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Daniel Dennett's Most Useful Critical Thinking Tools
Occam’s Razor
The main idea: Don't fabricate a complicated theory when you have a simpler one that handles a phenomenon just as well.
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Key Ideas
Making mistakes
Mistakes are opportunities for learning and for creating something truly new.
And the trick for making good mistakes is not trying to hide them. Be honest with yourself and really know your own mistakes, so that you learn from them and that you'll never repeat them.
Reductio ad absurdum
It's a mode of argumentation or a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd conclusion.
Take an assertion and see if you can inquire about any contradictions out of it. If you can, that proposition has to be discarded.
A successful critical commentary
- Re-express your target’s position so clearly and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
- List any points of agreement.
- Mention anything that you have learned from your target.
- Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Occam’s Razor
The main idea: Don't fabricate a complicated theory when you have a simpler one that handles a phenomenon just as well.
Occam’s Broom
It describes the process in which inconvenient facts are whisked under the rug by intellectually dishonest champions of one theory or another.
Jootsing
It stands for “jumping out of the system.”It can be applied to science, philosophy, and arts.
Being creative is not about searching for something new, but about making the novelty jump out of some system, a system that has become somewhat established, for good reasons.
The “Surely” Operator
Often the world “surely” is as good as a blinking light in locating a weak point in the argument.
Because it marks the very edge of what the author is actually sure about and hopes readers will also be sure about
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Critical thinkers need the knowledge first
Employers need critical thinkers, but they cannot find them.
Focussing on knowledge only in college does not seem to help. Neither does it help to only focus on intellectual and cognitive sk...
The focus of skills over knowledge
Considering the K-12 system, we see that the emphasis on skills over content has changed the curriculum. Students increasingly focus on learning skills, but they may not learn too much history or science.
Critical thinking is not enough on its own. It needs to be used to gain insight from studying meaningful subject matter, like history or economics or physics or chemistry.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is a disciplined activity. It is not something we can acquire without intensive study and practice, nor can we isolate it from knowledge. Knowledge is foundational to provide the structure to do deep thinking.
Only with some background knowledge, can we apply the skills of critical thinking to problems and texts, understand the strengths and weaknesses of arguments, and offer creative solutions.
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Key Ideas
Community Is Vital
Loneliness is not a problem in traditional societies. For 99% of human existence, we lived in small tribes. We were constantly surrounded by family and friends.
Research links loneli...
"Mens sana in corpore sano"
Having a healthy body is essential to having a sound mind. Exercising is a habit that’s been shown to lead people to create other, often unrelated, good habits. Exercising is also a proven way to improve the rate of learning.
"Know Thyself"
Knowing yourself allows you to seize opportunities and make better decisions as well as know what you and others should expect from you and how to counteract your personal flaws.
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Key Ideas
The critical window of childhood
There is an assumption that in the first years of life the vast majority of the brain’s development occurs, and after this period, the trajectory of human development is more or less fixed.&...
The idle-brain theory
Irrespective of what a person is doing, the entire brain is generally active and, depending on the task, some areas are more active than others.
People can always learn new ideas and new skills, not by tapping into some unused part of the brain, but by forming new or stronger connections between nerve cells.
The left/right brain hypothesis
The theory that most people are either dominantly analytical (and left-brained) or creative (and right-brained) is false.
The two hemispheres of the brain are linked and communicate extensively together; they do not work in isolation.
Recent studies suggest that engaging all the senses in a variety of ways (for instance, audiovisual and tactile) can help employees retain new content.