'Critical Thinking' Fails its Socratic Paternity Test

If, as I contend, 'Critical Thinking' is and always has been a critical threat to sound reasoning (it has) - why did (do) otherwise intelligent people adopt and promote it? That's partly due to what we saw in the previous post, where its deceptive claims about what CT is and will 'do' for students, are furthered by the claim that 'Critical Thinking' is directly descended from what Socrates practiced at the dawn of Western philosophy. As has already been pointed out, these claims are clearly bogus, even on the basis of the title itself, as 'Critical Thinking' stretches no further back in time than to John Dewey in the 1890's (not actually using those words until 1910), and that the first book on 'Critical Thinking' wasn't published until 1941. But what needs to be better understood, which is the purpose of this post, is that worse than simply being technically incorrect about historic details (AKA: Lying), the substance and spirit of the claim is, at best, patently absurd.

Ironically (Socrates cheers), as their Socratic paternity claim is made to lull people into not thinking about what 'Critical Thinking' really is, if we subject 'Critical Thinking' itself to just the initial questions that Socrates might have begun with, it not only reveals itself to be a mismatch on the basis of its philosophical DNA, but it reveals how fundamentally incompatible that CT is to what Socrates was doing, and to why he was doing it, and so flat-out fails the Socratic paternity test.

At the dawn of moral philosophy some 2,500 years ago (can you feel Moses waving 'hi!' from across the sea?), Socrates had begun practicing his unique form of asking questions in a manner he called the Dialectic, to clarify the meaning of the words we use, and how to use them to better understand ourselves and the world around us. As Plato recounts it, his dialectical process began with asking someone a seemingly simple question about what had been claimed or repeated by them, and whether or not an obvious implication of that was something that they thought to be true. He'd continue questioning the answers given to his questions to reveal the extent and integrated nature of that knowledge (or lack of it), in the hopes that both the questioner and the person being questioned (and those of us participating in the dialog at home) would gain a better depth of understanding of what they did and did not know about what they had presumed to be so.

One thing that practicing his dialectical reasoning upon his fellow Athenians brought out into the open, was that those terms which Socrates' fellows' lives revolved around, in everything from the seemingly mundane, to the loftiest of sentiments, were so poorly understood by them, that their own words were leading themselves astray from what they expected they could secure by using them. Worse still, their lack of understanding was being used by those amongst them, the Sophists, who understood how to cultivate their confusion in order to disorder their minds into whichever state of passionate intensity or apathetic disregard, seemed to best serve the interests of a well-positioned few.

NOTE: You shouldn't read Plato to find 'answers' (that's a bad habit from 'Critical Thinking'), but to identify the questions, and how best to pursue understanding. 

One such dialog, the Euthyphro, is set where Socrates is waiting to be arraigned on the charges of impiety that he'd soon be executed for, and it recounts the conversation that followed from Socrates asking another fellow in 'the waiting room', about what he was there for. Euthyphro answered that he was there waiting to charge his father with 1st degree murder over the accidental death of a misbehaving fieldhand, because Euthyphro thought that would be the pious thing to do.

Socrates, a bit taken back by that, asked him what he meant by Piety? To which Euthyphro, as do most of Socrates' 'victims', replied with a surface level answer:

"Piety is giving an offering to the gods, or being respectful"

, and in typical fashion, Socrates began by clarifying what he'd asked, before launching into the dialog of further questioning the answers being given:

"You misunderstand me, you've given me examples of pious behavior, but I'm interested in what it is that Piety means..."

, and the dialogs get underway with Socrates attempting - oftentimes without succeeding - to clarify what the speaker actually meant by the words and terms they'd been carelessly using to think with.

Consider, for instance, Euthyphro charging his father with murder. His father had taken an action, and his slave died following it - that was an obvious and readily apparent fact. But whose action was it that caused the death, the father's or the slave's? And what was meant by 'Caused'? And was the action Just?

Without having questioned his way past the surface level of appearances, Euthyphro could not have the knowledge that only follows from examining the depths of context surrounding an issue, and acting 'as if' you already know what you haven't bothered to examine, causes consequences that cannot be good. Can justice be served by taking action against someone 'as if' you know what you haven't bothered to understand? Can such an action be pious? By disregarding the context of what happened, Euthyphro's pious action amounted to virtue signaling the pretense of it at his father's expense - how likely was it that (Zeus? Athena? The Furies?) would look kindly upon that?

By ignoring context, we butcher our grasp of causation into a materialistic "Cause & Effect" response, which is not adequate for gaining a sound understanding of an issue. Unfortunately for Euthyphro, Aristotle's study of Causation and the four causes which that revealed (final cause, efficient cause, formal cause, and material cause), was still several decades in the future, and Aquinas's 5th 'Exemplary cause', was still a thousand years beyond that. We, however, can benefit from what Euthyphro lacked... but how many of us do? As 'Critical Thinking' gives no consideration to such concerns, it helps to ensure that those numbers are few.

What the Socratic dialogs that Plato left us also demonstrate, is not only how little people often understand of what they're saying, but how angry they can become when made to face their own errors & ignorance - so much so that Socrates' was ultimately executed for refusing to stop practicing his dialectic of questioning upon the people of Athens.

What is critically important for us to understand still to this day, and perhaps especially today, is that it is as easy as it is unwise to behave as if we understand something, when the underlying meaning of the words we're using amounts to what 'everyone knows!', and without the context being clear to us, we truly cannot know what we are talking about.

The painful fact is that the real drama of history often ensues from those critical misunderstandings which result from the right questions having not been asked, or having been asked, were left unheeded. In fact, tragedians, comedians, and historians have long made their living by providing their audiences with an awareness of the context which the people 'on stage' lack, and without which they lead themselves into taking those unwise positions and actions that can only lead to disaster, while 'the audience' is left to experience the agony of knowing what could have been prevented if someone, anyone, would have simply asked one or two key questions that would have unraveled the entire awful turn of events.

But unlike an audience, we here in the present cannot know what might hinge upon what it is that we do not consider, or say, and we should learn from those dramatists that real knowledge is never isolated, and only (seemingly) ethically neutral in certain contexts. And we should also realize that the sophists of every age view those who ask and pursue questions as Socrates did, as threats to those whose interests are served by such matters not being common knowledge, and they view those who teach such lessons, as Socrates did, as being... unwelcome.

But being ignorant of important facts isn't nearly the problem that being ignorant of the need to ask relevant questions, is. The inclination to assume that we cannot know what is true, or that 'knowledge' is just a matter of recalling isolated facts, combine together with our willingness to accept 'obvious' facts and 'answers' that 'everyone knows!', to leave you forever 'just asking questions!' while never gaining an understanding of what an answer to them should be, which mainly benefits those who'd prefer they remain concealed by what 'everyone knows!'.

A Critical Difference between philosophical reasoning and 'Critical Thinking'

We saw in the previous post, that when asked what 'Critical Thinking' is, CT'rs standard reply to parents and the public, was very much like that of Euthyphro's reply about what Piety is, with:

"Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write...."

, and with Socrates's response as an example, we can see that we should reply to those CT'rs:

"You misunderstand me, you've given me examples of 'Critical Thinking's behavior, but I'm interested in what it is that 'Critical Thinking' means..."

, but to be fair, as that is clearly not the kind of thinking that 'Critical Think'rs are familiar with, we, like Socrates, should clarify a little further about just what kind of reply it is that we're looking for, and why. When we feel ourselves being either stirred up into anger or lulled to sleep by another's words, as you feel their words taking ahold of you, you should do as he did and question the nature of the context that they're leading you into. Ask:

• What ends will the good or ill passions you're being led to feel, serve to excuse, distract you from, or accomplish?
• Is what is meant by the words being used to urge you on, going to have the same meaning when they're being applied?
• Who benefits most from the actions you're being led to take?

, and despite his famously protesting that he knew nothing, Socrates clearly understood the importance of knowing the meaning of the words you're thinking with. He knew how the overall context that those words are used in, could shift what is assumed to be meant by them, and he knew that it's only by asking and pursuing questions into that as yet shadowy context, that we can hope to understand whether the positions and actions that people are being led into taking, are of value or not, are true or false, or right or wrong, which are matters that shouldn't remain concealed through our ignorance of it.

Socrates referred to the practice of his dialectic, as Philosophy, 'the love of wisdom', and it was clear that he considered Philosophy to be - in a way that has been made nearly alien to our ears today - a deeply moral matter of consciously using our language to integrate our understanding of reality, so as to develop our knowledge of what is real & true and right & wrong to do, and without which we cannot know what it is that we're talking about.

Having a systematic approach to understanding what it was that Socrates's dialectical practice of philosophical reasoning meant and entailed, would have to wait for his philosophical son & grandson, Plato and Aristotle, to begin developing. But it was his persistent engagement of his fellows in those habits of inquiry (which (no surprise to him) would eventually cost him his life), that started the Grecco/Roman half of The West upon the path towards seeking an objective understanding of what is real & true, and right & wrong, and which, IMHO, was and is central to what enabled its Judeo/Christian counterpart to join together with it, in the forming of Western civilization.

Socrates starts opening a can of worms with a leading sophist, in The Gorgias: ...
SOCRATES: Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions? for I want to hear from him what is the nature of his art, and what it is which he professes and teaches; he may, as you (Chaerephon) suggest, defer the exhibition to some other time.
CALLICLES: There is nothing like asking him, Socrates; and indeed to answer questions is a part of his exhibition, for he was saying only just now, that any one in my house might put any question to him, and that he would answer.
SOCRATES: How fortunate! will you ask him, Chaerephon—?
CHAEREPHON: What shall I ask him?
SOCRATES: Ask him who he is...."

Socrates' opponents at the time, the Sophists, OTOH, were already well aware of the misunderstandings that the misuse of language could create, and rather than attempt to clarify what our words mean and how best to use them, they thrived upon that darker form of dialectical reasoning which cultivates the ignorance & errors that result from an absence of good questions being asked, and in fact depends upon utilizing ignorance and the ambiguities of language to conceal meaning. Their skill in the manipulation of that, was what the Sophists were sought out and rewarded for.

Sophistry requires the ability to get away with treating words and terms 'as if' their meaning is disintegrated from the rest of what you know, and that depends upon a widespread view of knowledge being seen as little more than the ability to recall what's useful in one moment, and to consider that completely irrelevant to the concerns of the next moment. That Pragmatic view of knowledge as essentially having 'meaning' in name only (another variant of Nominalism), is what enables the sort of language that we accept today in phrases such as 'Truth is an illusion' and 'Truth is what works', which is critical for spurring people into taking those positions and actions that serve a given narrative which they likely know less than nothing about (hello 'stay 6' apart for social distancing'!), for a 'common good' that primarily serves the interests of those that the sophists of the Ideological Observatories serve.

And so with that contrast between Socrates' Philosophical Reasoning, and that of Rhetorical Sophistry in mind, I hope you're recalling two of the primary contentions of the Critical Thinking crowd from the previous post, which are that:

1)“...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"

, and that that assertion is dependent upon the view of 'knowledge' that Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives has been teaching to those who've been teaching our teachers since the 1950s, that 'knowledge' is only a matter of recalling "...previously learned material...", and as such, it:

2)"...represents the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain."

, and if so, you should now recognize - if you are thinking reasonably rather than 'critically' - that both of these beliefs that are at the heart of 'Critical Thinking', are in full opposition to the deeply integrated knowledge and moral clarity of thought that Socrates was pursuing through his Dialectic.

And seeing now why the CT'rs reply to the question of what 'Critical Thinking' is, is so much like Euthyphro's, we can compare and contrast what Socrates' purpose of using his Dialectic to pursue Philosophy was, to the nature of the 'Critical Thinking' that our modern day sophists teach in our schools, and notice just how unlike that is to Socrates' method, which sought to understand and integrate our thinking, and to expand our knowledge in order to better do what Aristotle said in the opening of the Nichomachean Ethics:

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim ..."

In complete contrast to that, what the sophistry of 'Critical Thinking' aims at, is what is momentarily useful to ends that can only be unworthy, because they are achieved by diminishing the nature of our knowledge to a recalling of random facts as suitable 'answers', and with which CT'rs seek to bring about an attitude within a student's mind, that:

“...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"

On that basis alone, any reasonable consideration of the evidence before us, shows that 'Critical Thinking' not only fully and completely fails the Socratic paternity test, but reveals that the claim could only have been made, in order to put you and your children under its power. You needn't fear that this failed paternity test will leave our 'Critical Thinkers' as philosophical orphans though, for since it was also the Sophists' primary interest to get people to act without considering whether such actions were 'right or wrong', and instead to just do 'what works', we have identified that our 'Critical Thinkers' philosophical pedigree truly lies with the Sophists.

The authentic intelligence that leads people out of the darkness of confusion and into seeking to see and do what is right, comes from turning your own attention towards actively identifying what is (Metaphysics), how you know it (through an epistemology of Causality and Logic), and what should be done in response to that (Ethics), and will reveal to you a depth of context in every aspect of your life, that can only be revealed by the light of what is real and true.

Because the Sophist's power - then and now - depends upon those manipulations of language that are only possible within a climate of subtle misunderstandings and meaningless 'knowledge', their 'Critical Thinking', like Euthyphro, blinds themselves into believing that they can see what they do not, and if we are not aware of their doing so, we put ourselves in peril.

To prevent the same old sophistry from becoming as fatal to us today, as it was to Socrates in his day, it is critical for us to stop mistaking the Artificial Intelligence of 'Critical Thinking', for the real thing, and we'll dig further into that, in the next post.

Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking

I've had enough experience over the years with the issue of criticizing 'Critical Thinking', to know that many of you are unlikely to become convinced anytime soon that 'Critical Thinking' is the problem which I understand it to be. But I'm less interested in persuading you about that, than in having you pursue some questions that are, oddly enough, rarely asked, and if you'll do that, give some consideration to what those questions reveal about what you'd assumed CT to be, and make an honest judgement about that, then whether or not you agree with my conclusions, I'll consider that a big success.

Richard Mitchell's "The Leaning Tower of Babel"

So, let's start with trying to get a grip on what most people think is meant by 'Critical Thinking', by considering how parents and academics might respond to the question:

• What is Critical Thinking, and what is it expected to do for students?

It's safe to say that if you ask most people what their expectations of 'Critical Thinking' is, and what they expect that it will do to help their, and their kids lives, they'll answer something like:

a - Learning 'Critical Thinking' will help my kid to think more clearly and logically about what they read and hear.
b - Being a 'Critical Thinker' will help my kid to see and do what is right, and better understand how to succeed in life.

Not surprisingly, most schools will reply similarly, though in academic language, that they expect 'the same':

a -"Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write...."
and b - it's "... about making reliable judgements based on reliable information."

What's interesting to note though, is that when the theorists of 'Critical Thinking' talk with each other about what 'Critical Thinking' is and does, the one thing they agree upon most, is that they don't agree upon what it is or does for students. Furthermore, the fact is that doubts about whether or not learning to be better able to "... question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement... is something that is being taught effectively by CT, have been raised almost from its inception.

So there's at least one discrepancy between what 'Critical Think'rs say to each other, and what they say to parents and the general public about what they think CT is and does.

That's interesting.

Something else that shouldn't be missed, is that there's a bit of ambiguity involved in their citing those 'features' of how to "...question, analyze, interpret..." to identify what 'Critical Thinking' is and does, as those are also what the Western understanding of the art of Reasoning has been identified with for thousands of years. And while those habits of mind which most people typically expect kids to learn from practicing 'Critical Thinking' - to "...question, analyze, interpret...", think logically, etc. - are the habits of mind that any decent education has sought to lead students to develop throughout those thousands of years - why speak 'as if' that would identify 'Critical Thinking' in particular?

it is confounding...

Are any of you Critical Thinkers out there now wondering how 'Critical Thinking' differs from Reasoning? And if not, does that mean that you think that 'Critical Thinking' and Reasoning are 'the same'? But... if they describe 'the same thing'... then why does 'Critical Thinking' even exist? Those of you who recall the previous post's warnings about the perils of reasoning with false premises and ambiguous terms, should be getting curiouser and curiouser. As Christine at The Palmerworm points out, when you are intentionally led "to mistake for another, to identify falsely", it's possible that you are being confounded... and those of you who're familiar with the activist uses of a 'Floating Signifier', should be slipping out of curiosity, and into alarm.

But sure, while the discrepancies we can see so far between these two sets of answers, don't seem to amount to being a deal breaker, they do at least indicate the need for us to ask a few more questions. We can come at this from a different angle by asking three more questions, beginning with one question about what you might be thinking that I'm thinking:

Are you suggesting that 'Critical Thinking' isn't equivalent to, or as old and valued as, a traditional approach to Reasoning is?

, followed by:

When did we first discover the wonders of 'Critical Thinking', and what are its innovations?

When and why did we begin calling for more of 'Critical Thinking'?

To answer question #1, Yes, I am. One reason why I speak of 'Critical Thinking' in such a critical manner, is because it is typically spoken of 'as if' it were something it is not, which leads people into a number of false assumptions about it, ranging from it having its origins coming from Socrates (which is untrue), to it coming from the Frankfort School of 'Critical Theory' (which is also untrue... but as we'll see, in many ways the reverse of that is more true).

When I criticize 'Critical Thinking', I'm not questioning the value of what most people believe CT means, I am questioning what it actually is and does. I'm pointing out that despite what CT promises, it not only has not lived up to those promises, but that there are good reasons to believe that CT is itself central to what has degraded our student's ability to develop those habits of mind that "...question, analyze, interpret..." which thoughtful judgement is dependent upon.

Do you think I go too far in that? Then answer me this, given that we can probably all agree that 'Critical Thinking' has been one of, if not the most popular products of the Education Industry since it first began to surface in the academic language of the 1950s, quickly rose into public awareness across the 1960s & 1970s, and then exploded into demand by schools across the nation over the 1980s,1990s and into the 2000s, has this thought ever occurred to you?:

• I marvel at how much more clear and consistent and sensible the general thinking and behavior of the American people has become, since we began teaching more and more of 'Critical Thinking', don't you?

I think that most people would hesitate to reply 'yes!' to that... and that the rest of us would burst out in bitter laughter at the suggestion.

And yet experience shows that people's reaction to that will amount to little more than a headshake & a grumble.

That's interesting too, isn't it?

And if you haven't asked such a question before, or having asked it, didn't get an adequate answer to it... is that a failure of 'Critical Thinking', or a result of it? What I am encouraging people to do here, is to consider these questions and to stop assuming that 'everyone knows!' what 'Critical Thinking' is 'all about', and also to consider instead how well it's lived up to delivering on any of the promises made in its name, and to wonder why that might be.

I'm asking these questions because the concerns that I have with 'Critical Thinking', are that what those academic theorists intend 'Critical Thinking' to do, has less to do with what most parents and others would see as improving their student's thinking, than with fundamentally changing their student's way of thinking, and that it does so in ways that most parents and others would neither expect nor approve of.

So yes, I am more than just suggesting that how the rising popularity of 'Critical Thinking' has tracked with a 'surprising' inability to think through such issues, and I'm cautioning that it has a lot more to do with causation, than correlation.

Intellectual Stolen Valor - Is 'Critical Thinking' what you've been led to think it is?
The answer to question #2 (2-When did we first discover the wonders of 'Critical Thinking', and what are its innovations?), isn't the easy answer that we're usually given, as the promoters of 'Critical Thinking' often speak of it 'as if' it were either a very modern 'discovery' which our poor 'critical thinking' deprived Founding Fathers had to make do without while framing, debating, and ratifying, our Constitution, or 'as if' our Founder's era knew about, engaged in, and may have even been masters of, but whose skills we've somehow lost the knack of since their time. If you assumed something like the latter, you might be forgiven for that error, as it is one that CT'rs are very keen on everyone thinking 'as if' it were so. For instance, the popular and 'authoritative' CT site, CT.org, opens its post on: "A Brief History of the Idea of Critical Thinking", with this glowing line:

"The intellectual roots of critical thinking are as ancient as its etymology, traceable, ultimately, to the teaching practice and vision of Socrates 2,500 years ago who discovered by a method of probing questioning that people could not rationally justify their confident claims to knowledge."

Sounds swell, doesn't it? Except for one teensy-weensy problem: in both fact and spirit, it is untrue. It's a Semantic Deception that's even more blatant than what was performed with 'epistemology' (if you're unaware, read that link). This entire narrative of theirs is one they've essentially plagiarized from, and misattributed to, intellectual history, and it amounts to the equivalent of a case of philosophical stolen valor.

How can I say that? Because "...its etymology..." is very traceable to a few scattered mentions by John Dewey and other supporters of 'Progressive Education' in the late 1890s to early 1900's, where Dewey described the need for a *new* method of thinking, as in 1910's "How We Think", which at the time he usually referred to as 'Reflective Thinking', and envisioned that what:

"...was needed, as

"...active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends." (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind..."

, keep your eye on that 'scientific attitude of mind' (and 'supposed form of knowledge'), we'll come back to these shortly. And although the motive theories behind CT had been gaining traction in 'Progressive Education' circles, the first serious treatment of 'Critical Thinking', didn't come until decades later when one of Dewey's followers, an obscure academic & management consultant from Teachers College, Columbia University, Edward M. Glaser, delivered his book 'Critical Thinking' to a preoccupied world in that somewhat less than ancient year of: 1941.

It's not as if the fine folks at CT.org don't already know this, they even mention it elsewhere on their site, but because they'd rather not openly say so and draw attention to the fact, they 'bury the lead' (AKA: Lie by omission and commission). One reason for that, might be the fact that the actual history of 'Critical Thinking', is rather brief, uninspiring, exceedingly boring, and riven by such failures that they feel the need to resort to the intellectual stolen valor of their claims, in order to 'get important things done'.

For a deep dive into the depths of the "that is this" tactic, you should cautiously read Derrida's 'Structure, Sign, and play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences', which lays out the strategy of deconstructionism (equivocate, mis-identify, and brazenly uphold the new error as being a valid point). It is pure toxic garbage, but it is revealing all the same.

BTW parents, does the inclination to pretentiously misrepresent another's history & achievements as being your own, sound like the traits you'd look for in someone being hired to clarify and improve the thinking of your child? The fact that CT'rs are resorting to an old Sophist's trick of equating this with that, and then pretending that is the 'same as' this (see Derrida's essay in sidebar), is not only pathetic, but is a level of 'creative thinking' (AKA: Lying) that most parents would also be unlikely to want to have experts instilling in their kids' minds (especially so if they are mindful that it was the Sophists who instigated the trial & death of Socrates).

So now, seeing that 'Critical Thinking' is a recent construct, are you curious about what innovations it has introduced into our habits of thinking? After all, as our schools advertise their ability to improve their students' 'Critical Thinking Skills', what are these new innovations that CT has added to our known knowledge of Thinkology? And how do they differ from the old and supposedly outmoded methods that 'mere reasoning' once advised on how to '...question, analyze, interpret...'? And why is it that CT still advertises itself by those same old traits of how to '...question, analyze, interpret...', instead of using its own marvelous new innovations to that?

Wizard of Oz, Dr of Thinkology

That isn't just interesting, it's odd, isn't it? I mean, when you want to distinguish one thing from another, do you highlight what both have in common, or do you point out how they differ? IOW, if you had a sports car to sell, you wouldn't say:

"This sports car is worth so much more than that sedan because it has the same engine and four wheels that sedan has but now I'm referring to those as being sporty!"

, would you? No, if you'd devised something that's better and more effective than something else, you'd focus on what sets your new thing apart from that old thing, and highlight what makes this, better than that, right?

OTOH, if for some reason, you'd rather avoid scrutiny, then the way you're going to sell that product is by acting 'as if' it was 'the same as' your competition's, but... that's it's less expensive, or easier to come by, or some such, right?

But if you're being told that it delivers those old tried and true steps, methods and expectations 'borrowed' from earlier philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Thomas Reid, etc., and you then noticed that it requires far more time, money, and resources to do the same thing that had always been done before, but now with worse results, and you found that your questions about that are met with "...nothing to see here, no need to concern yourself , just more expert thinkery in action, move along. All's well...", you could be forgiven for suspecting that what you're being sold 'as if' it were 'the same' thing, might be hiding something very, very, different, behind the appearances of sameness that you've been advised to just trust to the 'experts'.

If these were used car salesmen selling you a car with another car's Carfax history, you'd be concerned... but it's somehow ok behavior in those teaching your child how to think?

If 'Critical Think'rs did not come up with these 'features' of '...question, analyze, interpret...' - and they did not - or add new steps to them - and they have not - then why do they behave as if they had? What is this pretense intended (yes, intended) to conceal?

Having read through many a book and whitepaper on the subject, I can tell you that the poorly hidden secret of 'Critical Thinking's secret sauce is that it most definitely does differ from what came before, and they do not like to advertise the nature of what that difference is, because what it actually is, is an absence - a subtraction from rather than an addition to - our knowledge and understanding, and how to think with and about them.

If you are someone who sees themself as being open-minded and capable of 'questioning, analyzing, interpreting', then I'd think this would be something that you'd consider to be worth pursuing to an answer. Right?

The answer to #3 (3-When and why did we begin calling for more of 'Critical Thinking'?), requires a bit of a two-step reply, which begins with Glaser's book on 'Critical Thinking', as he and his fellow theorists of education realized that 'Critical Thinking' could be made out 'as if' it were a critical necessity for 'education' in the modern world. And with that claim being made by TWKB (Those Who Know Best), it became possible for them to achieve less than nothing right out in the open, by peddling their jargon terms of 'Critical Thinking Skills' and 'Higher-Order Thinking' as the innovations needed for gaining a 'scientific understanding' of any issue at all.

John Dewey & Co. and their 'labs' at Columbia's Teachers College had been building up to this for years, and Glaser's own efforts made extensive use of various studies to bolster those skills, and to warn of what hinders them, such as referenced on pg 47 of Maller and Lundeen's study on "Sources of Superstitious Beliefs", which describes how:

"...the researchers sought to determine the extent to which the home, books/media, school, church, friends, and personal experiences influence belief and disbelief in superstitions..."

, and in noting that superstitions are often described as 'false religions', they noted that:

"... it is not altogether surprising that what is considered religion by one may be considered superstition by another..."

Do you find yourself a bit suspicious as to how they went about clarifying that difference, or the reason for pointing it out? If not, how about after noting how Glaser repeatedly advocates that:

"...a scientific attitude is developed by a knowledge of scientific facts and varies directly with such knowledge...."

, even as he repeatedly has to admit that:

"...general science work seemed to have no effect in reducing superstitious beliefs..."

That's interesting.

Even more interesting, Glaser himself notes in the conclusion to his study, that 'Critical Thinking' didn't actually help students in their general thinking. As he puts it:

"...There is no reason to believe, for instance, that the students who gained significantly in critical thinking as measured by the tests are now appreciably more competent to make critical judgments of pieces of art, music, or literature...."[emphasis mine]

Yes, you read that right. Thomas Reid's quip comes to mind, that "Theories are the creatures of men, which nature seldom mimics". And while it's hard to imagine how any of this helps in selling the sizzle of the 'CT Sports Car', the fact is, that it has sold, and sold well. How?

The Great Chain of Epistemology;
Hierarchical Order of Knowledge

Glaser and his fellow 'Social Scientists' certainly didn't add anything new beyond their jargon in place of the old terms 'as if' they meant the same things as syllogisms, rhetoric, and the like. It's worth noting, however, that their new 'social science' terms have served to verbally divide the thousands of years of existing commentary on the subject of teaching and reasoning well, from what they've been advertising as this new method called 'Critical Thinking'. And yet they'd added nothing of substance to the practice or explanation and effectiveness of reasoning, or to logical thinking, or rhetoric, or even to the practice of science itself.

Nothing.

But in being sold the spiel of improving students' ability to "...question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement...", what is being concealed is that their 'thinking skills' are not intended to improve the student's ability to reason well, but more narrowly to instruct the student in finding what is expected to be the correct answer, and the way that 'Critical Thinking' does that, is hidden in plain sight behind what it boasts to parents that it will provide their kids: Critical Thinking Skills. The operational use of 'skills' is first being applied to two very different approaches to thinking - one being the kind of reasoning in which a juror would deliberate over evidence for an accused person being found guilty or innocent, and the other with which a scientist might examine some materials and measure others to find and select what fits a given formula - and collapsing both under the narrower term of 'skills', which is more suited to the latter, results in the former being neglected, at best.

The students, in being instructed to treat all knowledge 'as if' it were a demonstrable fact or calculation of external references so as to find 'the right answer' (which, BTW, was Fichte's goal for Prussian 'education', to produce students who would accept the answers they were given without question), are being nudged away from developing the inner qualities of honesty, ethics and moral behavior, that are necessary for developing sound reasoning and practical wisdom.

That's where the second step in CT's success story comes in, with 'Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives', which helped enormously in making the very new and obviously flawed field of 'Critical Thinking', able to spread throughout our schools.

The sciency-ish set of booklets that comprise Bloom's Taxonomy, formed what's been lauded as the authoritative list of definitions and objectives for what every teacher has been directly or indirectly taught to teach from, since the 1950's, and was critical to the selling of 'Critical Thinking' to the world. One of those critical points defined Knowledge as:

"Knowledge is defined as the remembering of previously learned material... represents the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain."

, and according to Bloom et all, knowledge doesn't imply understanding or deep meaning (as you'll see below, it definitely doesn't imply knowledge as being right or wrong), it's just facts conveniently strung together so as to be recalled when & where useful. In the new 'cognitive domain' of Bloom's Taxonomy, the sense of knowledge as once understood as being a depth of understanding that's valuable in the pursuit of wisdom, has been replaced with 'knowledge' as the 'lowest level' of 'learning outcomes' in 'the cognitive domain', where students will prove their 'knowledge' by scanning for and collecting as many of the useful facts that the social science experiment of 'education' calls for, which is what enabled the recall of facts to become what is measured in our 'testing'.

Bloom's views on these matters are very much drawn from the likes of John Dewey's ideas of 'Pragmatism', and operate under the modern presumption that metaphysics - what is - is either unknowable or does not exist (ahem), and that what matters is the 'epistemological' processing of 'facts' to find 'what works', readily fit so well with what our Teachers Colleges already taught in their practice of teaching teachers how to teach, that it quickly caught fire with modern notions of 'education' and 'went viral' worldwide. Even today, a quick search online will return thousands of references over the last seven decades, such as this one from The London School of Management Education (2019), saying that effectively developing:”

“...critical thinking skills is always a challenge to teach and deliver effectively to learners, and the best approach is to adopt the Bloom’s taxonomy as the basis of learning...”

, which all supports their efforts to teach, and teach, and teach, your kids the skills of 'higher-order thinking' that they insist is soOooo necessary to the success of 'Critical Thinking'.

Delivering less than zero, by means of the Thinking Skills of Semantic Deception

Dr. Benjamin Bloom should be remembered for writing books such as "Outcome-Based Education", and "Mastery Learning", each of which prompted a great deal of parental outrage, and many more rounds of productive 'Education Reform!'.

What reading through the booklets of Bloom's Taxonomy reveals, is not just that 'Critical Thinking' promises to deliver the 'higher-order thinking' skills - or 'HOTS', as they like to refer to them - (they do love their cutesy acronyms), or that they are difficult for them to deliver on. And what we should note here, is that parents and most other people's expectations of what these 'Critical Thinking Skills' are, is very likely not what these Educrats mean by them.

For instance, it seems unlikely that most people think that their suburban school district would teach their teachers that 'Critical Thinking' and 'HOTS' should be taught to mean, what I found was being emphasized in around 2020 by the "Santa Clara County Office of Education" (it's since been taken down or put behind its membership wall), which was (and likely still is) instructing their new teachers to teach their students 'Thinking Skills', according to this view from 'Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives'. Note: As you can see in the screenshot, the bold emphasis is mine, but the ellipsis are in the original, I have not edited its content:

How can lesson design move learners from knowledge acquisition that is concrete to one that is more abstract and creative? “Benjamin Bloom said, “...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong". In creating his taxonomy, Bloom highlighted a student’s ability to think more abstractly and demonstrate learning in ways that were sparked by creative thinking. Learning is more than recalling the right answer. It is applying learned content to new and different situations in ways that can “reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings.” This course will review Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and will expose the learner to different technology tools that can move students to higher orders of thinking."

Is "... no longer believes in right or wrong..." and "...reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings..." what you were thinking of when I originally asked what you expected 'Critical Thinking' to do for a child's thinking?

And now, as you use your 'Critical Thinking Skills' to read this with an open and analytical mind, to compare what I've shown you so far, to your original expectations, are some doubts beginning to arise in your mind? If you were to '...question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement...' further upon this, it seems to me that these are just a few fairly obvious questions that you should be asking yourself (and stewing upon):

• How do they intend to 'help' students to 'no longer believe' in Right & Wrong (spoiler alert: they mean that in both senses of the words, BTW, true/false & good/bad)?
• What is meant by 'reorganize their student's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings', and how do they go about doing that?
• What is meant by 'knowledge acquisition', and how does that differ from learning what is being studied?

Prior to our modern reforming of schooling (which, BTW, is in no way limited to public schooling), people sought an education to lead them out of the shadows of ignorance and confused misunderstanding, by learning what's rooted in an integrated understanding of what is real and true and right and wrong, and by aiming at identifying the good that all sound thinking aims at, the student was expected to be able to become a moral and self-governing individual capable of living a life worth living, in liberty with others.

Teaching students 'Critical Thinking Skills', OTOH, utilizes the student's mind 'as if' the purpose of an 'education' was to stock the shelves of the nation's human resources tool sheds, with a variety of tools and skills which TWKB have determined to be needed, at varying skill levels, for various tasks, as needed. Such 'Thinking Skills' do not reflect who a student is, but what actions they've been trained to perform for 'today's economy'. A sad 'side effect' of instilling 'thinking skills' in this way, is that in between having tasks to work on, the student's 'education' is of little or no use to them outside of the tasks which they've been made useful for, and so they're left to fill their 'off hours' with whatever distracting entertainments might keep their 'power tool' brain buzzing with between tasks.

Unlike traditional education which carefully revealed timeless truths to its students which they would find to be of value throughout their lives, to be 'educated' in modern times is to be suited only to the present moment, which necessarily means becoming useless in the next one ... which will then require your re-education ("Learn to code!"). Perhaps what it is that 'Critical Thinking Skills' are intended to move us 'beyond', is best summed up with the opening line of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics:

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim ..."

, which was the view that was prevalent in our Founders era, and was very much rooted in a concern for understanding what is real and true, and is unquestionably concerned with what is right and wrong, and that is entirely opposed by what Bloom's Taxonomy has been teaching our teachers to teach our kids to 'rise above' for decades.

'Critical Thinking' in action: “I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.”
— Katherine Maher (NPR CEO)

Because these differences between what had traditionally been considered to be sound reasoning, and 'Critical Thinking', are distinctions that make a critical difference, they go unmentioned when CT'rs are selling CT's skills to parents and the general public to confound their understanding with "Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write...."

Under the guise of teaching kids 'thinking skills' to "...question, analyze, interpret..." the world 'as if' 'Critical Thinking' were the 'same as' reasoning, students are being taught what was never intended to lead them into becoming good, moral, ethical persons, and instead focuses them on acquiring some level of 'Conflict Resolution Skills' which views 'truth' as a relative and malleable means of calculating utilitarian bargains in which the 'ends justify the means', and it does so under the implicit presumption that it would be wrong to teach the importance of developing a child's ethical judgment of what is real and true and right and wrong.

The harsh reality is that through the power of being trained in 'Critical Thinking Skills' which view knowledge as "...the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain...", a person's depth of understanding is easily satisfied at the surface level of ideological appearances, which severs them from having any deeper concern for what is real and true and right and wrong. By their own efforts to skillfully calculate a pragmatic answer, rather than by seeking first to understand and respond appropriately to what it is that's being contemplated, they are metaphysically decapitating themselves from within their own mind, by removing the metaphysical point and purpose of reasoning well from their conscious awareness and intent.

That subtraction of the student's metaphysical awareness is 'Critical Thinking's primary innovation, and it has enabled the pro-regressive desire to develop demoralized human resources (just what do you think "... no longer believes in right or wrong..." means?!), who are stocked with whatever calculative tools and 'people skills' that the experts of TWKB deem to be needed most at that particular point in time.

Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left:

Especially if your own schooling was all about building up your 'thinking skills', this cannot be pleasant to hear, and even harder to accept, but as you're beginning to see for yourself, if you pay attention to what the purveyors of 'Critical Thinking' say when discussing what they intend 'Critical Thinking' to accomplish, they'll tell you in their own words, that these are the ideals that they intend to transform you and your kids with.

Do yourself a favor, don't just try to 'keep an open mind', and perhaps above all don't try to 'wake up!', as if you've been asleep all along - you have not been asleep, and the contrivance of that excuse is unworthy of the mind of man (hi Marx!). What you do need to do, is to turn the light of your own attention towards actively taking notice of what is (Metaphysics), how you know it (through an epistemology of Causality and Logic), and what should be done in response to that (Ethics), and you'll soon see the darkness being rolled back by the light of what is real and true. There is a great deal that you will begin to take notice of as you continue to "...question, analyze, interpret..." from that perspective, and despite what our educators think of you (and humanity), because you are a human being, you are able to see, recognize, understand, and correct the errors of men.

What is 'Critical' to your Thinking?
So now as you compare what you'd assumed CT to be, to what you're now beginning to see it involves, never forget that what you assume that the Pro-Regressive Left (and Right) mean by something, as even how to '...question, analyze, interpret...' is often the sheep's clothing that's being used to smuggle in a wolf that's contrary to your expectations, and they do so because of their pragmatic belief that truth is just 'what works' for the moment, and they see themselves as TWKB (Those Who Know Best) who should have the power to determine what it 'works' for.

See: "Beneath Sheep's Clothing"

That's especially the case when you see the word 'Critical' placed before the word 'Thinking', for while you might think that 'Critical' simply implies an important point to question & consider in what you are thinking about, if that were the case, there'd be no need for the 'Critical' to be prefixed to 'Thinking', as that is what 'thinking' is:

thinking noun
the activity of using your mind to consider something:
do some thinking I'll have to do some thinking about how best to arrange the books.

, but those of a Progressive, Socialist, Marxist, Hegelian, Kantian, Rousseauian, Cartesian, Hobbesian bent of mind (or just Pro-Regressive for short), do not mean for you to simply consider something from different angles, what they mean by 'Critical', is for you to engage you in the causeless doubt (hi Descartes!) that isn't intended to raise questions, but, as how the skeptic puffs himself up in his own eyes while tearing down what others behold and revere, it encourages you to presume to 'just know' that there are alternate or hidden 'answers' to be dwelt upon, without any actual cause or evidence for suspecting them - what Samuel Silva calls 'the affirmation of the No' - and that sense of 'Critical' is perhaps best expressed by Marx's exhortation to a:

Fissiparous, in CS Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress, is a "...process of infinite fracturing, unceasingly dividing..."

"... ruthless criticism of all that exists..."

, so as to undermine and destroy the foundations of the West in general and of America in particular, and to bring our houses to ruin.

It's critical to note that adding 'Critical' to your 'Thinking', is not done to better understand what is true, the 'Critical' is put there to operate upon your 'Thinking', in much the same way as 'Social' is used in 'Social Justice' to dilute & destroy the traditional western understanding of 'Justice' that's concerned with individual instances of right and wrong, in favor of using power to enforce those popular presumptions and prejudices, which TWKB calculate that they can get away with at the moment, by presenting them as being 'what works'. Both instances are intentional assaults upon the metaphysical 'Imago Dei' of man as a being created in the image of God, which they seek to replace with social constructs that give TWKB the power to reshape society in their own image.

The first step a person takes down the road of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in seeking 'answers' to poorly understood questions, is already leading them away from attending to what is, how you know it, and what you should do about that and why (buh-bye Aristotle), and 'Critical Thinking' does so because its HOTS are not intended to, or interested in, enhancing the ethical reasoning, or the sense of morality, or even the accuracy of a person's thinking, they exist to put the purposes of power at the center of your attention, as with the NPR CEO quoted above, so as to dispense with 'truth' as a "...distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done". That is the purpose of 'Critical Thinking', and that is how 'Critical Thinking' seeks to "...reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings.." and move them 'beyond' concerns for 'right or wrong', which leaves them, you, and the rest of 'We The People' wandering around as metaphysically decapitated beings, not just dazed and confused about what is real and true, but arguing with each other over the ideal way to churn society in their brave new world of Ideology (see previous post).

The Root and the Fruit

In the coming posts we'll dive deeper into what we've just scratched the surface of here, in what 'Critical Thinking' follows from, seeks, triggers and accomplishes, but as its 'Skills' have been spread throughout our schools, it should be no surprise to us today that generations of people drilled in 'Critical Thinking Skills', should show an ever diminishing ability to think well, behave virtuously, morally, honestly, or purposefully.

And finally, I should add, with the reactions in mind that many of us have on first learning about the nature of 'Critical Thinking', it's best to not forget that one of the leading reasons why we find ourselves in our current circumstances today, is because of all of the bipartisan 'School Reform!' we've engaged in over the last century. To borrow a phrase from a radical activist: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house!”.

It's best to just get your kids out of our schools, and redirect their attention and concerns towards what is real and true, so that they can have a chance to get a decent education.

The Meaning of our 'Answers' are problems for 'Critical Thinking'

Do you understand The Grammar of Liberty?

In the previous two posts (here and here) I noted how much we've lost with those stories and histories of The West that we're no longer learning from today. And whether it's the case that we're only not reading & studying them, or worse, that we're reading them through a post-modernist 'lens' that is fundamentally opposed to what makes The West in general and America in particular so much better than the rest, either way their meaning is being lost to us, and that is what's leaving us blind to the very real monsters that we're facing in the world today.

That means that recovering the canon of the Greco-Roman-Judeo/Christian West's stories and histories, involves more than just reading those works, it involves being mindful that those works represent an approach to reality which understands that:

Real meaning is only found through recognizing what is real and true.

IOW: how you go about your reading, matters as much or more than what you're reading - how else could you be expected to recognize the many errors, and even evils (hello Rousseau!), that are present in the canon, and understand how to avoid swallowing and repeating them? Recovering the Western mind, rather than simply repeating its sometimes fashionable 'answers', requires developing its essential approach to reasoning about reality (which, despite appearances, is the same reality that our Founders faced) in the pursuit of wisdom, and that involves seeking to understand what is (Metaphysics), what that leads to and what follows from it (Causality & Logic), and what, if anything, should or should not be done about what it is that you do come to understand about aspects of the real world that you live within (Ethics).

If you're one of those who recognizes the problems surrounding what we no longer know or understand, and are wondering what to do about it, I hope you're not also one of those who complains when told what the solution to that is:

Open those books and begin remedying your own lack of familiarity with the canon.

And yet, because I've had experience with delivering this message over the years, I won't be surprised when those hearing this advice for the first time (first time? Really?), that many of you (not you, of course) will be thinking (or shouting):

"But Van, it'll take time to read those books!"

Yes, you are correct. It will take time and some effort on your part, to learn some measure of what you should have been taught to understand all along.

And?

Are you waiting for the Answer Fairy to leave some solutions under your pillow? Or to have A.I. 'somehow' do that for you? Do you imagine that you can 'fix' others, without 'fixing' yourself? That must be some mote you see in another's eye, if it's stopping you from seeing that this is exactly the sort of response that the Hydra's 'somehow' knows it can expect as "... an expression of the American mind..." from most people schooled in America today. Go figure.

I do, of course, get the aggravation behind the response, though. When I began this series of posts, I naively thought that I could just expose the central issues required to cauterize the stumps and approach the 'final boss' (which I'll finally name in the course of this post, and identify and dig further into it throughout this series of posts). Nevertheless, it's taken me five years of going through the history of 'Education Reform' in America (again), the equally forgotten (discarded) nature of Metaphysics, and what Epistemology is not (but should be), and the false & subversive ideology of 'Economic Thinking' (which is not philosophy or a substitute for one).

It turns out it takes time to get something done. Go figure. Recognize that evading this is just indulging in more of the wishful thinking we've all been filled up with since pre-school. Deal with it, and get on with the doing of it!

If you still resist doing so, is it because you don't realize that recovering some measure of those works, along with the deliberate intention of seeking to understand what is real and true, may be able to do for you some measure of what it did for our Founders in their era? If you don't think it can... why? If you do, but would rather use your time doing something else... what and why?

Or do you 'somehow' think that human beings in our modern world are so very different from those of our Founders' era? Do you imagine that their powdered wigs & horse drawn carriages somehow made them different from (or better than?) you? Or that having technology 'somehow' makes you different from (or better than?) them?

What seems more likely to you, that having electric lights means that we don't need to know what they understood to be necessary for living lives worth living and in liberty with others, or that something about our having electric lights has 'somehow' blinded us to the dangers of our own ignorance?

You should blink and take a moment. Then refocus, and think.

The only real difference between them then, and us now, is our respective familiarity with the canon, along with approaching it with the intention of gaining a better understanding of what is real and true and right to do, and doing so with a clear awareness that there are consequences to ignoring reality. The real difference between them then, and us now, is that our electrified society eases our thinking that we can 'somehow' get away with ignoring reality, in a way that wasn't possible with the hostile wilderness they faced.

If you want to do something to help restore The West, what is it that you imagine you could do that'd be better and more effective, than beginning to restore it within yourself first? If you doubt the value or effectiveness of doing so... do you not understand what that 'answer' means for the very issue you've admitted to recognizing?

Becoming familiar with the stories and histories that shaped their thinking, and the habits they practiced in thinking about them, will provide you with some measure of what led Thomas Jefferson to describe the Declaration of Independence, as being: "... an expression of the American mind...". Conversely, failing to adhere to a habit of reasoning that seeks to understand what is real and true, and lacking the canon which develops that habit, leads into the muddled state of mind that the Hydra's provocations are meant to distract us into, and 'Critical Thinking' plays a significant role in which mode it is that prevails for our students, and for the rest of us today, though... perhaps not in the way you might assume.

And again, No: getting 'answers' from your targeted research and LLM prompts will not provide you with the understanding that you should have, or save you much if any time in learning what you need to learn. What either is most likely to do, is to fill you with still more meaningless 'answers' that you'll be drawn into bandying about with the opposing groups from the Ideological Observatory, as both of you help the ideologs to spread their ideological churn further far and wide.

Don't do that. Learn something from history, instead. Stop complaining and start reading what you've missed out on.

• Questions that lead to Metaphysics, Causality, and the Logic of Ethics
• How the failings of our public schools trace back to our Founders
• How to step out of the Wizard's Circle of Economics, and return to Classical American Liberalism

And as you go about doing what you know you need to do, keep in mind that the point of engaging in this kind of learning is less about fetching items from a shopping list of The Bible, Homer, the Greek Tragedians, Herodotus, Aesops... Dante... Shakespeare, as if to acquire new possessions, merit badges, and support ribbons for displaying on social media, than to continuously learn more about what is, what follows, and how their integration enables us to better recognize the universal concepts and principles involved in better understanding what you know, and what should be done about that (and don't neglect your Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, and Thomas Reid, who'll help you with getting more meaning and understanding out of those stories, and within your life).

The good news is that you don't need to 'know it all' (and you should know that you never will), and neither do you have to memorize long lists of facts and answers.

What really needs to be done, is what so many are avoiding: Doing the reading, and actively focusing on how to approach an issue, which is what enables a person to generate a sufficient force and heat of understanding that's needed to both sever and cauterize the hydra's many headed lies into lifeless stumps, and to understand that then, and only then, can it be safe to move on to attack the next provocation that's being waved in their face.

The Pro-Regressive doesn't want you to develop those habits - and they need for you to think that simply reacting, is a 'good idea'.

With that in mind, keep in mind that Pro-Regressive's (Left and Right) always utilize ambiguous terms in order to benefit from the shallow and premature conclusions which they know that you will assume they mean by their words (such as 'Left' and 'Right'), while unbeknownst to you, the inner-circle of TWKB (Those Who Know Best) have freighted them with misleading content and meaning which directly contradicts what you assume is meant by them.

Key Tools of Semantic Deception:
Paltering (n.) The act of using truthful statements to mislead or deceive, often by omitting key details or presenting facts so as to create a false impression.

Polysemy (n.) The coexistence of multiple meanings for a single word or phrase, where the meanings are related but distinct, often arising from a common origin or usage over time.

Equivocation (n.) The use of ambiguous language or expressions to mislead or avoid commitment to a clear statement, often by exploiting multiple meanings of a word or phrase to obscure the truth.

As we'll see in this series of posts, these tactics are nothing new, they come from the age-old art of Sophistry, which concentrates upon generating an 'everybody knows!' mask of unquestioned narratives which seem to have substance, and turns your attention away from looking beneath the surface for further arguments or deeper meaning. The sophist waves the flag of 'Only fools & fascists doubt ___!' to divert the rest of their audience into fighting against a slew of superficial labels in one rhetorical dead-end alley after another, while the revolution advances on around them and acquires ever more monstrous forms.

To be able to identify and expose the central neck of the many-headed hydra, requires our not treating what isn't real, as if it were real - that's what their illusions rest upon. That requires your being in the habit of expecting that the meaning of something, must mean that something is and can be understood to be true, something whose essentials are identifiable, and which integrate into the rest of what you know - before and after - without contradiction, and is not simply a floating 'fact' that is copy & pasted widely as the 'answer' whenever prompted.

What I mean by that, is that what seems sensible on the surface, may not have any real meaning in it. For instance, take the original syllogism:

Socrates is a man,
All men are mortal,
Socrates is a mortal man

, which is logically correct, meaningful, and true, but the fact that on the surface it is syntactically correct (it follows Logic's rules of distributed middle, etc.,), is not what makes this syllogism either meaningful or true. Aristotle's first rule of logic is that before beginning to construct a syllogism, you must first ensure that your premises are true, and that your terms are unambiguous, and only then do you go on to constructing a syllogism to logically demonstrate that.

It is only by understanding that the premise of what a man is ( human beings have a nature that is created to perceive reality and to use its reasoning faculty to guide its chosen actions to accord with what is real and true, and suffers the consequences of failing to do so), and that what the term mortality refers to (a living creature's life will end in death, and that every man, no matter how well they reason out their best laid plans, will someday die), and knowing who it was that the term Socrates refers to (an Athenian man, proven in battle, who thought that an unexamined life was not worth living, and who was put to death in 399 B.C. for publicly questioning his fellow Athenians and testing the meaning of their replies with his Socratic logic), is what makes it possible for the properly structured syllogism to demonstrate that it is both meaningful and true, but if either its premises are untrue or its terms are ambiguous, it doesn't matter how correctly the syllogism is structured, it's 'answer' can't be logically shown to be either or meaningful true.

...from Stephen Coughlin's Unconstrained Analytics

To better see the issue, contrast the 'Socrates is a man' syllogism, with one that is syntactically correct, but whose premises and terms are invalid:

Socrates is a tortoise,
All tortoises fly,
Socrates is a flying tortoise

The premise that all tortoises fly is a false premise that does not reflect what a tortoise is or can do. And while we recognize the name 'Socrates', because it's not being used to refer to the man that we typically assume it does, the term is being used ambiguously. Because the syllogism's premises are untrue, and its terms are ambiguous, it is not logical, meaningful, or true.

I can hear some thinking:

"Another swell story Van, but I'm not worried about what a tortoise can or kant do!"

Try this one on for size:

Healthcare is a human right,
All human rights are inalienable,
Healthcare is an inalienable human right

The absence of Context, often indicates the presence of Pretext

If you're in the habit of ignoring context and accepting answers where 'That makes sense', or what 'everyone knows' is correct, and are not in the habit of checking premises & terms, your agreement with or objection to this, will likely reflect whichever way the current ideological winds are blowing you in, each of which may reflect as little of what is real and true, as the other (See obamacare, or 'replacements' for it, for reference).

Note: you should also beware of those who'd say that something like the Tortoise & Healthcare syllogisms are 'logically correct, but technically untrue' (hi Kant!), for they too are utilizing untrue premises and ambiguous terms, to subvert your understanding of reality through the mis-structuring of logic, so as to escape the restrictions of what is real and true.

With the habit of checking premises & terms firmly in place, then you'll find issues with such 'arguments' jumping out at you, one after the other, such as:

• 'Healthcare' - What is meant by 'health'? Who defines and determines that, you, your doctor, or metrics on a govt regulated insurance form? Similarly for what is meant by 'care', does that mean choosing a service from those offering it, that you think are best able to provide it, or will you have to take what some other entity has determined that you're eligible to receive, according to how you are classified by it?
• 'human right' - a 'human right' is a collectivist term for what might be secured by pressure groups who desire to use political power to force others to act as they wish, and so such inhumane 'rights' are entirely constructed and fully alienable, by majority rule, and/or authoritarian dictate
• An 'Inalienable Right' is derived from what all human beings by nature are, and not from what some or all people yearn for - what is inalienable, cannot be alienated - separated from your nature - anymore than breathing can be made optional.
• I say again: There are no 'human rights' that are inalienable
• 'Individual Right' - is derived from the nature of what all human beings are, not from what some or all people desire . An individual right cannot be alienated from you except by force, such as imprisonment or execution, as penalty for violating the individual rights of others, and such individual rights can only be justly upheld and defended, within a rule of law that is dedicated to, and limited by, an objective respect for them (AKA: Liberty).
• Liberty or a House Slave - Whether your society recognizes 'human rights' or 'individual rights', determines whether you have a choice in your 'healthcare' being provided by those who're interested and competent to offer it, or have no choice in what will be given by those who have been compelled to provide it (AKA: enslaved), and competence will have little or no role in the 'care' you receive, or the 'health' you achieve from it.

Those who peddle 'answers' which have only the surface appearance of being correct, while urging you to accept their statements as 'obviously true!' without your grasping or examining their underlying meaning, are just as likely to 'argue' that you are a heartless fascist for even thinking of questioning what 'everyone knows!', as do both sides of the ideological "Healthcare is a human right!" battle.

Reminder/Hint: They want you to react to their 'answer', they do not want you to take a moment to understand what it supposedly answers, or what an actual answer would actually mean.

The scattershot banalities of 'everyone knows!' that surround phrases in everything from "Healthcare is a human right!" to "Heritage Americans are the only real Americans!", are waved about to lure you into biting on the enticing bait of isolated facts shorn of necessary context, by which they form the Semantic Deceptions needed for disguising their untrue premises and ambiguous terms. It's in that way that our own language is often used to play upon our assumptions, and if we fail to examine the premises & terms being used in the language that we habitually hear and use, then our own thoughts use of them can do grave injury to our understanding of far more than just what is being 'argued' in that moment.

That is and always has been the signature strategy of Sophists through the ages, and in all of their ideological stripes. It is how Pro-Regress is achieved.

Fortunately for us, these monsters, as all monsters do, have a fatal weak spot - they are untrue - which they can't help but hide in plain sight, which is why they live in a constant state of dread of an honest man with the sense and liberty to ask: "What do you mean by ___?". They are painfully aware of the real danger that they would be left facing if we don't take the bait of those distractions that they're busily thrusting into our faces.

Their weak spot is easily spotted, if you look

Whether it occurs on X, or Facebook, or face to face, don't engage with them on the level of their narrative and its deliberate provocations, for to do so is to implicitly accept their false premises. That is what happened during the "Healthcare is a human right!" push for obamacare, which was often advocated for with lines such as "What are you going to do about the 30% who lack health insurance?!", and the typical response from The Right was something like "First of all, it's only about 10%, and these people choose...", without ever realizing that by doing so, they'd implicitly accepted their pro-regressive premises, and effectively conceded the argument, and so could do nothing more than complain as their half of the ideological "Left! Right! Forward March!" cadence helped in marching us on towards our demise.

Stop taking their narratives as presenting either valid or invalid facts (what is obviously wrong, is a key means of drawing you into their ideological churn. AKA: Clickbait). Ignore their provocations and poke beneath the surface by paying less attention to what they've said, and more to what the premises for what they'd said must mean, what they're based upon, and what is likely to follow from, and be built upon, their being accepted.

Start looking at their narratives as a story that's being told to make you assume that they mean what they do not really mean (which typically involves evading a principle that's lethal to their narrative), which is how they sell what 'everyone knows', and inflict such damage by shifting our attention away from what is, to their narrative about it.

Doing this needn't be a complicated process, and doesn't require research projects, or position papers, it only requires you to question their narrative along the conceptual paths that they're evading, "...taking every thought captive..." so as to reveal and identify their unspoken premises & terms:

• When they say 'Black lives matter!', ignore the provocations that some lives matter and others don't, by questioning the premise it evades and denies: 'Why do any lives matter?'
• When they say that "The sexual organs you were born with don't determine your 'gender'!", question the premise they want you to presume is unquestionable, by asking "Then how does faking the appearances of having those sexual organs through costume, makeup, or surgical alteration, determine your 'gender'?"

• When they say 'America is only for Heritage Americans!', bring what they count upon you thinking that they mean, face to face with what they don't want you to realize that they mean, by pointing out the actual meaning of their words: "The motto of The Great Seal of the United States of America, finalized in 1782, is e Pluribus Unum (Out of many, One), and clearly proclaims the 1776 date (MDCCLXXVI) of  the Declaration of Independence and its proposition that "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..." and so must be treated equally before the law, as the origin of and foundation for the United States of America. That is the meaning and heritage of being an American, so how can rejecting either of those mean anything other than opposition to our American heritage?"

Note that they cannot reply to those questions, without also acknowledging that the false premises and ambiguous terms which they are trying to evade, are the Achilles' heel (another lost story) of their assertions. Ask such questions not to 'own them!', but to turn the discussion away from their narrative, and back towards reality.

Some people (you too?) will say:

"But they'll never engage in conversations like that!"

, and of course that is the kind of conversation that the truly Pro-Regressive (Woke or otherwise) will never engage in - they'll recoil from such questions like Dracula from a mirror, and perhaps for the same reason.

Keep in mind though that most such conversations that you may become engaged in, are not for the (immediate) benefit of the radical you're speaking with (though you never know what time will tell), but for your own understanding, and especially for those who may be silently watching from a distance.

If we fail to demonstrate how to dig deeper into identifying what they're trying to distract us from, that can be as deadly to us, as their failing to distract us from doing so, is to them.

Again, don't react and try to 'own them' - that helps no one but the churning of the Ideological Observatory. The most effective thing you can do is to question their point calmly and cooly, not to get to a different answer, but to bring out a deeper understanding of the issue and their premises, and by doing so, pull them along with you as you pursue identifying what is - and is not - real and true about their 'answer'.

A Critical Language Alert
In short, the alternative to being led around by your ears, is your giving some meaningful thought to what underlies the terms of the narrative that they're attempting to entangle you in.

The best response to a narrative and its provocations, is to think through the meaning and implications of what they've said, and to test whether its assumptions and claims (entailing premises and terms), meaningfully reflect what you can understand to be real and true.

Most people today will feel an almost natural reaction against that - did you feel its tug?

It comes from a particular habit of thinking, and that is what needs to be identified, broken, and replaced with that which I've been describing here, and those who don't do that, will continue to find themselves being carried along on the surface of popular narratives, flopping about as they're skewered with one provocation after another.

The one thing you can be sure of, is that whichever ideological path that this habit of thinking is leading us all down, leads to a very real and inescapably anti-American system being imposed upon us all.

Remember Alinsky's lesson for training up monsters:

The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.

The deeper problem with banalities of 'everyone knows!', and our eagerness for easy answers, and our acceptance of shallow 'logic', is that this pattern for arriving at their conclusions, has been repeatedly presented to us as being so sensible, and so obvious, and so alluring for a hundred years, that questioning the design pattern that generates this habit of thinking, doesn't occur to us. Popular opinion recognizes problems all around us, and enthusiastically calls for actions that can only bring still more of the same, and we do so, not because we want more problems, but because we're unaware that how we've been taught to go about our thinking, is the pattern that is furthering the purposes of the Critical Insurrection being waged against us.

What I'm getting at here, is that the thing that's defined our pattern of thinking, whose habits incline us towards seeking 'answers' from everything from narrowly targeted research, to those turning to A.I. for 'answers' as if having those answers is or could be a substitute for understanding the problem, which only then can appropriate solutions be sought for.

The thing that I'm pointing to as being the central head of the modern Hydra...

...the 'Final Boss', is...

...wait for it:

'Critical Thinking'.

No, I'm not recommending more 'Critical Thinking'.

What I am saying, is that in much the same way that 'Social Justice', 'Black Lives Matter!' and 'Heritage American', seek the opposite of what they advertise themselves as being concerned with, 'Critical Thinking' is not the cure for our problematic thinking, 'Critical Thinking' is the problem that has made our thinking so unreasonable.

IOW: The 'Critical Thinking' that we've been putting so much time and effort and money into forcing down our kids' throats as if it were the cure, is the very poison that's been making us all so sick. 'Critical Thinking' is the bad habit we need to be cured of.

The Munchausen Proxy folks in the Intellectual Observatory, have been careful to generate the impression that 'obviously' what 'everybody knows!' is meant by 'Critical Thinking', is that it is a scientifically valid method for thinking through the meaning and implications of what has been said, and for testing whether what you believe is or is not true. Unfortunately, as we'll see in excruciating detail in the coming posts, is that while they do intend to give you that impression, the reality is that the theorists of 'Critical Thinking' make artful use of semantic deception to formulate their materials and curriculum in such a way that they effectively undermine and subvert what every sensible person expects 'Critical Thinking' to mean, and to do for them. And this has been done deliberately, and remarkably openly (for those who bothered to look), for nearly a century.

What I'm pointing to here is not just another Ideology, it is not CRT (Critical Race Theory), or even any of the other 'Critical Theories'; what I'm pointing to is the monstrous many-headed hydra which those writhing necks of CRT, BLM, and 'Heritage Americans', sprout from, each time we attack any of them as if they were the central problem attacking us.

Even as I type this into the internet, I can sense the pushback from many of you against what I've just said (you too? Of course). And that's a good thing.

But it's worth your while to keep in mind another trope of monster stories, which is that the loudest denials of the monster's existence often turn out to be coming from either the monster in disguise, or from those who have been unwittingly aiding and supporting it ("The call is coming from inside the house!"). See our long and tragic history of Education Reform, and our very bipartisan calls for "We need more 'Critical Thinking'!" today.

And so, as we head into the coming posts, I'm not asking you to trust that I have the answers. I'm asking you to consider that you haven't been asking the right questions (such as What is education?).

I'm not asking you to trust what I present to you as new 'answers', I'm asking you to consider what I present, and to satisfy yourself that the premises and terms involved are sound and meaningful (theirs, mine, and yours), while being especially careful about the difference between those facts that you assume to be true ('everybody knows!'), and what you actually know, within the proper context, is real and true, and that you come to understand its meaning.

Towards that end, keep Solzhenitsyn's line from 'Live not by lies' in mind:

...Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, we will be obstinate in this smallest of matters: Let them embrace everything, but not with any help from me...

, and that:

"...The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world...."

There are few things that are more critically important to a sound mind, than that.

Do that, and then like Hercules & Iolaus, or even the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes, you may soon recognize what the old tales told us over and over, that few things burn the lie and its liar more hotly, than having their false pretenses publicly exposed to the truth.

Now all we have to do, is to do that to every last one of the Hydra's heads, and soon we'll be able to bury its body under a tombstone, and consider the immortal beast to be defeated.

For the moment.