CriticalThinkingAcademy

Why is it that people are obsessed with the objective/subjective distinction? You see these terms in all sorts of debates, calling your opponent “subjective” kind of means you won the fight. For example I hear them claim that atheism is subject to radical relativism, or that religious morality is “objective” and that there is no “solid ground to base claims of morality without god”. A lot of arguments revolve around this distinction, I think due to this weird misunderstanding of objectivity and subjectivity. Social construction is conflated with radical relativism, and while I agree there are people who label themselves as relativists who also adhere to social constructivism I do not think that the concept implies a radical relativism of the sort “there are no facts”. No one can actually be a relativist, you simply cannot survive. So we must be clear as to what this means in the context of the objective/subjective distinction and social construction. Let’s start with the notion of “int...

What are the attributes of a critical thinker? What are the practices of a critical thinker? How does one orient their mind towards criticality and how does this differ from other modes of thought? The answer is that they ask the right questions at the right time! That is not so obvious at first. A question is "right" as opposed to what, "wrong"? What does the "right" time mean; that a window of opportunity has passed before some of the implications of not having asked a crucial question have effected you? Both of these postulates are possible. Maybe you are asking irrelevant questions, unspecified questions, too generic, or non-fundamental. Maybe you have not asked a question that would yield preliminary information. Critical thinking as defined in Wikipedia refers to the: the analysis of available facts , evidence , observations , and arguments to form a judgment. [1] The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally includ...