Is Critical Thinking Universal? — Critical Thinking 9 (C1)

CRITICAL THINKING · LESSON 9

Is Critical Thinking Universal?

C1 (B2–C2) · 90 minutes

Which two go together?

Task Which two go together, and why? Write your pair and one reason. Then rate the statement on the scale.

STATEMENT

"The rules of good reasoning are the same in every culture."

A

a cow

B

a chicken

C

some grass

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

Interview across cultures

Task Interview your partner, then swap. Answer for any community you know well: a country, a region, a family, a school or a workplace. Together, prepare one difference and one surprise to report to the group.

1. At school, could a student tell a teacher "I think you're wrong"? What would happen next?

2. How would you disagree with a boss: in the meeting, privately afterwards, through someone else, or not at all?

3. Could you openly challenge an older relative's opinion at a family meal? Does the topic matter?

4. When two people argue in public, is it seen as healthy, rude, entertaining or dangerous?

5. Is a good argument one that wins, or one that keeps the relationship intact?

6. Who taught you how to disagree? Did anyone ever state the rules out loud?

READING

Two ways of seeing

In The Geography of Thought (2003), the social psychologist Richard Nisbett argued that some basic habits of thought are not universal. Drawing on studies that compared participants from the United States with participants from China, Japan and Korea, he described two broad styles. Analytic thinking picks out a focal object, sorts it into categories by its attributes and explains its behaviour by rules, including formal logic. Holistic thinking attends to

the whole field, to relationships and context, and prefers to reconcile apparent contradictions by finding a "middle way". On average, Western participants leaned analytic and East Asian participants leaned holistic.

In a triad task used by Liang-Hwang Chiu (1972), children saw a cow, a chicken and some grass and were asked which two go together. American children tended to pair the cow and the chicken, as both are animals.

READING · CONTINUED

Two ways of seeing

Chinese children tended to pair the cow and the grass, because the cow eats the grass.

In Takahiko Masuda and Nisbett's aquarium study (2001), Japanese and American students watched 20-second animated underwater scenes and described them. Americans usually began with the large, bright, fast-moving fish. Japanese students began with the setting almost twice as often, and made about 65 per cent more

comments about the background overall. Later, shown fish they had seen before against a new background, Japanese students made more recognition errors; Americans were unaffected.

Nisbett traced the difference to social life: people in dense networks of obligation must watch the context, while more independent people can focus on objects and their own goals.

READING

Tendencies, not types

These results are averages. In each study, many American participants gave "holistic" answers and many East Asian participants gave "analytic" ones. Later research has complicated the picture.

Replication. Two eye-tracking studies published in 2009, one using an earlier study's own pictures, found no difference in how Chinese and American participants looked at scenes. Other work finds differences when people must describe a scene, but not when they simply watch it.

Variation inside "East" and "West". Thomas Talhelm and colleagues (2014) gave the triad task to 1,162 Han Chinese students and found more holistic answers among those from rice-growing provinces than from wheat-growing ones. Shinobu Kitayama and

colleagues (2009) found that British and German participants showed less focused attention than Americans.

Flexibility. Asian American participants usually fall between the two groups. In priming studies, bicultural students in Hong Kong explained a picture of one fish swimming ahead of a group differently after seeing Chinese or American images.

History. Nisbett leaned on the view that ancient China, apart from brief periods, took little interest in logic. Specialists in Chinese and Indian thought describe rich traditions of argument.

None of this shows the differences are imaginary. It suggests they are tendencies, shaped by experience and context, rather than fixed types.

Test the claim

Task Rate each claim from your own experience, not from the reading. Compare ratings with your partner, then discuss the three questions below. If the East/West split does not fit where you come from, say so: that is data too.

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

Where I grew up, people explain someone's behaviour mainly by the situation, not by their character.

Where I grew up, people describe themselves through their roles and relationships more than their personal traits.

A

D

Where I grew up, people are comfortable holding two opposing views and looking for a middle way.

B

E

Where I grew up, people notice the setting of a scene as much as the main object in it.

C

Where I grew up, a good argument is expected to follow explicit rules of logic.

F

My own thinking fits the "typical" pattern for where I grew up.

Test the claim

1

If your experience contradicts a claim, does that disprove it? What would?

2

Who counts as "people where I grew up": your family, your city, your country?

3

What can a laboratory study see that personal experience can't? And the reverse?

READING

Five steps to fire

Nyāya is one of the classical schools of Indian philosophy. Its founding text, the Nyāya-sūtra, is attributed to Gautama, also called Akṣapāda, and is usually dated to around 200 CE. It grew out of older traditions of public debate, whose rules are among the sūtra's sixteen opening topics.

To persuade someone else, Nyāya used an argument of five members:

1. Thesis (pratijñā): There is fire on the hill.

2. Reason (hetu): Because there is smoke on the hill.

3. Example (udāharaṇa): Wherever there is smoke, there is fire, as in a kitchen hearth; where there is no fire, there is no smoke, as in a lake.

4. Application (upanaya): This hill is likewise smoky.

5. Conclusion (nigamana): Therefore, there is fire on the hill.

The load-bearing relation is vyāpti, or "pervasion": fire pervades smoke, meaning smoke is never found without fire. The example anchors that general rule in cases both sides already accept. Repeating the thesis can look redundant to a reader of Aristotle, but the form is built for a public exchange. Indian logicians, Buddhist and Jain among them, argued about whether fewer members would do.

READING

Ox or non-ox?

In China, the followers of Mozi, who was active around 430 BCE, formed a school that challenged the Confucians. Its later members compiled the Mohist Canons (books 40 to 45 of the Mozi, probably from the late fourth to mid-third century BCE): terse definitions and arguments on ethics, language, knowledge and science. Disputation (biàn), in Chris Fraser's translation, is how "we clarify divisions between this (shì) and not-this (fēi)". If one side calls a thing "ox" and the other "non-ox", both cannot be right: the side whose claim fits the thing wins. Claims were judged against models (fa), so Mohist reasoning was mostly analogical rather than a formal logic.

In the Gelug monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism, such as Sera, monks still learn philosophy through daily debate in a courtyard. A standing challenger presses a seated defender, clapping to mark each point. The defender has a few set replies, including "I accept", "the reason is not established" and "there is no pervasion". The practice combines great respect for teachers and texts with constant challenge to arguments.

Translate the argument

Task Choose one argument below and rewrite it as a five-member Nyāya argument, one sentence per step. Then play challenger: would you reply "the reason is not established" or "there is no pervasion"? Write one sentence explaining why.

A

"Take an umbrella. Look at those dark clouds."

B

"Kenji must be home. His bike is outside."

C

"That restaurant must be good. It's full of local people."

D

"Amara will pass the exam. She has been revising every day."

E

"This app is safe to install. It has millions of downloads."

Translate the argument

1

Thesis (pratijñā): the claim

2

Reason (hetu): the sign

the same sentence, at the start and the end

3

Example (udāharaṇa): the general rule plus a familiar case

pervasion (vyāpti) lives here

4

Application (upanaya): the sign is present here

5

Conclusion (nigamana): the claim, now established

the reason is not established: attacks 2 and 4

there is no pervasion: attacks 3

A Western export?

Task Read both positions. Then rate the statement below.

Position A: a cultural practice

Position B: a false dichotomy

In an influential 1997 article in TESOL Quarterly, the applied linguist Dwight Atkinson urged English teachers to be cautious about teaching critical thinking to students from other cultures. He argued that it is less a teachable set of skills than a social practice, absorbed tacitly by growing up in a particular culture, and that it carries that culture's values, such as individualism and self-expression. "Critical thinking is cultural thinking," he concluded.

Critics replied that the picture of "Western" critical thinkers and "Confucian" rote learners is a caricature. Janette Ryan and Kam Louie (2007) argued that both traditions are too diverse to be set against each other as opposites. Others point to long traditions of reasoned dispute in India, China and Tibet; Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian (2005) traces public debate in India from the Buddha and the emperor Ashoka to the Mughal emperor Akbar. On this view, the skills are widespread. What varies are the rules about who may challenge whom, when, and how openly.

A Western export?

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

STATEMENT

"Critical thinking, as Western universities teach it, is a Western cultural practice."

Whose reasoning?

Task Choose three or four questions. Spend most of your time on the one your group disagrees about.

1. Can studies of university students tell us how a whole nation thinks?

2. If thinking styles shift with context, is "culture" still the right explanation?

3. Is the five-member Nyāya argument better than a short syllogism for persuading a sceptic?

4. Can you challenge an idea while fully respecting the person who taught it to you?

5. Should universities teach international students one "correct" style of argument?

6. Is research comparing "East" and "West" useful, harmful, or both?

Private reflection

Task Choose one prompt and write privately. Nobody will read what you write. Sharing afterwards is optional.

Prompt 1

Think of a time the unwritten rules for disagreeing changed around you: a new school, job, city or country. What did you have to learn, and what did you keep?

Prompt 2 (lighter)

Which style of argument from today would you most like to try: Nyāya's five steps, Mohist "ox or non-ox", or a Tibetan courtyard debate? On what topic?

Back to the cow and the grass

Task Rate the opening statement again: "The rules of good reasoning are the same in every culture." Has your number changed?

Would you still choose the same two items? Would you now give a different reason?

A

a cow

B

a chicken

C

some grass

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

Before Lesson 10

This week, notice one disagreement that was handled well: at work, in a family, in a meeting or online.

Write down what made it work: who spoke, in what order, and how the person who lost the argument was treated.

Next lesson: Thinking Well Together. How groups can reason better, or much worse, than the people in them.

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

WHICH TWO GO TOGETHER? In Chiu's (1972) study, American children tended to choose A and B (cow and chicken: both animals, a category). Chinese children tended to choose A and C (cow and grass: the cow eats the grass, a relationship). Neither answer is wrong; the study measured which kind of grouping came first more often.

TRANSLATE THE ARGUMENT suggested; other wordings are fine as long as each step does its job

Model, B: 1. Kenji is at home. 2. Because his bike is outside. 3. Wherever someone's bike is parked outside their home, they are at home, as with my neighbour every evening. 4. Kenji's bike is outside his home. 5. Therefore, Kenji is at home.

• The reason is not established: is that really Kenji's bike?

• There is no pervasion: people often leave their bike and take the bus or walk. Step 3 is false as a general rule.

Model, A: 1. It will rain soon. 2. Because there are dark clouds. 3. Wherever there are heavy dark clouds, rain follows, as last Tuesday; where the sky is clear, no rain, as yesterday. 4. These clouds are of that kind. 5. Therefore, it will rain soon. The weak point is step 3 (no pervasion): dark clouds make rain likely, not certain. Nyāya's ideal of pervasion is stricter than everyday prediction, which is worth discussing.

The others, in brief:

• C: No pervasion. "Full of local people" fits restaurants that are cheap, near offices or simply the only one open. A challenger might also say the reason is not established: how do you know they're local?

• D: No pervasion. Daily revision makes passing likely, but people who revise every day still fail.

• E: No pervasion. Popularity does not pervade safety; some widely downloaded apps have turned out to be harmful. This is the appeal to popularity in five-member form.