By Kino Zhao (Simon Fraser University)
I recently went through a public media training program for professors, in which we were asked to reflect on what value we aim to offer to the public. It was somewhat difficult to think about this as a philosopher, alongside scientists who work on climate mitigation, housing insecurity, effective parenting, etc. I wanted to help people think harder and better, all the time and about everything. More specifically, I suppose, I wanted them to think better without having to become experts themselves.
Naturally, my first instinct was "critical thinking", but the word "critical" bothered me. I'm usually not one bothered by word choices and I know that "critical" in the philosophical sense does not exactly mean "to criticize". Nevertheless, most critical thinking examples philosophers give *are* negative. More often than not, the emphasis is about pointing out deficits and fallacies. Below, I present three reasons that we should shift the emphasis to a more positive, holistic one.
When I taught philosophy of statistics, I had students find scientific studies and discuss them using theories we've learned in class. They had to discuss at least one negative and at least one positive point about the study. However, I really did not want students to point to the "low hanging fruits" like "the sample isn't representative" or "the experiment isn't random controlled", which, depending on what field of science you're talking about, can apply to virtually every study. But I wanted to phrase my expectation in a positive, actionable way, rather than just giving examples of what to avoid. I finally settled on something like this: think about your criticism and think about how the researchers might have done it better. If they couldn't possibly have done it better, then this isn't a very helpful criticism. Similarly, if it's something that they could have changed, but wouldn't have made a big difference to the conclusion they drew, pointing out this criticism might not be very interesting.
That "critical thinking" sometimes leads to unconstructive criticism is the first problem I want to avoid. The second problem is a bit more intricate.
In a fascinating piece comparing transparency with surveillance, C. Thi Nguyen (2022) argues that, if you believe (which some do not) that expertise involves tacit knowledge gained through socially situated context and experience, then expertise is necessarily disrespected by demands of transparency, because transparency asks experts to justify their reasoning to non-experts. Granted, sometimes there are very good reasons to sacrifice expertise for the sake of accountability, just as there are sometimes good reasons to sacrifice privacy for security, but it is a sacrifice nevertheless.
Sometimes, I think, gen-ed critical thinking classes blurs the line between a willingness to think very hard about a subject and having expertise in that subject. While it is important to question news headlines, urban legends, and unspecified "authorities", it is equally important to recognize when one does not presently possess the tools necessary to think fruitfully about a topic, and when it is wise to defer to others.
I finally settled on the phrase "think conscientiously". As I mull the phrase over in my mind, a third benefit emerged. While not an ethicist by training, I've increasingly found ethical issues and perspectives emerging in my work, as I'm sure many philosophers of science can empathize. To me, thinking conscientiously is about navigating complex terrain of science, culture, morality, and politics as best as we can manage. It's about content as well as context. It's about the what as well as the who and the how. It's about pushing back on each other's epistemic authority as well as reflecting upon one's own. It's about recognizing the power of thinking, as well as the limitations of thinking alone.
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