intellectual autonomy in critical thinking

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Critical thinking is that mode of thinking – about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them. (Paul and Elder, 2001). The Paul-Elder framework has three components:

• The elements of thought (reasoning)
• The  intellectual standards that should be applied to the elements of reasoning
• The intellectual traits associated with a cultivated critical thinker that result from the consistent and disciplined application of the intellectual standards to the elements of thought

According to Paul and Elder (1997), there are two essential dimensions of thinking that students need to master in order to learn how to upgrade their thinking. They need to be able to identify the "parts" of their thinking, and they need to be able to assess their use of these parts of thinking.

Elements of Thought (reasoning)

The "parts" or elements of thinking are as follows:

• All reasoning has a purpose
• All reasoning is an attempt to figure something out, to settle some question, to solve some problem
• All reasoning is based on assumptions
• All reasoning is done from some point of view
• All reasoning is based on data, information and evidence
• All reasoning is expressed through, and shaped by, concepts and ideas
• All reasoning contains inferences or interpretations by which we draw conclusions and give meaning to data
• All reasoning leads somewhere or has implications and consequences

Universal Intellectual Standards

The intellectual standards that are to these elements are used to determine the quality of reasoning. Good critical thinking requires having a command of these standards. According to Paul and Elder (1997 ,2006), the ultimate goal is for the standards of reasoning to become infused in all thinking so as to become the guide to better and better reasoning. The intellectual standards include:

Intellectual Traits

Consistent application of the standards of thinking to the elements of thinking result in the development of intellectual traits of:

• Intellectual Humility
• Intellectual Courage
• Intellectual Empathy
• Intellectual Autonomy
• Intellectual Integrity
• Intellectual Perseverance
• Confidence in Reason
• Fair-mindedness

Characteristics of a Well-Cultivated Critical Thinker

Habitual utilization of the intellectual traits produce a well-cultivated critical thinker who is able to:

• Raise vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely
• Gather and assess relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively
• Come to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
• Think open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
• Communicate effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems

Paul, R. and Elder, L. (2010). The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. Dillon Beach: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press.

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Intellectual autonomy, epistemic dependence and cognitive enhancement

• S.I. : Epistemic Dependence
• Open access
• Published: 15 September 2017
• Volume 197 , pages 2937–2961, ( 2020 )

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• J. Adam Carter 1  

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Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by (among others) Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood (Intellectual virtues: an essay in regulative epistemology, OUP Oxford, Oxford, pp. 259–260, 2007 ) note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing (e.g., on other individuals, technology, medicine, etc.) to an appropriate extent, while at the same time maintaining intellectual self-direction. In this essay, I want to investigate the ramifications for intellectual autonomy of a particular kind of epistemic dependence: cognitive enhancement . Cognitive enhancements (as opposed to therapeutic cognitive improvements) involve the use of technology and medicine to improve cognitive capacities in healthy individuals, through mechanisms ranging from smart drugs to brain-computer interfaces. With reference to case studies in bioethics, as well as the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, it is shown that epistemic dependence, in this extreme form, poses a prima facie threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, specifically, by threatening to undermine our intellectual self-direction. My aim will be to show why certain kinds of cognitive enhancements are subject to this objection from self-direction, while others are not. Once this is established, we’ll see that even some extreme kinds of cognitive enhancement might be not merely compatible with, but constitutive of, virtuous intellectual autonomy.

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1 Intellectual autonomy: Kant, Emerson and Hume

Intellectual autonomy—roughly, a disposition to think (in some to-be-specified sense) independently —has received various influential endorsements in the Western intellectual tradition. Immanuel Kant ( 1784 ) regards independence of thought as at the very heart of the enlightenment’s motto:

Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude . Footnote 1 ! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment ( 1784 , §1).

Kant here is effectively praising intellectual self-determination , which can be contrasted with what he’s calling ‘immaturity’, Footnote 2 where the latter involves a kind of intellectual cowardice that manifests when one’s thinking is wilfully allowed to be guided by something external to oneself.

Like Kant, the American essayist and Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his famous essay Self-Reliance , frames as contrast points what is easy—accepting intellectual guidance—and what is praiseworthy—guiding one’s own intellectual life. As Emerson ( 1841 , p. 55) puts it:

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

While both Kant and Emerson extol in different ways the virtues of self-trust, Emerson’s aversion to intellectual conformity of any kind is perhaps even stronger than Kant’s. Whereas Kant’s primary objective in ‘What is Enlightenment’ is a celebration of the value of self-determination in our intellectual lives, Emerson to a greater extent focuses on the disvalue of (even weak forms of) intellectual servility. Footnote 3 This is apparent in Emerson’s overarching argument for self-trust in Self-Reliance , where the opinions of others, and their potential influence, are treated as a threat to undermining the value of the kind of self-worth that is grounded in one’s individuality. Footnote 4

A more moderate though highly influential defence of self-trust, albeit of a more fine-grained sort, can be found in David Hume’s thinking about both induction and testimony. Hume ( 1772 ) distinguished, as epistemologically problematic, evidence for induction conceived of as evidence concerning what goes ‘beyond the present testimony of the senses, or the records of our memory’. Footnote 5 And it’s precisely the testimony of one’s own senses and of memory which are always necessarily required, for Hume, in order to ever justifiably believe the word of someone else. Footnote 6 In this respect, Hume gives a epistemic privilege to what is apparent to the self (through perception and memory) which is not afforded to any other kind of evidence, including the kind we acquire by relying on others.

Although Kant, Emerson and Hume are all clear cases where epistemic independence and self-direction are, in different ways, advanced as worthy aims, notice that there is hardly any unified expression here of the disvalue of epistemic dependence , which is something any viable account of intellectual autonomy, conceived of as a virtue, should be sensitive to. Whatever is praiseworthy about intellectual autonomy should be sensitive to both what is valuable about self-direction and what is disvaluable about epistemic dependence; an account that misfires in either direction misses the mark.

We can imagine an account of intellectual autonomy which zealously incorporates Hume’s epistemological demands with the most radical construal of Kant and Emerson. According to such an account, the virtuously autonomous agent (i) should never uncritically trust others (Hume), (ii) should never allow her intelligence or reason to be guided by another (Kant) and—perhaps most radically of all—(iii) should actively see to it that she is not shaped by the opinions of others (Emerson). While such a person would be intellectually autonomous in the sense of maximally independent and self-directive, she would hardly be virtuously so, Footnote 7 and this is because such an individual disvalues epistemic dependence to her own intellectual detriment.

On most any account of epistemic value, the acquisition of true beliefs, knowledge and understanding are epistemic goods, Footnote 8 and aspects of character are typically explained as intellectually good to have (as opposed to say morally good to have) in virtue of their connection to such goods. Footnote 9 The kind of cognitive isolation that results from disproportionately disvaluing epistemic dependence (as in the extreme form of autonomy sketched above) cuts one off from such cognitive goods.

The foregoing considerations can be captured pithily in slogan form: impressive intellectual self-direction and independence of thought without a suitable knowledge base—from others, technology, the internet, etc.—is effectively empty, whereas knowledge acquired in the absence of a suitable capacity for autonomous self-direction is blind. Footnote 10

I want to suggest that it’s possible to articulate a more reasonable way to incorporate some of what the aforementioned thinkers take to be valuable about independence of thought without committing to an implausibly restrictive stance towards epistemic dependence. Firstly, a concession to Hume is that blind trust of any kind of testimony—be it particular mundane items of information, or testimony aimed at guiding inquiry itself—is epistemically criticisable. Though, this concession is compatible with the epistemic appropriateness of certain kinds of trust. Footnote 11 Secondly, a concession to Kant and Emerson: cognitive outsourcing—to what is external to one’s own intelligence (Kant) and individuality (Emerson)—is epistemically criticisable in cases where such outsourcing undermines (in some relevant, non-trivial way) one’s capacity for intellectual self-direction. And this concession is compatible with the thought that sometimes—perhaps even often—we should make use of available resources (other people, technology, etc.) when forming particular beliefs and also when determining what inquiries to pursue.

Putting this all together—and without committing to any detailed account of intellectual autonomy—it’s reasonable to suppose that virtuous intellectual autonomy simply cannot mean, as Roberts and Wood ( 2007 , pp. 259–260) put it, ‘that one never relies on the intellectual labor of another’. But nor should a virtuously autonomous agent necessarily rarely rely on anything other than one’s own endowed faculties. Rather, the crucial idea is that the virtuously autonomous agent actually must rely on others, and outsource cognitive tasks as a means to gaining knowledge and other epistemic goods, up until the point that doing so would be at the expense of her own capacity for self-direction . And this makes intellectual autonomy, essentially, a virtue of self-regulation Footnote 12 in the acquisition and maintenance of our beliefs. Footnote 13

Over-reliance on the opinion of others is perhaps—as Roberts and Wood ( 2007 , p. 259) have suggested—the most straightforward threat to an individual’s capacity for intellectual self-direction, but it is hardly the only such threat. The virtuously autonomous individual must also be sensitive to other less obvious ways in which her own agency can become disconnected from the way she acquires and maintains her beliefs.

Increasingly, in order to meet our cognitive goals, we tend to ‘offload’ tasks (traditionally performed through the use of our endowed biological faculties) to technological gadgets with which we regularly and uncritically interact. Moreover, the latest science and medicine has made it possible to improve cognitive functioning along various dimensions using such methods as nootropics or ‘smart drugs’ (e.g., Adderall, Ritalin, Provigil, Oxiracetan), implants (e.g., neuroprosthetics), direct brain-computer interfaces, and (to some extent) genetic engineering. Footnote 14

Both high-tech cognitive offloading and reliance on medicine to achieve cognitive goals represent increasingly ubiquitous ways in which an individual’s own intellectual agency can—at least potentially—become disconnected from the way she acquires and maintains her beliefs.

In what follows, I want to examine how the foregoing considerations about the connection between virtuous intellectual autonomy and maintaining self-direction interface with the potential threat posed by various forms of cognitive enhancement. The forms of enhancement explored have in common—and in a way that is relevant to intellectual autonomy—that an individual, in virtue of the enhancement, is such that the contribution of her own biologically endowed cognitive faculties to her cognitive projects is diminished. Footnote 15

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. Section  2 sharpens the notion of cognitive enhancement and, in the course of doing so, distinguishes it from the related notion of therapeutic cognitive improvement. Section  3 presents three kinds of cognitive enhancement cases which appear to undermine, for slightly different reasons, the intellectual autonomy of the cognitive enhanced agent, by undermining (each case, in a different way) her capacity for intellectual self-direction. Section  4 responds to the three example cases in a way that will clarify why some enhancements are immune to the objection from self-direction while others are not. Once this point is appreciated, it will be suggested how—in the right circumstances—availing ourselves to the latest technology and medicine is not only compatible with, but can fruitfully augment, our intellectual self-direction and autonomy.

2 Cognitive enhancement

One very common reason why we rely on technology and/or medicine to assist us in our cognitive tasks is that our endowed biological cognitive faculties sometimes fail us. Take, for example, Alzheimer’s disease, which has symptoms that include short-term memory loss and confusion. Sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease increasingly rely on drugs such as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (e.g., Donepezil) to slow the cognitive symptoms of the disease. Footnote 16 Specifically, drugs like Donepezil slow the breakdown of acetylcholine, which is a chemical (in low supply in Alzheimer’s patients) that helps to send messages between nerve cells. Footnote 17

Contrast now the use of Donepezil to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, from a superficially similar case, where a drug is likewise involved to improve cognition, but which (as we’ll see) might generate a different intuitive reaction. Consider the ‘smart drug’ Modafinil (i.e., Provigil), a eugeroic drug prescribed to patients suffering from narcolepsy, though which is widely used ‘off label’ not to correct any pathology or defect, but to gain some kind of cognitive advantage. Footnote 18 A comprehensive meta-study conducted by Battleday and Brem ( 2015 ) has shown Modafinil to be consistently efficacious in enhancing, in non-sleep-deprived healthy individuals, attention, executive functions, and learning, especially in complex cognitive tasks. A potential cost of these gains, as reported in recent studies by Mohamed ( 2014 ) and Mohamed and Lewis ( 2014 )—comes in the area of creativity. Such studies indicate that Modafinil, despite its benefits in focus in healthy individuals, has a deleterious effect in convergent and divergent creative thinking tasks, aimed at narrowing possibilities and generating novel ideas, respectively. Footnote 19

In both the case of Donepezil as well as Modafinil use, something extra-agential—viz., drugs—is a significant causal difference maker with respect to the nature and quality as well as the direction of one’s cognitive projects. Also, in both cases, the contribution of the agent’s biologically endowed cognitive faculties to her cognitive projects is diminished given the increased role drugs are playing. However, while it’s not clear that the former case in any way represents a threat to the cognitively improved agent’s intellectual autonomy (if anything, it seems the former case facilitates intellectual self-direction in Alzheimer’s patients), the second case—viz., regarding Modafinil—is a quite a bit murkier. That is, intuitively, it seems as though allowing a drug like Modafinil to substantially shape the way one manages one’s cognitive life (in matters such as focus, learning and creativity) involves a certain sacrifice of self-direction that one doesn’t seem to be making in the case of Donepezil.

One might initially assume that this is because ‘smart drugs’ such as Modafinil generally have a more substantial causal influence on one’s cognitive life (relative to not taking the drug) than do drugs like Donepezil, when the latter is taken therapeutically and the former is taken ‘off label’ by healthy individuals. Though this is hardly the case. A faster rate of neural degeneration would be a much more dramatic shift in one’s cognitive life than an absence of above-the-mean focus and attention. On closer consideration, it seems as though some kind of normative consideration must be what’s underlying the intuition that dependence on Modafinil poses a more credible threat to undermining intellectual autonomy than does dependence on Donepezil. Footnote 20

Here is an obvious (though ultimately, I’ll suggest, misguided) candidate normative consideration: although Donepezil is itself something extra-agential which is causally responsible in an important sense to patients’ belief retention and memory, its use is aimed at correcting a pathology or cognitive defect, and as such to bring the agent closer to normal healthy levels of cognitive functioning. Improvements to human functioning which have this kind of goal are termed therapeutic cognitive improvements . Footnote 21 Modafinil by contrast, when used by healthy individuals to gain a kind of cognitive advantage, constitutes a cognitive enhancement and as such aims go beyond mere healthy human cognitive functioning. Footnote 22

If this normative difference between the two cases is the right explanation, then it would have to be premised upon a more general claim to the effect that cognitive enhancements, as such , pose a distinctive kind of challenge to the retention of intellectual autonomy that is not posed by therapeutic cognitive improvements. Even if this more general claim were true, it would just raise yet a further, more difficult question: why should the fact that enhancements raise cognitive functioning beyond healthy levels be relevant at all to whether autonomy is at risk of being compromised?

Ultimately, what I want to suggest is that the cognitive norm that is, on closer inspection, most fundamental in explaining why some cases where cognition is partly driven by extra-agential factors really do compromise intellectual autonomy, while others don’t, is framed not in terms of enhancement, but rather, in terms of (a lack of) cognitive integration , in a sense that will be articulated in more detail in Sect.  4 .

In order to appreciate why it’s not enhancement, as such , that’s the problem from the perspective of retaining one’s intellectual autonomy, it will be helpful to consider three example enhancement cases, which draw from work by Michael Lynch ( 2016 ) on neuromedia, Felicitas Kraemer ( 2011 ) on pharmacological enhancement and authenticity and Google design ethicists on framing effects and the illusion of choice, respectively. Each case features a strand of cognitive enhancement with a different proximate cause for why the agent’s capacity for intellectual self-direction is undermined. What I hope to show is that these three proximate causes all have an underlying or distal cause which can account for why intellectual autonomy is undermined in these enhancement cases. We’ll see, further, that such a cause needn’t be present in all cases of cognitive enhancement, which is why not all forms of cognitive enhancement are a threat to one’s intellectual autonomy. Moreover, the view advanced can also explain why therapeutic cognitive improvements are generally speaking (though not always) compatible with the retention of intellectual autonomy.

3 Three objections from self-direction

3.1 learned helplessness footnote 23.

While drugs can help to help improve cognitive functioning, so can cognitive scaffolding —viz., reliance on technologies that complement our endowed cognitive abilities. Footnote 24 Generally, gadgets used for cognitive scaffolding (i.e., iPhones, laptops, Google Glass) are located outside of our brains. However, this might just be temporary. As Michael Lynch ( 2016 ) has pointed out, the gadgets we rely on to store, process and acquire information have become, even just over the past decade, significantly smaller and wearable—as he puts it, trending toward seamless and ‘invisible’. One example of such ‘invisible’ scaffolding includes the new Google ‘Smart Lens’ project, which is bringing to the market ‘smart contact eye lenses’ with tiny wireless chips inside along with a wireless antenna thinner than a human hair. Footnote 25 Since the launch of this project, Samsung has countered (in February 2016) by patenting its own smart contact lenses which includes an invisible camera, with a display that can ‘project images directly into the human eye’. Footnote 26

One of the most provocative kinds of seamless cognitive scaffolding however comes in the form of wireless neural implants. Neural implants, increasingly used to assist individuals with prostheses to allow their brain and nerves to control and receive feedback from movements of prostheses, had previously required the use of wires that are connected to a device outside the agent’s body. Footnote 27 A recent (2016) smart chip development can now be paired with the implants to allow for wireless transmission of brain signals. Footnote 28 While this technology is currently being developed exclusively for therapeutic purposes, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision non-therapeutic uses for wireless neural implants.

In his recent book The Internet of Us , Michael Lynch ( 2016 ) anticipates a not unrealistic future scenario where sophisticated wireless neutral implants—what he calls ‘neuromedia’—are the norm in a society. However, Lynch’s story comes with a twist:

NEUROMEDIA: Imagine a society where smartphones are miniaturized and hooked directly into a person’s brain. With a single mental command, those who have this technology—let’s call it neuromedia—can access information on any subject [...] Now imagine that an environmental disaster strikes our invented society after several generations have enjoyed the fruits of neuromedia. The electronic communication grid that allows neuromedia to function is destroyed. Suddenly no one can access the shared cloud of information by thought alone. [...] for the inhabitants of this society, losing neuromedia is an immensely unsettling experience; it’s like a normally sighted person going blind. They have lost a way of accessing information on which they’ve come to rely [...]

The moral Lynch draws, and which he develops in the book, is of course a cautionary one. Footnote 29 Though while the worry expressed by the neuromedia thought experiment appeals to a futuristic scenario featuring ‘extreme’ cognitive scaffolding, Footnote 30 the crux of the worry can be abstracted away from the details of his case, so as to apply more broadly to some of our currently available cognitive scaffolding, such as smartphones.

Here, the social-psychological notion of “learned helplessness” (e.g., Seligman 1972 ) will be useful in capturing the lesson. Learned helplessness, generally construed, occurs when one repeatedly experiences a lack of control over his or her environment, then resigns herself to such lack of control. Footnote 31 The former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation, Roger McKinlay ( 2016 ) offers, in a recent article in Nature , a clear everyday example of learned helplessness as it pertains to the maintenance of navigation skills. McKinlay notes that increased reliance on satellite navigation has led drivers to be less vigilant in tracking where they have previously driven compared to those drivers accustomed to relying on paper maps, and so (in simulation tests) are more inclined to drive past the same place twice without noticing. More generally, deteriorating navigation skills has in turn only increased reliance on satellite navigation, through a process whereby individuals are increasingly ‘giving up’ attempting to orient themselves–and are accordingly failing to develop parts of the brain responsible for spatial orientation. Footnote 32

Putting this all together, a rationale emerges for at least one specific way in which cognitive enhancement can threaten intellectual autonomy—viz., by rendering individuals increasingly intellectually helpless. Footnote 33 To the extent that one is helpless, one is unable even if one tries, to direct one’s cognitive affairs, in the absence of the enhancement in question. Let’s now consider two other potential rationales, which are motivated on the basis of different kinds of considerations.

3.2 Scaffolding, framing effects and the illusion of preference-based choice

An well-known variety of cognitive bias called the framing effect occurs when the presentation of a choice influences how individuals react to it (e.g., Tversky and Kahneman 1981 ). Framing effects reveal that our perceived control over certain kinds of choices is often illusory, and the shape that our online inquiries take is especially susceptible to such an illusion of control.

A concrete example of such a framing effect involves online searching. We are often led to believe that our own preferences are what’s primarily responsible for determining what inquiries we in fact pursue online, in a way that overlooks, as Google design ethicist Tristan Harris ( 2016 ) puts it, the way ‘choices are manipulated upstream by menus we didn’t choose in the first place’. As Harris puts it:

When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask: “what’s not on the menu?” “why am I being given these options and not others?” “do I know the menu provider’s goals?” “is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?”

Suppose, for example, you make an online choice (e.g., between five options which turn up in a Yelp search) Footnote 34 about what activity to pursue when visiting a new town. In such a circumstance, you might believe the choice you make, from the options on the Yelp search menu best represents your own preferences. You then search again, to learn some more information about the specific activity you’ve tentatively chosen, and are in the process nudged by Google-auto-complete, when generates another choice from a menu. Footnote 35 At the end of such a series, your curiosity is satisfied and your inquiry is complete. It is an interesting philosophical question to what extent you have just directed the particular chain of inquiries which have culminated in the new set of beliefs you’ve settled upon. This much seems plausible: the shape that online inquiry chains take is significantly influenced by undetected framing effects that are themselves the product of upstream technological design decisions. Footnote 36

The more general line of argument that emerges is the following: enhancement via intelligence augmentation, as when we outsourcing cognitive tasks to smartphones and other gadgets, subjects us to constant framing effects which often go unnoticed. While such gadgets obviously aid us in acquiring knowledge quickly and seamlessly, they—as this line of argument contends—undermine our intellectual self-direction by (and in a manner that typically goes undetected) diminishing the contribution that our own biological cognitive faculties make towards the shape our inquiries take. Footnote 37

3.3 Authenticity and self-direction

Some virtue epistemologists such as Christopher Hookway ( 2003 ) and Catherine Elgin ( 1996 ) have argued, in different ways, for the epistemological significance of certain kinds of emotions. Footnote 38 Emotions can be influenced pharmacologically, sometimes therapeutically, though sometimes with the aim of enhancing emotional well-being in healthy individuals, as in what Peter Kramer ( 1994 ) calls ‘cosmetic pharmacology’. Footnote 39

As Felicitas Kraemer ( 2011 , p. 52) has asked, when drugs are relied on to enhance our emotional well-being ‘Can emotional authenticity or inauthenticity be inferred from the naturalness or artificiality [...]’ of such drugs? How this question is answered is relevant to intellectual self-direction. For if those such as Hookway and Elgin are right that emotions can be epistemically significant, then to the extent such emotions are inauthentic, the self-directedness of inquiries influenced by such emotions appears prima facie called into doubt.

Kraemer’s own line, drawing from work by Kramer ( 1994 ) and Elliott ( 2004 ), is that we should take seriously that (for example) someone using Prozac might feel ‘like themselves’ for the first time ever and is not in doing so mistaken. Footnote 40 On accounts of emotional authenticity which make the naturalness or artificiality of the enhancing agent relevant to emotional authenticity, such cases are difficult to explain.

Kraemer is led to the conclusion that emotional authenticity is to be regarded as a phenomenally felt quality. She writes:

The notion ‘emotional authenticity’ thus means the phenomenally felt quality that a person perceives with respect to his or her inner emotional state, no matter by which means (natural or artificial) it has been brought about [...] and whenever ‘the individuals experiencing it recognize their own feelings really as their own and identify with them’ ( 2011 , p. 57).

Kraemer’s phenomenological account of emotional authenticity has a number of advantages over other accounts which will (for example) be faced with the problem of accounting for why some non-natural or artificial enhancing agents detract from authenticity while more common cases (as she writes, listening to Mahler, drinking wine) do not.

However, Kraemer’s own account invites a further epistemological worry, one that is highlighted in recent experimental work by Newman et al. ( 2014 , 2015 ). In short, what these experimental studies found was that ‘people’s true self attributions appear to be influenced in a complex way by their moral judgments’ Footnote 41 through what Knobe calls ‘positivity bias’. In particular, as Newman et al. ( 2014 ) put it:

people have a general tendency to conclude that the true self is fundamentally good—that is, that deep inside every individual, there is something motivating him or her to behave in ways that are virtuous’ ( 2014 , p. 203).

Such studies cast doubt on the thought that (as per Kraemer) the phenomenally felt quality that a person perceives with respect to his or her inner emotional state is such that, when one experiences it, one can reliably recognize their own feelings really as their own and identify with them. At least, from these findings, it is reasonable to conclude that, given the prevalence of positivity bias, one will be ceteris paribus more inclined to regard some emotions as aspects of one’s true self if those emotions are judged positively than otherwise.

Putting this all together, an epistemological worry materialises: the more positively one regards a given emotional experience, the more likely one is to mistake that experience as characteristic of one’s true self even when it is not. Pharmacological enhancement of emotions tends to generate in one the kinds of emotional experiences that will be regarded positively, from the subject’s perspective. Enhanced emotions, as such, are thus likely to be mistaken as characteristic of one’s authentic self even when they are not . This includes enhanced epistemic emotions (e.g., attentiveness, curiosity, pride), the sort which (as per Hookway, Elgin and others) can be relevant to virtuous inquiry. To the extent that the kind of intellectual self-direction that is crucial to intellectual autonomy involves one’s authentic self, the foregoing looks problematic; enhancement of epistemically relevant emotions threatens to make one more likely to regard her inquiries as self-directed, in the sense of authentically self-directed, when they are in fact not.

4 Cognitive integration and high-tech autonomy

We’re now in a position to put several pieces together. In Sect.  1 , it was shown why overly self-reliant conceptions of intellectual autonomy are self-undermining. The virtuously autonomous agent, it was argued, must rely on others, and outsource cognitive tasks as a means to gaining knowledge and other epistemic goods, up until the point that doing so would be at the expense of her own capacity for self-direction . This will happen when a subject’s intellectual agency is (in some relevant sense) caused to be disconnected from the way she acquires and maintains her beliefs. Call this kind of disconnect agential disconnect .

In Sect.  3 , we saw three kinds of cases where some form of cognitive enhancement led to agential disconnect. In Sect.  3.1 , cognitive enhancement via Lynch-style neuromedia appeared to cause agential disconnect by diminishing through habituation (viz., as in cases of learned helplessness) the contribution of one’s biological faculties in her cognitive projects. In Sect.  3.2 , cognitive enhancement via intelligence augmentation/scaffolding appeared to cause agential disconnect via subjecting individuals to constant framing effects which often go unnoticed and which generate an illusion of choice in the course of cognitive projects. In Sect.  3.3 , pharmacological enhancement of epistemic emotions appeared to cause agential disconnect by making the subject more likely to regard her inquiries as authentically self-directed, when they are in fact not.

In what follows, I want to argue that these three proximate causes of agential disconnect canvassed in Sects.  3.1 – 3.3 share a common distal cause. Footnote 42 Once this point is appreciated, it will be shown that cognitive enhancement, as such, is not doing any interesting work in accounting for the threat to autonomy posed in the three enhancement cases surveyed in Sect.  3 . Rather, what’s important is just how the cognitive artifacts in question are being incorporated into the subject’s cognitive character.

4.1 Cognitive character and ‘extended’ agency

There is a well-developed framework in contemporary virtue epistemology which offers a way to model the comparative contribution of a subject’s own agency versus other non-agential factors in one’s intellectual endeavours. A key reference point in the history of epistemology where this framework was especially important came in the wake of meta-incoherence objections Footnote 43 to standard process reliabilist accounts of knowledge. According to process reliabilist (e.g., Goldman 1976 ) approaches to knowledge, knowledge is true belief issued by a reliable belief forming process.

Problematically for this view, some processes which lead to belief generation are themselves disintegrated from the agent’s own cognitive psychology, as was the case in Keith Lehrer’s ( 1990 ) famous case of Mr. Truetemp. In that case, an individual—Mr. Truetemp—has (unbeknownst to him) a thermometer planted in his head, and which causes him to reliably form true beliefs about the ambient temperature. Even though Mr. Truetemp’s beliefs are formed by a reliable process, they plausibly (contra the process reliabilist) do not qualify as knowledge. Footnote 44

The virtue reliabilist’s explanation for why such beliefs do not qualify as knowledge is that (in Lehrer’s case) the thermometer is not appropriately integrated within the agent’s—to use Greco’s terminology—cognitive character. Footnote 45 In support of this point, consider that when Truetemp forms a true belief, it is hardly something for which we can credit him .

But this raises a further question: under what conditions does an external artifact, such as a thermometer, count as being appropriately integrated within the psychology of the individual such that it is part of one’s character—viz., so that the product of the inquiry is something the agent can take credit for?

A promising answer to this question—one which offers possibilities for diagnosing the cases considered in Sects.  3.1 – 3.3 , can be found in recent literature at the intersection of virtue epistemology and active externalist approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Footnote 46 Consider, for example, the hypothesis of extended cognition (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998 ; Clark 2008 ), according to which cognitive processes can cross-cross the boundaries of the skin and skull and includes extra-organismic parts of the world, such as notebooks, iPhones, laptops, etc. Proponents of extended cognition insist that the matter of whether to include something as part of a cognitive process should be made on the basis of the functional role that thing plays, rather than on the basis of its location or material constitution. As Clark and Chalmers ( 1998 , p. 8) put it, such judgments should be guided by a kind of parity principle:

if, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it to go on in the head, we would have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.

What this principle implies is that in cases where, for example, one habituates oneself to outsourcing information storage and retrieval to a device (e.g., an online diary) as opposed to biological memory, then—given that we’re prepared to count biological memory as part of a cognitive process—so likewise we should include one’s iPhone, which is playing the same functional role as biological memory vis-a-vis information storage and retrieval, despite being located outside the head. Footnote 47

Proponents of extended cognition however are careful not to include just any kind of external artefact we interact with as part of a cognitive process. It would be problematic for example to suggest that certain devices we consult only occasionally qualify. And so it is a theoretical project for proponents of extended cognition to explain which extra-organismic artifacts we rely on are to be ruled-in as parts of our cognitive processes, and which should be excluded. Footnote 48

As Duncan Pritchard ( 2010 ) has pointed out, the question the virtue-epistemologist must answer—viz., under what conditions does an external artifact, such as a thermometer, count as being appropriately integrated within the psychology of the individual such that it is part of one’s character—bears similarities to the question the proponent of extended cognition must answer in order to avoid ruling in too much as part of a cognitive process. Pritchard ( 2010 ) has argued, in the earliest paper to explicitly connect extended cognition and virtue epistemology, that these related questions might have a similar answer. In particular, the line he has pressed is that for some extra-agential item to be included as part of an extended cognitive process, it must also be cognitively integrated in such a way as to qualify as a part of the agent’s own cognitive character.

One obvious such integration condition, one that has been advanced also by Clark ( 2008 ), involves accessibility ; the external artifact must be accessible in a way that is broadly analogous to our innate faculties. In the case of cognitive scaffolding, this means that the iPhone or gadget must be (literally) available to one much like one’s own biological memory is. Cases of individuals who only occasionally carry a phone thus do not qualify; likewise, analogously, in the pharmacological case, a smart drug, regardless of its efficacy, which is taken irregularly does not qualify. Another such condition involves automatic endorsement ; the representational deliverances of the extra-organismic artifact should be automatically endorsed and should not normally be subject to critical scrutiny. Thus, in the scaffolding case, a gadget—say, a tactile visual substitution system Footnote 49 (TVSS)—is not cognitively integrated if the agent does not trust in a default way the deliverances of the TVSS, much like, in normal circumstances, we trust uncritically the deliverances of our biological eyes; likewise, in the pharmacological case.

A third and important condition, one which Pritchard puts forward, is a kind of cognitive ownership condition—viz., whereby the individual in question endorses in some epistemically respectable way the extra-organismic entity which is playing a role in her belief formation and to appreciate it as reliable. Consider the following case: suppose some ethically compromised cognitive scientists were to surreptitiously install a tactile visual substitution system in an individual with non-working biological eyes—and without that individual having any awareness that such a system had ever been installed. The epistemic pedigree of whatever spatial orientation beliefs such an individual forms via the tactile inputs generated by the system is in this case undermined. Footnote 50 Furthermore, notice that such an individual is in the relevantly same situation as Lehrer’s Mr. Truetemp: neither is aware of the source of the reliability of the relevant beliefs, having never originally endorsed the extra-organismic source as a reliable one. By contrast, Pritchard suggests that if, for example, Mr. Truetemp were to come to find out about the thermometer and to appreciate it as a reliable source of his beliefs about the ambient temperature, then his cognitive success could be creditable to him in a way it is not in the original version of the case, even though in both cases, the temperature beliefs are caused by the thermometer. Mutatis mutandis , in the case of the individual with the tactile visual substitution system.

To the extent that this thinking is on the right track, we have a precedent, as well as some tools, for thinking about the cognitive enhancement cases canvassed in Sects.  3.1 – 3.3 featuring agential disconnect, and just how in these cases contribution of the subject’s own agency compares to the contribution from what is external to it.

4.2 Cognitive enhancement and cognitive integration

Cognitive enhancement via Lynch-style neuromedia appeared to cause agential disconnect, and thus to undermine the kind of intellectual self-direction that is crucial to intellectual autonomy, by generating through habituation a kind of ‘learned helplessness’ (in the sense articulated in Sect.  3.1 ). I want to now suggest that there is an even more fundamental cause of the agential disconnect we find in such cases. The more fundamental cause can be expressed in the language of cognitive integration.

Consider again Pritchard’s diagnosis of the original presentation of the Truetemp case. Mr. Truetemp fails the cognitive ownership condition on cognitive integration, specifically because Mr. Truetemp lacks any conception of the reliability of the source of his own beliefs—which happen to be issued correctly by the implanted thermometer. Lynch’s neuromedia cases are presumably not like Truetemp in the respect that, in Lynch’s thought experiment, those with neuromedia are plausibly aware that they are relying on wireless neural implants to form their beliefs. However, there is another respect in which Lynch’s case lines up closely with the Truetemp case. In neither case does the subject have an epistemically respectable conception of the source of the reliability of the beliefs. Truetemp lacks such a conception because he fails to know about the thermometer. In Lynch’s case, the neglect of epistemic hygiene has led to a profound kind of cognitive atrophy. As Lynch puts it,

Just as overreliance on one sense can weaken the others, so overdependence on neuromedia might atrophy the ability to access information in other ways, ways that are less easy and require more creative effort ( 2016 , p. 22).

A consequence of such atrophy is that the individuals in question lacks any conception, in the absence of relying on the neuromedia itself , of the neuromedia’s reliability. Just as one cannot take cognitive ownership of the legality of the laws enshrined in a legal text by reading in that very text that its laws are legal, so likewise Lynch’s neuromedia proponents are not in a position to satisfy the cognitive ownership condition by bootstrapping—viz., by simply relying on what their neuromedia tells them about the epistemic pedigree of neuromedia, Footnote 51 and endorsing the reliability of neuromedia on this basis. In sum, a lack of cognitive integration would suffice to account for the agential disconnect, that is, for why intellectual agency is caused to be disconnected from the way she acquires and maintains her beliefs.

Consider now the second kind of scaffolding case canvassed—where cognitive enhancement via cognitive scaffolding appeared to cause agential disconnect via subjecting individuals to constant framing effects which often go unnoticed and which generate illusions of choice. The paradigmatic example is one who comes to form a set of beliefs through some form of intelligence augmentation (e.g., Google Glass) as a result of an series of menu choices. Again, in the case described, the cognitive integration conditions are not suitably met; this is in particular because the cognitive ownership condition on cognitive integration fails, though for a different reason than in Lynch’s neuromedia case. In the neuromedia thought experiment, the individual will plausibly concede her helplessness in the absence of the neuromedia (and in the presence of neuromedia, can not satisfy the condition in an epistemically respectable way). In the cases discussed in Sect.  3.2 , however, the individual is likely to claim cognitive ownership of her own inquiries. The problem is just that the individual significantly mistaken about what she is entitled to claim.

Given that, as Harris ( 2016 ) points out, design decisions often significantly influence upstream menu choices, the salient explanation for why—in the kind of case described, at least—certain inquiries take the shapes they do, and culminate in the beliefs that they do (correct or otherwise), is technological design rather than the individual’s own preferences. For those who outsource certain kinds of inquiries entirely to menu-driven search apps (e.g., Yelp reviews, Spotify music suggestions, etc.) the beliefs which serve as the termination of these inquiries might be very different if the menu choices were different, if one searched through different apps, or by means with fewer automated suggestions.

This is not to say that individual preferences play no explanatory role in such inquiries at all. Preference plays a guiding role even in inquiries that are almost entirely and uncritically influenced by menu-choice design. Rather, the point is that in some of these cases, the subject is led to claim a mistaken level of ownership, oblivious to the framing effect and its influence in her belief formation. This failure of cognitive integration between the individual and the technology whose influence she lacks a conception of, suffices to account for the agential disconnect which undermines intellectual self-direction.

Finally, in the case of pharmacological enhancement considered in Sect.  3.3 , things are more complex. In this case, the problem was one of authenticity: it was shown that pharmacological enhancement of epistemically efficacious emotions threatens to make one more likely to regard her inquiries as self-directed, in the sense of authentically self-directed, when they are in fact not. And this was due to the fact that enhanced emotions, as such, are for reasons outlined in Sect.  3.3 , likely to be mistaken as characteristic of one’s authentic self even when they are not .

Here I think it will be helpful to draw a diagnostic parallel between (i) the failure of cognitive integration in intelligence augmentation cases where technological design generates an illusion of choice in the direction of one’s inquiries, and (ii) what can be a failure of cognitive integration in some (but not all) cases of pharmacological enhancement. In the former case, the subject’s lack of a conception of how the technology relied upon influenced her cognising resulted in the subject’s failing the cognitive ownership condition on cognitive integration. An analogous problem surfaces in the latter case, when the subject lacks a conception of how the pharmacological enhancement relied upon influences her cognising. To the extent that the former case constitutes a failure of cognitive integration, by parity of reasoning, so should the latter case.

4.3 High-tech autonomy

We’ve arrived at the conclusion that the three kinds of enhancement cases (e.g., as surveyed in Sects.  3.1 – 3.3 ) which seemed to pose a threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, share a common feature: in each case, plausible conditions on cognitive integration are not satisfied, Footnote 52 and in a way that accounts for the kind of agential disconnect that underlies the agents’ (respective) defect in intellectual self-direction.

I want to now go further to suggest that, in so far as these cases are ones where intellectual autonomy is undermined, the fact that they are cases of cognitive enhancement, as opposed to therapeutic cognitive improvement, is just an accidental feature. In order to appreciate why, we can briefly run variations on all three cases. In each variation, we’ll hold fixed the cognitive enhancement element of the case but shift the cognitive integration present, so that the cognitive ownership condition on integration is satisfied. In each case, what results is that the agential disconnect characteristic of compromised intellectual self-direction is not present.

Consider first a spin on our ‘learned helplessness’ case. Suppose that the individuals in Lynch’s thought experiment rely on neuromedia in a more epistemically hygienic fashion than he has us suppose they do—viz., by maintaining ways, without relying on neuromedia itself, to monitor and calibrate against their environment the neuromedia they’re relying on, and so without allowing their other ways of forming and maintaining beliefs to atrophy. In such a circumstance, these individuals will be such that they would not surrender the capacities to be sensitive to potential faults in their neuromedia, specifically by maintaining other reliable methods for assessing its reliability. In such a circumstance, even when the neural implants are in perfectly working order, the individuals in this revised version of the story are plausibly a position to take a kind of cognitive ownership over the truths they acquire on the basis of their implants. They are, in this respect, in an analogous position with an ‘enlightened Mr. Truetemp’ who is able to monitor the deliverances of the thermometer with other faculties. In neither the enlightened Truetemp nor the enlightened neuromedia cases—where the cognitive ownership condition is satisfied—is it at all clear that we have agential disconnect of the sort that undermines intellectual self-direction. Footnote 53

Similar remarks can be made with respect to ‘enlightened’ variants of the enhancement cases noted in Sects.  3.2 – 3.3 . In the case of intelligence augmentation and framing effects, the subject is oblivious to the framing effect and its powerful influence in her belief formation. This is why the individual is not in a position to take cognitive ownership of the results of the inquiry, as self-directed. However, the situation is different if the individual were to become aware of the framing effects particular to the gadgets she is relying on, and to attain some conception of how such affects are inclined to nudge inquiries in particular directions, and thus how to avoid such effects when they conflict with her other preferences. One such mechanisms through which this could be accomplished is by actively undertaking ‘framing-effect’ debiasing, which a study by Almashat et al. ( 2008 ) has shown has been effective in medical contexts. In a similar vein, an enlightened variation of the pharmacological enhancement case from Sect.  3.3 , where the relevant ‘debiasing’ would pertain to positivity bias (as reported by Knobe and co-authors) as opposed to framing-effect biases.

In each of the three enhancement cases, the more information one acquires about the mechanisms by which the extra-organismic artefact (be it drugs, technology) culminate in beliefs the agent holds, and the conditions that are required for these mechanisms to function reliably, the better positioned the individual is to appreciate when such mechanisms are not reliable, and thus to take cognitive ownership even when (as in the enlightened Truetemp case) the extra-organismic element seems to be doing most of the relevant work. Footnote 54

If this is right, then two final points can be gleaned. The first point is that, when cases of cognitive enhancement genuinely threaten to undermine our intellectual autonomy, it is not because they are cases of enhancement, as opposed to therapeutic improvement. Rather, the cases feature a lack of suitable cognitive integration. The corollary to this point is that cases of cognitive enhancement which feature suitable cognitive integration pose no obvious threat to intellectual autonomy, despite the fact that such cases might involve heavy epistemic dependence on extra-organismic elements of the world.

This verdict seems to conflict with our original diagnosis of the Donepezil versus Modafinil case from Sect.  2 . That verdict was, recall, that cognitive enhancement in healthy agents, such as by relying on Modafinil, seems to pose a prima facie threat to intellectual autonomy that is not posed in equal measure in cases where an individual relies on drugs such as Donepezil for purely therapeutic purposes, viz., to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. This reading suggested that in the case of Modafinil, it was the fact of enhancement (which is not present in the Donepezil case) that seemed to make a difference with respect to intellectual autonomy.

The second key point to make is that cases like this, no less than the cases from Sect.  3 , can be diagnosed in the language of cognitive integration, and so involve no essential appeal to enhancement. There are two elements to establishing this point. First, consider again Donepezil as used for Alzheimer’s patients, which does not intuitively threaten intellectual autonomy. That it is used therapeutically is not an essential part of the explanation for why. Consider that, in the case of pharmacological therapeutic cognitive improvements such as Donepezil, the drug is administered with the aim of preventing change (e.g., by slowing change) in the agent’s cognitive psychology, rather than causing it. However, other drugs with the same kind of therapeutic purpose can aid in achieving this cognitively ameliorative aim while dramatically inducing new changes in the agent’s cognitive psychology in other ways. A notable example here are benzodiazepines (e.g., Xanax), which can be used to treat anxiety problems. When used therapeutically, these drugs can help to improve poor concentration for anxiety sufferers. However, drugs like Xanax, while helping to quell anxiety-driven distraction and lack of focus, can have cognitively detrimental side effects, including memory loss Footnote 55 and in some extreme cases anterograde amnesia. Footnote 56 Given the prevalence of memory-loss denial Footnote 57 for those suffering memory loss, the use of Xanex therapeutically can engender cognitive disintegration in the subject despite the ameliorative cognitive affects it brings about by fulfilling its therapeutic function. Such individuals can accordingly have their intellectual autonomy compromised even when therapeutic drugs are fulfilling their intended function. Footnote 58

To the extent that therapeutic cognitive improvements, on the whole, generally do not typically pose a threat to autonomy, this is only because the introduction of new changes to system is an aberrant and accidental property of drugs administered in these circumstances. In normal circumstances—as in the example of successful administering of Donepezil—the subject is prevented by the drug from further cognitive deterioration (or at least, caused to have such deterioration forestalled), without the introduction of comparatively more dramatic new changes to the way she maintains and forms beliefs.

As for the case of Modafinil—to the extent that our comparison in Sect.  2 elicited the response that Modafinil is a greater threat to intellectual autonomy than Donepezil as used therapeutically, that is because Modafinil when functioning normally as a cognitive enhancement (as when taken by healthy individuals to gain a cognitive advantage) causes new changes which must be in some epistemically respectable way appreciated by the subject in order for her to take cognitive ownership. An individual taking Modafinil for the first time is likely to be unaware of the specific effect the drug is having and how it is contributing to the individual’s cognitive success. Such an individual begins to trend closer to the unenlightened (and cognitively disintegrated) Mr. Truetemp who trusts the deliverances of the thermometer but fails to appreciate it as a reliable source of his beliefs. However—and this is a point that has been expressed by Pritchard ( 2010 , Sect. 4), time is a factor which can make possible such appreciation. As Pritchard notes, provided the individual (who undergoes a change to her cognitive architecture) in question is suitably epistemically vigilant, she will acquire track record evidence about the way she is forming beliefs when utilising the drug. Over time, one who is vigilant in this way can plausibly take a kind of cognitive ownership of the beliefs formed through the drug which is not possible, say, the first time the drug is taken.

Putting these points together, given that enhancements when functioning normally induce new changes in the individual’s cognitive architecture (whereas therapeutic improvements when functioning normally aim to correct or slow the progression of some pathology or defect) additional demands are made for suitable cognitive integration in all enhancement cases which are more relaxed in the cases where the drug (e.g., Donepezil) when functioning normally does not cause substantial new changes but rather functions so as to prevent or forestall new changes.

These observations about therapeutic cognitive improvements and cognitive enhancements generally speaking suffice to explain initial reactions to the comparison in Sect.  2 . Modafinil, in short, is the sort of thing which requires more by way of cognitive integration than Donepezil. And so for any given case of Modafinil use, the likelihood of cognitive integration is lower than in the case of Donepezil for which the standards are more relaxed. Footnote 59 And this is so even though some cases of therapeutic improvements (e.g., consider the memory-loss side effects of Xanax) bring about significant new changes to the agents’ cognitive architecture and thus require more by way cognitive integration, and some cases of cognitive enhancements (e.g., Modafinil, as used epistemically vigilant subject) can become cognitively integrated over time. What goes for pharmacological enhancements goes for other forms of cognitive enhancement, such as cognitive scaffolding. Footnote 60

5 Concluding remarks

Cognitive enhancement is profoundly controversial. Bioconservatives and other critics of what they perceive as ‘techno-progressivism’ and ‘post-humanism’ have offered a range of anti-enhancement arguments, many of which are based on ethical considerations for why cognitive enhancement is dangerous or immoral. These include arguments to the effect that enhancement will undermine human dignity and preclude the possibility of meaningful achievements, by artificially removing obstacles the overcoming of which gives meaning to our lives. Footnote 61 Ethically driven arguments against cognitive enhancement are not only registered by bioconservatives or for that matter by ethical deontologists; on utiltarian grounds, Persson and Savulescu ( 2012 )—ardent proponents of embracing moral bioenhancement—have influentially maintained that, given the ease by which available technologies have made possible the destruction of the human race (e.g., bioweapons, nuclear weapons, etc.) cognitive enhancement is currently too dangerous to pursue, at least until we can morally improve ourselves.

These ethical concerns about cognitive enhancement might be valid. Footnote 62 They are however orthogonal to the specifically epistemic question of whether availing ourselves to the latest science and medicine in order to improve ourselves cognitively (beyond health levels of functioning) threatens to undermine our capacity for intellectual autonomy. I’ve shown how, at least initially, it looks like cognitive enhancement (in three different kinds of cases) poses a direct threat to undermining intellectual autonomy by undermining our capacity for intellectual self-direction. Furthermore, it appeared that epistemic dependence on technology and drugs for the purpose of therapeutic cognitive improvement (with a purely restorative aim) was immune to this charge. I have attempted to provide a different diagnosis. Drawing from recent work on virtue epistemology and extended cognition, I hope to have shown that the notion of enhancement as such is theoretically unimportant for accounting for why certain kinds of high-tech epistemic dependence genuinely threaten to undermine intellectual autonomy and others such kinds of dependence don’t. If my diagnosis is correct, then just as some therapeutic uses of technology and medicine can undermine autonomy, so likewise, ‘high-tech’ intellectual autonomy is not an oxymoron, but a very natural result of combining epistemic dependence with epistemic vigilance. In short, whether embracing new cognitive enhancement technologies is a ultimately threat to maintaining virtuous intellectual autonomy is not a matter of what we’re depending on (e.g., material constitution, location), or why we’re depending on it (to correct a pathology or gain an advantage), but rather is a matter of how we’re depending on it—which, and contrary to some bioconservative jeremiads to the contrary, remains largely in our own hands. Footnote 63

The translation from Latin is ‘Dare to be wise’ or alternatively ‘Dare to know’, a term used originally by the Roman poet Horace in the Epistles In the context of Kant’s essay, the phrase is often understood as the imperative: ‘Have the courage to use your own reason’ (see, e.g., Gardner 1999 , p. 2).

Kant’s use of the German Unmündigkeit has also been translated as ‘nonage’, or, the condition of not being of age.

Emerson’s disdain for intellectual conformity was already apparent in his 1837 speech ‘On The American Scholar’ in which Emerson had written that man, ‘[...]In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, [...] tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking’ (1837, §1).

A more contemporary expression of this point can be found in Charles Taylor’s ( 1991 ) defence of the value of authenticity.

Hume ( 1772 , Sect. 4, p. 1).

This is a component of Hume’s global reductionist view about testimony. The classic counterreply, advanced most notably by Thomas Reid ( 1764 , p. 197), is that individuals ‘would be unable to find reasons for believing the thousandth part of what is told them’ and thus that a non-sceptical approach to testimonial knowledge acquisition should take testimony as itself a basic source. For a contemporary expression of this rejoinder to testimonial reductionism, see Coady ( 1992 , p. 82).

To draw an analogy to open-mindedness, consider that one is not virtuously open-minded when one’s mind is so open that one lacks any intellectual convictions whatsoever.

For some representative work, see for example Haddock et al. ( 2009 ).

According to virtue responsibilists (e.g., Battaly 2015 ; Montmarquet 1993 ; Code 1987 ), the relevant connection is unpacked in terms of motivation toward epistemic goods. Virtue reliabilists (e.g., Sosa 2009 , 2010 , 2015 ; Greco 2010 , 2012 ) by contrast regard traits as virtues provided their manifestation reliably generates epistemic goods such as true belief and the avoidance of error. Cf., Baehr ( 2011 ) for an alternative ‘personal worth’ construal of this connection.

In the former case, we can imagine at one limit, the individual who—from her position in cognitive (near)-isolation—is (while free from the influence of others’ opinions) lacking of the essential knowledge base that is necessary to inform intellectually virtuous inquiries. At the other limit, an individual acquires (through deferential and extra-agential means) an impressive knowledge-base, but lacks the crucial capacity to assess, on the basis of this wealth of information, what further inquiries should be pursued without extra-agential assistance.

This is a point that can be embraced by reductivists as well as anti-reductivists in the epistemology of testimony.

As Roberts and Wood ( 2007 , p. 259) put it, such self-regulation will involve relying on others to the appropriate extent (e.g., by being cautious and trusting in the right circumstances), without devolving into what they call intellectual heteronymity —i.e., defined as the opposite of autonomy—which involves being others- rather than self-directed.

That the arena in which autonomy is exercised is the acquisition and maintenance of beliefs is a point that’s been developed by Zagzebski ( 2013 , p. 259).

For some helpful overviews of the state of current cognitive enhancement technologies, see Bostrom and Sandberg ( 2009 ) and Sandberg and Bostrom ( 2006 ).

For a detailed discussion of the relationship between cognitive enhancement and cognitive achievements (in the sense of ‘achievement’ deployed by virtue epistemologists), see Carter and Pritchard ( 2016 ).

See, for example, Boada-Rovira et al. ( 2004 ).

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=147 .

See Peñaloza et al. ( 2013 ) for data on recent trends in off-label usage of Modafinil in the United States.

Mohamed ( 2014 , p. 2). Note that these effects are during use.

To sharpen this comparative intuition, we can simply run a pair of variant hypothetical cases, where the causal efficacy of these drugs in each case is dramatically increased. Suppose ‘Donepezil-Extra’ is a drug, approved by the FDA in the year 2040, which not only slows the breakdown of acetylcholine, but halts it completely, and then through other mechanisms reverses other symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Donepezil-Extra, suppose, can have this impressive effect even in cases where cognitive degeneration is severe. ‘Modafinil-Extra’, by contrast not only improves focus and attention—at the expense of creativity—but does so profoundly, such that users of Modafinil-Extra have substantially different (perhaps even unrecognisably different) maintenance and acquisition tendencies than they did previously, and consequently, very different cognitive character traits.

See, for example, Bostrom and Sandberg ( 2009 , p. 312).

There may potentially be some borderline cases—viz., where the limits of normal cognitive functioning are unclear.

For a related discussion of such cases in the context of autonomy and education, see Carter ( forthcoming ).

See for example Sutton ( 2010 ) and Heersmink ( 2015a , b ). Cf, Vygotsky ( 1980 ).

Otis and Parvis ( 2014 ). Cf., Senior ( 2014 ) for discussion.

http://www.sciencealert.com/samsung-just-patented-smart-contact-lenses-with-a-built-in-camera .

http://www.todaysmedicaldevelopments.com/article/smart-chip-enables-low-powered-wireless-neural-implants/ .

This discovery was pioneered by scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on 11 February 2016. Here is their press release: http://media.ntu.edu.sg/NewsReleases/Pages/newsdetail.aspx?news=81889a1d-edc2-479e-8350-dad40a767029 .

Among other larger points, Lynch contrasts the ease by which knowledge is acquired with the more cognitively involved task of gaining understanding, where the latter is at risk of being undermined rather than promoted by certain ways of managing information acquired from the web.

By ‘extreme’, I mean that in Lynch’s case, the neural implants aren’t merely supplementing endowed cognitive faculties, but rather, effectively replacing such faculties. At the very least, the implants are relegating biological cognitive faculties to a auxiliary role in both belief maintenance and formation.

Cf., Brehm ( 1966 ) for a different approach to human behaviour in the face of lack of control, called psychological reactance theory. Psychological reactance theory however is predicated upon the individual feeling that something is taken away from them. Such feelings however are less likely to accompany cases where loss of control is more subtle, as when loss of control is a byproduct of achieving other gains (e.g., afforded by new technologies). For an overview, see Baumeister and Vohs ( 2007 , pp. 723–725).

McKinlay ( 2016 ). For discussion on this point, see Maguire et al. ( 2006 ) (cited in McKinlay). More generally, see Rupert ( 2004 ) for an expression of worries about biological cognitive atrophy, in response to Rowlands ( 1999 ).

Of course, not all such individuals will have been intellectually helpless to begin with—the idea is that individuals trend toward becoming more helpless, by degree.

This is an example used by Harris ( 2016 ), when noting we are often led to believe that the only salient choices, relative to the initial inquiry (e.g., nearby activities), are the ones which websites like Yelp provide.

See also Heersmink ( 2016 ) for additional discussion of some of the epistemic implications of auto-complete.

For further discussion, see Edelman ( 2014 ).

It is worth noting that our inquiries are often subject to framing effects that are non-technological in nature. This is a point Sunstein (2014) notes when discussing the inevitability of choice architecture—viz., it is inevitable that many kinds of choices will be framed in some particular way rather than another. ‘Opting out’ of framing effects, at least in a wide class of decision points, is not a straightforward option. One might accordingly wonder to what extent technological design decision-making represents a case of particular interest ( vis-à-vis autonomy) beyond the general interest of non-technological framing effects? I submit two points in response, firstly, cognitive offloading is becoming increasingly widespread as a strategy for gaining information (e.g., Lynch 2016 ), a consequence of which is that we are to a much greater extent appropriating new kinds of framing effects into our belief-forming processes. Secondly, the kinds of framing effects are, in the case of technology design in particular, a product of other people’s interests and purposes, where these purposes include deliberate manipulation (e.g., Sunstein and Thaler 2008 ). Thanks to Glen Pettigrove and Jennifer Corns for discussion on this point.

For an overview of recent work on the relevance to emotion in epistemology, see Brun and Kuenzle ( 2008 ). Cf., Brady ( 2013 ) for a notable recent contribution to debates about epistemic significance of emotional experience.

See for example, Elliott ( 2004 ).

She notes, in particular, Peter Kramer’s case of ‘Tess’ ( 1997 , pp. 1–21, 278), cf., Kraemer ( 2011 , pp. 52–53).

Newman et al. ( 2015 , p. 4).

Of course, it might be tempting to conclude that cognitive enhancement, as such, is ultimately what’s responsible for the agential disconnect in each of these cases. According to such a line, the fact that in each of these cases (of neuromedia, scaffolding and pharmacological enhancement, respectively), cognition is improved in healthy individuals—rather than merely therapeutically to correct some pathology—is itself a kind of difference maker in each case. A diagnosis along these lines would be implied by one who regards the threat to autonomy posed by Modafinil as opposed to Donepezil, as surveyed in Sect.  2 , to be explained by the fact that the former is an enhancement, rather than an improvement. The argument that is advanced in this section shows why this kind of diagnosis is unworkable.

For an early formulation of this kind of objection, see Lehrer and Cohen ( 1983 ).

See Goldman ( 2011 ) for discussion.

See for example, Greco ( 2003 , 2010 ).

This literature has emerged around 2010 and has gained traction since. For an overview, see Carter et al. ( 2014 ).

For some notable critiques of this line of thinking, see Adams and Aizawa ( 2001 ) and Rupert ( 2004 ).

See, for example, Palermos ( 2014 ) and Heersmink ( 2015a , b ).

These convert the images recorded by a camera to tactile stimulation on the tongue. See Bach-y-Rita and Kercel ( 2003 ) for an overview. Cf., Palermos ( 2011 ).

Pritchard himself makes this point with reference to Clark and Chalmers’ case of ‘Otto’. See Pritchard ( 2010 , p. 145).

For a related argument to do with extended cognition and epistemic circularity, see Carter and Kallestrup ( 2017 ).

One difference worth noting between intelligence augmentation devices and pharmaceuticals is that the former often lead directly to beliefs/information, whereas the relationship between pharmaceuticals and belief-forming is comparatively indirect. Despite this difference, both are integrated only if a kind of cognitive ownership condition is satisfied (even if the content of what one must endorse differs to some extent across these cases in light of the direct/indirect distinction).

Of course, one kind of rejoinder will be to embrace a strong form of what Kallestrup and Pritchard ( 2012 ) term epistemic individualism. According to the most general version of this thesis, positive epistemic status supervenes exclusively on biological properties of the subject. If epistemic individualism is true, then the notion of extended agency is hard to make sense of, which means the kind of cognitive integration we’d find in a revised version of the neuromedia case is ruled out ex ante. Epistemic individualism, widely embraced by epistemic internalists, is also tacitly embraced by epistemic externalists, such as Goldman ( 1979 ), who has remarked that epistemic justification is a matter of reliable processes, where the process themselves are seated in the agent. As Goldman ( 1979 ) puts it, ‘A justified belief is, roughly speaking, one that results from cognitive operations that are, generally speaking, good or successful. But ‘cognitive’ operations are most plausibly construed as operations of the cognitive faculties, i.e., information-processing equipment internal to the organism’ ( 1979 , p. 13). See also, for discussion, Carter and Kallestrup ( 2016 , Sect. 3.2). One reason to embrace epistemic individualism is that one might be opposed to the very possibility of extended cognition. However, this is a false choice; as Kallestrup and Pritchard ( 2012 ) have argued, epistemic individualism actually has a hard time making sense of mundane cases of testimonial knowledge dependence. See, along with Kallestrup and Pritchard ( 2012 ), also Kallestrup and Pritchard ( 2013a , b )for arguments from arguments against epistemic individualism.

Note that the kind of cognitive ownership that is necessary for cognitive integration might in some cases require simply appreciating of an external resource that it is reliable, and possessing some rough conception of what the mechanisms is reliable at doing (without additional cognitive command of the details). At least, this—as opposed to more robust requirements (e.g., that one understands at a greater level of sophistication how the mechanisms works) would seem to be sufficient for integration of the sort that’s apposite to intellectual autonomy. There are, of course, other varieties of autonomy: moral, political, etc. Perhaps different articulations of the kind of cognitive ownership condition on cognitive integration might be germane to these different aspects of autonomy. Thanks to Fiona Macpherson for discussion on this point.

For example, as reported in a study by Chouinard ( 2004 ).

See Mejo ( 1992 ).

In the UK, memory loss denial as noted as among the factors which make it difficult to convince individuals suffering memory loss to seek proper medical care. http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/memory-loss/Pages/Introduction.aspx .

Therapeutic use of Xanex can be brief, and while autonomy can be undermined in the long term, some threats to autonomy will be more short-term.

The standards for cognitive integration should be understood as commensurate with the degree of change in the individual’s cognitive architecture. In the Donepezil case specifically, the standards will be lower because the changes will be merely accidental ones, rather than (as in the case of enhancement) the intended effect.

A classic example of cognitive scaffolding as used for therapeutic purposes is Clark and Chalmers’ classic case of Otto, who slowly replaces his failing biological memory with a notebook for the purposes of information storage and retrieval.

For expressions of such arguments, see for example Kass ( 2004 ), Sandel ( 2009 ) and Harris ( 2011 ). For recent criticism to this general line of argument, see Carter and Pritchard ( 2016 ) and Bostrom ( 2005 ).

See, however, Carter and Gordon ( 2015 ) for a recent critique of Savulescu and Persson’s argument.

I am grateful to Mark Alfano, Jennifer Corns, Emma C. Gordon, Orestis Palermos, Richard Heersmink, Fiona Macpherson, Glen Pettigrove, Duncan Pritchard and Jesús Vega Encabo for helpful discussion. I’m also grateful to audiences at the 2017 Pacific APA, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow Postgraduate reading party. Finally, I’d like to thank two anonymous referees at Synthese as well as Jesús Vega Encabo and Fernando Broncano-Berrocal for their work in putting together this special issue.

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Pursuing Truth: A Guide to Critical Thinking

Chapter 21 intellectual virtues.

Over the past twenty chapters, you have learned some basic tools that can make you a good critical thinker. At this point, you should know how to:

• Distinguish good arguments from bad arguments.
• Use the technical tools of logic to assess the relationships between premises and conclusions.
• Evaluate different sources of information.
• Identify fallacious reasoning.
• Use the tools of basic probability theory.
• Reason well about causation.
• Identify the ways human psychology and situations keep us from reasoning well.
• Make rational choices in groups and other social contexts.

The tools themselves, though, don’t make a person into a good critical thinker. I’m reminded of a person I knew who blamed his poor golf game on his old, cheap set of clubs. He finally bought a very expensive set of professional clubs, and his average score got worse , not better. The problem was not in the tools that he had — the problem was he didn’t know how to use them. Even knowing how to use the tools of critical is not enough, though. No amount of knowledge of logic, probability, or psychology will help if a person simply does not care. A good critical thinker is one who has the tools available, knows how to use them, and cares enough to use them well.

A good critical thinker is a certain kind of person, a person marked by the intellectual virtues. Being intellectually virtuous is not the same thing as being intelligent or being knowledgeable. A person may well be very intelligent and knowledgeable, but also be careless, arrogant, and closed-minded. So, what is a virtue, and more specifically, what are the intellectual virtues?

21.1 Virtue

A virtue is a state of character that makes one better in virtue of having it. Most of the time, when people discuss virtue, they are referring to moral virtue. Think of moral virtues as the qualities that morally good people have, like honesty, charity, courage, etc. There are also character states that make a person morally worse, like dishonesty, miserliness, and son. These are called vices.

Virtues have several aspects. First, they aim at something. In the case of the moral virtues, the aim is moral goodness. The person having the virtue is motivated to bring about that goal. Finally, the person who has the virtue can reliably succeeded at achieving the goal. For example, the courageous person is motivated to, or wants to, act courageously. Their actually succeeding in doing what courage requires can’t be merely accidental, however. That’s why the reliability requirement is necessary. The virtuous person can recognize situations where charity or courage is appropriate, requiring the ability to make true moral judgments about the situations in which they find themselves.

Aristotle pointed out centuries ago that one can think of virtues being on a mean. That is, courage is kind of like a midpoint between cowardice and rashness. The courageous person is not so overwhelmed with fear that he cannot act when he should, but also does not act rashly in circumstances where it would be foolish to do so.

21.2 Intellectual Virtue

Intellectual virtues are traits that aim at things like truth, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. The intellectually virtuous person desires these things, is motivated to achieve them, and has the qualities that enable her to do so reliably. Exercising each virtue will require certain skills, and the good judgment to know when exercising those skills is appropriate.

In Cultivating Good Minds , Jason Baehr identifies nine key intellectual virtues. ( Baehr 2015 ) He divides them into three useful categories:

• Virtues required to initially motivate learning.
• Virtues required to guide the learning.
• Virtues required to overcome obstacles to learning.

21.3 Motivating Learning

The first virtue is curiosity. People who are curious naturally want to gain knowledge, to learn new things, and to seek truth. The truly curious person wants more than simply to know that something is true, she wants to understand why it is true. People with the virtue of curiosity seeks more than just knowledge of trivia, they seek knowledge of issues and matters that are worthy of our attention.

The second virtue is intellectual autonomy. To be autonomous is to be independent, or self-governing. To be intellectually autonomous is to think for oneself. Intellectually autonomous people do not succumb to the bandwagon fallacy, that is, believing something merely because others believe it, nor do they change their minds simply because someone disagrees with them. The examine evidence for themselves, and decides whether the beliefs offered by others are well-supported or not.

The third virtue that motivates learning is intellectual humility. The humble person recognizes his own intellectual weaknesses and mistakes. Intellectually humble people are aware of what they don’t know, and the ways that their thinking needs improvement or is prone to error.

21.4 Guiding Learning

The first virtue that guides learning is attentiveness. The attentive person is present in the situation. This presence is not merely physical. We all have had times when we were physically present, but distracted or “checked out.” The attentive person actively and carefully listens — listens to understand, not just thinking about how to respond. Finally, the attentive person recognize the important details, and can differentiate those details from the trivial.

The next virtue is carefulness. The careful person avoids reasoning errors, and takes care to avoid falling prone to cognitive biases. In order to do this, of course, one must know that counts as a fallacy or cognitive bias.

The last virtue that guides learning is thoroughness. The thorough person is not satisfied with what is superficial; the thorough person wants to truly understand. Thoroughness demands something more than just a recounting of the facts. The thorough person desires an explanation of those facts, and an understanding of how the facts or connected.

21.5 Overcoming Obstacles

The first virtue that is needed to overcome obstacles to learning is open-mindedness. The closed-minded person is not willing to consider alternative viewpoints or beliefs. The open-minded person is willing to consider alternatives to his own beliefs, and is not afraid to have his own beliefs criticized. It’s important to recognize that one can be open-minded but still firm in his beliefs. If a belief is true, it should stand up the evidence.

Next is intellectual courage. The intellectually courageous person is willing to suffer a potential loss or harm in the pursuit of the truth. The intellectually courageous student is willing to answer questions in class, when others are too afraid of having the wrong answer. The intellectually courageous person is willing to stand up for her beliefs, even when they are unpopular.

Finally, there is intellectual tenacity. Unfortunately, learning is just hard. There are no magic formulas or secret tools that can make something like learning a second language easy. The intellectually tenacious person is wiling to stick to it. Intellectually tenacious people don’t just give up when they don’t understand something, or when a text is difficult to read. Intellectually tenacious people don’t give up with they fail, they rethink their approaches and try again.

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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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Critical Thinking

• What is Critical Thinking?
• Intellectual Standards
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Intellectual Traits

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Critical Thinking and The Intellectual Traits by Dr. Richard Paul

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If standards of thought are applied, a student has potential to grow into an individual who exhibits the intellectual character described by the Paul- Elder Intellectual Traits. These intellectual traits include intellectual integrity, independence, perseverance, empathy, humility, courage, confidence in reason and fair-mindedness (Figure 1). - By Crest + Oral-B Professional Community

Intellectual integrity  – this trait requires that the standards that guide actions and thoughts need to be the same standards by which others are evaluated. an individual exhibiting this trait treats others with kindness while avoiding harm and outwardly projects this trait. this trait eliminates double standards and hypocrisy., intellectual autonomy  – this trait requires an individual to use critical thinking tools, such as the paul-elder model, and to trust their own ability to reason critically. for example, a dental professional exhibiting intellectual autonomy will ask questions about new products and will critically think through all aspects of the products to determine their implications of use. these individuals do not have to rely on others to do their thinking., intellectual perseverance  – the tag phase for this trait is "never give up" and encourages individuals to work through any difficulties. a clinician exhibiting intellectual perseverance has to depend on their critical thinking toolkit to keep working through challenging patient issues or unfamiliar situations., intellectual empathy  – an individual achieves intellectual empathy when they actively put themselves in someone else’s shoes in terms of how they think and feel. for instance, a dental clinician may encounter a patient who has a different viewpoint about certain dental preventive agents such as fluoride. a clinician exhibiting intellectual empathy strives to understand the patient’s point of view in order to think fully about the situation before responding to it. while the clinician does not have to agree with your patient’s point of view, intellectual empathy demands that they accurately represent the thinking of a different view despite what they believe., intellectual humility  – individuals exhibiting intellectual humility accept they are human and that they do not know everything. they continue to learn and grow as they age. they acknowledge their limitations. dental professionals exhibiting intellectual humility are okay to tell patients they are not familiar with a certain product, technique, condition or research behind the product or technique, and acknowledge that they are an ongoing learner in the profession., intellectual courage  – individuals with intellectual courage stand up for their beliefs and the conclusions they have fully thought through, especially when it is difficult to do so. sometimes it will not be a popular or common thought, but if they stand up for their beliefs, change can occur., confidence in reason and fair-mindedness  - utilizing the elements of thought and the standards will lead to confidence in reason and fair-mindedness and requires individuals to look at all of the evidence and relevant points of views and arrive at conclusions that embodies the intellectual traits. this allows dental professionals with confidence in reason and fair-mindedness to trust, as thinkers, to come to sound conclusions for patient care simply by applying the framework to their thought process. 2-6.

Dr. Richard Paul briefly defines and discusses the Intellectual Traits and the importance of fostering their development in students. Excerpted from the Spring 2008 Workshop on Teaching for Intellectual Engagement. Apr 15, 2008 - (9:53)

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• AUTHORITY, RATIONALITY, CRITICAL RATIONALITY AND CRITICAL THINKING
• BACK TO THE MAIN EVENT: AUTONOMY AND PERFECTIONISM
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Autonomy, Critical Thinking and the Wittgensteinian Legacy: Reflections on Christopher Winch, Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking

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Harvey Siegel, Autonomy, Critical Thinking and the Wittgensteinian Legacy: Reflections on Christopher Winch, Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking, Journal of Philosophy of Education , Volume 42, Issue 1, February 2008, Pages 165–184, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2008.00611.x

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In this review of Christopher Winch’s new book, Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking (2006), I discuss its main theses, supporting some and criticising others. In particular, I take issue with several of Winch’s claims and arguments concerning critical thinking and rationality, and deplore his reliance on what I suggest are problematic strains of the later Wittgenstein. But these criticisms are not such as to upend Winch’s powerful critique of antiperfectionism and ‘strong autonomy’ or his defence of ‘weak autonomy’. His account of autonomy as an educational aim is important and in several respects compelling.

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The Role of Autonomy in Critical Thinking

2016, The Role of Autonomy in Critical Thinking

Abstract This paper explores the link between learner autonomy and critical thinking and aims to propose a practical approach to promote both skills in English classes at Japanese univer- sities. Based upon the relevant literature review and examination of two survey question- naires, the conclusion indicates that autonomous learning skills play an essential role in developing critical thinking skills among university students. In addition, more emphasis needs to be placed on the role of the teacher as a facilitator in order to enhance the quali- ty of English education at Japanese universities. Key words: critical thinking, English, facilitator, learner autonomy, promote

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