{"id":9735,"date":"2016-10-20T07:38:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T14:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9735"},"modified":"2016-10-20T07:38:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T14:38:20","slug":"ive-been-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/ive-been-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve been thinking&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A miniature guide to critical thinking<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Einstein.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9737\" src=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Einstein-300x172.jpg\" alt=\"Einstein\" width=\"300\" height=\"172\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is what you might refer to as \u201cshort and sweet\u201d, bringing with it the gift of succinctness to some busy <em>demon<\/em> students, which is more than welcome in my world.<\/p>\n<p>Because of its brevity, it is a fairly dense little book, which will serve as a good point of reference for reading and writing.<\/p>\n<p>The guide starts by emphasising the importance of systematically cultivating excellence of thought. Not all thoughts are born equal, some are more equal than others, and good thinking is something that we can get better at. The authors write about three different levels of thinking, from lower order to the highest order.<\/p>\n<p>This short guide looks at the different elements of thought (purpose, questions, information, assumptions and so on), the standards of good thinking and certain intellectual traits that are required to be a good thinker.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of things that stood out to me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intellectual perseverance is \u201ca sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve deeper understanding and insight.\u201d (Kindle: Location 187) This is me at the moment, struggling with a level of confusion and not having settled wholly on a direction of travel.<\/li>\n<li>What question am I trying to answer? What problem am I trying to solve? I don\u2019t think I have totally nailed that question yet for my research. Not at a deep visceral level.<\/li>\n<li>I think there are elements of my tradition that state: \u201cIt\u2019s true because I believe it.\u201d (Location 247) \u201cSociocentrism: I assume that the dominant beliefs of the group to which I belong are true even though I have never questioned the basis for those beliefs.\u201d (Location 254). I think I am quite intrigued and even excited at taking the time to question certain areas of believe and praxis in my tradition and not to accept simply that \u201cwe have always believed this.\u201d My research will certainly involve digging and questioning around certain areas where I feel there is a degree of cognitive dissonance in my own life or my tradition.<\/li>\n<li>I think, reading this book, that I have been overly accepting, and not sufficiently \u201ccritical\u201d of points of view, assumptions, conclusions and so on, that I want to get better at dissecting. Jeremy Paxman, who is a British journalist and interviewer, says that, when he is interviewing politicians, he always asks himself: \u201cWhy is this lying b@%**!\u00a3 lying to me?\u201d I might not go that extreme, but I do need to become much more incisive in my thinking and analysis of what I read and write.<\/li>\n<li>This will be a good little number to keep coming back to.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A miniature guide to critical thinking This is what you might refer to as \u201cshort and sweet\u201d, bringing with it the gift of succinctness to some busy demon students, which is more than welcome in my world. Because of its brevity, it is a fairly dense little book, which will serve as a good point [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[444,441],"class_list":["post-9735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-critical-thinking","tag-elder-and-paul","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}