Development of Critical Thinking Skills in Romanian Society. Possibilities and Limits
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18662/brain/14.1/427Keywords:
Critical thinking, skills, cultural boundaries, rationality, educationAbstract
The research aims to identify the current situation of critical thinking (CT) in the Romanian mentality, from the perspective of interventions necessary to increase specific skills. We start from an analysis of the main approaches of CT specific to Western educational practices, these being the reference for a comparative analysis of the situation in Romania. Because we cannot exclude the possibility of the existence of certain CT specific contents camouflaged in the Romanian educational practices (that correspond to the western ones but they have other names), we carry out an analysis of the specific CT contents to observe the differences and possible similarities. Considering that CT involves the ability to discover boundaries (e.g.: discovering one's own cognitive boundaries), we look at the issue of potential boundaries. The approach includes analyzing the risk of CT marketing and the limits of specific CT interventions outlined by the mindsets of different communities. The research includes the evaluation of the existence of cultural limits possibility, starting from the question: "Is there a cultural place of CT (is it a value) in the Romanian mentality?". We evaluate the coherence of CT with social values, considering that in the absence of values that enhance its possibility, the probability of success of CT is diminished. Since we cannot a priori exclude the risk of importing models that do not match the mentality and values of this society, we analyze the problem from the perspective of the shapes without fond theory (a relevant questioning paradigm for Romanian society).
References
Battersby, M. (2006). Applied Epistemology and Argumentation in Epidemiology. Informal Logic, 26(1), 41-62.
Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2020). Decision-Making Competence: More Than Intelligence? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(2), 186–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420901592
Bender, E.M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., et al. (2021). On the dangers of stochastic parrots: can language models be too big? Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT‘21). ACM, New York, USA (pp. 610–623). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3442188.3445922
Căstăian, D. (2018, 25 iunie). Educaţia şi gândirea critică a gândirii critice. Contributors. https://www.contributors.ro/educatia-si-gandirea-critica-a-gandirii-critice/
Căstăian, D. (2016, 26 octombrie). Căutându-i pe fanatici. Despre ce ne apropie şi ce ne desparte. Contributors. https://www.contributors.ro/cautandu-i-pe-fanatici-despre-ce-ne-apropie-si-ce-ne-desparte/
Căstăian, D. (2021). Reţelele memetice ascendente şi descendente ca produse evoluţioniste, rolul lor în dinamica polarizării şi a conflictului cultural şi potenţialul lor pentru creşterea toleranţei democratice. Analele Universităţii “Dunărea de Jos`, Filosofie, XVIII(11), 103-113.
Katsikopoulos, K. V. (2011). Psychological heuristics for making inferences: Definition, performance, and the emerging theory and practice. Decision Analysis, 8(1), 10–29. https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.1100.0191
Grüne-Yanoff, T., & Hertwig, R. (2016). Nudge versus boost: How coherent are policy and theory? Minds and Machines: Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, 26(1-2), 149–183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-015-9367-9
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & The ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G. (2018). The Bias Bias in Behavioral Economics. Review of Behavioral Economics, 5, 303–336. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/105.00000092
Gigerenzer, G. (2011). What are natural frequencies? BMJ, 343, d6386. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d6386
Gigerenzer, G., & Edwards, A. (2003). Simple tools for understanding risks: from innumeracy to insight. BMJ, 327(7417), 741-4. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7417.741
Herbert, S. (1955). A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69(1), 99-118.
Hoffrage, U., Krauss, S., Martignon, L., & Gigerenzer, G. (2015). Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks. Frontiers in psychology, 6(1473). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01473
Hutson, M. (2021). Robo-writers: the rise and risks of language-generating AI. Nature, 591(7848), 22–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00530-0
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kahan, D. M. (2017). The expressive rationality of inaccurate perceptions. The Behavioral and brain sciences, 40(e6). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15002332
Mustață, M.-A., & Bogzeanu, C. (2017). Programul euristicilor și biasurilor: aplicații și implicații în domeniul military. Editura Universităţii Naţionale de Apărare “Carol I`.
Meehl, P. E. (1954). Clinical versus statistical prediction. University of Minnesota Press.
Mihail, R. (2022). The Relevance of Critical Thinking from the Perspective of Professional Training. Postmodern Openings, 13(2), 499-513. https://doi.org/10.18662/po/13.2/468
Pinker, S. (2021). Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. Penguin.
Rotila, V. (2022). The Absence of Critical Thinking Skills and its Effects. Case Study: Vaccine Hesitation. Revista Romaneasca pentru Educatie Multidimensionala, 14(3), 01-17. https://doi.org/10.18662/rrem/14.3/594
Rotilă, V. (2017). An Alternative to Post-Humanism: Neo-Humanism. The Argument of Consciousness Singularity. In C. Ignatescu, A. Sandu, & T. Ciulei (eds.), Rethinking Social Action. Core Values in Practice (pp.709-718). LUMEN Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.18662/lumproc.rsacvp2017.64
Searle, J. (2004). Mind, A Brief Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Stanovich, K. E. (2001). The Rationality of Educating for Wisdom, Educational Psychologist, 36(4), 247–251.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Penguin Books.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 The Authors & LUMEN Publishing House
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant this journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work, with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as an earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
BRAIN. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience Journal has an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND
