Revisiting Critical Thinking

At the beginning of yet another new year and then, yet again, coining of new resolutions, it will certainly be worth our while to resolve to critically evaluate where the world is heading. Yes, as ostentatious as it may sound, more alarming than the fact that much is amiss, is the apparent death of ideas to amend the situation. The commonly accepted reason for this is that we live in a post-ideological era. 

The grand narratives of class and economics struggles, having been discredited, have now been effectively replaced by single-issue debates and campaigns on race, identity, gender, environment, religion et al. Though this marks the end of ideology as a totalitarian concept, political reality suggests 'a plethora of new – and old – ideological phenomena waiting for rethinking the empirical and theoretical frameworks of analysis'.  This brings us back to the notion of critical thinking, within issue-based campaigns.

The Greek philosopher Socrates once remarked, "An unexamined life is not worth living". But, unfortunately, we are born into a structured world that discourages examination of the realities we live in, making us hostage to other people's interpretations of right and wrong.  Breaking free and thinking 'out of the box' is the beginning of critical thinking. This necessitates a willingness to allow space for difference. A wonderful illustration of this is the classic dialogue of the Buddhist tradition 'Milinda-pañha' or 'Questions of King Milinda to the sage Nagasena' from the 2nd century BC, famous for its discussion of the no-self view central to Buddhism. 

Milinda: Reverend Sir, will you discuss with me again?

Nāgasena: If your Majesty will discuss (vāda) as a scholar, well, but if you will discuss as a king, no.

Milinda: How is it that scholars discuss?

Nāgasena: When scholars talk a matter over one with another, then there is a winding up, an unraveling, one or other is convicted of error, and he then acknowledges his mistake; distinctions are drawn, and contra-distinctions; and yet thereby they are not angered. Thus do scholars, O King, discuss. 

Milinda: And how do kings discuss?

Nāgasena: When a king, your Majesty, discusses a matter, and he advances a point, if anyone differs from him on that point, he is apt to fine him, saying "Inflict such and such a punishment upon that fellow!" Thus, your Majesty, do kings discuss.

Milinda: Very well. It is as a scholar, not as a king, that I will discuss. (MP 2.1.3)

But then, how do we equip ourselves to think critically? More and more 'metacognition' is being recognized as a necessary skill for critical thinking – meaning the need to 'think about thinking', 'know about knowing', and becoming 'aware of your awareness'. In other words, go beyond cognition, or 'cognize the world differently'. One way to do this is to look at the world through the arts.

Cognition clearly involves perception of one's environment through the senses. Art, on one hand, is a unique human activity associated fundamentally with symbolic and abstract cognition. On the other hand, present day neuroscience points to art as a multi-process cognition that is dependent on diverse brain regions. Clearly, therefore, art helps in developing conceptual understanding, essential to critical thinking, by encouraging creative imagination. Indian aesthetics, too, recognizes the fact that "Natyam, or theatre, while evoking the inner-organizing principle (anuvyavasāyatmakam) of apperception, can make audiences differently cognize (vikalpa – samvedanam) their world" (Abhinavagupta, 9th Century AD). 

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and leading advocate of 'critical pedagogy', maintained that, with 'proper tools', individuals can 'become conscious of their own social reality and deal critically with it'. German poet and playwright, Bertold Brecht, goes on to state that theatre can be that 'tool' which 'arouses man's capacity for action and forces him to take decisions', because 'the observer is alterable and able to alter'. 

Therefore, this new year, let us resolve to cognize the world differently, to allow us to think critically in the hope of finding new solutions. Be it through the arts, or otherwise. Shubho Noboborsho.