It’s a Judgment Call

Most decisions we have to make are judgment calls. A judgment call is made when we must make a decision when there is no “true” or “false” answers. When we make a judgment call our decision is bad, good, or better.

Many factors are involved: there are the available facts, assumptions, skills, knowledge, and especially personal experience and attitude. I think that the two most important elements in the mix are personal experience and attitude.

When we study math we learn how to use various algorithms to facilitate our skill in dealing with quantities. If we never studied math we could deal with quantity on a primary level but our quantifying ability would be minimal. Likewise with making judgments; if we study the art and science of good judgment we can make better decisions and if we never study the art and science of judgment our decision ability will remain minimal.

I am convinced that a fundamental problem we have in this country (USA) is that our citizens have never learned the art and science of good judgment. Before the recent introduction of CT into our schools and colleges our young people have been taught primarily what to think and not how to think. All of us graduated with insufficient comprehension of the knowledge, skills, and attitude necessary for the formulation of good judgment. The result of this inability to make good judgment is evident and is dangerous.

I am primarily interested in the judgment that adults exercise in regard to public issues. Of course, any improvement in judgment generally will affect both personal and community matters.

To put the matter into a nut shell:
1. Normal men and women can significantly improve their ability to make judgments.
2. CT is the domain of knowledge that delineates the knowledge, skills, and intellectual character demanded for good judgment.
3. CT has been introduced into our schools and colleges slowly in the last two or three decades.
4. Few of today’s adults were ever taught CT.
5. I suspect that at least another two generations will pass before our society reaps significant rewards resulting from teaching CT to our children.
6. Can our democracy survive that long?
7. I think that every effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they need to study and learn CT on their own. I am not suggesting that adults find a teacher but I am suggesting that adults become self-actualizing learners.
8. I am convinced that learning the art and science of Critical Thinking is an important step toward becoming a better citizen in today’s democratic society.

Perhaps you are not familiar with CT. I first encountered the concept about five years ago. The following are a few Internet sites that will familiarize you with the matter.

http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-notes.html

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...&ct=clnk&cd=11

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquir...5/weinste.html

http://www.criticalthinking.org/reso...glossary.shtml

http://www.doit.gmu.edu/inventio/pas...g03&sID=eslava

I beg your pardon, but if the folks here are not familiar with CT who´ll be?

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Hi Coberst, how are you? Haven't we discussed Critical Thinking (CT, for those who weren't sure) many times in previous threads you started?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Oh, let me include another CT site in that list:

http://www.bautforum.com.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Which is just as well, given that Coberst didn't bother to define the acronym in his post.

Also,
can anyone come up with a way of answering that bullet point (Oh, how I detest bullet points) without falling foul of the "no politics" rule?

I'll try....

Yes.

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"It was a crime of passion! Not premeditated dentistry!"

I'll go with YES also as my incredibly insighful insightfulness says we will last at least 2 more generations. (Just an opinion of course based on my personal interpretation of the probablilities of society completely falling apart before then).

BTW, I disagree with the statement that we have ALL graduated with insufficient comprehension of knowledge, . . . blah-blah-blah. In fact, I resent it. It's so far out there and so geneeral that I can't even think of where to begin debating any particualr point.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Wasn't that rather normal for his posts?

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Pretty much, except somehow he did without the condescending comment about all that nasty book larnin' we've enjoyed. [Edit: Oh wait. Retract that. There it is. Yup, pretty much same stuff, different day.]

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

I had to go back and check--you are correct I did not state that CT is Critical Thinking. My error. I am sure all of you have been studying CT carefully since my last mention of this matter. But there have been new members added in the last few months no doubt.

I always think bullet point is rather a candid
term. Most printed info is Bull so one line of
it is a "bullet". Another rambling thought, I
have seen a leaflet advising folk to only use
the car to take stuff to the local tip when
"you are going somewhere else". If CT had been
there the additional condition "in the same
direction" would have been added. For budding
mathematicians here, look up "Kalman filter".
Part of the modern world. Should be a
nova/horizon on it one day!

I am great! Thanks for asking.

I assume new members have joined in the last few months so thought I should bring them up to date.

CT is such an important and complex issue that there is always much to say about the concept.

No. Why study it? Isn't it better to actually just, you know, think critically than study how to? (Dang. There's my book larnin' showing itself again!)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I for one have learned it the hardest way. Unlike riding a bicycle, you can forget how to think critically. It´s easy to let oneself go into the slipstream of preconceptions. So, you must practice it all the time.

[sometimes I hear a background voice saying "The force, argos, the force..."]

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

In some respects thinking is like breathing; you do it without any conscious awareness. In other respects thinking is like chess; if you study the matter you can find all kind of useful bits of knowledge and understanding.

It might be like dealing with quantity. At birth we have some small innate ability to deal with quantity but with education one can sharpen that ability significantly.

Do not fear books and learning!

Amen! Critical Thinking does not happen by some osmotic process.

If I feared books, I couldn't go into my own apartment, especially now my best friend's here. That was this thing we like to call "sarcasm."

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Coberst, have you met Brumsen? I think you two would really get along.

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

No I have not encountered Brumsen.