Many of us teach service courses called “Critical Thinking” in our colleges and universities. Exactly what ‘critical thinking’ means, however, is and has been the source of much vexation. Reading this blog post by neuroscience researcher and popularizer Jonah Lehrer put me in mind of a discussion I’ve sometimes heard bits and pieces of in this context: on whether and how critical thinking bears any relation to creative thinking.
Broadly speaking I’d suppose that most people understand critical thinking as a br0adly analytical enterprise. Whether one is extracting an argument for evaluation, analyzing a discussion according to pragma-dialectic rules or critiquing a speech according to rhetorical canons of interpretation, the effort seems to be one in which the task is to “look underneath” the surface phenomenon of the linguistic artifact (the argument or dialogue as it is found “naturally”, in its own discursive “habitat”, say) to structural, prescriptive, and other such properties. Creative thinking seems less to be about analyzing images or bits of text, and more about the realization of hitherto un-thought-of possibilities that arise from them, or perhaps about the ability to associate freely between different sorts of families of word or image.
It would be easy to pigeonhole critical thinking and creative thinking into wholly different mindsets by saying that critical thinking is about analysis and creative thinking is about expression, but I think this would be misleading. Critical thinkers learn to prize clarity of expression and to be clear when the occasion requires it. Creative thinkers also engage in analysis, for example, in the visual analysis of whether a composition or a choice of color is apt given what the artist is trying to express. Despite the apparent differences, I’m inclined to think that creative and critical thinking aren’t wholly disparate. Important to both, for example, is the ability to resist framing problems and other dynamics that artificially close off avenues of interpretation or understanding. Both, I think, also require the development of character traits like intellectual independence. Certainly neither is possible without a good deal of open-mindedness. Freedom of thought and expression seems essential for developing both sets of skills too.
This is not to say that we can collapse the two. I don’t think we can or should. I do think, however, that it might be interesting from a pedagogical point of view to consider what critical thinking would look like if taught from a creative perspective, and vice versa. What kind of classroom environment would best combine both? What skills, ideally, would the student leave such a class with that he or she doesn’t leave a critical thinking class with now?
Though I am here thinking mostly of pedagogical concerns, I can’t help but wonder if thinking along these lines might not be helpful in sorting out the relationship between rhetoric and argumentation too.
RAIL 
I think that the dichotomy you’re appealing to here rests upon a questionable assumption: namely, that “critical thinking” is equivalent to ‘analytic thinking’. It is the idea that thinking critically is a matter of, at least, thinking with an analytic mindset which seems to put it at odds with creative thinking because of the implicit idea that there is an essentially ‘opening’ aspect to creative thinking. This is in the sense that creative thinking is been associated with day-dreaming and so on: the idea that allowing the mind to float and roam free is a necessary condition (and perhaps essential character) of creative thinking. However, that sort of non-restrictiveness is certainly not something one would normally associate with critical thinking, which requires focus, precision and so on.
I think it might be wrong to frame things this way because I see no good reason to say that ‘critical thinking’ is essentially analytic. Being analytic is one way of being critical but there are other ways. If an artist, poet, song-writer or philosopher sees the world with a different perspective then that can provide insight into whatever the topic is; that is, they provide a critical insight.
Such discussions also, in my opinion, bear a prejudice which comes out when one thinks of creativity as something which needs to be free from restrictions in order to flourish: namely, that a mode of thinking is more critical to the extent that one can control and direct that sort of thought. It is, I think, the idea that when we simply think then we are subject to prejudices, irrational beliefs and habits; but when we exercise conscious, reflective control of our faculties then we are able to over-ride or negate our own idiosyncrasies and ingrained modes of thought etc.
However, I don’t agree that this is necessarily the right view to take. The common basis for the assumption is obvious enough: we know that behaviours are often instinct-driven but is because because of our ability to reason that we can over-ride those instincts (or at least check them) and therefore act more in accordance with our best-interests (which aren’t always served by our instincts). The critical thought analogue of this is the idea that, as mentioned, reason enables us to take a more objective view of a topic. But while analytic thought does indeed help us filter out our own mental and attitudinal idiosyncrasies, it does not follow that this constitutes the only (or even the best) kind of Criticism available.
If the end goal of Criticism is to get at the truth (whatever that amounts to) then it seems quite natural to move from a claim about the filtering and objectifying nature of analytic thinking to the claim that such thinking is appropriate and most suited to Criticism. However, I’m not sure we can make that sort of claim without making the term “analytic criticism” redundant. There seems no wholly logical reason for thinking that the purpose (or, even, the only purpose) of criticism is to get at the truth. Consider that one can give criticism not to get at the truth but to correct behaviour; it is only in a roundabout way of speaking that we might say that such action is aimed at bringing behaviour in line with ‘true behaviour’. To suppose that behaviour is true or false is an obvious category mistake.
What is core here is the idea that behaviour falls in line with either expectations or that behaviour begins to be useful, in some respect.
It is the latter option which I think is relevant to my point: it is a purpose of Criticism to provide a useful perspective (through though or action) for introducing the possibility of change.
In this way I do indeed see people like artists as being engaged in critical thinking and critical action (with the former being a subset of the latter).
There is, of course, the issue of whether people who are creatively critical in this way are capable of being as self-critical as those who are critical in the analytic sense; i.e. are they able to provide sufficient impetus for change in their own view (rather than in others) on a topic? However, this goes back to what I’ve said earlier about self-direction. It is just a prejudice that critical thought needs to be self-directed and or self-controllable; the idea, again, is that it is this which frees us from our own instincts and tendencies and thus allows us to see, reach or know a more objective truth. However, why should the condition be that, necessarily, the critical thinking of S must make such things possible for S? Without the above prejudice there is no reason why it might be impossible for the critical thinking of S to make such things possible for S, and yet it make such things possible for R. As such, the idea is that essential to Criticism is not that it “provide a useful perspective (through though or action) for introducing the possibility of change” for, minimally, the person engaged in the criticism; rather, that it do so (or be aimed at doing so) for anyone and not necessarily the person engaged in the criticism.
Hey Luis,
Quick response for the moment: It’s not really my dichotomy. In fact I think I’m raising the possibility that the distinction isn’t hard and fast at all. Lehrer might have something like this in mind though. His post isn’t really clear as to whether he presumes a hard and fast dichotomy or something more like a sliding scale. If it’s the former then I don’t subscribe to his view (if that is his view)–I just noted his post as the thing that got me musing (daydreaming?) about this question today.
For my own part I’m not at all sure where to draw these lines. I’d probably want eventually to include a lot that probably isn’t prominently on anyone’s map just quite yet (e.g. the biases and heuristics program in psychology, and some of its applications in behavioral economics). That’s part of the excitement of argumentation theory right now, I think. It’s rich with lots of interesting ways of “cutting up the pie”.
Steve
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