翻译《第一章：提出正确问题的益处》
Authors Answer Student Questions
作者回答学生问题
Q1: Will this book make me skeptical about everything I read or hear?
问：这本书会让我对我所听到读到的一切都报以怀疑？
A: We hope that it will make you skeptical about any ideas that are important to you personally. And one needs to be especially skeptical about highly controversial or extraordinary claims. As Carl Sagan stated, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." In our opinion, the goal of skepticism is to examine claims made by others using high standards of critical thinking. The most important thing should not be whether a claim turns out to be true or false but whether it was rigorously, critically evaluated. The evidence and reasons should direct us to our conclusions. It is desirable to balance thewill to believewith thewill to doubt; but for the critical thinker, the will to doubt and to question precedes the adoption of beliefs.
答：我们希望他能让你怀疑对你个人很重要的所有想法。一个人特别需要怀疑具有高度争议、特别离奇的主张。正如卡尔·萨根所说：“非凡的主张需要非凡的证据。”我们认为，怀疑的目的是为了使用高标准的批判性思维检查别人的主张。最重要的事情不应该是证明一个主张是真或假，而是此主张是经严格审慎评估的。证据和理由应该引导我们得出结论。在信任与怀疑的意愿之间取得平衡是可取的，但是对于批判性思考者，怀疑的意愿和提出问题优先于选择相信。
Q2: You talk about the need to question, but is it possible to question too much, or to overanalyze things?
问：你谈到提问的必要性，但有可能提问过多，或者对事情分析过度？
A: Yes. But you can guard against this. You must accept the fact that you will have to answer many questions in the face of much uncertainty. Some of our best leaders and decision makers are expert critical thinkers. Critical thinkers also vote. They gather and evaluate the best information available and make the best decision they can given their time constraints. The goal of critical thinking is not absolute certainty! It is to make the best decisions that you can, given the present circumstances. As you gain more practice in critical thinking, you will also begin to feel more comfortable with not having ALL the answers before you make a decision. In most cases, your goal should be to "move the conversation forward" enough to make you feel more confident about your tentative decision, but knowing that there is much more to the conversation yet to be discovered.
答：是的。但是你可以避免这种情况。你必须接受这样一个事实，即你会在面对诸多不确定性的时候回答许多问题。我们一些最好的领导者和决策者都是批判思维专家。批判思考者也搞投票表决。他们收集评估可获得的最佳信息，做出在其时间限制内所能给出的最佳决策。
Q3: Do you ever come to a point in which critical thinking is almost effortless?
A: Well, perhaps ALMOST, SOMETIMES. It certainly will get easier as you keep practicing it, and you begin to incorporate the questions as habitual ways of thinking. But, in general, even for expert critical thinkers, critical thinking is hard work, and requires much more concentration and attention than does applying the Sponge model. We believe strongly, however, that the payoffs greatly exceed the costs. Learning to be an expert critical thinker is much like learning to be an expert professional basketball player. Such players have learned many difficult skills through lots of hard practice, and can now apply many of them in a coordinated fashion; but to perform at a high level, they still must work very hard to succeed at a high level.
Q4: Is it possible to separate emotions from issues based heavily on belief systems, such as religious beliefs?
A: We think it's very difficult to TOTALLY separate emotions from issues in which you already have strong beliefs. We do believe, however, that you can STRIVE HARDILY to put your emotions on the back burner in an effort to examine the basis for your beliefs. Important values of critical thinking are openness to others' ideas and moral courage. By moral courage we mean the willingness to face and examine fairly moral ideas or beliefs that we have not seriously considered, even if we have a strong negative reaction to them. Why should we do this? Because moral conclusions or beliefs that have been expressed by those around us and/or instilled in us are sometimes found to be flawed when closely examined. You can be most open to differing ideas if you try to minimize the emotional involvement in your own beliefs as you try to understand reasoning that is in conflict with those beliefs. We are strong advocates of expressing one's emotions under the appropriate circumstances. But we also believe that strong feelings often get in the way when one is trying to carefully evaluate an issue.
Q5: Does your book include ALL the critical thinking questions?
A: No. We would be very surprised if any book did. Once you have completed this book, you will have only started your critical thinking journey, and we hope you will continue to add critical thinking questions as you continue your education. Each of us has been teaching critical thinking for more than 30 years, and we are still learning new ways to effectively evaluate arguments. Our book, however, does reflect most of the skills and dispositions that those people who have studied critical thinking for many years believe are important. And we can promise you that if you can learn to effectively apply the questions in this book, you will be making evaluative judgments of very high quality. Our research has shown that students who have usedAsking the Right Questionsin their classes score much higher than those who have not on critical thinking tests.
Q6: Aren't people going to be annoyed by me if I keep questioning them?
A: Certainly. If you question in certain ways, others may very well become annoyed. Most human beings do not welcome being questioned by others with open arms. We think this is a very important issue for interpersonal relationships, as evidenced by our attention to it at the end of our book. (See the last several pages ofAsking the Right Questions.) As you read the additional chapters in the book, we recommend that you try different approaches to questioning others until you find ones that are comfortable and do not seem to create too much resistance or defensiveness. But we also recommend that you work on tolerating some short-term annoyance from others. The dire need to be loved by everyone is a need that tends to interfere with effective critical thinking. Others can learn much from your questioning them, even if they don't seem to be enjoying the experience at the time. Pick your spots. Try to convince others that you are asking questions to try to better understand their reasoning, not to put them on the spot. We believe that enduring SOME annoyances in others is the price we all have to pay if we want choose our conclusions carefully.
Q7: Is there a difference between being open to revision and being indecisive?
A: Yes. Individuals who are open can also be decisive. The difference is that the open individual knows that certain actions have to be taken quickly, even if one is not ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that particular conclusion is the correct one. The decisiveness comes from knowing that the present conclusion has been reached through a rigorous questioning process. The openness comes from knowing that it's possible that new information may emerge in the future that may change the conclusion. For example, your textbook's authors are very decisive in choices about teaching strategies. But we also continue to read others' arguments about teaching strategies, and we are willing to change our strategies if we encounter strong arguments to suggest such change.
Q8: Shouldn't we SPONGE first and then PAN FOR GOLD later, so that we have enough information to work with?
A: We are very strong believers in theactive personal construction of knowledge, and thus believe that even in the early stages of learning college material, in most cases it is preferable to actively structure what you're learning, rather than simply reproduce it, from the beginning. Doing this puts the information into a form that leads to deep understanding, as opposed to a more superficial understanding. The next few chapters should help you see the benefits of such active structuring.
Q9: Is it necessary to know a lot about the topic being discussed in order to use our critical thinking skills?
A: Knowing a lot sure helps, and you will find critical thinking to be easiest when you are evaluating topics with which you are familiar. However, many of the questions you will be learning to ask inAsking the Right Questionscan be applied to many topics with which you are not very familiar. The questions are not discipline specific and can be applied across many disciplines. For example, asking questions about sampling bias can be productive in most disciplines that rely on conducting experiments.
Q10: Why do we need a critical thinking class to learn these skills? Won't we automatically learn them in our regular classrooms?
A: No, you will not automatically learn such skills, and there are a number of reasons for this. First, much research suggests that in most universities and colleges, critical thinking is not sufficiently emphasized "across the curriculum" to instill critical thinking skills in students. Many college students graduate without possessing high-level critical thinking skills. Other research shows that typical textbooks in this country emphasize the presentation of facts and infrequently require critical thought, as we are defining it. Also, many teachers tend to emphasize the reproduction of content, rather than the deep understanding of material. Teachers usually teach the way they were taught. Also, an in-depth class in critical thinking provides you with a coherent holistic sense of the critical thinking process in a manner similar to the way a first-year English Composition class might provide you with a coherent sense of how to write effective essays. In both cases, such training should be transferable to many other classes and should be very helpful to you even if your other teachers emphasize critical thinking skills.
Multiple Choice
This activity contains 3 questions.
Which of the following is NOT an aspect of critical thinking as it is defined by the authors ofAsking the Right Questions?
- the ability to ask and answer critical questions at appropriate times
- the desire to actively use critical questions
- the ability to memorize an author's main points
- the awareness of a set of coherent critical questions
Using the Panning-for-Gold approach to learning most emphasizes
- absorbing information.
- asking evaluative questions.
- getting the right answer.
- disagreeing.
The authors ofAsking the Right Questionsbelieve that
- critical thinkers should wait until they have found the right answer before acting on their beliefs.
- we should first act on our feelings, then apply critical thinking skills.
- emotional involvement should be most intense after critical thinking has occurred.
- emotional involvement should be the primary basis for accepting a conclusion.
True or False
This activity contains 3 questions.
Strong sense critical thinking means trying to identify faulty reasoning in other people's thinking.
- True
- False
If you ask the critical thinking questions sufficiently and thoroughly, you will eventually discover the right answer to a question.
- True
- False
It is important to ask the question "Who cares?" before you decide how much energy to invest in applying your critical thinking skills.
- True
- False
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