Critical Thinking as Applied Epistemology: Relocating Critical Thinking in the Philosophical Landscape^[1]

Mark Battersby

1. Introduction

One of the most important developments in contemporary philosophy has been the interest in applying philosophy to contem­porary issues. This occurred first on an ad hoc basis as philosophical reasoning was brought to bear on various moral problems such as abortion and triage. But more significantly, it has involved the creation of applied disciplines such as applied ethics (and sub-disciplines such as professional ethics) and Critical Thinking or informal logic.^[2] While most philosophers would pro­bably not question my claim concerning the importance of developments in applied ethics, they might well question the claim as it applies to informal logic.

But I think that this would be a mistake. In this paper I will argue that critical thinking’s relationship to philosophy could well be as productive of philosophical insight as is applied ethics, and, as a result, critical thinking deserves the same philosophical at­tention as that accorded applied ethics.

“Informal logic” is the name commonly used in philosophical circles to describe critical thinking, but it tends to obscure the relationship of critical thinking to philosophy; critical thinking is not a “casual” relative of logic, as the name sug­gests, but, rather, it is a significant effort to apply many of the insights of philosophy and particularly of epistemology to common questions about what we should believe. What makes critical thinking “critical” is the often negative impact on belief that results from the application of epistemologi­cal norms to common problems and judgments. Because it is epistemological norms and not rules of logic that constitute the philosophical core of critical thinking, it is unfortunate that this activity has been called and, therefore, misunderstood as in­formal logic. A better nomenclature would be “applied epistemology,” suggesting as it does the right philosophical heritage and the parallel with applied ethics. Indeed, it is reasonable to expect that critical thinking will generate as many interesting pro­blems for epistemology as applied ethics has done for ethics.

There is no novelty in the claim that the theoretical core of critical thinking should be thought of as epistemology; an excellent paper by Harvey Siegel (1985) makes this case quite eloquently, and McPeck (1981) has made a similar point. The argument is very simple. Most of the claims that critical thinkers wish to examine are not deductively supported by their evidence, but are sup­ported by evidence that “warrants” or justifies the belief. The crucial challenge for critical thinkers is to articulate the norms which can be used to justify well supported beliefs and criticize those that are not. While I elaborate this argument slightly, I am primarily concerned to bring to the atten­tion of philosophers the value that the study of critical thinking has for epistemology. I do this by pressing the analogy of applied ethics, and illustrating the significant epistemological difficulties that critical thinking has already revealed, as, for ex­ample, the problems surrounding the appeal to authority.

Critical thinking’s failure to attract appropriate attention from the discipline of philosophy is due I think partly to its history and partly to its novelty. Let me deal first with its history.

Critical thinking began primarily as a “teaching discipline.” Howard Kahane, who can be given large credit for initiating this effort, has explained how he was push­ed by student demands for relevance that characterized the sixties to create an infor­mal logic course. To many in philosophy, informal logic remains something either to be celebrated or endured in the curriculum, as a holdover from the sixties and as a boost to student enrollment in the eighties. Because of the history and role that introductory critical thinking courses play, philosophers view the course as a service course, as essentially remedial, yet rarely as a subject with interesting problems worthy of study and research.

I think this is the wrong attitude. Applied ethics had the same “sixties” origins, but has now grown into a discipline with numerous journals and sub-disciplines. It has done so because those who began seriously to “apply” such ethical under­standing as they thought philosophy possessed discovered that their theoretical understanding was not up to the complexity of many real life situations. As a result, there was a need for theoretical develop­ment which gave central place to the pro­cesses and problems of application, the study of which gradually took on a life of its own.

Important effects of this awareness have been the renewed emphasis on rights in ethical and political literature, increased skepticism about the value of utilitarianism to solve ethical problems despite its self-proclaimed practicality, and a general awareness that much of the difficulty in applying ethical norms comes in interpreta­tion of the norms during application. More generally, the actual effort to resolve press­ing moral dilemmas, or at least to provide guidance for approaching moral problems, has led to a deeper understanding of moral reasoning and a revitalization of ethical theory as exemplified in such journals as Philosophy and Public Affairs.

Much the same may be expected from critical thinking. Not only do striking parallels exist between the relationship that critical thinking bears to epistemology and that which applied ethics bears to traditional ethical theory, but there are already pro­blems that have been encountered by critical thinking instructors that could have a pro­found impact on epistemology. The discus­sion of these problems will provide the se­cond ground for my claim.

To develop my claims about the parallels between applied ethics and critical thinking, I must first give a more detailed ac­count of what I see as the situation in ethics. Subsequently, I will show how this categorization of ethics can be applied to epistemology to illuminate the relationship between critical thinking and traditional epistemology.

2. The Parallel and its Implication for Critical thinking

2.1. Ethics

Ethics can be divided into three sub­areas (exhibiting the traditional philosophical enthusiasm for tripartite distinctions): meta-ethics, normative or theoretical ethics, and applied ethics. Courses and texts are often divided up this way: such a subdivision of ethics is relative­ly uncontroversial.

2.1.1. Meta-ethics

Beyond the analysis of basic ethical concepts, meta-ethics is con­cerned with the nature and foundation of ethical knowledge, particularly with the question of whether there is any ethical knowledge.^[3] The difficulties in establishing a secure basis for ethical claims has led many philosophers and even more first year students to conclude that some kind of skep­ticism or relativism is the only reasonable position. The arguments for and against skepticism and relativism, Naturalism and Intuitionism, and arguments generally about the nature of ethical discourse fall under meta-ethics.

2.1.2. Normative or Theoretical Ethics

Nor­mative ethics, in contrast to meta-ethics, assumes that there is some ethical knowledge to be acquired (or at least that there are better and worse answers to ethical questions) and that this knowledge is usually articulated in a principle or fundamental set of principles or norms. The job of the philosopher in this area is to find these principles, articulate them, and show that these are the principles that any ethically thoughtful person should accept.

Normative ethics has tended to bifurcate into two major approaches: consequentialism and the deontologism. Consequentialism, as its name implies, holds that the rightness or wrongness of acts is wholly a function of their consequences. Deontologism (deon (Gr.) = duty) denies this claim insisting that some acts are right or wrong independent of their consequences. The principle representatives of each ap­proach are Utilitarianism and Kantianism. Both schools have tried to show that this approach to ethical reasoning yields the cor­rect outcome in actual moral situations. However, their main emphasis has been to argue about imaginary problems and thought experiments—some of them thoroughly bizarre. A more practical approach has been taken by John Rawls (1971). His effort to ground ethical norms in a decision procedure using the “veil of ignorance” is an excellent example of normative ethics.^[4]

2.1.3. Applied Ethics

While philosophers have obviously been concerned over the centuries with applying ethical theories to practical issues, the appearance of a sub-discipline devoted to this endeavor is of recent vintage.

The original goal of applied ethics was to use the insights and principles of normative ethics to illuminate or even resolve issues of contemporary moral debate such as abortion and the allocation of scarce medical resources. But while this was the intent of applied ethics, in practice the inadequacy of many traditional moral theories and the difficulties in their interpretation have resulted in the development of new approaches which are grounded in the problems being studied. Therefore, the distinc­tion between applied ethics and normative ethics is not so much a conceptual one as is the distinction between meta-ethics and normative ethics, but rather one of focus. Applied ethics focuses first on the ethical problem and only then on the ethical theory. The question for applied ethics is, first, what is the morally correct action in response to this sort of situation? and then, what are the correct principles of ethical theory?

Of course many great ethicists have written about everyday problems, for example, Kant in his Lectures, or Mill in his chapter on “Applications” in On Liberty. In doing so, they were engaged in applied ethics, but they differed from contemporary applied ethicists in that these efforts were afterthoughts, rather than their central concern.

Take the problem of abortion. One could start out with a theory about the universal right to life and then puzzle over how to apply it to a fetus. Or one could start, as various thinkers have, with the problem of trying to discern what the morally relevant differences are (if any) between a fetus, a dying violinist (Thomson 1971), a human vegetable, and a zygote. This “problem first” approach is both exciting and illuminating. One of the consequences of this approach has been an increased awareness of the problem of interpretation of ethical norms in actual application. One may expect that new normative theories might emerge from this effort; although they may fall roughly into one of the normative camps, the emphasis on real problems assures that the theories will be tied to the rich factual base of ordinary and extraordinary problems of everyday life.

It is not so much the move to apply philosophy that is exciting about applied ethics, but rather the feedback that these at­tempted applications generate. By sensitiz­ing us to the difficulty of interpretation and the inadequacy of existing normative theories, and by placing philosophers in positions where decisions must be made, ap­plied ethics has inspired a renaissance in ethical reflection.

One further distinction should be mentioned. There is ethics even beyond applied ethical theory, that is, there is being ethical. I do not see the making of individual ethical judgments about, for example, whether to have an abortion in a particular case, as be­ing applied ethics. These are cases of applying ethics, yes, but not an event in the field of applied ethics. On the other hand, to the extent that someone criticizes an ethical decision on the basis of the misap­plication of ethical norms (as opposed to factual and logical error), this seems to me an activity inside, though near the border of, applied ethics. This distinction will become important when I go on to discuss applied epistemology.

How does the above division of ethics compare to an appropriate division in epistemology?

2.2. Epistemology

There is not a parallel, well-established trichotomy in epistemology, but I have one to propose, one directly analogous to that of ethics.^[5]

2.2.1. Meta-Epistemology

First, there is meta-epistemology. This is what most philosophers think of under the general term of “epistemology”: the study of the cen­tral concepts of knowledge and the foun­dations of the theory of knowledge.^[6] Meta-epistemology attends primarily to epistemic discourse and it, too, can lead to skepticism about the possibility of knowledge. It has as its goal the analysis of epistemological discourse as illustrated by the continuing ef­forts to discover the missing ingredients in the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified, true belief (illustrated in the puzzles of Gettier). Why it has not been called meta-epistemology is not clear to me. This failure has tended to create the illu­sion that meta-epistemological concerns are the central issues in the discipline of epistemology.

2.2.2. Normative Epistemology

Normative epistemology^[7] is a less distinct area, but there are a number of items that are specific to it. Like the normative ethicist, the nor­mative epistemologist assumes that there is a solution to skeptical objections and pro­ceeds to articulate what constitutes the cor­rect basis of knowledge. As Brandt puts it:

[Normative epistemologists] . . . have at­tempted to arrive at acceptable universal epistemological statements to be used as standards in appraising particular state­ments (Brant 1967, p.6).

While meta-epistemology is concerned with the role that “justified belief” plays in the analysis of the concept of knowledge, normative epistemology is concerned to articulate the epistemological norms which delineate what kind and quan­tity of evidence one needs to have a “justified belief.”

Here one finds the traditional debate — be­tween the rationalists and intuitionists on one side, and the empiricists and naturalists on the other side. It is a debate which very much parallels the one between the Kantians and the Utilitarians. These various epistemological views have even had the same geographic orientation as we saw in the ethical debate, in which Euro­peans prefer rationalism and intuitionism (and Kantianism) and the Anglo/Americans prefer empiricism and naturalism (and Utilitarianism).

Work in the philosophy of science (and its sub-areas) seems to occupy a middle-ground: partly normative epistemology, partly applied epistemology. Grounded as it currently is in the actual practice of scien­tists, it seems to reside naturally in applied epistemology, but its origins are in the ef­forts of both rationalists and empiricists to discover a basis for science without trying to ground it in the actual methods used by scientists. There is, for example something wonderfully rationalistic about Mill’s methods which is little troubled by actual scientific activity. Recently the philosophy of science has given greater emphasis to the actual way scientists assess claims which is more analogous to what goes on in applied ethics and, thus, closer to applied epistemology.

2.2.3. Applied Epistemology

I see applied epistemology as, first, attempting to apply the insights of normative epistemology to the everyday pursuit of knowledge. This activi­ty involves using normative epistemological views (for example, the role that the elimination of competing hypotheses plays in defending a causal claim) much more than “logical principles.” In teaching critical thinking, we are, among other things, pro­mulgating epistemological norms. And I think we find ourselves in a somewhat hap­pier situation than those who first set out to apply normative ethics.

By describing, for example, the role that the elimination of competing hypotheses plays, we can illuminate for our students important facts about the way scientists ac­quire knowledge and give them useful rules of thumb for assessing everyday causal claims. The well-established distinction between questions of how scientific discoveries are made and how they are established has many useful parallels in everyday life.

As indicated, much of the progress in philosophy of science has resulted from ac­tually attending to how scientists arrive at their knowledge of the world. It has pro­duced support for relativism (the recogni­tion that scientific world views are grounded in the culture(s) of science), but at the same time, has yielded insights which have influenced working scientist (cf. those scien­tist influenced by Karl Popper). These later insights are on the border line between normative and applied epistemology.

Hume’s attempt to show that miracle claims can be dismissed a priori is a nice, though controversial, example of trying to do applied epistemology. Similar efforts to apply epistemology are often made in the magazine, The Skeptical Inquirer. This magazine, while often concerned with the straightforward factual refutation of paranormal claims, also focuses on epistemological considerations such as the question of whether the claim is falsifiable. These are examples of applying our epistemological understanding to illuminate and criticize dubious, everyday knowledge claims, and they are parallel to the attempt to apply ethical principles to contemporary issues in applied ethics. ^[8]

Finally, I wish to em­phasize the parallel between doing applied epistemology versus applying epistemology, and doing applied ethics versus applying ethics. In applied ethics, for example, we deal with abortion in general; in applying ethics we decide on the rightness of a particular abor­tion. By analogy in applied epistemology we might deal with questions concerning the role that the elimination of competing hypotheses plays in establishing a causal claim, but not the question of whether this or that particular hypothesis should be, or has been, eliminated. On the other hand, as with applied ethics, the criticism of a particular view on an epistemological as opposed to factual basis is a legitimate activity within applied epistemology.^[9]

But my concern is not simply to draw the parallel between critical thinking and ap­plied epistemology, but to use this analogy to support the claim that the concerns of critical thinkers have significant philoso­phical import. In particular, the efforts to apply epistemological understanding to practical problems uncovers a number of difficulties within epistemology.

3. Some Implications for Normative Epistemology

One of the most obvious facts about how knowledge is actually ac­quired is the heavy reliance on authority. Most of what we know, we know because someone told us. This is out of line with the traditional emphasis on either reason or experience as the basis of knowledge. What is the state of the theory of appeal to authority? It hardly exists.^[10] But there other even deeper problems. While great effort is expended on trying to decide what else there is to knowledge besides justified true belief, little time is spent on what would count as sufficient justification for a belief to be the basis of a knowledge claim. The assumption may be that there is little in general that can be said about the rules which would specify what evidence would constitute sufficient justification for a belief to be the basis of a knowledge claim: that this question must be answered by probability theory or intra-discipline norms. But, of course, it is just such a question that presents itself to us every day, and such questions do not always fall into some discipline’s ”jurisdiction.” “Do I have enough evidence to proceed with this injunction, business decision, complaint, and so on?” “Can I say “I know” he did it on the basis of the evidence that I have?”

A related issue arises when considering people’s actual willingness to make knowledge claims. Our willingness to claim we know something seems to be, at least partly, a function of what is at stake, weaker justification being sufficient for issues of lesser importance. I may say that “I know you are coming at five” simply on the basis of overhearing you say so, until I discover that my life depends on my being right. This point is related to Austin’s insight that claiming to know is a kind of performative (Austin 1979). But Austin’s claim is a descriptive claim, a meta-epistemological claim. The question applied epistemology would treat would be: when is it reasonable to stake yourself behind your claim, to claim that you know?

These are crucial epistemological questions, questions that should be addressed by philosophers, and questions that get much impetus when one attempts to app­ly epistemology to issues of everyday concern. These problems seem to me rich enough to justify the creation of a new field. Before we can advance the teaching of critical thinking beyond the largely introductory nature of current courses, these questions require deep, theoretical study.

4. Examples of Applied Epistemology

There may not appear to be as many clear examples of the need for applied epistemology as there are examples of the kind of practical problems that requires ap­plied ethics: medicine, in particular, seems to supply enough moral problems to keep a legion of applied philosophers employed. But we really need not look far to find analogues for the applied epistemologist. Law is one obvious context where putative factual claims are made and assess­ed in light of implicit and explicit epistemological norms. Much use is made, for example, of the fact/opinion distinction which Weddle (1985) has shown to be fraught with difficulty.

Decision theory too, to the extent that it involves considerations of rational belief as a basis for action, also involves issues in applied epistemology. For example, the issue of the appropriate 2nd order decision principle to apply (Type I or Type II) to the question of whether to believe a claim on the basis of evidence that is too weak to sup­port a knowledge claim is a question for ap­plied epistemology. A lovely example of the application of just such principals can be found in William James’ famous ar­ticle “The Will to Believe” (1896).

An excellent example of a text that takes critical thinking beyond basic instruction is Giere’s book, Understanding Scientific Reasoning (1984). He elaborates a fairly sophisticated view of the basis of scien­tific knowledge, and attempts, in a simplified but theoretical way, to explain to people how to apply this approach to (1) theories in the natural sciences such as physics, (2) theories in the more statistically-based sciences such as epidemiology and sociology, and (3) popular theories such as Danekin’s Chariot of the Gods. This is a highly commendable enterprise and because of its explicit theoretical base, his work is superior to other works such as Science and Unreason (Radner and Radner 1982), which are more superficial.

In my view, and perhaps in Giere’s current view, there is too little emphasis on the role that the scientific community plays in assessing and establishing scientific knowledge. But whatever the difficulties with his particular approach, the students do learn a great deal from this careful and largely non-mathematical approach to science.^[11] They develop quite clear pro­cedures for assessing statistical information and good reasons to dismiss popular mythology like Danekin’s. The difficulties and problems are grist for the applied epistemologist.

Another good example of applied epistemology is one I have already alluded to: Hume’s attack on miracles (1748, Sections VIII-XI.) Hume argues that no empirical evidence or testimony could be sufficient to overwhelm the essential improbability of any claimed miracle. He also offers much historical evidence about people’s misguided en­thusiasms for the miraculous and extraor­dinary. But his argument against the possibility of justifying claims of the miraculous on the basis of fundamental epistemological considerations is an exemplary instance of applied epistemology. This is not to say that his argument is un­controversial; it is not an algorithmic application of well-established epistemological norms, but rather an argument which focuses on a particular set of judgments and, using epistemological reflections, sup­ports a skeptical position on claims of this type.

Another instance of applying epistemological reflections would be the use of the standards of statistical significance, especially in the various social sciences. One example would the use of ssd .05, which statisticians have fixed on as the minimal standard for a “scien­tific’” knowledge claim. The basic issue is how to decide the significance of statistics gathered by sampling. We have all read that Gallup polls typically allow for a confidence interval of ±3% (19 times out of 20). This means that Gallup is claiming that the percentage of the whole population holding a certain view will be within ±3% of whatever percentage Gallup’s poll yield­, 19 times out of 20 (i.e., 95% of the time). We can then say that we know (or at least that we are justified in believing) that the range in the population is X ±3%. We can say this because the 95% rule has been adopted as the norm of statistical significance for most statistical purposes. Introductory statistics students, for exam­ple, are taught that in the typical Gallup poll, changes in a politician’s popularity are (statistically) significant only if they exceed ±3 %. But is this the appropriate criterion? Why are we not prepared to say that, while there is a 95% chance of the population be­ing distributed within ±3% of Gallup’s results, there is, say, a 75% chance of it being within 1%. After all, how many things in life are 95% certain? Must all our knowledge claims (significance claims) meet a 95% certainty criteria? My goal is not to answer this question but to offer it as another illustration of the kind of epistemological claims that are not necessarily addressed in any discipline and deserve philosophical reflection.

5. Applied Epistemology and Other Aspects of Critical thinking

It must be admitted that much of what we typically teach in Critical Thinking classes is preliminary to the teaching of ap­plied epistemology, and as a result the con­cept and curriculum of Critical Thinking embraces a much broader range of skills and norms than are involved in applied epistemology. We must, of course, teach analysis of argument before we teach assessment and, with some students, this is a significant task. If students cannot recognize deductive in­ferences and their significance, then this, too, must be taught. But we teach analysis in order to teach assessment, so it seems fair to treat applied epistemology as the core discipline of Critical Thinking instruction.^[12]

In addition, there are activities associated with Critical Thinking that are neither evaluation nor analysis, such as problem-solving, creative thinking, argumentation theory, and for some, even ethical analysis. Almost all practitioners also consider the inculcation of the disposition to be reasonable as an important component of any Critical Thinking course. None of these topics is obviously epistemology, applied or otherwise, though it seems to me again that they are all directed at teaching students to apply appropriate epistemological norms in their lives. The purpose of creative thinking (lateral thinking, etc.) is surely to help people out of habitual and in­correct beliefs into true or at least better justified beliefs.

On the other hand, the temptation in many public schools to implement “creative thinking” as the central focus of Critical Thinking teaching seems, therefore, significantly wrong. And while this issue has been well treated (cf. Bailin 1987), arguing for the cen­trality of applied epistemology is a healthy correction to those tendencies.

6. Summary

These remarks are somewhat speculative, but they suggest some of the possibilities that flow from a study of ap­plied epistemology—even the possibilities of theoretical developments in normative epistemology. The view of critical thinking as applied epistemology ties it to its pro­per theoretical discipline, and encourages the possibilities of a two-way relationship between the theoretical and practical sides of the discipline, an approach which will be of benefit to both. If this is true, we have much fascinating and exciting work ahead. And, (almost) needless to say, a great deal of teaching to do. We must not only help our students to improve their Critical Thinking, but also help our colleagues see the significance of critical thinking/applied epistemology as a philosophical discipline.^[13]

References

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Alston, W.P. 1978. “Meta-ethics and Meta-epistemology.” In Values and Morals, edited by A.I. Goldman and J. Kim, 275-297. Dordrecht: Reidel.

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Bailin, S. and M. Battersby. 2016. Reason in the Balance: An Inquiry Approach to Critical Thinking, 2^nd Edition. Cambridge, Mass: Hackett.

Battersby, M. 2016. Is That a Fact? A Field Guide to Statistical and Scientific Information. 2^nd Edition. Broadview Press.

______ 1993. “Assessing Expert Claims: Critical Thinking and the Appeal to Authority.” Paideusis 6, 2: 5–16.

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McPeck, J.E. 1981. Critical Thinking and Education. Oxford: Martin Robertson.

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Siegel, H. 1985. “Educating Reason: Critical Thinking, Informal Logic and the Philosophy of Education.” Informal Logic 3, 2 & 3: 69-83.

______. 1988. Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical thinking, and Education. New York: Routledge.

Thomson, J.J. 1971. “A Defense of Abortion.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 47-64.

Walton, D. 2010. Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments From Authority. Penn State Press.

Weddle, P. 1985. “Fact From Opinion.” Informal Logic 3, 1: 19-26. Also in Govier, 1987: 55-64.