The Myth of Critical Thinking

Philosophy instead.

“Our age is the genuine age of criticism, to which everything must submit” –Kant, KrV Preface, A XI–XIII

“No one can tell another person in any definite way how he should think” –John Dewey, 1933, p. 3 (italics in original)

Kant said that philosophy was much recommended but little practiced (KrV A312/B369), yet I can assure you that today it is not even recommended. Faced with the educational crisis, one no longer hears ‘we need more philosophy’ but more ‘critical thinking’. I fear that this pedagogical movement has sought to replace philosophy as the ideal of human knowledge and its presence in curricula. And yet it presents itself as if it were immune to any discussion of its foundations. Thinking it through critically means dismantling its philosophical assumptions, showing the reasons for its universal acceptance. And that is precisely the task I wish to undertake: to show that there is controversy exactly where critical thinking takes its position for granted.

The origin of critical thinking is usually located in the work of John Dewey (1910, 1933; Glaser 1941). But even a brief glance at the history of ideas reveals that its beginnings lie further back in time. Modern critique was conceived as a mechanism of defence against authority and the preservation of autonomy, particularly against the thought of Aristotle upon which the foundations of the scholastic-medieval world rested. Against it, Descartes, Bacon and the promoters of modern science proclaimed the independence of reason from all authority, not only its visible ecclesiastical face. In this way, the ‘followers of Aristotle’ appeared archaic and pathetic before the new mechanical way of understanding science. There was thus a transfer from external authority towards the inner thought that trusts in itself to find the ultimate foundations of reality.

In this sense, Cartesian doubt was critical in one respect, because it called all knowledge into question, but not in another, because it is adopted as a means of reaching an absolute foundation: the immovable certainty of the thinking self. In the Discourse on Method II, one finds the very elements that the defenders of critical thinking would later claim as their own: evidence (R1), analysis (R2), order (R3), and enumeration (R4), an attempt to reduce the complexity of logic to a handful of precepts graspable at a glance. The author himself declares that this method is the result of a personal reform project, of ordering his own thoughts so as to conduct himself better in life. Cartesian doubt is therefore not deployed as a random exercise, but adopted as a methodical necessity subordinated to a philosophical motivation.

Centuries later, Kant will transform Critique into a philosophical project, where reason erects itself as a court of itself. It no longer doubts its own act in order to reach an immovable foundation, but subjects to examination the very capacity to think, in accordance with principles and rules for the determination of its concepts and the legitimation of their use. In this way, Kantian critique is at the service of an architectonic understanding of knowledge. This is why the universal critical function belongs to philosophy: «as critique, in order to avoid missteps in judgment…philosophy with all of its perspicacity and art of scrutiny is called up» (KrV A135/B174). To think critically, therefore, comes to be the same as philosophizing (KrV A837/B865). Hence his famous remark that one cannot learn philosophy: «one can only learn to philosophize, i.e., to exercise the talent of reason in prosecuting its general principles» (KrV A838/B866). Once again, limits and directives are imposed on critique by a philosophical project. Critique, then, is not a standard skill but an operation for preventing errors of judgement within a philosophical architecture that gives it its reason for being. This is why Kant, preserving Cartesian confidence in the interior displacement of the locus of authority, says: «the philosopher is not an artist of reason but the legislator of reason» (KrV A839/B867). Critical thinking will unwittingly keep the former, like a juggler of borrowed concepts, ceding the latter to the authority of science. The question, then, is at what point critique broke away from the Kantian project.

A first approach is found in the origins of postmodernity and the collapse of Kantian criticism, with the consequent dismantling of the foundations of the European Enlightenment. Nietzsche pushed the intrinsic tension of Kant’s philosophy to its ultimate consequences by declaring that any critique of knowledge is absurd: how could one possibly criticize an instrument that one must inevitably use in order to criticize? In this endeavor, reason cannot even define itself (Wille zur Macht §481). Just as in Kantian thought, critical thinking would posit a renewed instance that erects itself as a supreme court of beliefs and presumed forms of knowledge. Critique is understood less and less as resistance to authority and preservation of autonomy, though it keeps intact its preventive core of procedural errors: «Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends» (Glaser, 1941, p. 6; cf. Dewey, 1910, p. 6; Dewey, 1933, p. 9).

At this postmodern crossroads, thought avoided placing itself once again under the court of reason so as not to return to Kant. It therefore chose to redirect itself towards correction, as if it were a purely pragmatic matter, free of any philosophical commitment. In Dewey’s work, good thinking is corrected thinking, operating like the rules of Descartes, with analysis and order, that is, with a methodical vocation (Dewey, 1933, p. 3). This is why Ennis defines it as «the correct assessing of statements» (Ennis, 1962, p. 83). Put differently, without the idea of correction, of there being something to correct, in this case the flow of thought, it is difficult to speak of critique at all. The Kantian inspiration of this vision is evident in the claim of its proponents that critical thinking does not address what we think but how we think: «As such, critical thinking has little to do with what we think, but everything to do with how we think. Accordingly, any model of critical thinking that asserts that there are definite ends at which critical thinking aims — in terms of what we should or should not believe, or how we should or should not behave — is deeply suspicious» (Wilson Mulnix, 2010, p. 3). But how is it possible to determine a how without a what? Faced with the possibilities opened by the idea of correction, the critical thinking movement included formal logic in its program. From Max Black (1946) onwards, logic secured its place in almost every guide and manual (Johnson, 2012, pp. 8–9).

But because formal logic seemed to capture only the language of science at the expense of the richness of everyday language, a counter-movement arose in which critical thinking found itself alongside its close cousins –problem solving, decision making, informal logic— with which it tends to be confused. In the words of one of its proponents: «if one wishes to say that this is only a form of problem-solving in which the purpose is to decide whether or not what is said is dependable, we shall not object. But for our purposes we choose to call it critical thinking» (Smith, 1953, p. 130). Given the disagreement over a common definition, critical thinking is better characterized as a pedagogical movement than as a specific theory (Wilson Mulnix, 2010; Johnson, 2012, pp. 11, §5.1). Something similar happened to its cousin, informal logic. Its proponents acknowledge that it is «an unfortunate name» (Hitchcock, 2006, p. 101) and that the adjective ‘informal’ was a rhetorical device to emphasize that it constitutes an opposition to the methods of logic (Blair, 2012, p. 1). In any case, there is a more or less well-founded conviction that informal logic is insufficient to constitute critical thinking (Johnson, 2012, pp. 8–9). But the problem runs deeper than mere terminology.

In this critique of the inadequacy of formal logic, the movement’s proponents inadvertently adopted the Kantian conception of logic. The reason for this adoption rests on the idea that logic (1) is a set of rules and (2) operates in the total absence of content (KrV A55/B79, A52/B76). Against this common background, its proponents hold that informal logic attempts to be a kind of logic, a logic of argumentation, «whereas critical thinking designates both a kind of intellectual practice as well as an educational ideal» (Johnson, 2012, p. 9). On this same Kantian basis of conceiving logic as a set of rules operating in the absence of content, the controversy is exposed: «the term ‘logic’ is no longer the name of a science concerned with the principles of inference common to all studies, but a name for any collection of rules according to which we may argue in some context» (W. Kneale, 1957, p. 238). Until recently, informal logic had been unable to overcome its internal problems of foundation (Khomenko, 2018, p. 54).

The idea of neutrality likewise permeated the formal logicians from the early nineteenth century onwards, who have since sought to characterize the formality of logic in terms of its neutrality (MacFarlane, 2000, pp. 50–77). This merely shows «how deeply (and usually unwittingly) influenced by the Kantian conception of logic we still are» (Dutilh Novaes, 2012, p. 406 n. 42). Thanks to the epistemic value of neutrality, logic became the fundamental tool for the evaluation of arguments, because the idea of a set of rules applicable without specifying their content allows the notion of logic to be extended beyond its original domains. Consequently, accepting the neutrality of logic but without the philosophy that sustains the idea, its proponents seem to write from nowhere. They admit that there is something, a background that logic fails to capture, but without declaring that this is already philosophy, as can be seen in Siegel’s words: «their proper application does not require commitment to any particular world view. Rather, they are to be conceived as ‘world view neutral,’ sanctioned by the theory of critical thinking» (Siegel, 1988, p. 15).

But relying on logic is not as stable a ground as it first appears (cf. Siegel, 1988, pp. 24–27; Johnson, 2012, §III). Critical thinking manuals tend to present a philosophically loaded image of logic: «Logic can be briefly defined as the study of reasoning… Now reasoning is itself a special kind of thinking; hence the special kind of study known as Logic is concerned with thinking about thinking» (Black, 1946, p. 3). Against this, that deeply Neoplatonist vision from nineteenth-century German historiography is open to dispute: «It is not true, however, that logic is the science of the laws of thought. It is not the object of logic to investigate how we are thinking actually or how we ought to think» (Lukasiewicz, 1957, §6, p. 12). To escape the impasse, critical thinking must offer its own conception of the matter.

It cannot accept the view that logic does not concern how we think, because this complicates its own claim that critical thinking is concerned with how we think: if that were the case, logic would be useless to it. But if it accepts that logic is a study of reasoning, it must abandon its pretension of being merely a practice and an educational ideal in order to become something more. One author recently drew attention to the need to develop a theory of reasoning broad enough to accommodate the various concepts related by their common origin: critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and informal logic. A theory of reasoning would be the solution to the problem of how concepts with different pragmatic origins interrelate (Johnson, 2012, p. 10; Siegel, 1988, Postscript). The vicious circle is thus complete: logic would be the study of reasoning, whose theory remains to be made.

In this way, the attempt is made to fill the void left by Kantian criticism in a postmodern setting, where the internal incoherences of the critical thinking movement begin to surface precisely because what it ultimately demands is a philosophy capable of defining reasoning. At this point, perplexity becomes paradox: the challenge, at bottom, is how to do critical philosophy after Kant, but without Kant. There is therefore nothing more postmodern than critical thinking, because it cannot in principle accept that there is a truth or a final universal foundation reachable by human reason, one that would permit the construction of a grand narrative. In attempting to distance itself from formal logic, critical thinking falls into a dead end: to be universal and transferable it requires neutrality, but if it declares itself neutral it returns to the Kantian project, and if it declares itself non-neutral it compromises its pretension of being an educational ideal that trains a skill. That is to say, thought ceases to be critical, as its proponents have unwittingly admitted: without that neutrality, «critical thinking collapses as a coherent notion distinct from uncritical thinking and as an educational desideratum» (Siegel, 1988, p. 15).

The most critical aspect of critical thinking is undoubtedly its delegation of the content of thought to science, which returns the locus of authority to an external instance. The question of what to think is left to science. Since logic is neutral with respect to content, it cannot deliver what critical thinking demands, because one is critical with respect to a content. It can therefore venture safely beyond formal logic, which does not pronounce on the truth, falsity, or plausibility of premises. And here the strategy is consummated: critical thinking delegates the verification of premises to the sciences, relegating personal judgement to the private sphere.

If one compares the relationship of the Cartesian method and Kantian criticism with the sciences, critical thinking performs an inversion: it subordinates itself to them, as if it were the defender of an official science immune to critique. In the words of Edward Feser: «If the claims of any other system of belief conflict with what scientists say, it is held that these other systems must change to conform themselves with science, and never the other way around. To think critically is taken to entail thinking in accord with science, and never to entail criticizing science itself» (Feser, 2013). But if critical thinking cannot be critical of science, we must admit that there is already an operative, implicit philosophy to which we would all be obliged to subscribe. This neutrality borrowed from formal logic understood in Kantian terms is what allows the critical thinking movement to be so confident in its transfer of domains and to conceive of itself as an educational competence without content of its own. Nothing more than a how instead of a what. For this reason it can regard itself as a universal skill, applicable to any subject matter, for the resolution of problems on the basis of available evidence.

Critical thinking, therefore, is not philosophically innocent. It seeks to preserve Enlightenment ideas in their cosmopolitan power, but entirely detached from the philosophy in which they were born. It wishes to give a new foundation to the Kantian ideas of supreme court of reason, set of rules, neutrality, universal application, one that sounds less like philosophy and more like a transferable skill. Critical thinking thus becomes another argument for removing philosophy from curricula, as if thought could be neutral and exempt from responsibility. A philosophy that does not declare its commitments relieves one of epistemic responsibility, and that asepsis has proved very convenient for those who fund it. It is a pragmatic way of understanding education in which official science has the final word, setting the limits of what can be thought and, consequently, criticized. In the end, it cannot be as critical as it claims. But if someone disagrees with what I have said and seeks to criticize my critique of critical thinking, on what basis will they do so? I recommend philosophy.

References:

Black, M. (1946). Critical thinking: An introduction to logic and scientific method. Prentice-Hall.

Blair, A. J. (2012). The “Logic” of Informal Logic. In Groundwork in the Theory of Argumentation (pp. 1-16). Springer.

Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. D.C. Heath.

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (rev. ed.). D.C. Heath.

Dutilh Novaes, C. (2012). Formal languages in logic. Cambridge University Press.

Ennis, R. H. (1962). A concept of critical thinking. Harvard Educational Review, 32(1), 81–111.

Feser, E. (2013). Scientism: America’s state religion. The American Mind: https://americanmind.org/salvo/scientism-americas-state-religion/

Glaser, E. M. (1941). An experiment in the development of critical thinking. Teachers College, Columbia University.

Hitchcock, D. (2006). The concept of argument. In D. Hitchcock and B. Verheij (eds.), Arguing on the Toulmin model. Springer.

Johnson, R. H. (2012). When informal logic met critical thinking. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 27(3), 5–14.

Kant, I. (1998). Critique of pure reason. Trad. P. Guyer y A. W. Wood. Cambridge University Press.

Khomenko, I. (2018). A Look at Informal Logic. Future Human Image, 9, 52-62. DOI:10.29202/fhi/9/5

Kneale, W. (1957). The province of logic. In H. D. Lewis (ed.), Contemporary British philosophy. Allen & Unwin.

Lukasiewicz, J. (1957). Aristotle’s syllogistic from the standpoint of modern formal logic (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

MacFarlane, J. (2000). What does it mean to say that logic is formal? PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

Nietzsche, F. (1901). Der Wille zur Macht. Kröner.

Siegel, H. (1988). Educating reason: Rationality, critical thinking, and education. Routledge.

Smith, B. O. (1953). The improvement of critical thinking. Progressive Education, 30(5), 129–134.

Wilson Mulnix, J. (2010). Thinking critically about critical thinking. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(5), 464–479.