquiry which involves a dynamic interplay between the generation and the criticism of ideas. Argument is thus crucial to the development of new ideas.

The last paper in the volume, Mark’s “Enhancing Rationality: Heuristics, Biases, and The Critical Thinking Project,” revisits some of the ideas in our paper, “Critical Thinking and Cognitive Biases” but takes them in a new direction. This paper critiques the narrow conception of rationality as rational self-interest embedded in the standard economic interpretation of the heuristics and biases research. It further argues for the reclaiming for the critical thinking project of the area of applied rational decision-making but in a form which includes a focus on collective rationality and which takes into account factual, moral, political and personal considerations as well as utility maximization.

Inquiry: A New Paradigm for Critical Thinking Copyright © 2018 by Windsor Studies in Argumentation & The Authors is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Role of the Study of Philosophy in Shaping Critical Thinking and Intellectual Inquiry

Philosophy is a kind of subject that can give your brain a serious workout, and here's why. Firstly, it deals with some pretty big, abstract questions: What's the meaning of life? Do we have free will? How do we determine what's right and wrong? These aren't easy questions with straightforward answers. They're complex and thought-provoking, and they often lead to more questions than answers. This can make philosophy challenging but also incredibly fascinating. 

Then there's the language of philosophy. Philosophers have a way of using words that might seem unusual to most of us. They often use familiar words but with very specific, nuanced meanings that can be quite different from everyday usage. This specialized language can be tricky to get the hang of but is essential for conveying complex philosophical concepts. 

Cultivating Critical Thinking Skills

Let's dive into philosophy's secret power: its ability to cultivate some serious critical thinking skills. You see, philosophy isn't just about pondering life's big questions - it's also about learning how to think deeply, critically, and analytically. 

When you're studying philosophy, you're not just memorizing facts or learning procedures. You're engaging with:

•       complex ideas
•       evaluating arguments
•       learning to see things from different perspectives.

This requires critical thinking - the ability to analyze information, assess its validity, and use it to form reasoned judgments.

Take a philosophy debate, for instance. You'll need to understand the different viewpoints, evaluate the evidence supporting each one, and come up with a reasoned response . This isn't about choosing sides or proving someone wrong, but about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different arguments. 

•       analyzing information
•       making logical connections
•       forming reasoned conclusions. 

But here's the real kicker: the critical thinking skills you develop through studying philosophy don't just stay in the classroom. They're transferable skills that can be incredibly valuable in other areas of your life, from making decisions to solving problems and even understanding other people's viewpoints. 

So yes, philosophy might have a reputation for being abstract and complex, but it's also a powerful tool for cultivating critical thinking. It encourages us to question, analyze, and reason - and that's a skill set that can benefit us in many ways, both in the academic world and beyond.

Stimulating Intellectual Inquiry

You see, philosophy thrives on questions. Not just any old questions, but those really big, head-scratching ones. What is the nature of reality? How can we truly know anything? What is the meaning of life? These questions might not have easy or definite answers, but they prompt us to dig deep, to explore different ideas, and to think in new ways. That's intellectual inquiry at its finest! 

Then there's the way philosophy encourages us to question our assumptions. We all have beliefs about the world, but philosophy pushes us to examine these beliefs critically. Why do we hold these beliefs? Are they justified? Could we be wrong? This kind of self-examination can be challenging, but it also fosters intellectual growth and self-awareness. 

Moreover, philosophy promotes logical thinking. It teaches us:

•       how to construct coherent arguments
•       how to spot logical fallacies
•       how to reason effectively.

These skills are essential for intellectual inquiry, helping us to navigate complex ideas and debates. 

And finally, philosophy nurtures curiosity and wonder. It invites us:

•       to marvel at the mysteries of the universe
•       to ponder the complexities of existence
•       to grapple with profound ethical dilemmas.

This sense of wonder and curiosity can fuel our intellectual journey, driving us to learn more, to question more, and to deepen our understanding.

Final Thoughts

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Socratic Method 

By Jaafar Bouhlal   Updated on March 03, 2023

Introduction

Historical Significance

Process of Inquiry

Critical Thinking

Legal Practice

Limitations

Contemporary Relevance

The Socratic Method is a method of questioning developed by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. It involves a series of questions designed to clarify and refine one's thinking, with the goal of arriving at a deeper understanding of a concept or idea. The method is often used to promote critical thinking, challenge assumptions and preconceptions, and encourage individuals to question their own beliefs and values.

The Socratic Method involves a dialogue between two or more individuals, with one person asking questions and the other responding. The questions are designed to probe the respondent's understanding of the topic, to identify inconsistencies or weaknesses in their argument, and to encourage them to think more deeply about the subject at hand.

The Socratic Method is still used today in many fields, including philosophy, education, law, and ethics. It is particularly effective in promoting active learning and critical thinking skills, and can help individuals to develop a deeper understanding of complex issues. However, the method also has its limitations, including the potential for it to be used as a tool for manipulation or to reinforce existing biases. It requires a skilled practitioner who is able to ask the right questions and guide the conversation effectively.

The Socratic Method is a method of inquiry that was developed by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. It involves asking a series of questions to encourage critical thinking and to arrive at a deeper understanding of a concept or idea. The historical significance of the Socratic Method lies in its origins in ancient Greece, and its influence on Western philosophy and education.

Socrates, who lived in Athens during the 5th century BCE, is credited with developing the Socratic Method. He used this method to challenge assumptions and encourage critical thinking in his students, who included some of the most famous philosophers in history, such as Plato and Xenophon.

The Socratic Method became an important part of Western philosophy, particularly in the fields of ethics and epistemology. It has been used by many philosophers throughout history, including Plato and Aristotle, and continues to be an important method of inquiry and teaching.

In addition to its influence on philosophy, the Socratic Method has also had an impact on education. It is often used in classrooms to encourage critical thinking and to help students develop a deeper understanding of complex ideas. It has been particularly effective in promoting active learning and in helping students to engage in meaningful discussions.

The Socratic Method is a process of inquiry that involves a series of questions to explore a concept or idea. The goal of the method is to arrive at a deeper understanding of the concept or idea and to challenge assumptions and preconceptions that may be held by the individual being questioned.

The process of inquiry begins with a question or a statement about a particular concept or idea. The Socratic Method then involves asking a series of questions to explore the concept or idea further. The questions are designed to clarify the individual's thinking and to challenge their assumptions and preconceptions.

Through this process of questioning, the individual being questioned is encouraged to examine their own beliefs and assumptions, to consider different perspectives, and to engage in critical thinking. The method is intended to promote intellectual humility and to help individuals to recognize the limitations of their own knowledge.

The Socratic Method is a flexible approach to inquiry that can be used in a variety of contexts. It can be used to explore complex philosophical questions or to facilitate discussions about practical issues in fields such as education, law, and business.

Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information, make reasoned judgments, and evaluate evidence. The Socratic Method is a teaching and inquiry technique that is designed to promote critical thinking by encouraging individuals to question their own beliefs and assumptions.

Through a series of carefully crafted questions, the Socratic Method challenges individuals to think deeply about complex issues and to consider alternative perspectives. The method encourages individuals to analyze and evaluate evidence, to identify biases and assumptions, and to question the validity of arguments and claims.

By engaging in this process of critical thinking, individuals can develop a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of complex issues. They are better equipped to identify and evaluate arguments, to recognize logical fallacies, and to separate fact from fiction.

The Socratic Method is particularly effective in promoting critical thinking because it encourages individuals to question their own beliefs and assumptions. This approach helps to prevent individuals from becoming complacent and accepting information at face value. Instead, they are encouraged to actively engage with the material, to evaluate evidence, and to develop their own informed opinions.

The Socratic Method is a teaching and inquiry technique that has been used in education for centuries. It is often used to promote active learning and critical thinking skills in students. The method is particularly effective in encouraging students to think deeply about a concept or idea and to engage in meaningful discussions.

In the Socratic Method, the teacher or facilitator poses a series of questions to the students to encourage critical thinking and inquiry. The questions are designed to help students clarify their thinking, to challenge their assumptions and beliefs, and to explore different perspectives on a particular topic.

This approach to teaching encourages students to become active participants in the learning process. It promotes independent thinking and fosters a deeper understanding of the material being studied. By engaging in this process of inquiry and discussion, students are better able to internalize and apply the concepts they are learning.

The Socratic Method is particularly effective in encouraging students to engage in meaningful discussions. The method encourages students to listen carefully to the ideas and perspectives of others, to consider alternative viewpoints, and to challenge their own assumptions and beliefs. This approach to learning promotes empathy, understanding, and respect for diverse perspectives.

The Socratic Method is a technique used in legal practice, particularly in law schools, to teach students how to think critically and to develop strong arguments. The method involves asking a series of questions to test the validity of a legal argument and to help lawyers to identify weaknesses in their opponent's case.

In law schools, professors often use the Socratic Method to engage students in discussions about legal cases and to challenge their understanding of legal concepts. By asking questions and encouraging discussion, the professor helps students to develop critical thinking skills and to analyze legal arguments from multiple perspectives.

In legal practice, the Socratic Method can be used during the preparation of a case to help lawyers to identify weaknesses in their opponent's arguments. By asking a series of questions, lawyers can test the strength of their own arguments and identify potential holes in their opponent's case. This approach can help lawyers to develop stronger arguments and to anticipate potential objections from their opponent.

The Socratic Method is also useful in legal practice during cross-examination. During cross-examination, lawyers use a series of questions to challenge the testimony of a witness and to test the strength of their opponent's case. The method can be particularly effective in exposing inconsistencies or contradictions in a witness's testimony.

The Socratic Method is a powerful tool used in ethics to explore complex moral issues and to develop a deeper understanding of ethical principles. It involves asking a series of questions to help individuals clarify their thinking and to challenge their assumptions and preconceptions about ethical issues.

In ethics, the Socratic Method is used to promote critical thinking and to encourage individuals to consider multiple perspectives on a given ethical issue. The method is particularly useful in exploring complex moral issues that do not have clear-cut answers. By engaging in a process of inquiry and discussion, individuals can develop a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of ethical principles.

The Socratic Method can also be used to explore ethical dilemmas and to help individuals make more informed decisions. By asking a series of questions, individuals can identify the values and principles that are important to them and can explore the potential consequences of their actions.

The Socratic Method is a powerful tool for critical thinking, but it has some limitations that should be considered. One of the limitations of the Socratic Method is the potential for it to be used as a tool for manipulation. If a skilled practitioner of the Socratic Method uses it to push a particular agenda or to reinforce existing biases, it can become a tool for manipulation rather than a tool for critical thinking.

Another limitation of the Socratic Method is that it requires a skilled practitioner who is able to ask the right questions and guide the conversation effectively. In order for the method to be effective, the practitioner must have a deep understanding of the subject matter being discussed and must be able to ask questions that encourage critical thinking and meaningful discussion.

Additionally, the Socratic Method can sometimes be time-consuming and may not be appropriate for all situations. In some cases, a more direct approach may be more appropriate or necessary.

Furthermore, the Socratic Method may not be effective for individuals who have difficulty engaging in deep introspection or who struggle with abstract thinking. It may also be less effective in situations where emotions or personal biases are strong factors.

Despite being developed over two thousand years ago, the Socratic Method remains highly relevant in contemporary society. In many fields, including philosophy, education, and law, the Socratic Method is still seen as an effective tool for promoting critical thinking and facilitating meaningful discussions.

In philosophy, the Socratic Method continues to be used as a tool for exploring complex issues and for challenging assumptions and preconceptions. It is particularly effective in areas of philosophy such as ethics and political theory, where it can help individuals to develop a deeper understanding of complex issues and to engage in meaningful debates about important topics.

In education, the Socratic Method is often used to promote active learning and critical thinking skills. It can help students to develop a deeper understanding of complex concepts and to engage in meaningful discussions with their peers and instructors.

In law, the Socratic Method is still used in many law schools to teach students how to think critically and to develop strong arguments. It is particularly effective in helping students to identify weaknesses in legal arguments and to think creatively about legal solutions to complex problems.

In addition, the Socratic Method is increasingly being used in other fields such as business, journalism, and even medicine, where it can help individuals to develop critical thinking skills and to engage in meaningful discussions about complex issues.

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• Perception and Knowledge Claims
• Infallibility, Verifiability, Coherence Theory of Truth
• Justification, Beliefs and Truths
• Ethical Terms
• Modern Texts
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
• The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
• Medieval Texts
• The Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides
• The Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas
• The Incoherence of the Incoherence by Averroes
• Ancient Texts
• The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
• The Art of Rhetoric by Cicero
• The Republic by Plato
• Exploring Skepticism and Doubt: A Philosophical and Critical Thinking Perspective
• Philosophical thinking

From Socrates to the present day, skepticism and doubt have been at the forefront of philosophical thought. Skepticism has been used to challenge existing beliefs and assumptions, while doubt has been used to question and probe ideas, concepts, and beliefs. In this article, we explore the philosophical and critical thinking perspectives on skepticism and doubt. We will look at how they have been used throughout history to shape our thinking and inform our decisions.

We will also examine the implications of skepticism and doubt for our society today and how they can be used to foster greater understanding and collaboration. Skepticism and doubt have long been seen as tools of inquiry and analysis. They have been used to challenge established conventions, challenge accepted wisdom, and explore new ideas. As such, skepticism and doubt can be seen as essential elements of philosophical thinking. This article will explore the various ways in which skepticism and doubt have been employed by philosophers throughout history, as well as their implications for critical thinking. We will also examine the implications of skepticism and doubt in today's world.

We will look at how they can be used to promote greater understanding, collaboration, and progress in our society. We will also explore the potential pitfalls of relying too heavily on skepticism and doubt, such as the tendency to become too skeptical or too trusting of ideas. Finally, we will discuss how skepticism and doubt can be used in a constructive manner to promote meaningful dialogue and progress. Skepticism and doubt are two closely related concepts that have been discussed in philosophy and critical thinking for centuries. They involve questioning beliefs or assumptions, and seeking evidence in order to form one’s own conclusions.

Historically, skepticism and doubt have been used to challenge existing beliefs and accepted truths

Today, skepticism and doubt can still be used to think more critically about our beliefs and assumptions, by questioning our beliefs and assumptions, we can avoid making decisions based on false information or our own biases, when we question our beliefs and assumptions, it can help us to think more deeply about our positions and arguments, if taken too far, they can lead to a sense of cynicism or apathy, which can prevent us from forming meaningful connections with others or taking meaningful action.

By questioning our beliefs and assumptions, we can avoid making decisions based on false information or biases. We can also identify potential pitfalls in our reasoning and uncover alternative perspectives that we may not have considered before. Finally, when engaging in debates or discussions, skepticism and doubt can help us to think more deeply about our positions and arguments. However, it is important to use skepticism and doubt judiciously in order to avoid falling into a state of cynicism or apathy. For those looking to learn more about skepticism and doubt, there are a number of resources available.

What is Skepticism and Doubt?

Philosophical skepticism can be divided into several different types, including Cartesian skepticism, Pyrrhonism, Academic skepticism, and Humean skepticism. Cartesian skepticism is the view that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, while Pyrrhonism holds that nothing can be known with absolute certainty and that one should suspend judgement until further evidence is obtained. Academic skepticism maintains that no knowledge is certain and that wisdom is achieved through doubt, while Humean skepticism suggests that knowledge is based on experience and can never be certain. Scientific skepticism is a form of inquiry that uses scientific methods to investigate claims made in the absence of definitive proof. This type of skepticism is based on the premise that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted as valid.

The Historical Roots of Skepticism and Doubt

Descartes argued that people should use their own reason and experience to form beliefs, rather than relying solely on the teachings of others. He was an advocate of the “method of doubt”, which instructed people to doubt all of their beliefs until they could be proven true. Descartes’ ideas were highly influential and were taken up by other philosophers such as David Hume. Hume argued that humans are limited in their knowledge, and that we should not assume our beliefs to be true unless there is sufficient evidence for them.

The Application of Skepticism and Doubt

Additionally, by applying doubt to our problem-solving abilities, we can avoid the potential pitfalls of relying too heavily on instinct or intuition. For example, if we are presented with a complicated problem, we may be tempted to rush to a solution without considering the wider implications of our decision. However, by taking a moment to consider the implications of our decision and question any underlying assumptions, we can make sure that our solution is as informed and well-considered as possible. In addition to helping us think more critically, skepticism and doubt can help us develop a healthier sense of self-awareness. By questioning our own beliefs and assumptions, we can gain a better understanding of our own thought processes and the biases which might be influencing them.

Resources for Learning More About Skepticism and Doubt

Carroll 2.The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource 3.The Skeptics Society: Promoting Science and Reason Since 1992 4.Doubtful News: Keeping You Informed on Strange and Unusual Claims Podcasts: 1.Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena 2.The Partially Examined Life: Philosophy for the Rest of Us 3.Reasonable Doubts: Exploring the Claims of Christianity 4.Think Twice: Exploring the Relationship between Science and ReligionIn conclusion, skepticism and doubt are important philosophical and critical thinking tools that can help us better understand our world, beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives. By engaging in questioning and challenging our beliefs and assumptions, we are able to think more critically and gain new insights. Furthermore, skepticism and doubt can be used to inform our decision-making processes, problem-solving abilities, and more. Finally, there are a variety of resources available for readers to learn more about skepticism and doubt and how to apply them to their everyday lives.

Skepticism , doubt , critical thinking , philosophical thinking , and decision-making are all key concepts explored in this article.

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