(Ep. 6) The Analysis of Reasoning: Prior Questions & Complex Interdisciplinary Questions

hello I'm Linda Elder I'm here with my colleague Dr Gerald noich we are with the foundation for critical thinking which is a 50c 501c3 nonprofit organization in we are based in California and in this series we're focused on the analysis of reasoning going deeper in this part of the series series in the series we're focused on questions and in this particular session we're going to focus on identifying prior questions and talking about why that's important and and focusing on and and unpacking complex interdisciplinary questions and if we have time we'll go further but we'll start

there so if I could I'll just explain for a couple of minutes what identifying prior questions means but first let me say hello Gerald all right Linda good to be with you again talk about questions yes very good we do we do tend to launch right in so um we are when we are when we're focusing on questions again there are many ways in which we can use questions to enter problems and issues so we can so we've been exploring those in this series and one way is by taking a question that is that is

in in itself complex and therefore it contains questions that you would have to answer before you could answer that let us say final question and let me let's say remind us that it is it is through questions that we have guides for our thinking so so the better we are at unpacking the questions and in this case coming up with the questions we would need to ask before we could answer the real question we want to ask um so we we need to so we need some experience in this and so let's start with the

question what is history we actually have this example in our the art of asking essential questions guide so what is history let's say we're asking that question well let's say we're at a a party if you can imagine and somebody starts talking about history and somebody says well what is history so to answer that here are some questions we would would need to answer first to what extent do all historians share the same goal so when we ask what is history we're asking about historians as well because historians write history is it possible to include

all relevant facts of the past in a history book now notice these are pretty simple and how many of the that is to answer in comparison to the main question which is complex how many of the events during a given time period are left out in the history of that time period is more left out than is included how does a historian know what to emphasize or you could say how does a historian decide what to emphasize can historical value judgments be objective what variables might influence a historian's viewpoint is it possible to Simply list

facts in a history book or does all history WR writing involve interpretations as well as facts how can we begin to evaluate a historical interpretation so if within every historical book we have historical interpretations not just facts then how do we evaluate that interpretation those interpretations and how do we begin to evaluate a historical point of view now note that the last couple of um questions are more complex than the first one so when you when we think about prior questions we we have to just say okay it's a it's a complex question that we're

focusing on and then we would ask what are all of the questions that we would have to answer before we could answer that and some of those questions will be let's say simple they'll be uh procedural questions there will be what we call category one questions questions of fact or judgment and many of these are and but some of them will also require reason judgment so some of them will be complex category what we call category three questions just a complex questions in which we have to reason within more than one point of view so

this is an example this is a starting place for our thinking so I I thought we could then Gerald we first of all would you like to comment on that uh well I I I wouldn't say we have to e explicate all the concepts that all the prior questions before we can address our the main question we're interested in but we want to explore at least the most important ones maybe explore them not definitively but just through the act of of the questions you for example you just read about history just for the EXA for

the example of contemplating those thinking about those for a while the difference between facts and interpretation of the facts what's left out what's included how does a historian decide what just by thinking about those for a while it starts to both clarify our view of history and also complexify our view of what history is and I think both of those are advantageous because very often people's pronouncements about history I'm not speaking of historians now but people's ordinary pronouncements of History are very simple oneoff kinds of responses and this this points to a great deal of

the complexity about what we know about the past so yeah so I'm uh agreeing with you completely and it just seems to me to be it it seems to me to be uh necessary much of the time for us to explore prior questions if we really want to have a good sound answer maybe not a definitive one again but a good sound answer to a main question we want to be asking um so an examp for for me an example might be a question uh instructors teachers often ask and what should I do to teach

my class better um and uh just as a a very natural way I could Wonder well what exactly is teaching what do I mean by teaching exactly and then I would say well it's correlated with learning so what's my concept of learning and how teaching and learning fit together and once I start doing that I I at least off the top of my head right now think that if there's teaching but there isn't there's an act like teaching but there isn't any learning going on then I'm not at all sure it well he counts as

teaching so if I lecture the whole time and my students are not understanding what it is saying I can call that teaching if I want but if there's no learning taking place then I'm not sure it is teaching I'm not saying it in a blaming way though I'm not saying that because I've had students who said who who have said you know it's your job to teach me it's not my job to work to think my way through these things and U so I I'm not embracing that view at all um but but in general

if the people can understand the language and if it's at the appropriate level and all then I want then I want to judge the extent to which I'm teaching well or the extent to which I should try different things in my teaching kind of to be correlated with my conception of what it is to learn something so that's seems to me to be a straightforward example of a prior question that I need to ask yes well you raise a number of uh interesting points there the first move that you made was to say we don't

necessarily need all of these PRI questions right and because if you let me just say this in my own words so then because if we take half of these seriously then we maybe also deal with the other half in the way that these particular ones are laid out of them these are somewhat saying the same thing in different ways but one of the things that's that's so fascinating about questions is that we can begin to we can begin to articulate the question we can say okay we basically know what the questions are but but we

don't necessarily explicitly State the questions that that are implied in the original question or let's say let's say we're dealing with a cluster of questions and we're not dealing with the cluster very well because we're not able to articulate the questions very well because we don't have any theory of questions so what I'm saying is we want a very rich developed theory of questions but then know that sometimes we we've done enough thinking it's it's in a similar in the similar way we can approach the elements of reasoning right so if we if we take

purpose and question and interpretation seriously well maybe that's all we need right now because we've we've we've we've clarified the purpose which was really our problem and then everything fell into place you see so it's like what we're doing is we're building our toolbox and you're saying yeah and we don't necessarily need all those tools every time right but what we do have to do is we we have to make sure that we're adequately addressing the issue right and uh and with respect to history I'm thinking there's something uh there's a what seems to me

initially to be something like a second step in it because all all major historians that I know of all reput a historians confront the question how do I select what to present and what filters am I using to decide what to present and in what light and from what point of view so I think they they think there's a there's a standard that's in the preface of almost any well done history book that says something like that but then there's there's another step and my impression is that uh many historians don't consider it so they're

saying here's the fil I use or here's the point of view I use to decide what to include and what not but then they don't seem to ask what's another point of view I could use or how would this look from a very different Vantage Point um a different historical Vantage Point meaning a historian's vantage point um uh so that yeah so Marxist historians there's any number of them who are just really excellent um approach things from a more or less Marx Marxist kind of point of view and they're they own that they say it

straight out straightforwardly so that you as a as a way of guiding the reader to what they're planning to do what their purpose is but then they don't often ask well what would this look like from a different non-marxist point of view right so um yes so this th this this this uh illuminates that the fact that we though there are highly skilled historians and psychologists and professionals and thinkers in every field it doesn't follow that they're using the toolbox of critical thinking that we are advocating right right and um what we're AR one thing

we're arguing is that if we all use the tools more often our thinking will be at a much higher level right right and these are examples of how we can uh enter a question right and you see if you if you take the um and by the way your ex wait a minute your example of the Marxist theory theoreticians what what people one of the things that people do is they'll say I'm thinking as well as I can within this point of view uhuh they're not necessarily saying that explicitly but they're but they are as

you say often doing that but then what is being left out of that argument right and as you say what point of view is is not being considered yeah and so like take what is history this is this is a good question for us in the United States because we have brushed a lot of our history under the rug and it it's keeps trying to come out and we keep trying to brush it back under so when I was a child there was no the the textbooks didn't even pretend to even be trying to be

even-handed with things like how we treated black uh just the African American in our history and that was just not there was no apology just that's it you know you just we didn't hear about it we didn't read we of course there were little Snippets right but now people are saying that's not good enough right I'm I'm struck by the difference between the way uh Elementary School teachers in excuse not teachers Elementary School students in New York versus Elementary School students in Louisiana the striking difference there is in their treatment of slavery I mean in

the the history books for elementary school or high school students in Louisiana there's a very small section on slavery and in New York a paragraph yeah yeah so they could say well we've included it but uh in New York it's gone into quite extensively maybe not extensively as extensively as it occurred but but another good example one that often comes to my mind is about uh when even when I was a graduate student I read a lot of history and I read a lot of American History so I read about the American Revolution and and

uh I thought I knew about it and the historians spoke as if they knew about it and it took it took a while before it came out that there are no women in American history there were no women they're not mentioned at all and I actually then went back and read history books about the American Revolution I mean there are a few Betsy Ross and Dolly Madison but they're just mentioned in passing I went back and read some women historians from before 1960 say and they also don't seem to notice that the women are missing

that is the this mainstream way of doing history um just leaves out a significant 50% of the population and another example is that it's not until the 1950s that historians began to notice people other than government leaders right like uh farmers and ordinary people as they go about their business that was a big discovery of that they'd been missing all of this time so it's amazing to me often how we can Overlook such things and there's a sense in which there that that's a strong part of the prior questions who should our history right be

be describing um right right I mean what is history if we we look at it can seem sort of as I said it can be taken superficially and what we're trying to show is how complex it really is with the questions that we asked right and by the way way your example that you gave about teaching is related to another question that we could ask which is let's just let's just say what is education so if we ask if that's our main question what is education then what questions would we have to ask to answer

that so do now we're for the audience so you know this is not rehearsed as you can all right and so we're going to just explore this and see how we do with this so what is education so I can think of a few would you like to well I I I would think we'd have to be clear about what the main purpose of Education or the main purposes main goals of Education are um as at least one of the moves in there um okay so what is the purpose of Education or what are the

purposes of Education I was afraid you going to ask that Linda I was just I was asking the question pardon I said I was afraid you were gonna ask me that one no no I was just I'm just clarifying I'm clarifying your questions yeah no all we're doing is asking the questions we're not obliged to answer them just at the moment so then the another question could would be what is the opposite of Education or what is not education or what is what is not education but is often confused as education right right yeah that's

a very nice question I I'd never thought of that one before what's what's not education yeah um yeah um to revert to something else um we often talk about SEI State elaborate Give an example and an illustration and I'll often add to that give a not just give an example give a contrasting example something that's not in the category you're trying to Define but is often thought of as being in the category you're trying to Define that is what's a contrasting example of teaching or in this case of Education um and uh yeah and there

there are several different varieties as I'm thinking about it but very nice yes so what is the question that you're thinking of um that would be a prior question here um the question is I was really just hallucinating what you were saying that is contrasting example of Education yes exactly exactly okay that's okay so so then we could say to bring in some contrasting Concepts we could say what is the difference between or what are the differences or let's just say what is the difference between Education and Training right these are some that we often

use in our work with with Educators what is the difference between education and socialization right what is the difference between education and IND ration right right because those are not education but they appear as they they're fa similes they're they um they're fake but they appear real right yeah especially with indoctrination I I would say right training sometimes can be educ part of Education um yeah that you're right and the socialization is in there but there what what is what what is not understood is that in schooling indoctrination historically has been the rule yeah not

not the exception right right so we mainly want people to still believe the beliefs that right he believe so that that's just we sort of want we want students to do as we do through sort of through osmosis or something like that and don't question right this is why critical thinking has um such a difficult time in the lower grades and because the parents really want their children to think critically of course many do but many don't right and so and then so in other words if we're really asking a child to think critically about

something what are the implications of our opening the child's mind in a setting which doesn't allow for it right and sometimes people will uh oppose the critical thinking by by kind of unconsciously but biasedly choosing examples like uh should you be questioning your family's values and many parents are against teaching children to question their family's values and I think that when they say that they're thinking about their own values and that they don't want their children to be questioning their own values but they do want children to be questioning the values of their abusive parents

or their alcoholic parents or their or their P parents who engage in want to engage in violence so if I only think if I only think about my values and I don't want my child to be questioning my values I'm often not considering the range of values there is in families and how I do want children to think about those and to question those so there's a selective quality of choosing the examples that lead my thinking well it's it's true that to the degree that we that we cultivate critical thinking anywhere in human societies it

tends to be According to some purpose and within some framework within some box right so do do companies really want their employees to be thinking critically in a full sense right and so that's why I a question like what is education like a like what is history is a very important question and so if you let's just say if you are a teacher and you have never asked the question what is education right then you you should be doing that you should be you are by implication saying I am educated I am an educator and

if you say that you should have you should have great justification behind that should be able to State elaborate exemplify all the things that you do to advance that so um so these are some questions we can ask when we're focusing on a question like what is education right and you could say is it possible to educate people in today's world something like that is is it possible is it possible to now that that may not be a prior question but if let's just say what maybe what is education is our first question and the

question I'm asking is is it possible for me to educate myself can I be self-educated yeah not necessar completely though right um well I'm I'm just kind of keeping it open right I don't know that I mean is if you say when when I was thinking about self-education you see I don't know self-education is a um not it's not clear what that necessarily means in a context because everyone has been taught by others yeah right so even if you haven't it means you haven't been to school to a certain degree right but if you really

press on that self-education pretty soon you get to people that taught you so therefore um it's term self-education we have to be clear about what we mean there would it mean that you don't read any any books for no I think no I think well that would be so so we take self-education now we're asking what is what is mean to be self-educated so we're taking a prior question then we're coming up with prior questions that question so um would is it so so would is it possible to become self-educated without reading any books and

I I'm we're not we're not necessarily answering these questions but I'm tempted to answer that one because I I don't see how you really could um right I don't see how you could be self you can be self-trained and many people are many people have they they don't they haven't been to that many years of school but they have a lot of skills within a Terrain but that is not the same as being an educated person right right and uh yeah I I mean I think I mean I said books but clearly doesn't need to

be books because there are societies where people did not have literate skills and there were still many people who were there were people there who were critical thinkers and who might be called self-taught I mean Socrates comes to mind uh uh he's not exactly selftaught he he's read these other philosophers but but even in societies where there aren't any books there are critical thinkers and I I think but they're not going to be self-taught they're going to learn things from Elders from people they interact with from things that they hear so it's not always just

going to be books of course I just happen to say books um well the important thing is the exposure to the ideas yeah right right and we tend to get the ideas through books because the ideas of a great thinker are captured within the book and if that comes down to us another way then it's going to be getting diluted most likely and so First Source is always important and one thing that's really missing in our schooling process is the importance of going to those those early sources and those first voices well let me say

that our our topic is uh the general topic we began with is the topic of Prior questions in general we've been going through several examples of them but it just occurred to me as we were going through this that we have ex we have ready examples of Prior questions that are always relevant uh uh and that is questions having to do with the elements of reasoning and the standards of critical thinking so if I'm wondering what is education a good prior question to me for me to be asking is what are my assumptions about education

or what's the purpose of Education or what are the implications and consequences of being educated or not and am I and to go to the standards am I being clear about what education is how specific am I being about what it is to be educated but the the great thing about the elements and the standards is that they apply everywhere and so those I think are good prior questions always to be asking that's a that's the cheater move right I mean that if we if we know if we've internalized this other Theory this primary Theory

and we can say well what is the purpose of History what what questions do historians ask right how do they use the information what kinds of information do they use so you're right that's exactly right and um some of those were built into some of the questions that I asked right but then we also need to be able to contextualize right to the to the specific we always do I think right yeah so I hope that what we've been able to do is to point out the importance of taking a question and which is complex

and and and opening it up by asking questions that once you answered those you would then be in a good position to ask your original question or answer it rather and so so some of the questions that you gave you you you just gave a number of you added to the list so one of the questions that came from that is for me what is a reason reable conception of [Music] education and what is the relationship between education and critical [Music] thinking do you have to be a critical thinker to be educated yeah educated to

be a critical thinker uh I'm not with the first one that seems to me clearly yes that to use the word reasonable to a reasonable extent you need to be critical a critical thinker in order to be educated that is you have to question what you read you have to question what comes from sources you have to you have to think about so what are the con quences of this what are what are what are the consequences for this that I'm not seeing what points of view should I consider if you're not doing any of

that I'm not saying you have to do all of that to be educated um but but if you're not doing any of that then it's hard for me to see how you're being educated you're being kind of programmed in a way if you're not if you're not asking any of those that is the information is going into you or the or the the principles are going into you but you're not seeing how they work out you're not reflecting on them at all so I'm trying to figure out how someone else might come to this reality

without having or this question without having the concept of critical thinking so one one prior question would be something like this what what are the skills of an educated person what are the dis dispositions of an educated person because if you under you see the skills some of them you were just focusing on the the skills of critical thinking if you if you understand the skills of an educated person then you will get it you'll you'll reach critical thinking right yeah I think so I was actually uh writing down I mean you you won't re

when I said you you'll reach it you'll touch it you won't necessarily you won't have the whole uh toolbox but you'll begin to see the connections right between critical thinking and the skills of an educated person right and I I think that Educators I'm kind of thinking of K through 12 but I think it applies to college and university as well uh I think that one of the main ways uh that aspects of critical thinking aspects of critical thinking are taught even by people people before critical thinking developed as a field uh or as an

area to explore is to ask students okay so you've just read this about history or about any Topic in the course about the Constitution about anything and you and the teacher then asks so how do you understand that how do you understand what's what's written there I mean how or how would you apply that in your life or uh where do you see examples of that so they're asking questions that provoke critical thinking um they don't necessarily step back from those questions so that the students learn to ask those questions themselves but the students are

engaging in some in critical thinking themselves even without critical thinking theory uh right course it and when I think back of who were my good teachers long before I there was any knowledge in me of critical thinking as an area um there was the teachers who did that um and uh they didn't always do that directly sometimes they would say okay I want you to read this book on the other side and write a report on the other side of this issue uh the other side from what I was right dating as a strien adolescent

or something um yes um so there so so teachers will often make these moves that is they're they're making a critical thinking move right but they don't necessarily they're not necessarily calling it that especially at that time right and then they're not necessarily seeing the bigger picture right of critical thinking right and and and by the way this is a really interesting discussion because if you look at if you if you take the question what is education and you say well let's just look it up in the dictionary well you're going to find connections to

what we've been talking about but it's going to be you know a paragraph It's how is how can you capture something like education in in right in a paragraph So or a few lines so what I'm saying is we're going to still need to to explore further to come up with let's say here's another way of asking the question what is an educated person how does an educated person behave differently from a person who is not educated or undereducated right or indoctrinated or just socialized Al because uneducated often has the connotation of just someone who

hasn't gone to school very much and that's not what you mean by itth right right so in any case this question is essential for all teachers to explore yeah now I'm going to just look up education in um just an online dictionary okay and because this well one of the things I'm reminding us that we're doing in this series is we're showing how you learn we're showing how we learn so we are in a discussion something comes up we're talking about prior questions but suddenly I I said something about the definition if you look it

up and then I said a few things in it so why not just look it up right now and bring this definition to the table so let just read the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge oh developing the powers of reasoning and judgment and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life Wow you see that that's going to require a lot of thinking to unpack that and then there are other uses so number two the act or process of imparting or acquiring particular knowledge or skills as for a profession so

you might somebody might say well how much knowledge do you really have in the field of X um number three a degree level or kind of schooling as in a university education or right or a K12 education the result produ number four the the result produced by instruction training or study as in to show one's education that's kind of an interesting one um then five the science or art of teaching or pedagogics um so so let's go back to the first one because that's the one that's the most relevant to this discussion as I understand

the concept what is education okay so it's again the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge developing the powers of reasoning and judgment oh and let's just focus on those two okay so the first one is focusing on acquiring general knowledge and of course this has been an argument that's been made for you know historically that that's that's a key to education and it cannot be denied that there's certain there's certain kinds of knowledge that we should all have but what can be debated is what that knowledge is and that's what we've never

really agreed upon but that's that's a big discussion so we could say if our if our question is what is education we can say if taking this part into account is there general knowledge that everyone needs to have to be an educated person if so what is that general knowledge isurity in that in that definition or is that yes that was the third part I didn't read okay okay I'll read it again to so because that there were three parts that was the first part acquiring general knowledge second part powers of reasoning and judgment developing

and the third generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life now mature life we'd have to look that up but um but to just focus on these first two parts so you could ask are there certain readings that everyone should um engage in critically and internalize that all of us should have as humans so for example you could say well should all humans read in the stoic philosophers um should all humans read Socrates apology and you could we can argue you know we know that people are going to argue this back and forth

but what we can do is ask the question should we have general knowledge and if so from we're going to have this and we realize we're going to have to decide what it is and when we make that move we need to make sure that it's a reasonable move in other words that we come up with reasonable answers to that but it's messy you see that's that's that's one of the purposes again of this series is to show that reasoning is sometimes just just it's it's going to be complicated now the second part of this

developing the powers of reasoning and judgement well welcome critical thinking so that's that's really that that gives an interest to the the entirity of critical thinking as I understand the theory or as I conceptualize it right because we can find if we have reasoning we have critical reasoning judgment has to do with the criteria so there you have it so this to to um what I what I want to say is that we have complex questions facing us and right now as humans we're not thinking very well about those and um prior questions is one

way in so here's the question let me just list every single question I would have to answer to answer that question I know I'm going to off I'm going to have some offshoots and maybe I'm going to get a little bit off because I came up with a question that wasn't exactly relevant but it's hey it's a question I thought of in this process I'll bring this over here right so we don't say hey that's not relevant Linda so kick that out well maybe it's more significant though than some of these others right that's yeah

so then let's if we could just for a few minutes turn turn to uh asking complex interdisciplinary questions because these two are related right now what basically this Theory it it basically says that when you have a complex question obviously we know we have to consider multiple points of view that we realize so how do we how do we enter that how do we what does that really mean for a given question so what it means is that there are domains Within every complex question that we have to reason within so for example if we

have a given question we can ask does this have a biological component does this have a conceptual component does this have a political component does this have an ethical Dimension what are the dimensions and some of these dimensions are going to overlap right so if we take for instance in our think in our asking essential questions guide we have the example what can be done about the number of people who abuse illegal drugs and we could take that question and we can treat it as as as in terms of Prior questions in other words we

can say okay what questions would you have to answer to answer that right another way in is because we know that there this is going to involve multiple domains of thought we we can first identify those domains or we can just list the questions and figure out what the domains are after we list the questions so for example we know that if we ask a question what can be done about the number of people who abuse illegal drugs we know that there is an economic Dimension to that right so we can ask what economic forces

support drug use and what can be done to minimize the influence of involved in the drug culture so these are some this is a beginning place and then we know there's going to be a political Dimension right what possible solutions to drug abuse are politically acceptable are there any politically I'm sorry are there any potential politically realistic solutions to what extent does the political structure exacerbate the problem this is again just giving a a few questions in each category to show that you have these dimensions and now we can begin to see the complexities then

we have a social or sociological Dimension what social structures and practices support this drug abuse how does gang membership contribute to this problem Etc um then there's a psychological Dimension right right how do Factor such as stress individual personality differences in childhood traumas support drug abuse what if Ro of any does human irrationality play in drug abuse and then we have a biological Dimension what do genetic how do genetics play a role if they do in drug abuse then we have an educational Dimension because we know that we're going to have to have education to

diminish the problem so what can educational institutions do to reduce the incidence of drug abuse what role are they now playing to support or diminish the problem right right and for example you can say our our education is education um leading to or let's say the lack of Education leading to people becoming um disconnected from the community Etc you see so there are obviously other questions we can ask there's going to be potentially a religious Dimension uh what can religious institutions do to reduce the incidence of drug abuse what role are they playing now with

regard to the problem and then there's a cultural Dimension so we have economic political sociological psychological biological educational religious cultural and maybe more and just a couple of examples in each one and so you see I think this way of um approaching questions is very powerful because for example so if I understand this if I just understand the structure then I can take a question like what can be done about the problem of sustainability of the Earth's resources that's a very broad question very complex so is there going to be an economic Dimension is there

going to be a political Dimension sociological psychological bi biological maybe all of these will apply but you know we'd have to tweak it so if I know if I understand this that there are these complexities then I can when I'm dealing with a complex question I can immediately know Linda this is going to be hard so you're going to have so how do we bring peace to the world how do we stop having Wars that question has many uh prior questions implicit in it and many domains that we would have to think well within right

we'd have to use critical reason within all of these right so now what we're doing as humans is we are thinking critically within some of these right but we've got to do it within all of the dimensions that are contained in the question now I will pause and allow you Gerald to jump in I'm I'm uneasy about it I I I I get the spirit of what you're saying and I agree with the spirit of it but I wouldn't want the complexity of such a question or the multiple the number of multiple perspectives that are

involved in it to get in the way of acting on the question in so far as we have knowledge or understanding in this domain or in that domain we have a number of of things that we can do to make uh agriculture more sustainable to their ways of uh addressing uh addressing drug abuse that illegal drug abuse and legal drug abuse they are ways that work to a certain extent on some of those people and if and so I wouldn't want there's a way in which I if if I see this multiplicity of Dimensions I

I'm tempted to throw up my hands and say say I'm never going to think my way through all of that what's the use I think I'm going to go I'm going to go play chess um um and uh that's that's what I I want to guard against there's there's not a necessity of answering of everything of answering everything or if if if uh if if quantifying in here makes any sense at all there's not even any likelihood that I'm going to address 90% of the major question in any kind of adequate way so um I

wouldn't want the complexity to get in the way of measures that are based on partial or some dimensional knowledge um that have been shown to be effective okay now we can agree and then we can disagree we can agree with on part of this and disagree on part of this so obviously I agree on the part where we can wherever we can make moves that have the effectiveness we should make those moves so let's say I'm a psychologist and all I can do with is deal with the psychological Dimension but let's say I can I

can do that and I can it will help and maybe it will help significantly but on the other hand a question the question at issue determines the thinking we have to do to answer the question and these are not these these questions are not just you know made up and thrown in these are questions that are relevant to answering the first question so take sustainability it's a perfect example people are doing a lot of excellent things right now to in the green economy and in the green movement but we're we still may lose the war

because if our thinking is not good enough if we're not making enough of the Right Moves then what does that mean for the future of the planet and we are in big trouble right now let's hope that somebody's listening to this 100 years going haha I'm glad they I mean we've figured all these things out since you know since they died and they're gone but we've now gotten a lot smarter and we figured these things out now this for example take the political Dimension the political Dimension and the economic Dimension are both getting in the

way of addressing sustainability to a considerable degree and if we don't if we continue to allow the economics to be as they are then we will not be able to beat this um timeline that we're facing you see so the question itself determines the thinking that you have to do you can decide whether to answer the question or not but in the end it the question will determine what what the thinking is and um and I would I would not say it that way I would say um that it's not that the question determines what

I have to do or the further questions that I have to address I would say the question plus that what can I call it the intractability of the world determines the questions I need to answer that is there's a lot if I say if I say for instance that um to address the problems of sustainability there has to be a massive economic reform of the way the world functions I believe that something like that is true but I also believe that the chances of having a massive economic reform of the way the world f functions

financially is not if it's achievable it's not going to be achievable in the next hundred years so there's a way which I'm I'm not saying that absolutely but that so there's a way which I if I focus on the economic element or large scale reform I'm cutting out uh a lot of the success that we can have um well we agree on that yeah that's that we agree on right yeah and I don't I don't think that we actually disagree I think the right um the question does lay out the intellectual tasks that are required

of us but we can we can answer that partially and that's what you're saying don't don't just throw everything Outland if you can't just have the partial I'll take the partial right trust me that that that's fine but it what critical thinking does is it it should it does provide the tools for us to reach these higher levels right that yeah yeah and that's what we need to be able to see and so then if we say for example right now there's a war that's just been started and it's in the Ukraine and if we

ask what how should Ukraine position itself in the world to be safe to answer that question you have to take into account that Russia is right there and Russia wants Ukraine and Russia is huge and R and Ukraine is Tiny and and so if you have a bully that's right beside you and you can't do anything about this it's just it just is the fact that this this this bully is there are you going to are you going to um how are you going to position yourself to be safe and maybe you have to do

things you don't want to do right you have to give things up you're not you would prefer not to give up because this is the real world so I think that we do agree too right so we we tend to do that we have we sometimes feel like it's a bit of a disagreement but it's really not and that's again one of the beauties of this process because we show how much is involved in working through these complexities yes yeah very much so right right and so then now we could come up with other examples

but I think we've given the main idea behind prior questions and interdis Ary questions and then both of these are basically dealing with complex questions and a ways to unpack them right and and so if you're if you're facing a complex problem in your life you should know that it's got multiple domains right so let's take what what would it do what what would it take to be a good parent that's multiple domains right so you can you can be very good in this like you could be very good at being a little kid parent

like you're very good with the little tiny ones right but as soon as they become teenagers and you're you just rather not be a parent and I'm sure that there are mobile people that can relate to that yeah so because you're it sort of this part seems easy and this is more more complex so that's an example and so to be a good parent you have to think well within multiple domains right and so you have to think well about the child's education you have to think well about your own thinking critical thinking you you

have to be a critical thinker and and you have to think well about their diet right I mean everything about the child you you got to be a doctor you've got to be a nurse you've got to be you so you got to think within all of these domains and then if they if they want to be an athlete then you have to be you have to think athletically along with them in so far as you can and um if they want to be a musician then you've got to help them you've got to learn

something about the process of being a musician and so that parenting is a good example because you never quite as soon as you figure one thing out like one part of life one time in life once you figure that time out like okay I finally got figured out what it takes to take to deal with a three-year-old then they're four and then as you figure out what you know how to be a good four-year-old parent then they're five right and that keeps so that's a yeah it's a nice it's a nice example I live I

live with my two-year-old granddaughter who's just turned two and she's turned from being a docile smiling accepting person to someone who is how can I put it politely not so docel not so accept not so smiling but but I'm aware of all of the psychological literature that talks about the terrible twos and the changes that take place toward Independence but when my own son turned to I wasn't aware of that at all and it just seemed like he's changed completely and he's never going to go back to being accepting or smiling or or or docel

and of course that wasn't true and I didn't learn about the terrible twos until he was almost three but so it shows how having a perspective and getting the knowledge and understanding that comes from that perspective can change everything it would have it would have lessened my anxiety tremendously to think oh this is this is a part of what you have to go through to grow up and uh and I didn't know that that that's interesting that that shows you how like if you were thinking of minimal amounts of knowledge for parenting right we were

talking about that before well one thing would be to understand the terrible toes right and then connected to that understand the teenage years right that's right the terrible twos the reason why that's so important is Because unless you are a very good parent you will make a lot of mistakes in that time period right because you will misunderstand the child repeatedly yeah the child is simply trying to see how to get power they're G do all kinds of things that just drive you you know and so you have to that I think that's when those

of us who have been parents that's when you really look at yourself in the mirror and you say okay what kind of person am I going to be because you know they're there some are harder than others right and uh yeah e and even uh it it strikes me that even that small amount of knowledge uh the terrible twos um if I can say this it doesn't actually have to be completely accurate that is it helpful without it I mean if I read psychologists now who said this is greatly exaggerated and some children go through

it this time some go through it at other times I'm I'm pretending all of this is true but it seems very likely to be so that there are all these disagreements about this kind of phase that goes on but just just that just the perspective it gives me independent of its complete accuracy gave me a peace of mind gives me a peace of mind to see this through to the other side so um yes and that that I was thinking when I said terrible twos I was thinking that I think of that as a broad

range right you know it can go up to five it can go further it's it's it's really a need for power right humans have that great need for power if we can learn to get to to get and to use power appropriately in in the childhood era we're a lot better off and that takes a lot of skilled parenting especially when you have certain very difficult children right so yeah the term terrible toos resonates with me strongly because with my son all those years ago on his second birthday is when he changed he just said

no no so it just came as a complete sh shock to me so um that's not my granddaughter yes so I hope that this has been uh productive and helpful to for those of you who are with us and let me let me give a kind of homework assignment then to take a question that that you think is important and this could be in your field it can be if I'm if I teach psychology it can be what is psychology and then just list the questions I would have to answer before I answered that question

and that actually prepares me for a Socratic dialogue in class and that's one homework assignment another is to take another question and to figure out the domains embedded in the question and again go to our um asking essential questions guide our section on interdisciplinary questions asking complex interdisciplinary questions for uh assistance with that and just practice this because what I think again is by going through the practice what we see is that when we are faced with a problem like sustainability then we can read see this is going to be complex so what are we

missing here for example one thing that we're missing is and in in terms of sustainability is although there is some there's some collaboration among among groups we need much more collaboration among all of these groups that have the same agendas and we need to use our power together collectively so when we so we could we could it let's say we can figure out the domains embedded in the question and then we can say well you know we're not tuning too poorly on this particular part but here we're just totally missing the boat and that's um

one of the powerful things that you get out of this process yeah and and and for me a part of that question about sustainability but the parts of It's actually an aspect of all the other complex questions I can think about is a question like what are the costs or what are the implications and consequences or what are the negative implications and consequences that I'm not thinking of because I'm focused so much on the positive implications and consequences for instance about sustainability I've read I'm not vouching for it though but I've read that what it

does is it cuts down on the amount of agricultural produce in a major way that might be fine but it then has negative consequences for uh for poorer people in various countries in the world so uh I don't want to just focus on the on the benefits of something I also want to focus on possible negative consequence and then weigh one against the other right yes yes and so again that's I was looking at the the categories that would come up under political so we could see that we would we would ask questions that had

to do with equality across the world right right so thank you Gerald for this yeah Lively discussion very pleasurable and and uh intriguing and intellectually enlightened right so uh for all of you who are have been with us thank you we'll see you at our next uh podcast and we'll say goodbye goodbye