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This is actually a really interesting way of thinking about critical thinking! Definitely never thought of it that way before ...

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Sam

@11v11Sam

Oct 7, 2021

Replying to @C_Hendrick

I have started to think of critical thinking as the ability to "stew on the messiness of reality" without the lens of "frameworks layered between" your perception and an experience i.e. connecting your own dots commoncog.com/blog/reality-w h/t @ejames_c

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Oct 7, 2021

My distaste of frameworks mostly stems from fear that it would lock me into certain ways of seeing the world. Which *has* bitten me (and my colleagues) in the past. I buy

@vaughn_tan

’s argument that sitting with the messiness of uncertainty is important.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Oct 7, 2021

But would you call this ability critical thinking? It’s an interesting thought, but I’m not so sure …

Replying to

I think the original framing is inside-out; experience is the result of mediation. IMO the question is always "What framework do we believe we're using and is it different from what we're in-fact using?" From William James' "Principles of Psychology" (1890), Ch. 11:

Replying to

and

One can define their way out of the problem, I suppose, but I don't see what that buys us. For example, "A framework is a type of mediation with a specific encoding/form/content/etc. So all frameworks mediate, but not all things that mediate are frameworks."

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Replying to

@jfarmer

This, and especially that screenshot from William James, is really really good. Yeah I think sensemaking is a better word for this than critical thinking. Which makes me wonder what the original definition for critical thinking is …

4:22 PM · Oct 7, 2021Twitter Web App

Replying to

AFAIK the term comes from John Dewey's "How We Think" (1910) For him, I think it's not about mediated vs. unmediated, but regulated vs. unregulated, reflective vs. unreflective, controlled vs. uncontrolled. Like a hand on a steering wheel.

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and

Dewey's picture is something like... A belief or thought arrives. We notice its arrival. We "press pause", tracing out both what preceded it (perceptions, prior beliefs, possible causes, etc.) and follows (implications, judgments, reactions, etc.).