Translate this page from English...
*Machine translated pages not guaranteed for accuracy.
Click Here for our professional translations.
Mar 25, 2024
What Is Irrational Production? [1 of 2]
It is a platitude, but an important platitude to keep in mind, that the productive resources of society should be marshaled to serve public need and public good, as against the vested interests of a relative few at the expense of the public good. Production is irrational to the extent that it fails to serve the public good, insofar as it is production wasteful of non-renewable resources, destructive of public health, or at the expense of basic human needs. One valuable rule of thumb is this: any economic practice is of questionable rationality if it can be maintained only by keeping the public in ignorance as to specific nature and modes of operation. The public cannot be understood to sanction that which it does not comprehend.
Production and productivity are to be viewed as collective as well as individual decisions in a functioning democracy. For these decisions to be made in a rational fashion, the public must have been educated to think critically, for when some narrow interest group seeks to maintain some form of irrational production (either as a whole or in part), it is inevitable that public relations and lobbying efforts will be launched which function, at least in part, to obfuscate public recognition of its own interests. For instance, it was in the narrow egocentric interest of asbestos manufacturers to minimize public disclosure of the health hazards of working and building with asbestos. The asbestos industry obscured the public interest to serve its own. As a result of the industry successfully protecting its vested interest, a mode of production was maintained for decades at great expense and loss in public health.
Since it is unrealistic to expect industries with narrow vested interests to abandon those interests for the public good, it becomes necessary that the public be armed with the . . .
Mar 11, 2024
We have recently been reviewing, editing, and beginning to release some of our older archive video and audio, including this audio from the 8th International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform sponsored by the Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique, our sister institution.
In this video, you can hear an early introduction by Gerald Nosich, along with some of Richard Paul’s 1988 comments on the state of critical thinking in education, as well as some lively personal anecdotes from his own higher education experiences.
Sadly, much of what Richard discusses in this keynote address in terms of problems in schooling are still prevalent today, 44 years after he established the Center for Critical Thinking. During the 1980’s, when these comments were made, Richard envisioned critical thinking being gradually but steadily incorporated and integrated across schooling at all levels. He imagined centers for critical thinking being established, first across the country and then internationally. This has not happened.
In some ways, the problem of the lack of critical thinking in K-12 schooling and higher education has worsened since before we had a rich conception of critical thinking from which to draw. This is true for several reasons. One primary reason is that the field of Informal Logic in philosophy early on grabbed the title Critical Thinking, so that critical thinking in academia continues to be dogged by argumentation and fallacy theory, both of which are secondary or peripheral, not primary, concepts in critical thinking (and both of which were prevalent before the concept of critical thinking was developed far beyond the narrow vision of philosophers).
Further, academicians from fields outside philosophy and outside critical thinking increasingly claim expertise in critical thinking when these academicians have little to no knowledge of explicit critical thinking concepts and principles, nor how to broadly foster critical thinking skills, abilities, and character traits in student thinking. These academicians treat the field of critical thinking as if they themselves are (without studying critical thinking) naturally versed in critical thinking. For instance, we now commonly see such course titles in higher education as Sociology and Critical Thinking, Psychology and Critical Thinking, Literature and Critical Thinking. This attitude and behavior toward critical thinking these same academicians would never countenance from others outside their fields laying claim to expertise within it.
Because critical thinking has not managed to establish itself as a field of study distinct from other academic fields, we increasingly hear that there is no established conception of critical thinking – when there is a shared conception based in first principles in critical thinking. And to make matters worse, because the term critical thinking appeals to the public as something naturally desirable (however vague their conceptions of it may be), we increasingly see charlatans hanging out their signs, digital or otherwise, in which they claim expertise in critical thinking. Business and academic leaders are led astray by the spurious or partial conceptions now parading as critical thinking.
For more on the history, concept and problems facing the advancement of critical thinking, read these articles from Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines:
https://community.criticalthinking.org/viewDocument.php?doc=../content/library_for_everyone/135/Elder_Paul__sContributionstotheFieldofCriticalThinkingStudies.pdf&page=1
https://community.criticalthinking.org/viewDocument.php?doc=../content/library_for_everyone/145/ReflectionsontheNatureofCriticalThinking_ItsHistory_Politics_andBarriers_andonItsStatusacrosstheCollege_UniversityCurriculumPartI.pdf&page=1
https://community.criticalthinking.org/viewDocument.php?doc=../content/library_for_everyone/146/ReflectionsontheNatureofCriticalThinking_ItsHistory_Politics_andBarriers_andonItsStatusacrosstheCollege_UniversityCurriculumPartII.pdf&page=1
Mar 05, 2024
What is the Nature of Human Productivity?
Production is, quite simply, the creation of some utility. The first question to ask, then, in probing the roots of productivity is, whose utility? Beyond production for sheer survival, utility must be judged from a human point of view; and all of the diversity and opposition that exists between conflicting points of view is reflected in judgments of the relative utility of diverse forms and modes of production and productivity.
Production and productivity can be looked at both quantitatively and qualitatively. Of greatest significance are the standards we use to assess production qualitatively. I suggest that the most pressing problem the world faces today is the problem of irrational production, of that production which wastefully expends human labor and precious resources for ends that would not be valued by rational persons nor be given priority in a rational society.
The modes and nature of production within any given society reflect the nature, development, and values of that society. Insofar as a society is democratic, the modes and nature of production will reflect democratic decision making regarding production. This reflects not only individual decisions that one might make as an autonomous “consumer” and vocational decision-maker but also collective decisions as a citizen who supports some given social and economic philosophy or other. For example, the decision to provide many hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize . . .
Feb 27, 2024
Dr. Nosich and I continue to discuss and explore the more complex theory and application of critical thinking through our podcast series, Critical Thinking: Going Deeper. I invite you to view our two latest podcasts focused on the twin barriers to critical thinking – Egocentric and sociocentric thinking:
1. The Human Mind: Going Deeper - Barriers to Critical Thinking, Part 1: Sociocentricity
2. The Human Mind: Going Deeper - Barriers to Critical Thinking, Part 1: Egocentricity
Feb 13, 2024
What is the Nature of Irrational Human Learning?
All learning has social and psychological as well as epistemological roots. Whatever we learn, we learn in some social setting and in the light of the inborn constitution of the human mind. There is a natural reciprocity between the nature of the human mind as we know it and society as we know it. The human mind – and we must understand it as it is, not as we may judge it ought to be – has a profound and natural tendency toward ethnocentrism. Both egocentrism and ethnocentrism are powerful impediments to rational learning and rational production. An irrational society tends to spawn irrational learning and inevitably generates irrational productivity. Both socially and individually, irrationality is the normal state of affairs in human life. It represents our primary nature, the side of us that needs no cultivation, that emerges willy-nilly in our earliest behaviors.
No one needs to teach young children to focus on their own interests and desires (to the relative exclusion of the rights, interests, and desires of others), to experience their desires as self-evidently “justified”, and to structure experience with their own egos at the center. They do this quite naturally and spontaneously. They and we are spontaneously motivated to . . .
Feb 02, 2024
Jan 16, 2024
Abstract
In this paper, originally presented at the Annual Rupert N. Evans Symposium at the University of Illinois in 1985, Paul argues that productivity, development, and thinking are deeply interrelated. Consequently, societies concerned with their development and productivity must concern themselves with the nature of their educational systems, especially with whether or not the mass of citizens learn to think critically. Paul distinguishes rational from irrational productivity and argues that critical thinking is essential to rational productivity in a democratic world.
Irrational production, in Paul’s view, is productivity which “fails to serve the public good, insofar as it is production wasteful of non-renewable resources, destructive of public health, or at the expense of basic human needs”. As both capitalism and democracy develop as world forces, it is important that we recognize the struggle “between the ideal of democracy and protection of the public good, on the one hand, and the predictable drive on the part of vested interests to multiply their wealth and power irrespective of the public need or good, on the other . . . To the extent that it is possible for concentrations of wealth to saturate the media with images and messages that manipulate the public against its own interest, the forms of democracy become mere window dressing, mere appearance with no substantial reality.”
Paul believes that the human world we have created has been created with a minimum of critical thought, a minimum of public rationality. He is convinced, however, that we can no longer afford mass irrationality. For Paul, the tensions between democracy, unbridled capitalism, and the public good must be increasingly resolved by a genuinely educated, rational, citizenry.
Introduction
When we look upon learning in itself or productivity in itself or any other dimension of human life in itself, we look upon it with a partial view, as an abstraction from the real world in which all things exist in relationship. We then fail to see how it derives from relationship its true qualities. We view our object uncritically and narrowly. We fail to achieve the comprehensiveness genuine and deep understanding presupposes. In this paper, I emphasize the intimate reciprocal relation between learning and productivity, arguing that what we learn about the nature and problems of learning sheds light on the nature and problems of . . .
Jan 10, 2024
