(Ep. 1) The Analysis of Reasoning: Going Deeper - Analysis Overview

hello I am Linda Elder I here with my colleague Dr Gerald nosich hello Gerald hi Linda we are coming to you from the foundation for critical thinking which is a 501c3 nonprofit in California Gerald's coming from one part of California and I'm coming from another this is December 31st 2021 the last day of the year and we are focused on in this series on the analysis of thought specifically focusing on the elements of reasoning and we're going deeper we're going deeper beyond our introductory uh work in critical thinking and so we're glad that you're joining

us in this session we're going to focus on the concept of analysis itself and I would like like to just Begin by unpacking what I mean by that and then Gerald will join in as he will um so when we think of the analysis of reasoning we focus on what has come to be termed the elements of reasoning or the elements of thought or the parts of thinking there are other ways to say it these are the ones that we tend to use and it's important to understand that when we talk about the analysis of

thought we're talking about analysis in exactly that sense we're talking about analysis and relationship to reasoning and therefore we we can ask is are there other forms of analysis that go beyond or are different from reasoning or can be somehow separated from reasoning so we understand that if we if we're focusing on the analysis of thought we can immediately go to the elements of reason we know that we have a purpose we're asking questions we're using information we're making inferences based on our assumptions and the information and where that's leading us also uh informed by

and oriented by our point of view all of this leading to implications and consequences think I got them all so we have eight elements so that's that's once you really once you understand that then you can begin to apply the elements of reasoning wherever you have reasoning so then we ask well are there other uses of the term analysis that could be helpful and do all of them somehow connect to reasoning or just what and so we can and so so we know that if we look at a a good dictionary definition of analysis we

know that it means taking apart taking something apart looking at the parts of something so as I Was preparing for our discussion today I was thinking about well how well what what other things have parts and certain certain obvious things come to mind like the parts of an engine the parts of a tennis game uh the parts of a of a of an editorial and the parts can be thought of in general terms or in more specific terms so it could be General patterns in the way that we write then there can be specific uh

parts of of how a writer writes there so suddenly I've I've dived in and I'm thinking wait a minute maybe maybe we're asking the wrong question because maybe we should ask are there any things that we can talk about that don't have parts so for instance think of any anything that you can think of around your house so uh a book okay I've already said the book the book the the the the the um writing itself has parts and then the publishing of the book has parts and then a cell phone has parts and then

a pen has parts and and then you have a light that has parts and you have a scarf that has parts and you have a human body that has parts and you have an egg that has Parts suddenly everything's got parts and then so that's that's what sort of came to me and I I realized that I hadn't actually explored the concept of analysis before in this way I I was using the concept of analysis in these other intuitive ways but not thinking so much about the specific point that almost everything has Parts Gerald what

what what would you like to say there yeah yeah let me say something about analysis because I've been thinking about it um in the last couple of days since we were decided we were going to be talking about this and I'm thinking about it in a different but I think deeper way than the way I used to so whenever I talked about analysis before it was always in terms of the parts of something and that's because I'm cured to the elements of reasoning and the parts of reasoning that's in there but I think actually analysis

is used in two different ways they're related but there are two different ways one of those is analyze the is break something down into its parts okay um that's um if I do uh chemical analysis of a rock I'm I'm going to be enumerating the various molecules not the atoms but the molecules that constitute The Rock so it's a chemical analysis of a rock and I'm figuring out its parts so that's for inanimate natural objects but for other things for things that are uh either part of reasoning or the product of human thinking I I

think that the real question analysis is trying to answer is what's going on in this what's going on in this situation what's going on in this tennis game to use your example what's what's going on and then I go through the parts as an aid to figuring out what's going on in it if I analyze a poem it's not as if I'm just I'm gonna concentrate primarily what are the parts of the poem I'm going to be con I'm going to be focusing on how does the word choice fit with the meaning how does the

meter fit with the meaning so it's not just I'm going to be saying meter rhyme scheme and all those parts but how they fit together so that brings us naturally to the concept that we always use and that's the logic of so I think that the basic goal of analysis is to is to Enlighten us as to the logic of something to break it down not just into Parts but parts that are relevant to the logic of something and so what that means for me is that there's a there's the standard the critical thinking standard

intellectual standard of relevance that goes all the way through all our analysis and we just don't bring it to the Forefront of our mind because it's already embedded in the elements of reasoning but you can see it so suppose I'm analyzing my teaching so I'm going to give you a bad example now I'm analyzing my teaching and I'm saying well my purpose one of the elements of reasoning my purpose is to help my students think through issues in the subject matter in their life at to their best ability using the traits of a critical think

that's my purpose now you ask me what's an assumption I make about teaching and I say well an assumption is that I'm going to be paid at the end of each month okay that's an actual assumption but notice it doesn't fit with the purpose right doesn't fit with the purpose at all and so I would say well I went way off track I started on one thing so it's not just the parts it's the parts as interrelated to form a logic and uh that gives me a deeper insight into how I could how someone could

go wrong analyzing even using the elements of reasoning because you could have one thing in mind when you when you go through when you when you state your assumptions you can have something very different in mind when you state your goals or the implications and consequences you could be on a different attack so my thought up to this point is that there are two kinds of analysis one is where you're breaking something down into a into just its parts like the chemicals in a rock and the other one which involves reasoning either straightforwardly or implicitly

is I'm breaking things down into its parts in order to illuminate the logic of something okay so that's where I was but actually I actually went a step deeper than that even when I'm analyzing an inanimate natural object Like a Rock I'm actually using something like the logic of to guide me so suppose I'm analyzing a rock I break it down into its chemical elements right but if it were just an if I were just breaking a rock down into its parts I could say okay let me analyze the rock there's a left hand side

and there's the right hand side when I put them together I have the whole rock well I've broken it down into its parts but it's trivial it's unimportant because it doesn't have a goal in mind the way analis yes yes yes so notice relevant threads through everything but I mostly just take for granted that the relevance is in there but it isn't automatically in there a lots of times people analyze things and they go in different directions and I I can sometimes do that myself as well so uh so my conclusion so that goes to

uh one of the usual synonyms for calculus is analysis A lot of people refer to calculus as analysis but analysis really is the background Theory which makes which shows how it is that calculus works so notice it's not just calculating in calculus it's also understanding why I'm able to break things down into these infinitesimally small parts that means I'm Illuminating the logic of or think of analysis as in psycho analysis there I'm trying to figure out what's going on in me or with a client or something like that I'm not just looking at the parts

I'm looking at how these parts fit together in order to illuminate what's going on and maybe what's going what's going arai in this person's thinking or acting or feelings something like that anyhow that's my story what do you think there's a that's many stories in one so there are there are many ways to enter that and now you for one one thing that you were doing is you were showing the many ways in which if we understand the elements of reasoning the elements that exist in reasoning then we can uh do all kinds of things

with our thinking that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do just just as a summary of what you were saying and um you were G you gave a few examples which were very helpful and then you pointed out that even if you can identify things that are that seem to be uh connected to just looking at the parts in terms of analysis even then your your reasoning is you didn't I don't think you said always involved right but so that's so so that so that's I think what I'm looking for are let's say opposite cases

where some Paradigm case of something where yes you can connect it to reasoning because ultimately everything that we do connects to reasoning because you don't stop reasoning your reasoning is old always there it's always trying to help you figure things out so it's it's but but um what what what I'm what I'm thinking of is that we can command the elements of reasoning and use those well and that's that's that that's a direct way of entering a line of reasoning and right but then we can also enter even the elements by just looking at say

the parts where though the elements are there their their the immediate focus is on certain parts such as for example um let's say the let's take take if you can if you if you can imagine that every complex concept it it embodies a cluster of Concepts then I could say well what concepts are involved with or entailed in the concept of love then you're going to have to give me I'm going to say I want like I want uh con I want constellations I want there to be the center to be this the the core

idea and I want you to come out from that with other important ideas all of which interconnect and if I make and so one could be respect and one is consideration for the individual growth of the other person and you could name other Concepts so in this point we're not saying well we need all the elements of reasoning now we need your purpose you need your question no I'm saying I'm not focusing like that that right now I'm saying give me the concepts that you think are in involved in this other concept which is the

core concept and when you do that you're looking at you're using the term analysis in a slightly different way because you're saying no I want to analyze it from this perspective so let let me give you another example so if you are are analyzing um a a book that you're that you may want to read let us say Eric fr's escaped from Freedom now this is structured in a certain way I'm presuming so one thing I can do is I can open this up and I can look for the table of contents and I can

look at this book in accordance with that table of content thinking of each part as one of the parts of the whole so that's why I think we want to explore we we of course want to explore and are exploring more deeply in this series The Elements of reasoning but before we do I want to step back from that and ask well are we first clear about the different primary forms of analysis and you you've named the two I think primary forms that will Encompass others as well and so you're either looking at the parts

of something or you're looking at the parts of reasoning that may have created the something so for example let's take an engine you can look at the parts of an engine you can say look look I don't want to hear about the elements of reasoning right now I just want to know tell me what the parts of the engine are parts of the engine are in another set of questions so really it's you're asking uh what are what is what is it what is entailed in an engine and that's a question you're asking and I'm

going to give you my inferences based on the information so I didn't get away from elements of reasoning I just proved your point but in any case I could say yes okay I get that but now just name the parts just just look at this engine and name the parts so if I say that I'm asking you to focus on one element of reasoning I suppose which is what is the information so but I'm saying that in certain cases we don't need to be we don't have to enter at the elements of reasoning as a

whole we can enter at any place I can say look what are the parts of this book somebody says wait a minute how first let's do the logic of it I'm said what what do you you mean I want to know the parts of this book I want somebody to tell me what is in here and and so one Freedom a psychological problem question mark uh well so that tells me that he's basically saying that we've got a psychological problem with freedom that's section one that's the first part so what I'm saying is the term

analysis is actually very rich as I begin to explore just thinking about the element the the the the term analysis in terms of the parts right and so I wanted to just explore that a little bit and then we'll move to if we could back to the elements of reasoning as a whole and just talk a little bit about them um but focusing on first uh whether there are other things that we want need to explore on this question of analysis and I have a few notes Here I was looking at did you want to

yeah I guess I would say two things one is everything you're saying is quite in accord with how I think about it and how I usually talk about it but I'd say think about the parts of the engine of a car uh if you tell me the parts of the engine of the car I'm I'm thinking that you you don't literally mean only that what you mean already there's a logic going on underneath the surface what you mean is the interconnected Parts given the purpose of an engine right I mean if you say here are

the two parts again my crude analogy there's the left hand side and there's the right hand side those are Parts but it doesn't help at all so we're all we're looking for interconnected Parts given the purpose of an engine now that's for human artifacts things that people but with things that people haven't made we I'd say we always have to distinguish between the parts of the thing and the parts of our thinking about the thing yes right and it's and to me those those interchange in my mind very very easily um I mean there I

don't I don't know if I remember my physics well enough but there are some I think quarks don't have Parts but my thinking about Quark certainly has Parts um uh it's maybe the smallest building block of anything so um but if I think of yeah so but for everything else the thing itself may have parts or will have Parts but my thinking about those parts will have the elements of reasoning as essential components in how I'm understanding it so when I when when I said before about the chemical analysis of the rock we do that

that way because we have the systematic well-reasoned theory of chemistry to guide us to know what to look for in the Rock that's relevant to our chemical analysis if if if that makes sense that's pretty abstract but um 400 years ago that have looked at a rock and looked at um at what about it can turn lead into gold I mean they look for they look for things that aren't in fact there um so we're Guided by our thinking yeah so when we bring in natural things like say take a leaf right so a leaf

has has certain parts right right but the parts we're trying to understand the parts yeah and we may have imperfect knowledge of the parts and how the parts relate to the whole um so there again we have the the term function in relationship to purpose is is useful right so and then so we so relating this to the elements of reasoning we can say the leaf has a purpose and you could stretch around the wheel but um but uh meaning that you could say you know like is the the leaf is asking a question well

no the leaf is not really asking a question but it's it's pursuing a path based on it's what it knows to do now it all breaks down so in any case but there so there are parts and um now of course we have to understand the parts through our own reasoning right so again we can't escape reasoning and I'm I'm not I'm not trying to escape reasoning because that wouldn't make sense because we understand a leaveth through reasoning or any other object but what I am saying is that that we should explore meaning all of

us uses of the term analysis that aren't necessarily entering directly through the elements of reasoning maybe that's a better way of saying it oh we're entering through let's so let let's say that we we looked at this this book again uh Eric fr escap from freedom and we're looking at the table of contents so when I start to look at this I'm saying I want to analyze what's here I want to take apart what's here or see what the parts entail so you see again of course reasoning is involved in this because I'm going to

see key Concepts I'm going to see questions he's asking he's asking question right away so that's Freedom a psychological problem that's the question right away so and and probably everything in the book is going to be trying to answer that question I'm guessing based on this analysis so I'm saying we should explore using the term analysis in different ways and I mean in this I don't want to say more General way but in this different use yeah and so I don't know if this is actually addressing the point you're making but I would say that

the elements of reasoning are involved in everything that involves trying to think things through uh not I don't mean ex explicitly involved like to identify my assumptions but they're involved in all the thinking so certainly they're going to be in fr's book and I can use that to guide my way through it or are there going to be if you look at this painting behind me I can't quite point over here I mean the elements of reasoning are involved in all of that I can ask what's verm mir's goal in doing this right what information

did he have about how light comes through what assumptions is he making about how to paint it and so forth so I can so that's the to me that's the primary meaning of the word analysis is uh the logic of in terms of the eight elements so well I see that but I do think if someone were to ask the question what is the difference between analysis and Analysis of thought we have to have some uses that aren't just breaking down to the elements of reason and that's my point so yes they relate and they

relate very quickly there are other ways to use the term and for example again back to my my example of love so if I said um let's just focus on the key Concepts in in love you could say well Linda that's the elements of reasoning because you really you have an implicit question there and I can say yes that's true but I'm focusing right now over here just on Concepts and yes they're all connected but I don't have to connect them all the time and I don't we don't we we enter at a certain point

and we begin to analyze in that in that in that scenario and maybe that also illuminates the fact that we need to make more explicit uh moves related to the elements of reasoning in other words when when if I were to say okay let me just pick this up and let me analy Analyze This Book uh let me analyze the the table of contents well if I immediately bring in the elements into my mind and say well don't remember not to do this without the elements of reasoning MH you could say and um but anyway

it's it's it's interesting exploration just thinking about the concept of analysis and how it's probably I I believe it's probably more like this you're you're in the elements of reasoning somewhere but you may be highlighting again one of the elements and so you're it seems like the others aren't there but they are there so you're you're just focusing on the information right now for example right right so go ahead sorry just making just sorry just making That explicit in the mind when it's happening and saying so let's just say somebody says well let's discuss your

concept of love so the question issu is what is my concept of love and what are the concepts embed in that right well they asked me to go straight to Concepts they didn't they didn't tell me I could explore you know they didn't say what information has led you before you answer that Linda what information has led you to that these conclusion see what I mean so now what are you assuming right now Linda before you don't write your answer see so you can you're you're in you're you're more or less focusing in one of

the elements maybe that's a a more accurate way of saying it that as you're going through life you're you may be if you're explicitly trying to bring critical thinking into your life then you are noticing the elements of your reasoning right which so if if if if I if I think about uh analysis kind of independent of the explicit use of the elements of reasoning there were plenty of great literary analysts who would analyze the hamlet in Shakespeare's play and who did it without ever mentioning any of the elements of reasoning and without probably even

in their own mind enunciating well this is an assumption I'm making or this is an assumption that I think Hamlet is making so they're not bringing in their purpose they're not they might be bringing in the information but even it's just minor I mean this is something that happens in the play might be a piece of information so it's clear to me that you could analyze something without explicitly using the terms for the elements of reasoning and without actually having the elements of reasoning EXP licitly in your mind but what makes critical thinking so so

forceful and so workable is that having those explicitly in my mind leads me one way it directions I wouldn't ordinarily go so I'm saying this stuff it's 1900 I'm analyzing Hamlet if I ask myself so what assumptions am I making about Hamlet character that's going to lead me to maybe discoveries things that I can explore that I that I wouldn't explore if I just let my mind go in its usual pattern but my impression is that we tend toward certain elements in our lives lives in certain situations and even maybe overall we tend toward certain

of the elements and even more pointedly tend away from others um for instance um Concepts is I believe one of the ones that people often don't uh reflect on very much at all I'm luckily luckily in this respect I have a philosophy background where almost the entire focus is on Concepts but people will blly talk about democracy or Freedom or or rights without ever wondering what democracy Freedom or rights are so they we don't automatically explore those Concepts but if I've got the concept of concept if I've got that element explicit in my mind it

stops my discussion for a moment it makes me take that reflective step back and now I think okay so I'm wondering if this country is is using full democracy or not and now I have to analyze my concept or of what democracy is so what what I I'm what I'm I'm saying is that I can analyze something without explicit use of the elements of reasoning though of course they're there underneath um but that in addition in having the elements explicitly in front of me as conscious tools just just uh greatly amplifies the the perceptiveness of

my [Music] analysis well it's clear that there have there have been historically and and always will be people who use the elements of reasoning very well and and especially in certain areas of their lives that's clear because anywhere you see accomplishment you're want to see that and anywhere you see the best thinking you're going to see that whether it's political thinking or scientific thinking or any other type of thinking so that's that's clear but that doesn't help the rest so to speak in other words that's well and good but then how do we emulate you

know people like cica and Socrates how do we emulate these best thinkers and this is where the elements of reasoning come in and of course importantly the intellectual standards and intellectual virtues in connection but notice that that move that I'm making there so that's another example of what I mean where we're looking at the parts of something but we're not we're not focusing on the elements of reasoning per se so for example we could say in our approach in our framework for critical thinking we have certain Core Concepts that are themselves complex and we so

we have the elements of reasoning one part intellectual standards another part intellectual virtues another part and and barriers another part and I would say there are other core moves such as the relationship between cognition and a effect which we don't tend to place core but we really should so that people see right away there's an emotional Dimension we're not leaving that we're not talking about you know cold logic and so in any case we had these Core Concepts and we can talk about how these Core Concepts inter relate without ever talking about our question or

information and so forth and if we're thinking well then we don't need to have done that that's my point we don't always need to focus on all of the elements and and though they're always there whenever there is reasoning um we may be Focus using the the term again analysis um to focus in on certain types of analysis and of course again that requires I can see I see that you can't ever get out of the box of reasoning it's just every every move I make I'm I'm I'm I'm seeing that I'm in this in

this room and the the door's closed so we've got re the reasoning is occurring so I think we've basically expl we could continue to explore the different ways which analysis could be used for example um H so so so this is this is a good one I think because it's messy and that's what I'm looking for a bit so the analysis of a poem you've already mentioned that so when we analyze a poem there there are different rules that apply from when you're analyzing really any other written piece and you could say also if you're

reading a love letter that different rules apply but just say just say right so there are going to be special standards that apply But but so um so we what was that I lost my train thought there so what Wasing a poem so thank you analyzing a poem so when we're analyzing a poem we're not necessarily trying to figure out what the author meant so much as what is a powerful interpretation here and then we're not looking for a a definitive way of of defining a word that was used we're not asking for accuracy there

we're looking for some kind of something that's a little ambiguous so we don't ask the author did you mean this or did you mean that right the author will say well what did you think it right so that that that means so if we're analyzing a poem then we we we have we have different parameters from let's say the usual way of thinking about the elements of reasoning in relationship to writing where you're conveying important meaning so uh so what what are the parts um what are the parts of a good poem for example so

one of the parts would be to have it's there'll have to be certain use of language that draws the reader in and allows for different meanings that are equally powerful something like that and so we could continue you know thinking about what would be involved in the parts right but of course all of it relates to the elements of reason I see that but if you if we only allow if we only allow use of the term analysis to relate to the elements of reasoning then I think that's an error and that's what I'm trying

to illuminate okay so well let me say something I actually was going to say something The Poetry example but um let me say I I heard you say that people have engaged in very profound thinking and not necessarily focusing focus on all the ele on all the elements of reasoning they can they can focus on on this one or this set and not necessarily be focusing on all of them and that seems clearly true when I think of people uh of great thinkers in history I would say in addition though I'm going to use the

word always but I'm going to be willing to take it back in a moment uh though it's not necessary to think of think in terms of all the elements I'm gonna say it's always helpful to do so I don't really mean the always there let me say it's virtually always helpful so I may have thought through something very well focusing on this or that element or this set of elements explicitly or not but then if I step back and ask myself okay so what are some further implications of this I've already done all my thinking

that's helpful I don't mean it always gives me a new answer but it sends my thinking off in a direction that I haven't thought it through or how can I look at this from a different point of view even if I think about um uh something as as uh technical as quantum mechanics uh often times the objections that one great physicist will raise to another other are objections that the person that the first person that Einstein who always raised objections to quantum mechanics that he could have thought of those objections that were that were made

to him if he thought about the implications of what he was saying that is if he consciously stepped back and said okay so I'm saying this as an objection to Quantum Mechanics what are the implications of it those implications came out when Neil's boore then objected so I'm saying that that though you don't have to focus on all the elements of course not uh it's nearly always helpful to do so and I think that's one of the great uh blessings of the elements of reasoning it's one of the the great advantages it gives me um

so when I work on critical writing for instance uh I imagine a student who's finished the whole paper uh complete A+ paper very good paper um and uh then asks or then she asks herself how can I make this even better well a good way to do that is to ask about the elements or about the standards right I can say okay so what other assumptions am I making in this paper it's complete it's a very fine it's a nice paper what are some further implications of it what are some other points of view so

I'm thinking of the elements as always or near always helpful yes I I I believe that when I was when I was talking about people who reason well believe I said that they are frequently not aware of the elements of reasoning right and it's it would be interesting to know let's say take a book by Jane Austin would would that book have been better if she had been explicitly aware of the elements of reasoning so I think there are some there are some cases where the person really does have command of the elements she's not

calling them that yeah right so in other words she's very aware that people make inferences that don't make sense right she's very aware that people bring in information that's irrelevant and she so but she she's saying that no of course but so in an era a given era the in uh critical some degree of critical thinking skills may be explicitly taught or along with other things in in pieces right so there's this is very complex right and and it's important to remember that the of course you know the elements of reasoning have come to us

through his history that is we have been we've always been engaging in the elements of reasoning right is that Richard figured out how to capture it to bring it down to the most found the the most foundational Concepts I think that's right so and so people have been doing this and they've also been explicitly discussing that they were doing it so eventually though we get but that's that that's going to be coming to us in a very scattered way through history that's just my reading of how you know the the language is developing so in

any case now we have this ability to be very aware and I think it would be interesting to go through a week where you every time you thought something you made yourself connected to the elements just just every time you think something now what where how is that related to the elements of reason I say that's an inference could be very superficial you say well that would be that would sort of be exhausting so if you're cooking dinner and you think okay what what what do I want to eat well that's your question at issue

and so you're doing that and then what are my options that's the information M and then you're you begin to make inferences right for sure yeah right and so if you're eating from your H whatever is in your house then the information is right there it's whatever you've got it's the actual ingredients and then and and then although you can then make inferences based on those ingredients but some people make better inferences there right and right so some people only think of one way to cook and they cook the same way every day and other

people have all kinds of spices and know how to use them and make everything taste different even if it's the same thing you see what I mean so that so so I guess what I'm saying is you you know if you stopped yourself every time then I think and if you were able to do that I think by implication you would start to see all kinds of mistakes you're making and for examp example not seeing the mood that I just made about ingredients I mean I might tonight just because of this conversation I might say

you know I'm not going to cook the same way I always have that was the actual personal examples that rolled right off the tongue so maybe I'm going to you know use some different spices so just by stopping and saying what inferences I'm making based on what I have and so it's it's so you can get locked into even in a day on a daily basis these everyday decisions can be you can do you can sort of get caught in little ruts is what I mean and when you stop and look at everything you're doing

from the elements maybe you know that would illuminate what the problems in your thinking or begin to well uh let me say in relation to your cooking example it just I just related it to the Jane Austin example you used earlier and that is if she had worked consciously worked through the elements of reasoning would would her novels have been better and it it brings it brings up a question that I don't have an answer to but all often I think about I I don't think it would have made her novels better in fact here's

the question I think it may have made her novels worse I was afraid you might say that yeah yeah I mean if she questioned um is marrying somebody with a fortune the very best way of going about finding uh someone to marry um I'm I'm guessing that I don't know that that idea occurred to her or didn't occur to her but there's a way in which if she dwelled on that very much she's gonna lose one of her basic ideas for a novel or lose some impact in it and similarly the thing about cooking well

my example is always if you're playing baseball you're a professional baseball player and there's something going wrong with your swing and you're not hitting it's probably not the best idea to dwell thoughtfully about your swing while you're swinging the bat that's going to distract you from the motion of the bat that you had before it's often very good to ask a coach who can observe you from the outside but even that is at a later time so I'm thinking that if I think too much about my cooking I can spoil the soup well I think

those were two different kinds of examples of one is so so one is in the actually if I could is different well what one is one is in the moment so I was using right let's say a sports analysis yeah let's say let's say you're a tennis player and you've played the game as well as you possibly can for for that day and now you're watching the video of your performance so you're analyzing right your performance now the question and issue is clear how can I use this information to improve my game presumably right because

that's what unless I'm being made to view it then assumably I'm using this to become better at tennis so that we can enter right there with the elements of reasoning my purpose is to be the best player that I can and so this viewing I'm analyzing the the the uh video but I'm actually analyzing the data I'm analyzing the information I'm analyzing how I performed in the game and I'm so I'm analyzing from certain special standards I'm looking at did I move to the ball in time did I follow through on the stroke did I

keep my eye on the ball so I'm looking at the parts from that point of view and that also illuminates how the analysis the term analysis should be used thought of in this richer sense so if I'm if I'm analyzing it I am I am involved in the elements of reasoning I'm reasoning this is information so I and I should know that and of course it's it's it's really among the best information it's what I should spend the most time on from one perspective so I can actually see what I am doing wrong in order

to improve myself so and of course there are other kinds of information I would I would watch other videos of of very good players right and I'm going to use learn information I learned from my coach right now I'm going to really focus on what my weaknesses are and I can really see it all right so that would be an example of analyzing the information right and of course I'm going to have to come to conclusions so there's an inference so and that's based on again assumptions assumption that this is good information well it's unless

somebody has replaced me for someone else it's accurate I can count on it and you see so and I can decide how far into these elements I need to go right right very important yeah yes so and I I want to say if I could just just very quickly about Jane Austin especially given the example that you gave um I I believe that Jane Austin was a very good thinker and that she did make a lot of the moves that she would have made if she had had the explicit theory of critical thinking so she

she was asking does it really make sense to um to be sort of just on the marriage circuit and she herself was not she never married right and she uh but she seems to have been you know really trying to examine what that looked like from her world view that she could see and she also was very aware of her narrow perspective meaning that she knew that she knew certain things but that's all she knew because that was the only world that she lived in and so she told for example I believe her NE her

nephew or her niece who was writing a piece begin to write a novel and she wrote back and said I can see that uh from what you've written that you've never been in these places so don't write about what you've never experienced so I believe that she had that um that those understandings and I think one way that I look at this is that if you're you're at the top of let's say the human game thus far in your field then you're probably at the top of what what we're capable of you know you're at

least up there you know in the top X percent whatever that percentage is and um but that doesn't mean that you are also thinking that well in any other domain of your life and that has to be remind remembered we have to be reminded of that so each of us is going to think better in certain areas of our lives than in other areas we're not going to be spectacular across all the domains of Our Lives it's it's an impossibility you're going to be what A+ is think an economic thinker so you because you have

to be an economic thinkig you're G be an A+ as a parent you're gonna be an A+ as an intimate partner according to the other person not you a you're going to be A+ as an employee according to your employers not you you're be an A+ as a colleague according to them not you see what I mean so no one can achieve that therefore where we're not achieving is often where we need the elements of reasoning even more not to say that we can't use them even at the highest level so I don't want to

imply that either yeah um and and it in a way it just brings to mind how you might s someone say um a a a husband who focuses all his energy just on work and neglects his family what one way of reading that is to say well his family is just not as important to him as work and there may be very well be a lot of Truth in it but it also seems that that's a fair could be a could be a very facal reading of what's going on it can be that the idea

of doing what's good for my family and me in relation to my family just doesn't occupy the Forefront of this guy's mind and it could if he stepped back and reflected on his life and what was really important to him but he may never do so and if he does step back and say well what's really important in my life and comes to the conclusion that his family is at is very very important maybe more important than his performance at work the elements of reasoning that are going to help him a great deal he's GNA

ask what question should I be asking what assumptions do I make about my family so um that is I'm I'm responding to the part about uh how the elements can really help in aspects of my life where I'm not I'm not very Adept um and yeah and it may be that that just hasn't come to the Forefront of my mind in the way that it really could yes so um it's I think I want to say one one other thing that's um that I think is relevant here and that is our our work our framework

definite um directly goes back to Socratic thinking and of course there's there were historical uh there were historical markers before Socrates as well but we can start with Socrates as a convenient place and given the depth of his knowledge and it seems that Socrates was trying for something like the elements of reasoning because he focused he was focusing first and foremost I think in terms of the elements on Concepts yeah right you say let's take this concept but he also talked about following out the the implications of your thinking yeah and you can take the

socratic dialogues and you can find connectors to all of the elements of reasoning but some of them come up more than others of them and so in any case that's that's where we begin to see some explicit work in terms of the theory of the elements I guess I'm moving a bit just thinking about the theory of the elements now and the power in the elements of reasoning you know and moving away from just thinking about analysis itself although we could explore many other ways in which we could use the term analysis but in terms

of the elements of reasoning um so you get and in the development of the theory you really get a beginning there at Socrates a beginning focus on again some of the elements of reasoning and then we can bring in intellectual standards and virtues as well there with so with Socrates but then after socres in terms of theory of critical thinking based in natural languages as we um insist that it needs to be this theory of critical thinking doesn't really begin to emerge again until the 20th century so we get we get some movement we get

some concepts of course the concepts are beginning to build but in terms of coming up with a cohesive set of ideas that you can call your toolbox of critical thinking that's emerging in the 20th century right and I would say even even with Socrates I mean we don't have very much legitimately by him but I'm not aware of anything where he addressed a question like what is our toolbox for thinking um he used critical thinking in a magisterial way but work on the toolbox except maybe in bits and pieces and and you've explicated a lot

of this in your encyclopedia article there'd be Parts here and parts there that would be illuminated but I think it's not until the 20th century that anybody focused extensive ly on on the the theory of critical thinking or what how does one think through something critically or think through something well right and then as the theory began to emerge it was merg emerging more in terms of essay and in terms of uh explicit quote skills and abilities right than it was emerging as a cohesive yes set of intellectual tools which is really Richard's primary contribution

yeah taking this knowledge again and boiling it down to something that's really manageable and that if we were to take it seriously would be revolutionary right yeah uh that that skills model I mean there's of course a great deal of Truth in it that is that critical thinking involved higher order thinking skills obviously but but there's also something Insidious about it in that uh it leads to that belief that people who think well but in a nasty way or in an underhanded way or a self-centered way are engaged in full-fledged critical thinking they're they're engaged

in a variety of critical thinking I mean Richard's famous distinction weak sense versus strong sense um an example I used two days ago in my webinar on fair-mindedness was about something that's brilliant but again Insidious the guy who worked for the I think it's GIF peanut butter who invented the dip dimple in the bottom of the the jar so that it looks exactly the same size but it has onethird less peanut butter in it so that you look at the jar and you think oh it's the same size jar but there's this in there's this

dimple on the bottom that presses the peanut butter up so it's got less in it so I that's got that's got I don't want to say great it's got major Ingenuity in it but there's something un un unlikable about it uh and yeah um it's meant to deceive uh and that's that you can get you can get by an emphasis on skills alone and also by um you can even see it in the way I described it uh kind of impressiveness of the use of the skills all alone I'm kind of impressed by this guy

who did it uh with the peanut butter jar who came up with this this idea for the peanut butter jar um and I almost wish I wasn't impressed by it yes so yeah that that's um well of course that's I believe that that would fall under the category of sophistic thinking indeed and that was the problem one of the big problems that Socrates could see as well in human thinking in human life and we still see it rampant we always have seen it rampant but it hasn't quite destroyed us yet um I would like to

just talk for a minute explore a for a few minutes the term synthesis all right relationship to analysis so we often hear terms like analyze and synthesize and then I'll add just to be adding a few more compare and contrast and and so an analyze is often used in this more impoverished way in other words if you if you don't have the elements of reasoning you're analyzing then I'm not going to say there are going to be problems but I'm going to say there very well may be depending on how well you're doing that and

if you're doing it well then you're using the elements of reasoning well so in any case um so there so we can but we tend to kind of people tend to throw away the term Ana throw around the term analysis and throw around the term especially in education synthesize and compare and contrast and others like that so to synthesize I um well how how would you would you like to yeah I can say something I can see that you're ready a little dis maybe a little disparaging about it I I mean I think that without

the elements of reasoning analysis just becomes this amorphous ambiguous ill defined term um uh I mean you look inside something and and uh but the elements refine what is meant by analysis to an appreciable degree I don't don't know of an of a way of making synthesis well defined um I see synthesis the idea of bringing things together synthesis is uh is what I said about analysis without the elements it that is it's an amorphous term and it's it's really not well defined so there's a way in which I don't know quite exactly what to

do in order to synthesize something there is no synthesis analog analog for the elements of bringing it together to me the big contrast is between we you and I have talked about this a lot is between analysis and evaluation or analysis and assessment right in analysis I'm trying to tell what's going on in in in Eric fram's book when I evaluate it I'm I'm gonna be asking myself does this make sense does this seem does this seem accurate and and clear and to the point and deep enough uh so when I'm evaluating I'm doing something

very different from analyzing whereas in whereas if I think of yeah whereas I don't see that the good a good contrast between analysis and synthesis except in a vague overall way yes and the de the definitions that I'm looking at here at dictionary.com are also not very helpful the combining of the constituent elements of separate material or abstract entities into a single or unified entity opposed to analysis the separating of any material abstract entity into its constituent Elements which is strange because that actually means analysis and the second a complex whole for a complex hole

formed by combining right and and so that doesn't say it doesn't use the term integrating did you notice right right right right so it seems that synthesis often it to be to really be powerful would need to embody or entail um this integration of ideas so maybe um but but it's it's helpful because when terms are thrown around and yet we go and we go yeah yeah I know what you mean well what do you mean by synthesis right now how how are you using that and actually I I don't know that I've ever heard

anyone use that outside of the classroom it's it's right right you can do a chemical analysis of a rock but you can't do a chemical synthesis of a rock or well there there are certain like there are some other examples here chemistry has an example philosophy biology psychology and by the way psychology the integ ation of traits attitudes and impulses to create a total personality so now they so but they've added the term integration in a special to use the term synthesis in a special way in in in the field the two Fields so um

but I was thinking you could if you if you if you so now I can use the term integration because they have so so now if integration is included then I can say for example I'm working on the um as some this book on critical thinking therapy so in doing this I'm synthesizing right a lot of different ideas about the human mind and I'm also um critiquing and leaving out certain theories that often are included and and so but in in any case in the end I have an integration hopefully of the ideas that I

am pulling in to this Theory and so if you think of synthesis that way then it's very useful because often people don't have that ability they they don't have those abilities to pull ideas together and show how they interrelate right yeah so as we you were speaking I was writing down some notes for myself I uh I think a way of of thinking about it maybe even a better way of saying synthesis is to say it's uh organizing and showing the interconnections of things which is another way of saying in integrating so when you're writing

your book on therapy you're organizing a great number of different approaches to therapy and you're bringing to them together into a coherent whole but there's almost something misleading about the way of putting it you're you're you're you're organizing it you're showing how they interrelate and how this part works better than this other part so there's a there's a lot going on there so that might be my my take on uh what synthesis is I in really strictly defined Fields somehow our other physics examples are coming in to my mind today it's uh so a major

problem in theoretical physics is that relativity Theory applies to really big things quantum mechanics applies to really small things and the two sides don't fit together so for the last 30 years or so people have been working on synthesizing on integrating those two and it's called The Theory of Everything not a very happy title but but but what they're looking for is a is a mathematical or physical structure which will allow these two to work right together because as it is they seem to contradict one another which is frowned about um so that's but notice

this is a very strict field welldefined field where we're gonna know what's going to count as how they fit together if we have a mathematical physical account of how they fit together but most Fields don't have anything like that some overriding uh model for how things how to tell if you've done it so I think the word that let's say I tend to use and for where some might use someone might use the term synthesis I would tend to use in my work uh integration because that it seems more specific to the kind of synthesis

I'm doing indeed I think right so um but I think it's helpful to I always enjoy just talking about ideas like synthesis words that you know they they've been thrown around and you've used them here or there maybe maybe not and not a lot of discussion and maybe it's not even that helpful a concept but at least you've you've discussed it and so if and so you know that how it's uses you know what it will do for you what it will not do for you there better wor for your purpose and just to before

we leave that I mentioned you know compare and contrast those are also you know sort of thrown in especially in schooling circles k12 and compare and contrast is these two terms by in and of themselves and by themselves are not very interesting because we do it constantly you compare this person to that person this person is someone I like this person I can't stand uh and you contrast it with what you already believe what they you contrast what they believe with what you believe you so you're we're constantly comparing and contrasting people ideas food and

the question is what standards do you use when you compare and contrast and that's probably it would probably just do to wait for a later discussion on intellectual standards to go further with that so yeah it it also yeah it bothers me that Bloom's taxonomy and the education that takes takes it it's it stance on critical thinking based more or less on Bloom's taxonomy the older or the newer version uses those words as keystones um because they're so they're so malleable as terms they they're so interwoven and and uh people even think of it as

a hierarchy that first you do this and then you do this and then you do that and and of course that that doesn't work um it is so if I think about critical thinking kind of in the abstract there's a a person who is thinking about an issue right person issue and the person has certain characteristics meaning I'm thinking of the traits of mind the intellectual virtues or the lack thereof there certain traits that characterizes the person and there are certain things that get in the way the barriers but in the middle between the person

and the object are those words in Bloom's taxonomy right I mean the person analyzes an issue or tries to synthesize an issue or organizes or integrates it and we haven't done much work in there not much at all but I think it's partly because what goes on in the middle is so variable that is uh we as far as I know there isn't a good coherent account of how of what the Mind does when it applies reasoning to the object um in the sense of compare and contrast or synthesize or analyze right an and evaluate

I've got but the rest I lose some control of uh what comprehend comprehend uh yeah well if we were to teach the terms compare and contrast in connection with intellectual standards then would and if we were to help people see that you're continually comparing and contrasting or let's say routinely throughout life the question is how well are you doing it right and if I'm if I'm just comparing my ideas to to you know if I'm comparing myself to someone else first thing I could ask is why are you even doing that right and so you

see it's a deeper question that we miss you said you know we give students a circle and say you know compare and contrast what do you mean I would say I would say the and that article we wrote about Richard for for inquiry I mean I just the idea just came to me then is that what you just said applies to all of Bloom's taxonomy and all those terms there are no standards for how or how whether you're comprehending something well are you comprehending it accurately clearly as precisely as necessary with all its complexities so

is death take any of the terms for looms taxonomy or any other such taxonomy and what's left out noticeably is the standards yet the standards are in a major way what what makes critical thinking critical thinking right so if you leave those out there's a way in which you're not doing much and when they leave them out they just take them for granted yeah they say like make inferences well I mean we're always making inferences I was looking up as you were talking the six levels remembering understanding applying analyzing evaluating and creating so for examp

and you know Richard does a critique of this in his Anthology and anyone is interested should look at that so let me just say one other thing if I could one other example on the importance of of taking the elements of reasoning more seriously and in terms of their application in all fields of study I'll I'll take one example and I could we could go into any field and find similar examples you mentioned literary an literary critique earlier and and so it's like it's it's like an analysis right so that's sort of implied and often

literary critique is done by people who are living in a kind of special language where they're using certain Concepts to guide their critique such as tone and plot and there are others that are mainly to me uninteresting and in comparison with the elements of reasoning oh for example take Jane Austin she's often been criticized as being sort of trivial and only focused on manners and anyone who thinks that really is not is not reading Jane Austin very well because she is getting deeply into the pathologies of human thinking and she's exploring those and if you're

missing that that as a as a person giving your critique because you're focused on your own special language your own special way of analyzing according to your school of thought or the way that your colleagues do it or the way we've decided and written textbooks on it to do it not very well said but you get the idea so if we if we take if we if we critique the critique we're often going to see a lack of understanding of the elements of reasoning and their power so if I analyze a Jane Austin novel from

the point of view of the logic of any of the let's say main or important characters and so I can do the logic of every important character and I can do the logic of Jane Austin's thinking herself that is what I what I infer is her reasoning based on this book and so I guess that's that's one thing I wanted to point out that when you have the elements very well in hand then your critique shows that and you stick with ordinary language in critique and if you take you can take another field like again

going back to critical thinking therapy or let's just take the field of mental health therapy mental health therapies so there are very many schools of thought to choose from in terms of mental health um methodologies and they're better and worse and you you need the elements of reason reasoning and intal standards to be able to make sense of all of this and then if you will to synthesize it so you've got you need those tools to be able to figure out what is even going on in this Terrain in this intellectual terrain and that's a

that's a good example because there are so many different theories of mind right coming mainly from psychology in terms of of mental health Therapies right that you have to think very well to be able to critique them right that means you have to understand the the um purposes of the theorists themselves the way they're using information the questions they're asking the interpretations that they're coming to Etc so we can go into any field and we do this regular to discuss the importance of the elements of reasoning I just wanted to mention a couple of examples

um as we bring this to a close of how important the elements are in thinking within every field of study right yeah yeah it it's uh yeah it it seems ve it seems very clear that they're they're always enriching or nearly always enriching I always at stick that nearly in uh yeah we don't we when we we have the elements of reasoning when we understand our purpose our questions our information that we're using that we need to use now right there I brought in the intellectual standard intellectual standard intending to so in other words we

can take apart the elements without the intellectual standards we don't yet have critical thinking we only have the thinking we only have the reasoning so if we if we take the term critical thinking to mean critical reasoning then the reasoning entails eight elements but we still don't have the critical part right so we've still got to have and work we you and I are continually implying intellectual standards right indeed so the justifiability of your purpose the clarity of your question right the Precision of your question and so forth so we really we should never teach

the elements of reasoning without intellectual standards right and we should never we should when we're talking about elements of reasoning and we're saying we talk about the power in opening up the elements well you open it up and then you apply intellectual standards to it that's the way that I think of it right but we have to remember that we've got to apply those intellectual standards to the C to this the parts in the circle right and one other thing that that's related that I wanted to mention and that's uh and I know you already

that you agree with this of course it's that um if I've analyzed some issue or some aspect of my life by carefully going around the circle of elements identifying my assumptions the implications and consequences going all the way around um it doesn't mean I'm done it doesn't mean I'm done um that is and even if I do it in a with most of the standards I could if I do it incord with all the standards we normally list except for depth and comprehensiveness right then I can still have analyzed it accurately clearly precisely fairly and

so forth and still get a lot wrong or a lot left out because I can analyze it again a year from now and find out that I I now am able to go much deeper deeper into it than before or I can look at it much more comprehensively than I did before so it's not as if you analyze you you analyze something using the elements of reasoning and then that's you're done for all time um very often you have to go back into asking yourself uh okay so I said what my purpose is but maybe

I have some other purpose or maybe that purpose is really uh a blind for or some other underlying agenda I have I might question it later or I might say I identifi this or that assumption but you know there's another assumption I'm making that underlies that as well and I hadn't thought about that one before those I think hinge on primarily on those two standards depth and breadth or comprehensiveness yeah so um I don't know if you want to add anything thing I think this has been a very enlightening at least for me discussion yeah

and we covered a lot of ground and we haven't talked much about the elements of reasoning because we're going to be unpacking that in this series each of the elements of reasoning in this series and yet it's again and then important to it's again important to focus focus on the elements in relationship to intellectual standards which we've been discussing and then we can't forget intellectual virtues either so we're ultimately we're using the entire toolbox including the barriers barriers of egocentric and sociocentric thinking help us see where we've got an ulterior motive which is the purpose

underneath the real purpose underneath the purpose we're pretending so can we can look easy oh yeah okay so here's my purpose here's my question here's my information wait a minute well what's under the purpose what's the real purpose right you aren't willing to battle your irrational forces within you you're going to always think that your thinking is perfectly fine and you'll use the tools of critical thinking to prove it so that's right you'll be able to say of course my purpose is justifiable and of course I've been through the elements and I've I've one person

I heard who really knew almost nothing about critical thinking said that he thought that he knew a lot he said yeah we've been studying critical thinking long enough to know how to Salt and Pepper it in wow so that is to misunderstand yeah so we we want to weave I guess what I'm think of now and thinking of the analysis of our primary Theory so we have the elements of reasoning that's one theoretical set we're focusing on now we have intellectual standards which must come with the elements of reasoning to get the critical in the

reasoning and then you have intellectual virtues which are uh characteristics that we are trying to achieve and it's through using the elements and the standards well that we do achieve these intellectual virtues but then we can come out intellectual virtues directly as well in terms of develop and so as when we think about as we develop our our understanding of critical thinking what I'm saying is for me what we want is a mental map what I want is a map in my mind of Concepts that I can rely on that I can pull from and

that are there for me and that I use ultimately intuitively whenever I need to and whenever doing so will enhance my my life such as using different spices in youring tonight well let me say something about the the standards and how they enter that I I just liked your example about uh what other purpose is there so suppose I'm analyzing my place and at my job and I I could go around the circle and actually meet many of the standards and still not have done very much thinking at all so I can say my my

goal is uh is to make the office work better um an assumption I make is that if I always say yes to what my boss says I will make the office work better um and uh I can be precise because I can now illuminate the various ways in which I can say yes to what my boss says to do I can say an implication of this is that I'll advance in the company and so notice everything I've said is in a is accurate as far as it goes and it might be clear and it's relevant

to my purpose and yet I've missed the whole the whole dimension of what it is what it is I'm trying to what it is uh I might be doing or in a fuller sense what I might be doing I'm thinking things like making the world a better place so the barriers and the traits notice in my in the analysis I just gave the barriers are are right there I mean they're preventing me from getting to anything deep or Rich and the traits I'm not I'm not uh embodying the traits at all I'm not showing intellectual

humility I'm not showing intellectual courage I'm not I'm not showing intellectual Integrity um uh so it it's uh it's it it shows how deceptive it can be in that I can actually go around the circle of elements and check off some of those standards and F say I'm doing a great job I'm doing a good job in fact I I think that there are some politicians whom I won't name who regularly reflect on what they have done and say I've done a really good job my ego wasn't entering in it at all and just massive

self-deception um so that that's that's that's interesting yes and here's another example of that um which is I think very intuitive so parenting so you can say what kind of a parent is someo person so you could say well let's say what kind of parent are you and you could say I could say well I'm I'm actually a very good parent uh and then and then because you're thinking that in your mind you're thinking well about 90% of the time I'm a very good parent so that makes me a very good parent but what if

10% of the time I'm a terrible parent I'm awful yeah know I yell at my kids I threaten them I'm maybe you know hit them I you know I'm completely out of my mind so but in my mind you know that's something that's only happening 10% of the time in fact let's say and so 90% I'm great and I think that's the way we kind of do think of parenting you know basically I'm pretty good at it that that's a really nice that's a really nice example I mean I'm I'm a really good person 90%

of the time but of course 10% of the time I'm an Axe [Music] Murderer but but gee that's only 10% even only one% of the time maybe that's a good on which to end yes the ax murderer yeah I think that it is because um we will need to get in into a discussion about self-deception yeah and that will be another discussion and um but this has been very interesting and as always our minds are expanded when we just take a little time to explore ideas and to keep sort of added you know do we

do we do we really have a handle on analysis now do we really see how the elements of reasoning almost always is there when we're analyzing anything if not always but maybe we're not highlighting it exactly in in the ter in terms of the purpose question information Etc so but and you know exploring that and I I want to um stress the importance of this kind of thinking and this kind of just exploratory discussion where you don't come in at the beginning with everything figured out right you basically have your terrain you've done your homework

but you haven't thought it all through before talking to someone else that you know will be able to help you in your thinking so I've enjoyed this Gerald it's always me too Linda very much so we'll see you next time okay see everybody