[lit-ideas] Re: What the Tortoise said to Achilles
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 01:26:01 -0500 (EST)
R. Paul:
>What the Tortoise said to Achilles
>Excerpt from a comment in the daily InsideHigherEd.com.
>'The so-called "No Child Left Behind" policies have given us a crop of
students nearly incapable of drawing >conclusions on their
>own--so to teach critical thinking, we have to teach what thinking is
first.'
>Robert Paul,
>caught in a syllogistic web
What the Tortoise said to Achilles involved Modus Ponendo Ponens, which
Grice has, with the rest of most philosophers (notably Gentzen), as the
introduction of 'if'.
'If' and syllogism get an indirect connection:
a valid syllogism can be defined in terms of some modal prerequisites
involving the premises and the conclusion.
There is indeed an associated 'conditional' (or 'if' statement) to a valid
syllogism:
"If PREMISE, [then] CONCLUSION".
The slogan, as reported, goes:
>'[T]o teach critical thinking, we have to teach what thinking is first.'
I have not checked with the source, but it seems a bit of a loose wording.
Note that the sentence begins with:
"to teach critical thinking".
This is different from:
"to teach HOW to think critically."
So, pedantically, one can take,
'to teach critical thinking'
to stand for
'to teach what critical thinking IS' (and thus get a parallel with the
second bit of the sentence which mentions 'what thinking is').
But it may be argued that one can teach what critical thinking is (or that
one can 'teach critical thinking', to stick to the original locution)
WITHOUT getting the learner involved in a Rylean know-how.
In other words, the utterer (A) can get to teach B critical thinking
without having B in the process of to learning HOW to think critically, or
without B learning to think critically. (Similarly, I can learn what cubism
means without becoming a cube).
>'we have to teach what thinking is first'.
I think this is a non-sequitur? In this case, we have an implied
proposition:
"thinking is X"
-- i.e. A is alleging to know (or believe that he or she knows) what
thinking is (necessary and sufficient conditions for a true ascription,
"Thinker
T thinks that p" iff...).
But we don't!
Grice for one spent the whole four John Locke lectures at Oxford (now
published as "Aspects of reason") aiming at a partial answer to that ("A
reasons
from premise to conclusion"), 'to think critically', almost.
Ryle had spent even longer days at a partial answer to what thinking is --
and only to contradict Turing.
So, the second bit of the statement presupposes not only that
A knows, unlike Socrates, that thinking is X.
AND that A aims at
succeeding in teaching B that thinking is X.
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles may thus involve:
we have one class:
The class of "THINKING".
And we have a sub-class: the class of "CRITICAL THINKING" (the class of
apples, and the class of green apples).
It is just _logical_ that you cannot _understand_ the idea of 'critical
thinking' without understanding that of 'thinking'. But one is not sure about
this.
Consider 'analog watch', 'digital watch'.
If I teach B what an analog watch is, does B need to know what a watch,
simpliciter, is? (If I teach you to identify an European robin, have I taught
you to identify a _robin_ simpliciter (i.e. any robin, including the
European AND the American robin)?
Similarly: to teach what a digital watch is, does one really need to know
what, in general, a watch is?
Surely one can know what an analog watch is without getting the 'general'
and more 'abstract' (and thus psychologically less real) idea of 'watch'?
Similarly, I can teach you chess without having to teach you what 'a game'
is.
----
'The so-called "No Child Left Behind" policies have given us a crop of
students nearly incapable of drawing >conclusions on their
>own--so to teach critical thinking, we have to teach what thinking is
first.'
But then I'm not sure that 'thinking' HAS TO INVOLVE 'drawing conclusion
on your own'.
If I see that a tree falls after a storm (call it "p"), I come to THINK
that a tree falls after a storm ("I think that p" -- cfr. Descates, "I think;
therefore I am"). I'm not sure that I am drawing a conclusion _as I think_.
What is the premise out of which Descartes concludes, "I think"? His whole
point is that the cogito requires NO premise. It is self-evident. (cfr
Grice on trivial reasoning, "I like it because I like it", or "p; therefore,
p").
In other words: a thought is the outcome of some perceptual input. No
inference need be at play (unless we stretch the use of 'infer' as some early
verificationists like Isaiah Berlin or G. A. Paul did).
The utterer is, however, taking 'think' to mean 'reason' rather.
It is with 'reasoning' that we start drawing conclusion -- never mind, 'on
your own' -- as opposed to 'on your other'?
'The so-called "No Child Left Behind" policies have given us a crop of
students nearly incapable of drawing >conclusions on their
>own--
The utterer is implying ('implicating' even) that the crop of students,
however, did sort of succeed in drawing conclusions, but which were alas not
on their own? But how idiosyncratic do conclusions have to be? Grice
alleged that 'know' is overused. Gettier wanted to dismiss a case like:
"I know the date of the battle of Trafalgar".
Surely a student of history KNOWS things; he has been taught things, and he
has drawn conclusions. One big conclusion is to rely on your teacher. So
if a group of experts have concluded that C, it is reasonable to rely on
that conclusion rather than to experiment each time. "We conclude that the
Independence of the USA was in 1776". A student relies on that conclusion and
comes to think that the Independence of the USA was in 1776, without having
to double-check each document that LED to that conclusion.
And in any case, perhaps we can expand on what it means to 'draw a
conclusion,' but not 'on your own'? 'Not' can take maximal scope, and the
implicature may be that the utterer is claiming that the student just does not
just
draw ANY conclusion, simpliciter? In which case 'on your own' is
rhetorical and redundant.
>so to teach critical thinking, we have to teach what thinking is first.'
As we saw, thinking, _per se_ as any cognitive psychologist will tell you
(consult those boring Textbooks of psychology: Chapter I: Perception,
Chapter II: Thought, Chapter III: Reasoning) does NOT involve the explicit
drawing of conclusion ("I thought it was a rather good book", "I thought it
tasted rather nice").
The idea of 'critical' as applied to 'think' is a careful, post-modern,
one. "Crisis" is a typical Greek word, we sometimes forget, and meant 'to make
a fine distinction', almost, as in 'sifting thru the evidence'.
The way the utterer uses the idea of 'critical' is still a different one:
the idea that 'critical' opposes to the 'drawing of a conclusion NOT on
your own'.
And so on.
And then what Achilles said to the Tortoise...
Grice concluded that in a piece of reasoning we have
the premise
-----
the conclusion
And we have to incorporate that into real thoughts:
the thought of the premise
----
the thought of the conclusion.
Grice argued that there is indeed some causation involved. I.e. the THOUGHT
of the conclusion has to be caused, almost physically, by the thought of
the premise. In the case of the alleged phenomenon of 'drawing a conclusion
not of your own' the 'trouser word', 'not on your own' makes it manifest
that we would not be encountering, in this instance, a case of 'drawing a
conclusion', and thus 'thinking' (never mind 'critical') at all. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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