Research Catalog

Title

Education, culture, and critical thinking / Ken Brown.

Author

Brown, Ken, 1942-

Publication

Aldershot, England : Ashgate, ©1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

vii, 202 pages; 23 cm

Subject

• Critical thinking > Study and teaching > Great Britain
• Problem solving > Study and teaching > Great Britain
• Education > Aims and objectives > Great Britain
• Critical thinking > Study and teaching
• Education > Aims and objectives
• Problem solving > Study and teaching
• Erziehungsphilosophie
• Kritisches Denken
• Great Britain

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 188-197) and index.

Contents

1. Critical Thinking and its Alternatives. The 'Thinking Skills Movement'; a neglected historical dimension. The disinheritance of Mill's ideal. The contemporary thinking skills movement. Parameters, definitions and the critical tradition. Some dissenting voices and further implications. Darwin's lost supper: some features of a 'critical tradition' -- 2. The 'General Thinking Skills' Controversy. General or generalizable? The attack on 'general thinking skills'. Some pedagogic implications. The internality of 'logics' and the problem of relativism. The 'problem' of transfer; syntax and semantics. An example; the Wason Card Test -- 3. Epistemic Bedrock or Logical Quicksand? Domain theory and some of its limitations. The 'languages' of the formal disciplines. The demarcation between cognitive domains. The character of history. The contradiction inherent in domain theory. Domains and language games -- 4. Language and Consciousness. Syntax, semantics and human intentionality. Conceptual gridlock; subjective idealism or reductionist behaviourism? Different views of the relationship between language and thought. The centrality of consciousness and intentionality. Successive dialogical approximations -- 5. Side by Side Through Different Landscapes. Intentionality and 'forms of life'. Empirical, conceptual and historical dimensions of thought. Wittgensteinian idealism and 'essentialism' -- a source of misunderstanding. Different landscapes. Linguistic-conceptual innovation and prediction in social science. Concepts, models and 'false consciousness'. The significance of 'rule-governed' behaviour -- 6. Between Our Ears? Cognition as a cultural phenomenon. The biological basis of cognition and 'psychologism'. Constructivism versus nativism. Chomsky's view of the nature of the innate 'fixed nucleus'. Fodor's rejection of learning-theory -- and its significance. Some empirical studies of 'cognitive stages'. The notion of 'isomorphism'. Form and content -- 7. Language, Tradition and Culture. Tradition and critical thinking. The problem of relativism and some institutional ramifications. Social constructions of reality and the relativities of language. Metaphor, the 'inward' aspect of word-meaning, and myth. Words as tools, mediated learning; a 'zone of proximal development'. Literacy, new dimensions of consciousness, and critical thinking. Monolithic and critical 'world views'. The relativities of understanding and intolerance of ambiguity -- 8. The Sovereignty of Reason. Critical thinking as an ultimate ideal. Mill's education in context. Mill's contemporary relevance. The central issue; truth as a regulative principle. Critical thinking as a standard of social order. Democracy, education and critical thinking -- 9. Conclusion: 'A Spirit of Adventure'. The industrialisation of education and the 'total' school. Radical alternatives.

ISBN

• 184014324X
• 9781840143249

LCCN

98073765

OCLC

• ocm40483351
• 40483351
• SCSB-8901779

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library