Tuesday 23 June 2009

Critical Thinking with Lonergan

Plenty of thinking about Critical Thinking at the Lonergan Workshop. Or rather, more than one speaker brought to our notice the rather widespread movement that goes by the name of Critical Thinking. However, the recommendations were that we need critical thinking about Critical Thinking, which tends to be noun based rather than verb- or process-oriented, and which fails to focus on the relationships or processes connecting the nouns it concentrates on.

Also: critical thinking tends to neglect emotions, encourage linear rational thinking, favour the generic over the specific, is opposed to faith, is hostile to mystery, neglects the community, privileges the individual, etc.

People like Mike Stebbins have given up a university career to get into consultancy services, and are trying to work out a new model of critical thinking making use of the work of Bernard Lonergan.

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