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USA Edition | Today Is Wednesday, June 19, 2013 |
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Socratic Warning
Newsroom Magazine
May Challenge
Or Demand
Critical Thinking
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The intellectual roots of critical thinking date back to the Greek philosophers.
Socrates discovered, by means of probing questions, that in the exchange of competing ideas, people sometimes make confident claims based on unreliable assumptions or failed logic.
Such arguments, he discovered, were either erroneous in fact, absent sufficient foundation, or failing in logic. Instead, most arguments were based on confused meanings, inadequate evidence, or contradictory beliefs.
Socrates' contributions to critical thinking were many -- for he established new ways to think about contentious issues in terms of the quality of assumptions, facts and logic.
Thus Socrates demonstrated that persons may have passion, or power or high position but yet be deeply confused and irrational.
Good journalism, like compelling debate, is based on a clear understanding of facts and the logical construction of one's argument. And that is what the Socratic Method and The Sophist Tradition is all about.
Evidentiary Approach
The Socratic Method is the preferred way to examine issues.In the Socratic mode of questioning, postulations, ideas or arguments are examined for their clarity and logical consistency by systematic analysis of facts, assumptions and logical methodology to support a conclusion.
Socratic analysis is accomplished by means of a series of probing questions that systematically examine the quality of an argument or conclusion.
Understanding the quality of information, argument or one's conclusions, is fundamental to critical thinking -- and the goal of critical editing.
Historical Foundation
Socrates’ practice was followed by the critical thinking of Plato (who recorded Socrates’ thought), Aristotle, and the Greek skeptics, all of whom emphasized that things are often very different from what they appear to be.Only the trained mind is prepared to see through the way things look to us on the surface (delusive appearances) to the way they really are beneath the surface (the deeper realities of life.)
From this ancient Greek tradition emerged the need, for anyone who aspired to understand the deeper realities, to think systematically, to trace implications broadly and deeply; for only thinking that is comprehensive, well-reasoned, and responsive to objections can take us beyond the surface.
Means Of Analysis
The common denominators of Critical Thinking requires, for example, the systematic monitoring of thought; that thinking, to be critical, must not be accepted at face value, but must be analyzed and assessed for its clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and logical validity. All reasoning occurs within points of view and frames of reference.All reasoning proceeds from some goals, objectives, and has an informational base. All data, when used in reasoning, must be interpreted. That interpretation involves concepts, that concepts entail assumptions, and that all basic inferences in thought have implications, and each of these dimensions of thinking need to be monitored where problems of thinking can occur.
Questioning Chain
The result of the collective contribution of the history of critical thought is that the basic questions of Socrates can now be much more powerfully and focally framed.In every domain of human thought, and within every use of reasoning within any domain, it is now possible to question:
• ends and objectives
• the status and wording of questions
• the sources of information and fact
• the method and quality of information collection
• the mode of judgment and reasoning used
• the concepts that make that reasoning possible
• the assumptions that underlie concepts in use
• the implications that follow from their use
• the point of view or frame of reference within which reasoning takes place
Jeffrey Slee
Logician
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Newsroom Magazine is publishing news content today. Sharing what’s happening in Washington with readers world-wide is our purpose and our mission. We respect Internet content publishers who have chosen to bail-out, boycott, or go dark in protest over the K-Street Industrial Complex’ ham-handed attempt at copyright protection absent equally clear protection for freedom of speech rights.
Washington
Newsroom Magazine calls on Congress to kill both the SOPA and PIPA bills.
The Internet is a complex and often difficult to understand medium. Few who use this medium grasp how important the Internet has become to economic growth. Or how Internet-enabled freedom of speech has changed the world.
Newsroom Magazine supports legislation that equally values the needs and interests of all Internet content stakeholders.
Property rights are important. But no more so than freedom of speech and expression. As long as both are protected the Internet can continue to empower the disenfranchised, even as it affords others the opportunity to profit, share, inform, teach, entertain, lie, cheat, or misdirect.
Today, the Internet is at risk by way of SOPA and/or PIPA bills pending in the U.S. Congress. The purpose of the proposed legislation is to end wrongful exploitation of copyrighted materials by persons or organizations, especially those offshore, who seek to wrongfully profit from the intellectual property of others.
Intellectual property rights are of importance to both Internet users and publishers for the right to profit from one’s own work is central to freedom of information.
The pending legislation should be scrapped in favor of joint development of a new bill based on hearings and consultations by and among content copyright owners and Internet operators, publishers and content providers.
