Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
More books in the category:
Skepticism, Fallacies and Critical Thinking
by: R. W. Paul
CLICK HERE for more information and price
Reviews:
Author's intent seems less about teaching people how to apply logic to life's real-life situations and more about their agenda of promoting "liberal", "Humanist" philosophy. They eschew emotion as counterproductive to "fairmindedness," yet the discussion is replete with emotionally-charged words, symbols, and examples. We're disappointed and struggled to find the nuggets of truth in the sea of philosophical pondering.
Relativistic presuppositions doom this work to the category of new age silliness. As a book about trying to be smart and positive it's interesting but there's not much about critical thinking in here. The discussions depend heavily on modern psychology to present theories of "critical thinking" that redefine reasoning as a thoughtful journey of introspection. Worse, the use of worn-out psychobabble (overcoming our biases, etc.) and the undertone of mystical leftism, like using "thinking" to overcome larger human/societal problems, are essentially religious. E.g., critical thinking is offered as a way of overcoming societal problems like "waste, suffering, and injustice". Worthy goals, no doubt, but can thinking cure moral problems? It's simply repackaged positivism. Let's be honest, the religious/moral assumption behind this approach is that we can uncover "truth" inside of us if we think long and hard enough. It's an incorrect assumption no matter how many smart people believe it. The authors' presuppositions are essentially moral and spiritual and they pretend otherwise. The human mind is seen as the potenital savior of humanity. This is the religion of humanism packaged as "thinking".
Topics include: egocentric immediacy, sociocentric thinking, activated ignorance, submissive ego, unskilled reasoners, multilogical problems, native egocentrism, dominating ego, human egocentrism, intellectual perseverance, beginning thinker, egocentric reactions, sound ethical reasoning, egocentric mind, inert information, complete these statements, egocentric thinking, intellectual empathy, people cannot explain, egocentric people, activated knowledge, educated usage, intellectual humility, bureaucratic thinking, social professions
Resources:
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis