inforl'11al logic newsletter newsletter newsletter newsletter vol. iv, no. 2 J. Anthony Blair & Ralph H. Johnson May 1982 contents ARTICLE Teaching Critical Thinking In the "Strong" Sense Richard Paul ••••••••••••••••••••••••.•••• 2 The Diversity of Proof Jerome E. Bickenbach ••••••.•••••.••••••• 7 A Role for Formal Logic Mark Weinstein .•••••••••••••.••••.•••••. 13 RESPONSE Why Be Charitablel Jonathan E. Adler .•••••••••••.•••••••••••• 15 NOTE Charity Again Ralph H. Johnson •.•••.•...••..••••••••••• 16 QUERY .....•..•.....•.•••..•.••..••••••••••••• 17 CONFERENCE NOTES ..•••.••..••.••...••••.• · 17 ANNOUNCEMENTS •.•••••..••••.•.••••••••••• 17 BOOKS RECEiVED ............................ 18 from the editors We believe that our readers will be interested to learn that the California State University System has recently approved a critical thinking component as a requirement for graduation. We reproduce here the relevant portion of Executive Order No. 338: Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of logic to language, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, to reach factual or judgemental conclusions based on sound inferen- ces drawn from unambiguous statements of know- ledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful completion of instruc- tion in critical thinking should be the ability to dis- tinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought. For our part, we applaud this initiative. First, it is a concerted attempt to address a real need. The reasoning The Informal Logic Newsletter is published a minimum of three times a year, normally in Fall, Winter and Spring, with supplementary issues appearing from time to time. Published by the editors. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $6 to individuals, $10 to institutions. Payable to: Informal Logic Newsletter. All subscriptions begin with the Fall number; later subscribers receive the year's back issues. Special order back issues: Vols. i-iii, $2 singly or $5 per complete volume to individuals; $3 singly or $1 0 per complete volume to institutions. ADDRESS: (1} Subscription and advertising communications to the Managing Editor, (2) manuscripts and other editorial material or communications to the I:dltors: Informal Logic Newsletter, Department of Philo- sophy, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4. ability of undergraduates in at least the U.S. and Canada is generally alarmingly deficient. Whatever. the cause~­ television insufficient reading, poor primary or hIgh school cu~ricula or teaching, (heaven forbid, poor univer- sity teaching!), etcetera, etcetera-the phenomenon is notable. Second, we see it as a potentially valuable boost to democratic involvement in public affairs. The ideal of democracy requires a critical, reasoning citizenry, and the requisite abilities and dispositions ha~e to ~~ lear~ed: A third possible benefit is related: teaching cr.'tlcal thinking may cultivate the practice of argumentatlon-a flower that seems to be wilting these days. Fourth, separate critical thinking courses provide a fine opportunity for teaching students to integrate and apply what they are learning in specialized disciplines. In addition, the California directive holds out hope for incidental benefits for informal logic. Under its constraint, the concept of critical thinking and its cognates may be more likely to come under critical scrutiny themselves. Also, we can hope, the teaching of critical thinkin& ~ill result in more thinking about the teaching of CritIcal thinking. (We realize this may be a case of hope springing eternal against all odds: does teaching philosophy lead to thinking about teaching philosophy? All too rarely. Our first reaction to Executive Order No. 338 is thus one of pretty el"!thusiastic welcome. We do intend to monitor its execution, and reserve the right to comment on that in the future. Right away we want to register reservations about some of the specific details of the Executive Order. For instance, we are not altogether enthusiastic about its suggestion that inductive and deductive argument exhaust the domain of argumentative reasoning. More generally, we believe that its authors seem to have missed out on what has been happening in informal logic for over a dozen years. The wording of the Executive Order seems to come from what we dubbed elsewhere (ct., I nformal Logic,Ch. 1) the "global approach": a bit of philosophy of language and fallacy to start, a section of deductive logic, and then a section on inductive logic and scientific method (Copi's Introduction to Logic is the paradigm). Still, the wording of the Executive Order does not preclude the more recently-introduced practices of analyzingargu- ments in a natural language, tree diagramming for logical structure, the use of richer critical principles than de- ductive validity and truth of premises, and so on. In sum, we suggest to our readers that what is happening in California is well worth watching (what else is new?). In turn, we invite our California readers to tell their colleagues involved in teaching critical thinking courses about ILN and to pass along our invitation to use I LN as one medium for exchanging ideas and information. We all stand to benefit from the discussion of the many issues involved in teaching critical thinking that are found to arise in the wake of this development. In this issue We are happy to welcome four new contributors to this issue of ILN: Richard Paul, J.E. Bickenbach, Mark Wein- stein and Jonathan Adler. 0- 2 articles Teaching Critical Thinking in the "Strong" Sense: A Focus On Self- Deception, World Views, and a Dialectical Mode of Analysis Richard Paul Sonoma State University " ... no abstract or analytic point exists out of all connection with historical, personal thought: ... every thought belongs, not just somewhere, but to some- one, and is at home in a context of other thoughts, a context which is not purely formally prescribed. Thoughts ... are something to be known and under- stood in these concrete terms." . Io;aiah Berlin, Concepts and Categories, xii. I. The "Weak" Sense: Dangers and Pitfalls. To teach a course in critical thinking is to make im- portant, and for most of us frustrating, decisions about what to include and exclude, what to conceive as one's fundamental goals and what secondary, and how to tie all of what one includes into a coherent relationship to one's goals. There has been considerable and important debate on the value of a "symbolic" versus a "non-symbolic" approach, as well as debate on the appropriate definition and classification of fallacies, appropriate analysis of extended and non-extended arguments, and so forth. There has been little discussion, and as far as I know, virtually no debate, on how to avoid the fundamental "dangers" in teaching such a course: that of "sophistry", on th-e one hand (the student unwittingly learns to use critical concepts and techniques to maintain his most deep-seated prejudices and irraitonal habits of thought by