THINKING FOR YOURSELF AT UNIVERSITY What it means and how to do It
Many people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do. —Bertrand Russell, philosopher and Nobel laureate
Aidan Moran Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the Psychology Research Laboratory, UCD
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n August 2017, a group of distinguished professors from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale wrote an open letter to students who were about to begin university life. It contained a simple yet inspirational message: ‘Think for yourself!’ But what does this really mean? What is ‘thinking’ anyway? And how can we master the skill of critical thinking? WHAT DOES ‘THINKING FOR YOURSELF’ MEAN? For psychologists, ‘thinking for yourself’ has two components: an attitude and an ability. On the one hand it requires a sceptical attitude or an eagerness to question ideas, especially those that seem sacrosanct or inviolable. The Greek word skeptomai means ‘I consider thoughtfully’, so scepticism is rooted in active reflection. On the other hand, thinking for yourself involves the skill of critical evaluation or the ability to form independent conclusions based on a rational evaluation of available evidence. But what exactly is ‘thinking’? Thinking is best understood as a mental (‘cognitive’) process by which we use our knowledge and imagination to go beyond what is immediately obvious in order to see how things could be different. For example, look around the room you’re in. The fact that you can see furniture beside you doesn’t really qualify as thinking – it’s just perceptual awareness. But imagine what the room would look like if you rearranged the furniture. This activity involves a cognitive leap beyond the obvious – a mental step that constitutes ‘thinking’. Thinking is a process that enables us to transform a situation mentally. It happens whenever we use what we know or can imagine to explore something in our head. WHAT IS CRITICAL THINKING? Every day, we face a variety of complex and controversial questions. For example, do people have the right to choose to end their lives? What is the optimal age of digital consent? Unfortunately, because weighing up the evidence on these questions takes considerable mental effort, we take the easy way out by relying on shortcuts like intuition (‘gut feelings’) or accepting other people’s views mindlessly and uncritically.
IRELAND’S YEARBOOK OF EDUCATION 2018-2019 CHAPTER 5 HIGHER EDUCATION
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