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Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
Thursday, December 7th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
(10:00 a.m. PST)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Educated persons skillfully and routinely engage in substantive writing. Substantive writing consists in focusing on a subject worth writing about, then saying something worth saying about it. Remarkably, many students – even in higher education – have never written in a substantive way. Instead, they have developed the habit of getting by with superficial and impressionistic composition which obscures the purpose of writing itself. The result is that many are blind to the ways in which writing can enrich their learning and lives.
This webinar will begin to explore ways to help students develop substantive writing through the tools of critical thinking as a means of fulfilling, deep learning and communication. It will be especially helpful for instructors using Dr. Nosich's Critical Writing: A Guide to Writing a Paper Using the Concepts and Processes of Critical Thinking, and/or Paul and Elder’s The Thinker’s Guide to How to Write a Paragraph. However, everyone looking to help students improve their writing can greatly benefit from attendance.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. Read pages 5-13 in The Thinker’s Guide to How to Write a Paragraph.
2. Complete the activity “Paraphrasing Short Quotes with Specimen Answers.” Be sure to read the information at the top of the page first.
3. Complete the activity “Explicating Quotes, Set 1.” Be sure to read the information at the top of the page first.
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
Wednesday, November 15th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
(10:00 a.m. PST)
What are your questions?
Together we ponder or answer them.
In our regular question-and-answer webinars, led by one of our Fellows or Scholars, we open the floor to your questions about critical thinking and its unlimited applications to human life. Join us in this forum where you can ask deep and probing questions as well as basic questions of clarification on the theory and application of critical thinking. Some questions we will be able to answer easily; those that do not lend themselves to definitive answers, we will explore with you.
Thinking is driven by questions. The quality of your thinking is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. Fruitful questions, when properly addressed, lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to important understandings. Important understandings, when actively employed by the mind, can lead to increasingly more fulfilling, satisfying, and joyful lives.
The quality of the questions you ask and pursue every day - at work or in personal life - largely determines the quality of your life.
Similarly, in instruction, the quality of student learning can be largely captured in the questions students ask in our classes and as they go out into the world (not on how much information they have memorized).
Despite these insights, emphasis on questions in thinking is mainly missing from human conversations, relationships, and societies. The role of questions in thinking is rarely discussed in human life. Theory about questions is still in its infancy. While Socrates believed the most effective way to teach was through questioning, 2,400 years later, his insights seem to be little valued. Each of us needs to improve our ability to ask productive and rewarding questions.
Bring your questions on critical thinking to this session, whatever they may be.
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
Tuesday, October 24th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. PDT)
Duration: 60 Minutes
The proper role of ethical reasoning is to highlight acts of two kinds: those that enhance the well-being of others, and those that harm or diminish the well-being of others. Developing one’s ethical reasoning abilities is crucial because there is in human nature a strong tendency toward egotism, prejudice, self-justification, and self-deception. These tendencies are exacerbated by powerful sociocentric cultural influences that shape our lives. They can be actively combated only by systematically cultivating fairminded critical thinking. Further, ethical questions must be answered by the same means as all questions of judgment: by using explicit tools of reasoning to analyze information and ideas, and to evaluate them for their accuracy, precision, breadth, depth, fairness, and so forth.
In this webinar, Dr. Elder will discuss the importance of ethical reasoning and distinguish it from other forms of thinking with which it is often confused — namely, social conventions and taboos, religious belief systems, and the law.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. Read the partial copy of The Thinker’s Guide to Ethical Reasoning available in the Community Online.
2. Write out an example of a law that you have supported or felt inclined to support, but which is unethical in practice.
3. Write out an example of a convention within your religion, or within a social group to which you belong, that is accepted by the group but unethical in practice.
4. Complete the activity, “Are You Always Fair?” Be sure to read the language at the top of the page first.
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
Wednesday, September 27th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. PDT)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Cultivated thinkers are skilled at, and routinely engage in, close reading. They do not read blindly, but purposely. They have a goal or objective they are pursuing as they read. Their purpose, together with the nature of what they are reading, determines how they read. They read differently in different situations for different purposes. Of course, reading has a nearly universal purpose: to figure out what an author has to say on a given subject.
When we read, we translate words into meanings. The author has previously translated ideas and experiences into words. We must take those same words and re-translate them into the author’s original meaning using our own ideas and experiences as aids. Accurately translating words into intended meanings is an analytic, evaluative, and creative set of acts. Unfortunately, few readers are skilled at this translation. Few are able to accurately mirror the meaning the author intended; they instead project their own meanings onto a text. They often unintentionally distort or violate the original meaning of the authors they read.
Reading, then, is a form of intellectual work, and intellectual work requires willingness to persevere through difficulties. Perhaps even more importantly, it requires understanding what such work entails. And critical reading is essential to the skilled reasoner.
In this webinar, Dr. Nosich will elucidate processes for critically reading significant texts as a means of developing one’s reasoning abilities and intellectual dispositions. This will benefit your own reading and thinking, and for educators, it will help illuminate ways of bringing this process into your courses on a typical day.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. Read pages 1-19 in How to Read a Paragraph: The Art of Close Reading.
2. Complete the activity, “Paraphrasing Short Quotes with Specimen Answers.” Be sure to read the introductory information at the top of the page first.
3. Watch the video, “Clarify Concepts with the SEE-I Technique.”
4. Complete the activity, “Explicating Quotes, Set 1.” Be sure to read the introductory information at the top of the page first.
5. Complete the activity, “Paraphrasing a Text, The Declaration of Independence.”
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
Thursday, September 14th, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(5:00 p.m. PDT)
What are your questions?
Together we ponder or answer them.
In our regular question-and-answer webinars, led by one of our Fellows or Scholars, we open the floor to your questions about critical thinking and its unlimited applications to human life. Join us in this forum where you can ask deep and probing questions as well as basic questions of clarification on the theory and application of critical thinking. Some questions we will be able to answer easily; those that do not lend themselves to definitive answers, we will explore with you.
Thinking is driven by questions. The quality of your thinking is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. Fruitful questions, when properly addressed, lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to important understandings. Important understandings, when actively employed by the mind, can lead to increasingly more fulfilling, satisfying, and joyful lives.
The quality of the questions you ask and pursue every day - at work or in personal life - largely determines the quality of your life.
Similarly, in instruction, the quality of student learning can be largely captured in the questions students ask in our classes and as they go out into the world (not on how much information they have memorized).
Despite these insights, emphasis on questions in thinking is mainly missing from human conversations, relationships, and societies. The role of questions in thinking is rarely discussed in human life. Theory about questions is still in its infancy. While Socrates believed the most effective way to teach was through questioning, 2,400 years later, his insights seem to be little valued. Each of us needs to improve our ability to ask productive and rewarding questions.
Bring your questions on critical thinking to this session, whatever they may be.
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Wednesday, August 30th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. PDT)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Three disturbing, but hardly novel, facts still impede modern education:
• Most educators at all levels lack a substantive concept of critical thinking.
• Most educators don’t realize that they lack a substantive concept of critical thinking, believe that they sufficiently understand it, and assume they are already teaching it to students.
• Lecture, rote memorization, trivial exercises, and largely ineffective short-term study habits are still the norm in instruction today.
These three facts, taken together, represent serious obstacles to essential, long-term institutional change, for only when administrative and faculty leaders grasp the nature, implications, and power of a robust concept of critical thinking – as well as gain insight into the negative implications of its absence – are they able to orchestrate effective professional development. When faculty have a vague or outright mistaken notion of critical thinking, or they reduce it to a single-discipline model (as in attempting to teach critical thinking through an academic discipline without explicit critical thinking tools, through argumentation theory, or through fallacies), students fail to learn the concepts and principles necessary for making essential connections (both within subjects and across them), connections that give order and substance to teaching and learning, and which lead to student transformation.
In some ways, these problems have worsened over the past decade, in part because the term “critical thinking” is now more popular than ever. This has partially led to a backslide to the morass of the 1970s, when the phrase was seemingly up for grabs, appearing to mean whatever a particular scholar, department, school of thought, or business wanted to believe it meant (typically without any coherent line of reasoning as to why it should be conceptualized as such). As it did then, this problem leads to extensive confusion about what constitutes critical thinking; while most agree it is important, precious few can define it, let alone explain how it is to be done or taught.
Critical thinking’s struggle to find a real home in academia has led to predictable consequences for human societies at large: the average person has little or no idea how to analyze reasoning, assess reasoning, systematically improve reasoning, and therefore how to reason at all (except rarely, and only implicitly, in extremely narrow contexts). Because most people lack these skills and don’t understand their underlying conceptual frameworks, they simply do not value reasoning, despite its dominant role in the quality of their lives. Most businesses, as well as most government and military offices, accordingly lack a robust concept of critical thinking.
This problem can be resolved. In fact, it already would be, had a robust, practical, universally-applicable conception of critical thinking – framed in natural language – been adopted throughout educational curricula when the fledgling field of critical thinking studies began taking shape decades ago, only to again be buried under a mishmash of alternative approaches that are variously dated, partial, cryptic, or outright counterfeit.
In this webinar, Dr. Elder will discuss the state of critical thinking in modern education and society, how it reached this point, and how we can begin progressing in a better direction.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. Review page 12 in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools.
2. Review page 14 in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools.
3. Watch “Critical Thinking and the Basic Elements of Thought.”
4. Review pages 19 and 20 in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools.
5. Watch “Critical Thinking - Standards of Thought - Part 1.”
Also watch “Critical Thinking - Standards of Thought - Part 2.”
6. Read “Valuable Intellectual Traits.”
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
Tuesday, August 8th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. PDT)
Duration: 60 Minutes
We do not begin our respective critical thinking journeys as blank slates. We begin with already-established views of the world, of our minds, and of what constitutes reasonability. These views have unfortunately emerged from a largely impoverished world culture that tends not to highlight problems in thinking, nor to offer substantive approaches to those problems. Most people have little sense that within each of us are significant self-defeating attitudes and behaviors, and that many of these attitudes and behaviors are habitual. We therefore tend to have limited understanding of how these bad habits of thought affect our learning, and therefore our abilities to live, work, and teach rationally.
For these reasons, it is important to deeply explore and probe the habits of mind that impede our functionality. For instance, it is important to see that people tend towards intellectual arrogance, and that this tendency gets in the way of learning, teaching, and living. It is important to see that people frequently fail to persevere through difficulties when learning complex ideas or solving complex problems – and that this tendency can have drastic implications for not only our lives and work as individuals, but for the well-being of society and the earth at large. It is important, therefore, to understand the general (often subconscious) problems in thinking experienced by humans that lead to self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. We can then use these understandings to uncover our own particular dysfunctional patterns of thought.
This Webinar Q&A will focus on understanding the bad habits of thought common to all humans, how these attitudes and behaviors serve as formidable barriers to self-development and self-realization, and how you can work to overcome these impediments in your own life.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. In The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, read pages 24 and 25. Then review page 12 to see how our use of intellectual standards forms our intellectual habits (traits) of mind.
Note that while the page-12 diagram lists desirable intellectual standards and traits, there are also undesirable standards and traits; as such, the way we use (or don’t use) intellectual standards can lead to either intellectual virtues or vices.
2. On page 2 of the article “Valuable Intellectual Traits," read the brief section on fairmindedness. This is an important trait not detailed in the reading from assignment #1 above.
3. Complete the activity, “Distinguish Intellectual Humility from Intellectual Arrogance.” (Be sure to read the text at the top of the page first.)
When completing this activity, use examples from your own thinking, rather than hypothetical thinking or thinking by other people.
4. Complete the activity, “When Have You Been Intellectually Autonomous? When Have You Lacked Intellectual Autonomy?” (Be sure to read the text at the top of the page first.)
5. Read the short article, “Natural Egocentric Dispositions.”
6. On pages 11 and 12 of Liberating the Mind, read the section on “Primary Forms of Sociocentric Thought.”
7. Review your responses in the activities you completed in assignments #3 and #4 above. In light of your reading on egocentrism and sociocentrism, is there any way you would amend or elaborate on your answers?
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
Tuesday, July 11th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. PDT)
Thinking is driven by questions. The quality of your thinking, your decisions, and your life overall, all are determined by the quality of the questions you ask. Fruitful questions, when properly addressed, lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to important understandings. Important understandings, when actively employed by the mind, can lead to increasingly more fulfilling, satisfying, and joyful lives.
In other words, the quality of the questions you ask and pursue every day - at work or in personal life - largely determines the quality of your life. Similarly, in instruction, the quality of student learning can be largely captured in the questions students ask in our classes and as they go out into the world (not on how much information they have memorized).
Despite these insights, emphasis on questions in thinking is mainly missing from human conversations, relationships, and societies. The role of questions in thinking is rarely discussed in human life. Theory about questions is still in its infancy. While Socrates believed the most effective way to teach was through questioning, 2,400 years later, his insights seem to be little valued.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. Read page 4 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions.
2. Read pages 8-9 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions. Then, think of several examples of each category of question outlined on page 8 (questions of fact, of preference, and of reasoned judgement).
3. Read pages 11 & 12 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions. Then, think of several examples each of simple and complex conceptual questions.
4. Read pages 5 & 6 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions. Then, think of a time when you were pondering a difficult question of judgment and felt “stuck”; which of the sample questions on pages 5 & 6 of Asking Essential Questions might have helped you proceed more effectively?
5. Using a complex question of reasoned judgement, complete the activity, “Thinking Through Conflicting Ideas.” (Be sure to read the complete prompt at the top of the page first.)
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
Thursday, June 15th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. PDT)
What are your questions?
Together we ponder or answer them.
In our regular question-and-answer webinars, led by one of our Fellows or Scholars, we open the floor to your questions about critical thinking and its unlimited applications to human life. Join us in this forum where you can ask deep and probing questions as well as basic questions of clarification on the theory of critical thinking. Some questions we will be able to answer easily; those that do not lend themselves to definitive answers, we will explore with you.
Thinking is driven by questions. The quality of your thinking is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. Fruitful questions, when properly addressed, lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to important understandings. Important understandings, when actively employed by the mind, can lead to increasingly more fulfilling, satisfying, and joyful lives.
The quality of the questions you ask and pursue every day - at work or in personal life - largely determines the quality of your life.
Similarly, in instruction, the quality of student learning can be largely captured in the questions students ask in our classes and as they go out into the world (not on how much information they have memorized).
Despite these insights, emphasis on questions in thinking is mainly missing from human conversations, relationships, and societies. The role of questions in thinking is rarely discussed in human life. Theory about questions is still in its infancy. While Socrates believed the most effective way to teach was through questioning, 2,400 years later, his insights seem to be little valued. Each of us needs to improve our ability to ask productive and rewarding questions.
Bring your questions on critical thinking to this session, whatever they may be.
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Thursday, May 25th, 2023
1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(10:00 a.m. Pacific)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Most of the concepts we use in our thinking are handed down to us or influenced by societal conditioning; these ideas may be developed or given new life when emerging generations discuss and apply them. Many of these concepts lack substance, coming and going as fads do; others have the potential to bring about needed change, but are ultimately ineffective for a lack of criticality.
The important ideas that remain with us – exerting positive influence across generations – are those that give us the most power to improve human conditions, the conditions of all sentient species, and the life of the planet itself. These are ideas that stand the test of time.
In this session, the now widely-used terms inclusion, diversity, and social justice will be explored from a critical thinking viewpoint. Since these notions can be approached superficially or deeply, and since each can be used for good or misused for ill, a rich conception of them is needed if they are to help transform human societies for the better. Otherwise, they will fade away as buzzwords from a passing historical era – or, perhaps worse, they may be abused in opposition to the spirit of their most reasonable and ethical interpretations.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so will make the session significantly more effective for yourself and others.
1. Read pages 12 and 14 in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools.
2. Complete the activity, “Analyze the Logic of a Concept or Idea” for one of the following terms:
a. Inclusion
b. Diversity
c. Equity
d. Social Justice
3. Return to The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools and read pages 19-26.
4. Return to your answers from assignment #2 above. See if you can improve your analysis in light of your reading on intellectual standards and virtues.
5. For the concept you focused on in number 2 above - inclusion, diversity, equity, or social justice - can you think of a time when you, or someone else, misused this concept? Was selfish or vested interest involved in misuse of the concept. For example, focusing on the concept of equity:
“Aubrey said something that Charles misconstrued as prejudiced. I could see the misunderstanding; but rather than explaining that I thought Charles was misinterpreting the situation, I sided with Charles and admonished Aubrey. I feared that by explaining what Aubrey actually meant, I might be accused of prejudice myself.”
6. What intellectual standards were not being considered or adhered to in your example from assignment #5 above?
Example: “My thinking failed to meet the standard of fairness when I admonished Aubrey as a means of protecting my social status. My thinking also failed to meet the standard of accuracy when I knowingly misrepresented Aubrey’s intentions.”
7. Sticking with the situation from assignments #5, can you think of ways in which the behavior may have worked against the concept you were hoping to advance?
Example: “I was hoping to be fair or equitable in the situation. But I ended up treating Aubrey unfairly, while taking Charles’ side inappropriately. Consequently Aubrey was offended by my false accusation and Charles was misled as to Aubrey’s intentions.”
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Wednesday, April 26th, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Duration: 60 Minutes
There are a number of connections we must make conceptually and pragmatically to successfully advance educational curricula. Most school practices still cluster around or emerge from either a didactic conception of learning, or group-centered activities void of proper standards, both of which make the dominance of lower-order learning inevitable.
To get beyond this, students must learn to understand every subject as a mode of thinking – one that they must reason within and about using critical thinking concepts and principles. Substantial improvements can only occur by restructuring math classes so students learn to think mathematically, history classes so students learn to think historically, science classes so students learn to think scientifically, and so on. In other words, we must approach our disciplines not as bodies of content to be delivered and consumed, but as constellations of concepts to be reasoned through and internalized. By doing so, we provide a toolkit of actionable knowledge that can continue elevating our students’ thinking and learning long after they have completed our courses.
This webinar will provide some important principles and practical approaches for kindling students’ reasoning faculties, enabling them to internalize (not just memorize) significant ideas in your discipline, ultimately focusing the educational process upon learners’ engagement rather than the instructor’s “delivery” of content. There will be time at the end for questions.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so can be highly useful for your and others’ learning.
1. Read the article, “Distinguishing Between Inert Information, Activated Ignorance, and Activated Knowledge.”
2. Watch the video, “How to Teach Students to Seek the Logic of Things.”
3. After reading the content at the top of the page, complete the activity, “Analyze the Logic of a Profession, Subject, or Discipline” using the discipline or subject that you teach.
4. Review the transparency pack, “Content as Thinking.”
5. Read the article, “An Overview of How to Design Instruction Using Critical Thinking Concepts.”
6. Read this two-page document on teaching for depth of understanding and strategies that foster student engagement.
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Tuesday, April 4th, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Egocentric thinking comes from the unfortunate fact that humans do not naturally consider the rights and needs of others, nor do we naturally appreciate others’ points of view or the limitations in our own. We become explicitly aware of our egocentric thinking only if trained to do so; we do not naturally recognize our egocentric assumptions, the egocentric way we use information, the egocentric way we interpret data, the sources of our egocentric concepts and ideas, or the implications of our egocentric thought. We rarely recognize our self-serving perspectives, and when we do, we often try to rationalize them with convoluted reasoning instead of working to correct them.
Egocentricity frequently has severe consequences for the thinker, the thinker’s social circle, and for humanity and other species at large. It results in tremendous ongoing losses of opportunity, resources, and good will, and has negative implications for one’s mental well-being. In this webinar, Dr. Elder will discuss the concept of egocentricity and how we can intervene in our irrational self-centered thinking.
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so will help you better grasp the concept of egocentricity.
1. On pages 23 & 24 of A Glossary to Critical Thinking Terms & Concepts, read the entry for egocentricity.
2. Watch the following videos on egocentricity. (Please ignore the opening frame of each video, which in some cases will use the incorrect part number in the series.)
a. Human Egocentricity and Critical Thinking – Part 2
b. Human Egocentricity and Critical Thinking – Part 3
c. Human Egocentricity and Critical Thinking – Part 4
d. Human Egocentricity and Critical Thinking – Part 5
3. Complete the activity, “Analyze a Self-Centered Person You Know Well.”
4. Review your responses to activity #3 above. Try to think of ways in the past (especially recently) that you have exhibited, to some degree, these same behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Briefly write out a summary of each case.
This can be a challenging exercise to complete in good faith. If you find yourself struggling, remember that the idea is not to assume you exhibit egocentric traits to the same extent as the person you reflected on in activity #3. Rather, you are looking for instances in which you exhibited these traits to some extent.
5. Reflect on activity #4 above. As you worked through it, what kinds of thoughts and feelings did you experience? Did you find yourself automatically trying to justify your egocentric thoughts and behaviors? Did you find yourself experiencing negative emotions, and did these emotions impede your ability to complete the activity or reinforce your efforts toward justifying your egocentricity?
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
Thursday, March 16th, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
(5:00 p.m. PDT)
Exclusive to Members of The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online!
What are your questions?
Together we ponder or answer them.
Thinking is driven by questions. The quality of your thinking is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. Fruitful questions, when properly addressed, lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to important understandings. Important understandings, when actively employed by the mind, can lead to increasingly more fulfilling, satisfying, and joyful lives. In teaching and learning, the quality of our teaching can largely be captured in the questions students ask in our classes and the questions they ask when they leave our tutelage (not on how much information they have stored in short-term memory).
Despite these insights, the importance of questions in thinking is – and always has been – largely ignored in human conversations, relationships and societies. The role of questions in thinking is rarely discussed in human life (though in academia, of course, there are some few classes on how to pursue questions, and some faculty do explore the role of questions in thinking). Theory about questions is still in its infancy. While Socrates believed the most effective way to teach was through questioning, 2,400 years later, his insights seemed to be little valued. Each of us needs to improve our ability to ask productive and rewarding questions.
In our regular (roughly monthly) question-and-answer webinars, led by one of our Fellows or Scholars, we open the floor to your questions about critical thinking and its unlimited applications to human life. Join us in this forum where you can practice asking questions similar to how we want our students to practice asking them – to improve their ability to ask powerful questions in everyday life. Some questions we will be able to answer easily; those that do not lend themselves to definitive answers, we will explore with you.
We will largely structure this Q&A webinar with the entire group together in one room, but on some occasions, we may break into smaller groups to explore a given question. We look forward to lively, convivial, and enlightening discussions based on your questions.
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
(5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Questions with more than one arguable answer are not questions of fact or preference, but of reasoned judgment. These are questions with better and worse answers. The better answers are well-supported and well-reasoned; the worse answers are poorly-supported and/or poorly-reasoned. In reasoning through complex questions, critical thinkers seek the best answer(s) within the relevant range of possibilities. They systematically evaluate potential answers to these questions using universal intellectual standards such as clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, logicality, breadth, fairness and sufficiency. These questions are prominent in the human disciplines, such as history, philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, and art, but can be found in most primary domains of thought. Here are examples within humanities:
Within the natural sciences (such as physics, biology, and chemistry) complex questions frequently emerge, including whenever natural sciences are applied to situations involving the interests of humans or other living creatures. Here are some examples:
In approaching complex questions, students (and others) often give impulsive answers because they lack the skills to reason through difficulties in these questions. In this webinar, Dr. Nosich will discuss complex questions and offer some approaches to reasoning through them using foundational tools of critical thinking (and teaching students to do the same).
Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, but doing so will make the session significantly more effective for yourself and others.
1. Read pages 8 & 9 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions. Then, think of several examples of each category of question (questions of fact, of preference, and of reasoned judgement).
2. Read pages 11 & 12 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions. Then, think of several examples each of simple and complex conceptual questions.
3. Read pages 5 & 6 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions. Then, think of a time when you were pondering a difficult question of judgment and felt “stuck”; which of the sample questions on pages 4 & 5 of Asking Essential Questions might have helped you proceed more effectively?
4. Using a complex question of reasoned judgement, complete the activity, “Thinking Through Conflicting Ideas.” (Be sure to read the complete prompt at the top of the page first.)
Led by Dr. Linda Elder
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Wednesday, February 1st, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
(5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Duration: 60 Minutes
It is essential that we do all we can, each of us, to make the world healthier and less endangered by human pollution (including artificial noise and light, solid garbage, industrial runoff, and greenhouse gases), wilderness encroachment with resulting habitat loss, and flagrant disregard for other species – including those on which our survival depends. A recent United Nations report warns that humans must act now if we are to avoid catastrophe.
We simply cannot afford to continue shortsightedly placing money before sustainability of the earth’s limited resources. The devastation humans have inflicted upon other sentient creatures, and upon ourselves, has been clear for many generations. But we humans are skilled at deceiving ourselves in all kinds of ways, including that our precious desires and whims are more important than the health of the earth, the health of our families, and the future of the planet. This is why critical thinking is so important – because it helps us see through our self-deception to the real facts before us.
But what can we do to help mitigate the problem? First, we need to put our support behind only those leaders and politicians committed to drastically reducing and reversing ecological destruction, and we need to hold them responsible to follow through on their promises. Second, we need to do all that is within our individual power to reduce our impact on the earth and to enrich nature. One way of doing this is to reconsider how we think of nature itself and our responsibilities toward it. When we are educated about nature, and about the relationships between humans, plants, and other animals, our values should change according to the new information we internalize. Consequently, we should then have a far better chance of dealing with the vast sustainability problems we face, having learned to value nature more highly as an asset to be protected and supported. All of this requires critical thinking.
In this webinar, Dr. Elder will discuss ways that critical thinking can improve our chances of a healthy, sustainable future on earth. Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in the Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. You are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar.
1. Read pages 5, 6, 8, 9, 17, and 18 in The Thinker’s Guide to Asking Essential Questions.
2. On pages 23 & 24 of A Glossary to Critical Thinking Terms & Concepts, read the entry for egocentricity (also known as egocentrism).
3. On page 67 of A Glossary to Critical Thinking Terms & Concepts, read the entry for sociocentricity (also known as sociocentrism).
4. Read about speciescentrism on pages 72-76 in Liberating the Mind: Overcoming Sociocentric Thought and Egocentric Tendencies.
5. Consider these questions:
a. What reasons do people tend to give for flagrant disregard for the rights and needs of other sentient creatures?
b. Do any of these reasons serve as valid excuses for the behavior? Why or why not?
c. If you see any of these reasons as valid excuses for the behavior, do you believe your view would change if you were being treated in the same ways humans treat other sentient creatures when disregarding their rights and needs?
6. Considering your reading in assignments 1-3 above, write out some connections you see between egocentrism, sociocentrism, and speciescentrism. Consider whether any of these seem to emerge as byproducts of one or both of the others.
Led by Dr. Gerald Nosich
International Authority on Critical Thinking
Thursday, January 12th, 2023
8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
(5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Duration: 60 Minutes
Due to the world’s rapid changes with increasing complexity, humans at all levels of society – down to that of the individual – now face problems far more intricate and complicated than ever before. Solving these problems effectively requires self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective reasoning. It entails skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them.
When you face a problem with an understanding of how to analyze, assess, and improve thinking, you are more inclined to:
• raise vital questions regarding the problem, formulating them clearly and precisely;
• gather and assess relevant data and information, using reasonable concepts to interpret them effectively;
• recognize what assumptions he or she is making and consider their soundness (or lack thereof);
• follow out the implications of various potential solutions;
• come to well-reasoned conclusions about how best to solve the problem; and
• where applicable, communicate effectively with others in articulating a reasonable solution and how to enact it.
In this webinar, Dr. Gerald Nosich will discuss how critical thinking can be used to solve problems effectively. Because this webinar Q&A partially depends upon your questions as participants, we recommend completing as many of the following activities as you can beforehand. These require an account in The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online, where a 30-day free trial is available for new users. Though you are not required to complete the activities to join the webinar, doing so will make the session more effective for yourself and others.
1. Review pages 12 and 14 in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools.
2. Read the article, “The Elements of Reasoning and the Intellectual Standards.”
3. Using a complex problem you are now facing, complete the activity “Analyze the Logic of a Problem or Issue” and save it. (Be sure to read the content at the top of the page first.)
4. Read pages 19 and 20 in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools.
5. Watch the following videos:
a. Intellectual Virtues by Dr. Linda Elder – Part 1
b. Intellectual Virtues by Dr. Linda Elder – Part 2
c. Intellectual Virtues by Dr. Linda Elder – Part 3
6. Return to your answers in the activity, “Analyze the Logic of a Problem or Issue.” Considering your reading and viewing on the intellectual standards (in assignments 4 and 5 above), how can your answers be improved or elaborated upon?