If, for some reason, you’re not yet paying attention to the things that are happening in the computation-based wing of argumentation theory, let me ever-so-humbly suggest that you should be. The excellent work being done in this area integrates not only key insights from mainstream contemporary argumentation theory but key insights from the ever-developing field of non-monotonic logic too.  Well and truly gone are the days when, as applied to logic, ‘formal’ meant ‘classical’.  This is truly exciting stuff.  Those with no background in the overlap between argumentation and computation may wish to begin with Chris Reed and Marcin Kosowy’s excellent introduction.  Following that, I would recommend Doug Walton’s article, “How to Refute an Argument in Artificial Intelligence” and Marcin Lewinsky’s article too as being particularly friendly to those whose background is heavier in argumentation and/or dialectics (per the Walton-Krabbe model) than in computation as next steps.

This issue is special in that it shows the relevance of computational approaches to nearly every branch of argumentation theory. To look at what some would consider extremes, for example, formal logic is represented in Kazimierz Trzęsicki’s excellent treatment of the problem of argument classification, but so is rhetoric in the article by Katarzyna Budzyńska and Magdalena Kacprzak, that represents the latest extension of their work at the time of this writing.

It is timely too. For those who have an interest in the way that argumentation is carried out through the medium of the internet this issue will be very useful indeed. The aforementioned article by Lewinsky covers this ground as does the article by Karolina Stefanowicz.  Those interested in contemporary pragma-dialetctics will also find much to pique their interest here, especially the article by the team of Jacky Visser, Floris Bex, Chris Reed and Bart Garssen.

Though of course the computational wing of argumentation theory is established and thriving in departments all over the world, I think this issue of Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric also shows the variety of good things that are happening in what is becoming the vibrant argumentation theory community of Warsaw. We should all be paying attention.

Contributions are invited for an edited collection of papers for a book on the topic Critical Thinking in Higher Education,to be edited by Emeritus Professor Ronald Barnett (Institute of Education, University of London), Emeritus Professor Robert H. Ennis (University of Illinois), and Associate Professor Martin Davies (University of Melbourne).

Papers should be submitted by December 31st 2012. Please note that abstracts for papers (400 words maximum) should be sent to the editors for consideration first (see Submission Procedure below).

The book will include a number of previously published papers and original, previously un­published papers. Submissions can be comparative reviews, conceptual studies, empirically-based papers, reflective case studies or offer theoretical contributions. The book will combine new papers, commissioned articles, and excerpts from seminal papers in the field.

Contributions for the proposed book can cover, but are not limited to, the following areas:

Philosophical Issues
·         What constitutes critical thinking in the higher education context? i.e., what does it mean?
·         The nature of critical thinking as a generic or field-embedded skill/attribute, i.e., what does it mean to produce graduates that can “think critically”, and how is this best achieved?
·         Culture and critical thinking: is critical thinking culturally invariant?
·         The generalist-specifist debate in critical thinking: is critical thinking general, subject-specific, or both? What are the implications of this for teaching and learning?
·         Is critical thinking necessarily tied to action and, if so, in what ways?
·         In what ways might educational aims – such as students as global citizens – be linked to critical thinking?

Educational Practices, Pedagogy
·       Critical thinking as a form of inquiry in high­er education: what does it mean to expect graduates to demonstrate critical thinking in assignments, theses and term papers?
·         How can critical thinking be best embedded in the disciplines, and to what extent is this desirable?
·         How can critical thinking best be taught in separate modules or courses?
·         How should critical thinking be assessed?
·         How can a combination of separate and field-embedded instruction best be organised?
·         What is the role of higher education administrations in the promotion of critical thinking?
·         What might be cultural or social dimensions of students’ construal of, and willingness to develop their own critical thinking?  How might the internationalisation of the curriculum bear upon critical thinking?

New technologies and the sciences
·         Critical thinking and new technologies, e.g., computer-aided argument mapping. What are the implications for teaching and learning?
·        Critical thinking and the cognitive sciences, neurology, artificial intelligence, computer science, etc. What can these disciplines teach us about the educational aspects of critical thinking?
·         What new opportunities for the student’s acquisition of critical thinking are afforded by e-learning and comparable technologies?

Critical Thinking as a part of Professional Education
·         How might critical thinking be linked to education for the professions?
·         What is the importance of critical thinking to the professional context, i.e., employment practices, and the work-readiness of graduates?
·         How can higher education and the professions interact in the promotion and practice of critical thinking?
·         In what ways might higher education help in the formation of critical professionalism?
·         How is critical thinking germane to the social and political context, e.g., current economic and environmental debates?

(The above questions are merely indicative of the kinds of issues that contributors might wish to address.  The editors would welcome proposals that fall outside of these matters.)
The outline of the proposed book is as follows:

Introduction
1: Critical Thinking, Decision Making and Creativity
2: How Should We Teach Critical Thinking?
3. How Should Critical Thinking be Incorporated into the Higher Education Curriculum?
4: How Should Critical Thinking be Assessed?
5: How can the Cognitive Sciences Inform our Understanding of Critical Thinking?
6: What is the Role of Critical Thinking in the Professions?
7. What Role can Higher Education Play in the Practice and Promotion of Critical Thinking in the Outside World?
Conclusions and Implications for Policy and Pedagogy

Submission Procedure
Abstracts for papers (400 words maximum) should first be submitted by 1st July 2012, to Martin Davies by email:wmdavies@unimelb.edu.au or via ordinary mail to the following address:

Teaching and Learning Unit
Faculty of Business and Economics
Level 5, 198 Berkeley Street, Parkville 3010
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Please Note: Abstracts should be accompanied by a suggestion as to in which section of the volume the paper would best be situated (see above).

Papers should be submitted by December 31st 2012. They should be 5,800-6,000 words inclusive of references and follow the stylistic conventions of the journal Higher Education Research and Development. (See:http://www.herdsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/herd_style_guide-notes-aug-2004.pdf).

All papers will undergo peer review, and if accepted, may be shortened by the editors.

For further information contact:
Associate Professor Martin Davies
Teaching and Learning Unit
Faculty of Business and Economics
Level 5, 198 Berkeley Street, Parkville 3010
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

for the 7th International and ECAI 2012 Workshop on

EXPLANATION-AWARE COMPUTING (ExaCt 2012)

One-Day Workshop, 27 or 28 August 2012, Montpellier, France
http://exact2012.workshop.hm

** Submission deadline: May 28, 2012 **

When knowledge-based systems are partners in interactive socio-
technical processes, with incomplete and changing problem descriptions,
effective communication between human and software system is vital.
Explanations exchanged between human agents and software agents may
play a key role in such mixed-initiative problem solving. For
example, explanations may increase the confidence of the user in
specific results or in the system as a whole, by providing evidence of
how the results were derived. AI research has also focused on
how computer systems can themselves use explanations, for example to
guide learning.

Explanation-awareness in computing system development aims at making
systems able to interact more effectively or naturally with their
users, or better able to understand and exploit knowledge about their
own processing. Systems intended to exhibit explanation-awareness must
be more than simple reactive systems. When the word ‘awareness’ is
used in conjunction with the word ‘explanation’ it implies some
consciousness about explanation and reasoning about explanations at
the knowledge level.

Thinking of the Web not only as a collection of web pages, but as
providing a Web of experiences exchanged by people on many platforms,
gives rise to new challenges and opportunities to leverage experiential
knowledge in explanation.  For example, records of experiences on the
Web and interrelationships between experiences may provide provenance
and meta-data for explanations and can provide examples to help instil
confidence in computing systems. The interplay of provenance information
with areas such as trust and reputation, reasoning and meta-reasoning,
and explanation are known, but not yet well exploited.

Outside of artificial intelligence, disciplines such as cognitive
science, linguistics, philosophy of science, psychology, and education
have investigated explanation as well. They consider varying aspects,
making it clear that there are many different views of the nature of
explanation and facets of explanation to explore. Two relevant examples
of these are open learner models in education, and dialogue management
and planning in natural language generation.

The ExaCt workshop series aims to draw on the multiple perspectives on
explanation, to examine how explanation can be applied to further the
development of robust and dependable systems, and increase transparency,
user sense of control, trust, acceptance, and decision support.

GOALS AND AUDIENCE
The main goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers,
scientists from both industry and academia, and representatives from
different communities and areas such as those mentioned above, to study,
understand, and explore explanation in AI applications. In addition to
presentations and discussions of invited contributions and invited talks,
this workshop will offer organised and open spaces for targeted
discussions and creating an interdisciplinary community. Demonstration
sessions will provide the opportunity to showcase explanation-enabled/
-aware applications.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
Suggested topics for contributions (not restricted to IT views):
* Models and knowledge representations for explanations
* Integrating application and explanation knowledge
* Explanation-awareness in (designing) applications
* Methodologies for developing explanation-aware systems
* Explanations and learning
* Context-aware explanation vs. explanation-aware context
* Confidence and explanations
* Privacy, trust, and explanation
* Provenance and metareasoning
* Empirical studies of explanations
* Requirements and needs for explanations to support human understanding
* Explanation of complex, autonomous systems
* Co-operative explanation
* Visualising explanations
* Dialogue management and natural language generation

Submissions on additional topics are very welcome.

SUBMISSIONS AND STYLE
Workshop submissions will be electronic, in pdf format only, using
the EasyChair submission system linked from the workshop website.

Papers must be written in English and not exceed 5 pages in the
ECAI format. At least one author of each accepted paper must register
for the workshop and the ECAI conference and present the contribution
in order to be published in the workshop proceedings. The organising
committee is considering editing a special issue of an appropriate
international journal depending on the number and quality of the
submissions.

Those wishing to participate without a paper submission should
submit a brief synopsis of their relevant work or a brief statement
of interest.

The workshop proceedings will be published online on the ECAI website
and as CEUR workshop proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org).

If you have questions please contact the chairs using the following
email address: chairs@exact2012.workhop.hm.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline:                 May 28, 2012
Notification of acceptance:          June 28, 2012
Camera-ready versions of papers:     July 13, 2012
ExaCt Workshop:                      August 27/28, 2012

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
The schedule will be made available on the workshop website. See the
workshop website for an agenda overview and links to past workshops.

CHAIRS
Thomas Roth-Berghofer, School of Computing and Technology,
University of West London, United Kingdom
thomas.roth-berghofer (at) uwl ac uk

David B. Leake, School of Informatics and Computing,
Indiana University, USA
leake (at) cs indiana edu

Jörg Cassens, Institute for Multimedia and Interactive
Systems (IMIS), University of Lübeck, Germany
cassens (at) imis uni-luebeck de

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Agnar Aamodt, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
David W. Aha, Navy Center for Applied Research in AI, Washington DC, USA
Martin Atzmüller, University of Kassel, Germany
Ivan Bratko, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Patrick Brézillon, LIP6, France
Ashok Goel, Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Pierre Grenon, KMI, The Open University, UK
Anders Kofod-Petersen, SINTEF, Norway
Hector Muñoz-Avila, Lehigh University, USA
Miltos Petridis, University of Brighton, UK
Enric Plaza, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Christophe Roche, University of Savoie, France
Olga Santos, Spanish National University for Distance Education
Gheorghe Tecuci, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Douglas Walton, University of Windsor, Canada

THE YAHOO EXPLANATION GROUP

If you would like to participate in discussions on the topic of
explanation or like to receive further information about this workshop
you might consider joining the Yahoo!-group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/explanation-research.
Information on explanation research is also collected here:
http://on-explanation.net.

13th International Workshop on Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems [CLIMA XIII]

Special sessions on:

*  Logics for Multi-Agent Programming
*  Logics for Agreement Technologies

http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/clima2012.htm

Affiliated with ECAI 2012
Montpellier, France, August 27-28, 2012

Submission deadline: 28th May

Proceedings: LNCS/LNAI volume (available at the workshop).

JLC Special Issue: Selected extended papers will be published in a Special Issue of the Journal of Logic and Computation.

The purpose of the CLIMA Workshop Series is to provide a forum for discussing techniques, based on computational logic, for representing, programming and reasoning about agents and multi-agent systems in a formal way.

Following the previous, very successful, editions, the 13th CLIMA will be affiliated with ECAI 2012 and will take place in Montpellier, France, on the 27th and 28th of August 2012.

In addition to CLIMA’s regular topics and sessions, this edition will feature two special sessions:

*  Logics for Multi-Agent Programming
*  Logics for Agreement Technologies

We welcome and encourage the submission of high quality, original papers, which have not been accepted for publication nor are currently under review for another journal or conference.

LNCS Proceedings: CLIMA’s Proceedings will be published by Springer as a volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and will be available in time for the workshop.

JLC Special Issue: After the workshop, authors of selected papers will be invited to extend and re-submit their work to be considered for inclusion in a CLIMA Special Issue of the Journal of Logic and Computation.

Detailed information regarding CLIMA, its topics of interest, the two Special Sessions, formatting and submission instructions is available at http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/clima2012.html

Important dates:
* Submission:   28th May
* Notification: 16th June
* Camera Ready: 23rd June

CLIMA XII Chairs:
* Michael Fisher, University of Liverpool, UK
* Leon van der Torre, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Special Session Organisers:

Logics for Multi-Agent Programming
* Mehdi Dastani, University of Utrecht, Netherlands

Logics for Agreement Technologies
* Guido Governatori, NICTA, Australia

Please send all enquiries about CLIMA XIII toclima13@easychair.org

Original CFP @ Logic and Rational Interaction

To achieve its goals, the SAsSy project seeks a post-doctoral researcher who will investigate argumentation and dialogue based approaches to generate, represent and reason about plans, factoring in explicit norms and goals. Argumentation provides a natural way of explaining the rationale for decisions and their justifications, while dialogue will allow for their incremental generation and modification.

Since non-technical users can struggle to understand the formal arguments that underpin plans in such an approach, the project will also design and evaluate novel interfaces intended to present plans and their justifications in a coherent manner to such users. The project will therefore seek additional post-doctoral researchers with expertise in natural language generation and user modelling. The successful candidate will be expected to work closely with the other project members in order to achieve the overall project goals.

This post is funded by the EPSRC, and is offered for a period of 36 months.

For further details, please see http://bit.ly/KSQpQr

Informal enquiries can be made to Nir Oren, n.oren at abdn.ac.uk
–
Dr. Nir Oren
Department of Computing Science
University of Aberdeen
AB24 3UE

n.oren@abdn.ac.uk

http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~niroren/

All info and call for papers at http://ipra.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=.CONFERENCE13&n=1438.

Note the deadlines:

- 15 June 2012 for early submission of panel proposals (allowing for revision if necessary)
- 15 September 2012, final deadline for panel proposals
- 1 November 2012, deadline for panel contributions, lectures, and posters

Please read the instructions in the ´Call for papers´ carefully well in advance of the deadlines.

The special theme of this edition is Narrative pragmatics: Culture, cognition, context. But as always, the conference is open to ALL OTHER PRAGMATICS-RELATED TOPICS as well (where pragmatics is conceived broadly as a cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on language and communication).

The call for papers for the 13th International Pragmatics Conference is now open.

Please read all instructions carefully .
Note that IPrA membership is required for submitting an abstract (with all deadlines in 2012) as well as for presenting during the conference (in 2013), and that membership always runs from  1 January to 31 December, no matter at what time in the year it is applied for. Membership can be arranged instantly by going to ‘Membership application’ or, if you were a member before, ´Membership renewal´ (in which case you need your user name, which is identical to the email address under which you were registered as a member before).

For any unanswered questions:

IPrA Secretariat
P.O. Box 33 (Antwerp 11)
B-2018 Antwerp
Belgium
ann.verhaert@ua.ac.be

DEADLINES
- There are two deadlines for panel proposals (see definition below): 15 June 2012 (which allows for resubmission by the second deadline in case the proposal is not accepted immediately), and 15 September 2012.
- Contributions to accepted panels (which can only be submitted with the prior approval of the panel organizer – see below), and individual submissions for posters and lectures must be sent in by 1 November 2012

INSTRUCTIONS

• All submission procedures are web-based (i.e., paper copies or faxes will not be accepted, and e-mail attachments are permissible only if web-based submission does not work after following the recommendations you find when clicking ‘Help’ in the opening screen of the IPrA website). Click ‘Contribute’ to submit your contribution. Before doing so, however, read all of the following instructions. (Note that ´Contribute´ will not appear unless you are logged in as a member with your user name and password; user name is always identical to the e-mail address you used when becoming a member or renewing membership; you can retrieve a forgotten password by clicking ´Lost your password´ in the opening screen of the IPrA website.)
• The submission of proposals presupposes IPrA membership (see above).
• Panel proposals (deadlines 15 June 2012 – for early approval – and 15 September 2012; see above) have to consist of a brief outline (max. one average A4 or Standard-size page, single spacing, Times pt 12; i.e. ca 500 words) of the theme and purpose of the panel, with a first indication of the people the organizer(s) anticipate(s) to be involved as speakers. Panel organizers are asked to avoid, if at all possible, restricting their panels to an in-group; openness and diversity of perspectives is compatible with topical coherence. Immediately after the deadline the conference committee will, on the basis of the outline (weighed against other proposals in relation to the total number of available time slots), decide (i) whether the proposal is accepted, and (ii) how many 90-minute slots can be made available for the accepted panel. From that moment onwards, the organizer(s) is/are free to fill the allotted sessions in the way they see as most suitable to the theme and the purpose of their panel. Not all panels need to take the same form; some may work with sessions that emphasize discussion; others may want to fit in more (brief) oral presentations; the minimum number of presentations planned for one 90-minute session, however, should be three. Though it is the panel organizer(s) who take(s) active responsibility for the quality of the contributions to their panel (i.e. they decide what is accepted), abstracts should, for all panel contributions, be submitted by the individual contributors separately by the 1 November 2012 deadline that will be handled for individual submissions (see below). Panel organizers are expected to guide their participants in this process, so that all formal requirements are duly fulfilled and the abstracts live up to the expected international standards. This procedure implies that no-one can submit contributions to panels without the prior consent of the panel organizer(s). As a list of accepted panels will be available at the end of June (for early submissions) and at the end of  September (for later submissions), prospective participants are of course welcome to seek such prior consent by contacting the organizer(s) of the panel of their choice. As the number of slots for panels is limited, however, most participants will have to make an individual submission.
• Individual proposals for lectures and posters should take the form of a brief abstract (equivalent to max. one average A4 or Standard-size page, single spacing, Times pt 12; i.e. ca 500 words); mind the  1 November 2012 deadline. It is the individual submitter’s choice to submit for oral presentation (lecture) or a poster. For oral presentations, 30-minute slots will be available (including discussion time and time for moving between sessions). Posters will be up for the whole week; during one of the conference days, there is a poster period during which all other conference activities are blocked so that attention goes exclusively to looking at and discussing posters. IPrA actively encourages the submission of posters; experience tells us that they often lead to more serious interaction and result in more lasting and fruitful contacts than oral presentations.
• Because of heavy competition for slots in the program, no-one can be considered for more than one contribution of which he or she is the first author (whether panel contributions, lectures or posters). Anyone may be involved in a second or even a third paper if someone else is the first author and will be present at the conference as well. In the case of multiple authorship, the web-based submission system recognizes as first author only the one who handles the submission process. While there is a restriction on the number of contributions of which one may be the first author (one only!), presenting a paper is always compatible with taking the role of organizer of a panel or acting as a discussant in a panel.

Note that abstracts should not be programmatic; they should be based on research that is clearly in progress, with a well-formulated research question, and with a good description of the types of data used (if the work is empirical) and of the approach. For posters, a clear description of a research design may be acceptable, as this can lead to useful discussions in the early stages of a project.

CONFERENCE CHAIR: Rukmini BHAYA NAIR (Indian Institute of Technology)

Plenary speakers will be announced before September 2012.

LOCAL SITE COMMITTEE: The other members of the Local Site Committee are: Ramakant AGNIHOTRI (University of Delhi, Delhi), Ashraf BHAT (Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi), Bijoy BORUAH (Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi), Shubha CHAKRABORTY (Jadavpur University, Kolkata), Probal DASGUPTA (Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata), Peter DE SOUZA (Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla), Mushirul HASAN (National Archives of India, New Delhi), Ravinder KAUR (Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi), Dipti KULKARNI (Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi), Girishwar MISRA (University of Delhi, Delhi), Mohan RAMANAN (University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), V. SANIL (Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi), Purnima SINGH (Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi), Ashok THORAT (Institute of Advanced Studies in English, Pune)

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE COMMITTEE: In addition to the members of the Local Site Committee, the International Conference Committee includes two members of the Manchester (2011) Local Site Committee, the IPrA President and IPrA Secretary General, as well as a number of members of the IPrA Consultation Board: Charles ANTAKI (Loughborough, UK), Josie BERNICOT (Poitiers, France), Barbara BOKUS (Warsaw, Poland), Diana BOXER (Gainesvillle, USA), Winnie CHENG (Hong Kong, China), Anita FETZER (Würzburg, Germany), Janet HOLMES (Wellington, New Zealand), Sachiko IDE (Tokyo, Japan), Cornelia ILIE (Malmö, Sweden), Dennis KURZON (Haifa, Israel), Sophia MARMARIDOU (Athens, Greece), Rosina MARQUEZ REITER (Surrey,UK), Jacob MEY (Odense, Denmark), Maj-Britt MOSEGAARD HANSEN (Manchester, UK), Lynne MURPHY (University of Sussex), Neal NORRICK (Saarbrücken, Germany), Jan-Ola ÖSTMAN (Helsinki, Finland), Marina SBISÀ (Trieste, Italy), Jef VERSCHUEREN (University of Antwerp), Tuija VIRTANEN (Abo, F
inland), John WILSON (Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK)

Venue: INDIA HABITAT CENTRE, the premier state-of-the-art conference center in central New Delhi.
Click link for more information…
http://www.discourseanalysis.net/wiki.php?wiki=en%3A%3AEvents&id=709

Below are a few details about an intensive graduate course on reasoning to be held over one week at Lund University in Sweden.  Credits earned will be transferable, and there is a possibility that help with accommodations may be made available.

LUND UNIVERSITY
Reasoning, 7,5 ECTS
Lecturer: Frank Zenker
Course dates: One week (Mo-Fr 10-12 and 14-16) in autumn 2012. Enter your date preferences now:
http://www.doodle.com/8r8b6vaxbaqnt7iq
If you would like to take this course please get in touch with the instructor now. E-mail & webpage

Filed under: Connections, Seminar/Workshop/Program Announcements Tagged: cognitive psychology, Frank Zenker, graduate courses on reasoning, Lund University, philosophy ]]> http://railct.com/2012/05/05/graduate-course-on-reasoning-one-week-intensive-lund-autumn-2012/feed/ 0 Steve http://railct.com/2012/05/03/ailact-responds-to-peter-wood/ http://railct.com/2012/05/03/ailact-responds-to-peter-wood/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 22:07:46 +0000 Steve http://railct.com/?p=1464 ]]> Some RAIL readers may recall the fracas that developed between Peter Wood, of the NAS and AILACT around the end of 2011.  Unfortunately, it’s a fracas in which RAIL played a direct role–something I sincerely regret. Though I had written what I hoped was a moderate-in-tone post questioning Wood’s use of the term ‘critical thinking’ before this, it was a guest post by Don Lazere that really earned Wood’s anger in sufficient quantity for him to denounce both RAIL and AILACT in a post at the Chronicle of Higher Education website. Many members of AILACT, including myself, found Wood’s characterization of the organization and its conception of critical thinking in this post to be both unfair and inaccurate.  In order to respond to Wood’s charges, the Board of AILACT wrote the following reply, which appears in the organization’s April Newsletter.  It is reproduced here, in its entirety, by permission of the Board.  In addition to setting the record straight about AILACT and the sense of critical thinking it endorses, I hope that it sets the stage for a more constructive dialogue between AILACT and Wood, and with others who care about critical thinking and its place in higher education.

A Reply by the AILACT Board to Peter Wood’s CHE Comments on “Critical Thinking”

In posts under the Innovations section of the on-line Chronicle of Higher Education (Nov. 21 and Dec. 4, 2011), Peter Wood has decried certain trends in higher education and the teaching of humanities in particular which he believes have been touted as critical thinking by those advocating or participating in those trends. His statements in turn have prompted a protest from Don Lazere, a member of AILACT, that Dr. Wood has unfairly attacked critical thinking as understood and taught currently on college campuses in the United States or as it ideally should be taught. This has prompted an exchange in threads issuing from these blogs on the Chronicle website and in an exchange of e-mails on AILACT-D in which Dr. Wood and other members of AILACT have participated. These exchanges have led to a further blog by Dr. Wood (Jan. 6), dealing explicitly with the meaning of “critical thinking,” and an ensuing discussion thread. Since AILACT has been cited by name in these discussions, the Board feels it incumbent on them to reply.

The Board first notes and underscores that in both the Nov. 21 and Dec. 4 blogs, Dr. Wood has put “critical thinking” (or a cognate) in scare quotes. This should put the reader on notice that Dr. Wood is not attacking critical thinking as such, but what he regards as a distortion of critical thinking and the proper use of the term. The context of Dr. Wood’s use of “critical thinking” in his Nov. 21 blog is a protest against what he perceives as the loss of required study of the core texts of Western civilization in the current undergraduate humanities curriculum. Indeed, his outcry goes further, protesting losing the sense that we have lost anything important from our intellectual heritage. In this context, Dr. Wood remarks, “The stance of generalized antagonism to the whole of Western civilization and the elevation of ‘critical thinking’ in the sense of facile reductionism (everything at bottom is about race-gender-class hierarchy) makes the university function more and more as our society’ [sic] chief source of anti-intellectualism” (italics added).

Antagonism to Western civilization and an advocacy of race-gender-class power analysis as the proper method of doing critical thinking has nothing to do with critical thinking as understood by AILACT. To the contrary, should those advocating these positions formulate their views as propositional claims, those advocating critical thinking as AILACT understands it might be the first both to challenge them, by pointing out that they have incurred a burden of proof to defend these claims, and to furnish critical–i.e. logical and epistemological–tools for evaluating their arguments, should such arguments be forthcoming.

In his Dec. 4 blog, Dr. Wood is again concerned with the loss of regard for the intellectual tradition as having an integrity and with seeing it merely as “reducible to self-aggrandizing fantasies of the powerful.” He decries an education which would produce a “critical thinker” equipped “to take everything apart but not to put anything together.” Again, making such shallow thinkers is not a goal of critical thinking pedagogy and engaging in such shallow thinking is no part of critical thinking practice as conceived by AILACT. Indeed, proper
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instruction in critical thinking would aim for just the opposite. Suppose someone puts forward an argument that given certain reasons, some claim is acceptable, other things being equal. To evaluate critically whether this argument renders the claim acceptable, one must ask in particular whether other things really are equal, and this requires bringing one’s knowledge of potential rebuttals to bear on the evaluation, which certainly counts as putting things together. But maybe other things are equal. If a conclusion has been properly defended with argument, i.e. if the premises are justified and constitute relevant and sufficient grounds, the conclusion is acceptable. Critical thinking studies positive criteria of premise acceptability, relevance, and ground adequacy, not just reasons why an argument may be fallacious.

What then, in contrast to the misuse of “critical thinking” which Dr. Wood protests, is AILACT’s understanding of the term? This question has produced a posting of e-mails by some AILACT members to which Dr. Wood has responded in his Jan. 6 blog, where he contrasts “critical thinking” with genuine critical thinking going back in the Western tradition to Plato. Dr. Wood considers six characterizations of critical thinking which Bob Ennis has supplied, of which Dr. Ennis’ own–“reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do”–is a classic. Such reflective thinking includes not only considering whether a proposed claim or course of action requires explicit reasons for its justification but also, should reasons be forthcoming, whether they are good reasons. To be good, a reason must be acceptable–justified in the light of one’s evidence, relevant to the claim or action being defended, and together with the other acceptable and relevant reasons proffered, constitute grounds adequate to accept the claim or undertake the action. Dr. Ennis’ list includes two quotes from John Dewey, and Dr. Wood rightly perceives Dewey as an intellectual ancestor of the critical thinking movement as understood by AILACT.

This raises an interesting question. Assuming Dr. Wood is correct about usage, in light of how “critical thinking” is currently used at large in the academy, at least in the humanities outside philosophy, is AILACT’s use of the term, and its use in philosophy departments, idiosyncratic? Dr. Wood in effect makes this charge when he says “the AILACT folks on the whole seem to think that the term ‘critical thinking’ is the special province of philosophy departments and that it is irrelevant that the term is used in ways they don’t approve of in other university contexts.” There may be much truth in what Dr. Woods says here. But our usage may not be totally idiosyncratic. As Dr. Ennis observes, “critical thinking” could not be included in so many mission statements if it meant what Dr. Wood sees it as meaning. Of course, what a mission statement says and how that mission is put into effect may be two totally different things.  But even if our usage is idiosyncratic, it does not follow that members of AILACT wilfully disregard the use of “critical thinking” in other areas of academia. Disciplinarity sets boundaries, and those in one discipline need not be much aware of what goes on in others. But surely each discipline has the right to identify one of multiple meanings a term may have as the meaning of the term within that discipline.  A fortiori, it has this right if the meaning it identifies as its own has had a significant use in the past and alternative meanings are arguably misappropriations of the term.  “Argument” from the point of view of logic has nothing to do with barroom brawls. This is a point to make on the first day of logic class. We may thank Dr.

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Wood for showing that teachers of philosophy courses dealing with critical thinking should make an analogous point concerning “critical thinking.”

In this connection, we protest a comment Dr. Wood makes about members of AILACT, which even he feels may be unfair. Members of AILACT, together with other members of philosophy departments, may be an island in a relativist or postmodernist sea. But, given Dr. Ennis’ definition of critical thinking and our explication of reflective thinking, we are at a loss to see how this makes us leftists. Likewise neither are we blithely ignorant of facts–even facts about the corrupt uses of “critical thinking” (witness Dr. Lazere’s reply to Dr. Wood in the comments to his Jan. 6 blog) nor do we carry out our research into the theory and pedagogy of critical thinking in the spirit of “congratulating one another on [our] insights into the theory of critical thinking.” As scholars, we are concerned with facts pertinent to our discipline and subject our research to peer review.

We must also respond to some comments Dr. Wood makes about critical thinking and general education in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Dr. Wood agrees that the original intent to require instruction in critical thinking understood as logic and argumentation was good. The problem is that whenever a good thing comes along, a bad corruption may not be far behind. In the early 1980s, members of the critical thinking community recognized a serious threat in the proliferation of “quick fix” solutions–Critical thinking in 15 easy steps! Make your students critical thinkers in 10 hour-long lessons!–being marketed especially for the pre-college level. Now, as is generally recognized in academe, departments are under pressure to increase enrollments. If critical thinking is made a requirement, then let’s get a share of the students. Don’t we all teach critical thinking? It is this, together with a zeitgeist of relativism, postmodernism, and reductionism, which should be blamed for the corruption of “critical thinking,” not advocacy for making critical thinking a general education requirement.

In summary, Dr. Wood has made it clear that there are at least two radically different senses of “critical thinking.” He deplores critical thinking in one sense, which he regards as the current predominantly used sense in college humanities departments; he accepts and endorses the other. We regret that some members of AILACT have failed to see that Dr. Wood’s critique was directed to this stereotypical sense of “critical thinking,” which we regard as atypical of how the term has been used historically but which reflects the postmodernism of certain areas in the academy. But we strongly maintain that it is critical thinking as denoted by the second and historical sense that AILACT advocates. If anything, Dr. Wood has taught us that when the occasion is appropriate, we should highlight these two senses, disassociate ourselves from the first, and make it clear that we are concerned with what the second identifies. We only ask in return that when Dr. Wood criticizes “critical thinking,” he make clear that it is not the activities denoted by the historical–and we claim standard–sense, which we emphatically assert to be our sense, which is under his attack.

Writers Jim Cooke and elenabo/Shutterstock use a disquotational appeal to truth:

You know how you can tell that black people are still oppressed? Because black people are still oppressed.

The evidence is overwhelming.  Even if it were not, irony takes a delicate hand and is almost impossible to deliver from a position of privilege.

Their anger is inspiring but humour is difficult to think about critically.  Many of us have no understanding of how it works and why what seems to be a simple pleasure can cause so much harm.  Perhaps that is as important a subject for teaching critical thinking as argumentation?  Humour can be a hindrance or boon, and understanding the reasoning it involves may help us use it better.