ORIENTATION Continuation Reading as an essential skill in

ORIENTATION: Continuation • Reading as an essential skill in critical thinking (together with writing and conference as explained by Francis Bacon) • The purposes of reading: a) To enlarge our capacity to understand b) To expand the borders of our imagination c) To strengthen our belief in the possible

ORIENTATION: Continuation • Understand The ability to see the big picture, to see reality as comprised of elements that make up a large pattern or tapestry. We understand something when we make sense of it, that is, see how it relates with all its other aspects.

ORIENTATION: Continuation • Imagination Does not refer to the world of make-believe but to our ability to see beyond the borders of our perception, of our naivete, of our limited view. It is the ability to see the world larger than ourselves.

ORIENTATION: Continuation • Possibility Pertains to the aspect of reality that awaits discovery; the aspect that invites greater curiosity. Possibility makes us believe how and why life can be better.

What is the good life? The good life is the experience of the awareness of what makes life worth living. It such awareness that makes us fully alive and therefore fully human. The good life is both a personal and social experience.

The relation between the good life and our critical abilities It is our critical abilities that enable us to confront the vital questions which challenge our humanity and to create mental strategies to help us cope with them, either by attempting to search for their answers or simply living with them as enduring questions.

The relation between the current state of education and the cultivation of our critical abilities Globally, the cultivation of our critical abilities is undermined by an education that prioritizes profit, creation of more machines and the promotion of science and technology. There is really nothing wrong with any of those as long as the cultivation of humanities education (that is, education of being human like critical thinking) is not set aside.

Important quotes: • Everything that doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. (Friedrich Nietzsche) • We may handle any how if we only have a why. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Important quote: We need to favor an education that cultivates the critical capacities, that fosters a complex understanding of the world and its peoples and that educates and refines the capacity for sympathy. In short, an education that cultivates human beings rather than producing useful machines. If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away. They don't make money. But they do something far more precious: they make a world worth living in. (Martha Nussbaum)

Important quote: If all men were well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time. (Bertand Russell)

Important quote: The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect. (Bertrand Russell)

Next set of readings: • Defining Critical Thinking in • • http: //www. criticalthinking. org/about. CT/define_critic al_thinking. cfm A Brief History of Critical Thinking in http: //www. criticalthinking. org/about. CT/brief. History CT. cfm Reason To Live in http: //www. timeshighereducation. co. uk/story. asp? sec tioncode=26&storycode=410393&c=1

Study questions: • • What is critical thinking? What are the components of critical thinking? Do we always think critically? What undermines critical thinking? What kind of society did Socrates envision? Do you think this is achievable in the Philippines? What are the so-called elements of critical thinking? What are the traits inherent in a critical thinker? Cite 3 major critical thinkers and their contribution. Can you cite local figures whose thoughts have exerted great impact on Philippine society?