Inquiry: A New Paradigm for Critical Thinking

The Project

This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still evident in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments.

While acknowledging the value of “logical self-defense,” we see the critical thinking project as having a much more expansive educational goal – that of critical inquiry. Students need to be equipped to critically investigate issues of significance, actively seek and identify credible information, and make judgments based on a critical evaluation of reasons and evidence. Thus the alternative conception of critical thinking which we have been developing, while including fallacy identification and argument critique, focuses primarily on inquiry, which we view in terms of arriving at reasoned judgments on issues, frequently of a complex nature.

We believe that this approach offers a new paradigm for critical thinking because it differs from more traditional conceptions in a number of fundamental ways. First, it is primarily epistemological rather than logical. The traditional approach focuses on the evaluation of arguments according to the norms of logic, informal as well as formal, examining, for example, whether the conclusion of an argument follows from its premises or whether logical fallacies have been committed. The inquiry approach, on the other hand, appeals to the range of epistemological norms used to justify and critique claims in a variety of areas, including, for example, criteria for evaluating sources, judging causal claims, or evaluating statistical arguments.

Second, the inquiry approach differs from the traditional approach in being dialectical. It does not focus simply on individual arguments but rather on the comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments necessary for coming to a reasoned judgment.

Finally the inquiry approach is contextual. The consideration of context has traditionally been viewed as irrelevant to the evaluation of an argument. In contrast, the inquiry approach, focusing as it does on issues rather than individual arguments, takes as an important aspect of evaluation the consideration of the context in which the issue has been developed, including its dialectical, intellectual, and historical contexts.

We have implemented this inquiry approach in our textbook, Reason in the Balance: An Inquiry Approach to Critical Thinking (Hackett 2016; McGraw-Hill Ryerson 2010). The text uses dialogues among an ongoing cast of characters involved in realistic situations as a context for discussing the various aspects that go into the practice of inquiry, including identifying issues, identifying the relevant contexts, understanding the competing cases, and making a comparative judgment among them. These aspects are instantiated in inquiries on topics such as vegetarianism, vaccination, prostitution, conspiracy theories, the evaluation of a film, the legalization of marijuana, and the right of hate groups to speak. These various aspects are also applied to inquiry in specific contexts, including science, social science, philosophy, and the arts. There is also considerable emphasis placed throughout on the habits of mind which are essential for inquiry, including (among others) open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, the desire to act on the basis of reasons, the acceptance of uncertainty, and respect for others in dialogue – habits of mind which we characterize as the spirit of inquiry.

The present volume can be seen as a theoretical companion piece to the textbook. What we have done here is to collect the various papers that reflect the development of our approach, highlighting its foundation, theoretical elaboration, and diverse applications. These papers were written over a period of time and reflect the development of this approach historically as well as conceptually. The papers have all been published previously and are presented, for the most part, in their original form. As such, they draw on the research and literature available at the time of their creation or publication and reflect the dialectical context in which the ideas were initially developed. Our ideas have, to be sure, developed over time in response to a changing dialectical context. We have revisited issues, developing them in what we hope is a more robust and nuanced way, and explored implications and applications of the approach. While we have added some more contemporary references to several of the earliest papers (chapter 1, 2, 3, and 11), we have endeavoured to remain faithful to the original purpose and context of each paper and to the developmental nature of the project as a whole.

The Papers

The issues reflected here are ones which we have been thinking about and writing about for many years. We were each, independently, over the years, coming to the view that there were problems in basing critical thinking instruction strictly on the evaluation of individual arguments and in the fallacy approach; and we were both developing alternative ways to conceptualize critical thinking.

Mark’s 1989 paper, “Critical Thinking as Applied Epistemology: Relocating Critical Thinking in the Philosophical Landscape,” is an early elaboration of such an alternative conception. The paper argues that the appropriate philosophical heritage of critical thinking is not in logic, as is implied by the term ‘Informal logic,’ but rather in epistemology, involving as it does the application of epistemological norms to common problems. It also argues that, just as applied ethics contributes to the enhancement of normative ethics, so also should applied epistemology contribute to the enhancement of traditional epistemic norms.

Sharon’s 1992 “Argumentation as Inquiry” also addresses the issue of how argumentation should be conceived. The paper contests Blair’s contention that all argumentation can be construed as instances of two person dispute-resolving argumentation and argues that, from both an epistemological and a pedagogical perspective, argumentation is best conceived as inquiry.

Sharon’s 1999 paper, “The Problem with Percy: Epistemology, Understanding, and Critical Thinking,” further develops the argument for the centrality of epistemology for critical thinking. The paper argues that the requisites for critical thinking cannot be fully encompassed by the notions of skills and dispositions and that the additional dimension is an epistemological one: an understanding of the nature of inquiry.

The ideas regarding the centrality of epistemology and of inquiry for critical thinking initially proposed in these three early papers have been foundational for the conception of critical thinking which we subsequently jointly developed and elaborated.

“Reason Appreciation,” an early joint paper, explicates the notion of reason appreciation, which involves a respect for reasoning based on an understanding of its nature, role and significance. Appreciating reason involves, centrally, valuing its processes and outcomes, honouring its normative demands, and thus being committed to acting according to its dictates. This notion is at the heart of our subsequent idea of the critical spirit, which we argue is central to the process of inquiry.

It is in our paper, “Inquiry: A Dialectical Approach to Critical Thinking,” where we lay out our basic approach and its rationale. In this paper, we argue that the central goal of critical thinking is the making of reasoned judgments and that arriving at reasoned judgments is, in most cases, a dialectical process involving the comparative weighing of a variety of contending positions and arguments. Recognizing this dialectical dimension means that critical thinking pedagogy should focus on the kind of comparative evaluation and weighing of reasons which we make in actual contexts of disagreement and debate.

Scholarly interest in the kind of dialectical or pro and con reasoning which is at the heart of the inquiry approach has grown considerably in recent years with the renewed interest in conductive reasoning. As a contribution to this discussion, our paper, “Guidelines for Reaching a Reasoned Judgment,” addresses the contentious issue of the evaluation of conductive arguments by offering some general guidelines for reaching a well-reasoned judgment through conductive reasoning and a set of criteria which arise from these guidelines for identifying inadequate conductive argumentation.

One of the guidelines proposed in “Guidelines for Reaching a Reasoned Judgment” is that arguers should make a judgment at the appropriate level of confidence, apportioning their judgment to the strength of the reasons. Our paper, “Conductive Argumentation, Degrees of Confidence, and the Communication of Uncertainty,” takes this line of reasoning further by arguing that arguers also have an obligation to communicate their judgments with the appropriate level of confidence, expressing the degree of certainty or uncertainty warranted by the strength of the evidence and arguments.

A number of the papers develop various aspects of our approach and examine its implications for a variety of issues in critical thinking and argumentation theory. An early paper of Mark’s, “Assessing Expert Claims: Critical Thinking and the Appeal to Authority,” argues that the evaluation of authoritative information has been given insufficient attention in critical thinking instruction. The paper goes on to offer a revised set of criteria for assessing appeals to authority which recognize the role of expert consensus and of the explanation and justification of claims offered by experts. These criteria, aimed at fostering an appropriate balance between rational trust and appropriate skepticism, play an important role in the critical evaluation which is integral to the inquiry approach.

The role, in inquiry, of identifying fallacies is another subject of investigation. In “Fallacy Identification in a Dialectical Approach to Teaching Critical Thinking,” we put forward a conception of a fallacy that departs from many standard accounts, characterizing a fallacy as an argument pattern whose persuasive power greatly exceeds its probative value. We go on to argue, however, that the identification of fallacies in individual arguments usually cannot, in itself, constitute an adequate evaluation of the strength of the argumentative support for a claim and that such an assessment must be based on the completion of the inquiry and a comparative evaluation of the arguments. Thus, given the dialectical nature of inquiry, fallacy identification can play only a preliminary, prima facie role in argument assessment.

The significance of considering the context surrounding an issue is underestimated and often overlooked in approaches to critical thinking theory and instruction based on informal logic. Our paper, “Critical Inquiry: Considering the Context,” argues, in contrast, that considering the context of an issue is an important component of the inquiry process. The paper elaborates on our view about the importance of considering context by examining in detail the role of a number of different aspects of context for inquiry: dialectical context, the current state of belief or practice, intellectual, political, historical and social contexts, disciplinary context, sources, and self.

The implications for critical thinking theory and instruction of the research on cognitive biases is the subject of “Critical Thinking and Cognitive Biases.” The paper details what this psychological work can add to the philosophical understanding of reasoning errors and also highlights how some aspects of the inquiry approach can help to counter some of these biases. These include: 1) the identification of the persuasive power of fallacies; 2) the use of strategies such as a set of guiding questions and the conscious monitoring of our thinking processes to slow down our thinking and make it more deliberate; 3) the deliberate seeking out of counter-evidence and alternative views to counter myside bias; and 4) the requirement to examine the full range of arguments on all sides of an issue in order to make a judgment with the appropriate degree of confidence, which can act as a counter to the bias of overconfidence.

Our paper, “DAMed If You Do; DAMed If You Don’t: Cohen’s ‘Missed Opportunities’,” is written in response to a paper by Cohen in which he highlights an apparent tension between a collegial practice of argumentation in which arguers help each other and the Dominant Adversarial Model in which the specification of roles precludes such mutual assistance. Our paper, developing a theme initially raised in “Argumentation as Inquiry,” argues that the tension is resolved by rejecting the characterization of roles inherent in the DAM account and recognizing that the epistemological structure of argumentation necessitates inquiry, which is a collegial, non-adversarial enterprise.

Several of our papers examine the application of our approach in various contexts. “Beyond the Boundaries: The Epistemological Significance of Differing Cultural Perspectives” focuses on an aspect of critical thinking which is central to our dialectical conception, the consideration of alternatives, addressing the question of whether and to what extent the requirement to consider alternatives extends to the beliefs and practices of other cultures. The paper explores this question in the context of a number of examples, including conceptions and practices of art in other cultures, aboriginal justice, traditional Chinese medicine, and religion and hydrology, and offers some guidelines for delineating the appropriate realm for serious considerations.

“Teaching Critical Inquiry in Science: The Role of Dialectical Context in Scientific Reasoning” explores the role of dialectical context in scientific inquiry and science pedagogy. Building on the conception of dialectical context explicated in “Critical Inquiry: Considering the Context,” the paper details several examples from the history of science which show how the history and the state of the controversy in which a scientific theory is put forward play a crucial role in the evaluation of a theory. The paper also argues that having students conduct inquiries using such historical cases, as well as contemporary debates, can give students a sense of the dialectical and evolving nature of scientific inquiry.

The teaching of critical thinking is the subject of our textbook and is never very far from our sights in our theoretical papers. But there are also several of our papers where it is the explicit focus. Mark’s early paper, “The Competent Layperson: Re-envisioning the Ideal of the Educated Person,” argues that educating the competent layperson should be the central goal of undergraduate education. The paper explicates this notion, detailing the kind of breadth of understanding, ability to evaluate claims and explore specialized areas, and appreciation of the natural, social and artistic worlds that comprise this ideal. The paper goes on to show how engaging students in the process of critical inquiry is the best way to achieve this goal.

“Critical Thinking as Inquiry in Higher Education” outlines the shortcomings of both conventional critical thinking courses and traditional disciplinary teaching for developing critical thinking in higher education and argues that an inquiry approach is a more effective means for achieving this goal. The paper shows how the process of comparatively evaluating competing arguments is central for arriving at reasoned judgments in disciplinary as well as in everyday contexts. In emphasizing both the aspects common to inquiry across a range of areas and the modes of argumentation that are specific to an area, the inquiry approach can be used to foster critical thinking both in separate course and within disciplinary instruction.

Our paper, “Fostering the Virtues of Inquiry,” expands on our notion of the critical spirit, elucidating the virtues necessary for inquiry, which include an overarching commitment to rational belief and action and a set of sub-virtues such as open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, concern for truth and accuracy, which are grounded in that commitment. The paper argues, further, that these virtues are best acquired through an immersion in the practice of inquiry within the context of a community which instantiates the norms and virtues of rational inquiry.

The relationship between critical thinking and creative thinking is the topic of Sharon’s paper, “Is Argument for Conservatives? or, Where Do Sparkling New Ideas Come From?” In it, she addresses Rorty’s claim that argument can only be a means for criticizing existing ideas and so cannot result in innovation whereas an imaginative envisioning of new ideas is necessary for intellectual progress. The paper argues, on the contrary, that intellectual progress proceeds through the process of inquiry which involves a dynamic interplay between the generation and the criticism of ideas. Argument is thus crucial to the development of new ideas.

The last paper in the volume, Mark’s “Enhancing Rationality: Heuristics, Biases, and The Critical Thinking Project,” revisits some of the ideas in our paper, “Critical Thinking and Cognitive Biases” but takes them in a new direction. This paper critiques the narrow conception of rationality as rational self-interest embedded in the standard economic interpretation of the heuristics and biases research. It further argues for the reclaiming for the critical thinking project of the area of applied rational decision-making but in a form which includes a focus on collective rationality and which takes into account factual, moral, political and personal considerations as well as utility maximization.