Chapter 9
In This Chapter
Identifying initial clues from texts
Extracting the deeper golden nuggets
Using time-saving techniques
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
John Locke (As quoted in ‘Hand Book: Caution and Counsels’ in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (1843) by Horace Mann)
Critical Thinking is fed and nurtured by great books, which firmly places Critical Reading skills at the heart of good learning. Critical Readers do not accept passively what they read — they read actively, constantly weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of the author's case. As I explain in this chapter, they move beyond meekly bowing down before presented facts and instead question and assess all the evidence, whether it's stated openly or submerged deeply within.
Of course, Critical Reading is about discovering ideas and information — but that's no use if you can't remember much of what you've read afterwards, if you have trouble getting your hands on the specific bits you need or you're short of time. For this reason, I offer some practical tips on note-taking and skim-reading to finish off the development of your Critical Reading skills.
In some contexts, being an uncritical reader is sufficient: in fact most education encourages this approach. The main skill that schools develop is the ability to summarise rather than select; while challenging or disputing sources — be they other books or teachers — is actively discouraged. Colleges are no better.
This may be because education operates in a bit of a sealed bubble. The exam board tells the teacher what to teach; the teacher tells school students what to learn; and the exam board checks only ‘how much’ the children remember. Critical Thinking doesn't come into it! Put another way, a college course can be badly designed, out-of-date and irrelevant, but if the people who teach and mark it are happy with it, that's the course you have to succeed in.
Take healthcare, for example. Professionals of all kinds are responsible directly to their clients and reading that a particular new approach is effective isn't enough if people using it find that it makes the situation worse. Doctors are deluged with medical studies that argue persuasively for new treatments, which some years later turn out to be ineffectual or even harmful. A careful, Critical Reading of the claims made for the treatment may reveal early on that the evidence advanced for them is weak. So, having Critical Reading skills can be a matter of life or death!
Wouldn't life be much easier if you could assume that what you read is a straightforward account and that — by and large — authors are truthful. Yet people can be wrong and texts can be misleading — and for many more reasons than authors simply being mendacious (I swear it's true, honest!). They may be misinformed, out-of-date or simply incompetent; or mixed up, muddled or just lazy. Or all of them!
So you need to be a sceptical reader. In this section I describe a number of mental checks to run on any piece of writing that you're reading critically, to help assess the soundness of its content. You may be surprised just how much information you can glean from a few fairly basic quality controls.
But, despite what even some Critical Thinking experts say(!), all topics in scholarly life contain a range of diametrically opposed opinions. Therefore, this academic type of check is far from a guarantee that the text isn't making more sophisticated and significant mistakes, that it isn't partisan, or indeed that the work's whole approach isn't wrong.
Perhaps you've asked yourself what qualifications I have to write on Critical Thinking. You should have! Well, to put your mind at rest, I do have relevant degrees and I researched and co-authored a report on the subject for the UK government. For Dummies guides also require a popular touch, and so it's relevant that I've written many books for general readers too.
Authors having first-hand, relevant experience makes their books more credible. But look out for authors whose experience may indicate that they have a bias — it's an easy mistake to make. For a possible example, see the nearby sidebar ‘Being aware of potential author bias’.
Consider whether the text is presented as a factual report or as a logical argument. Or is it part of a campaign, even a piece of propaganda or advertising? If it's a piece of research, ‘how well’ has it been done?
Judging this last point is by no means straightforward. Evaluating research is a special process, involving consideration of several factors as I describe in the nearby box ‘Checking the methodology’! Even so, a Critical Reader should at least consider this issue.
If a text is presented as a factual report or as research, the date when it was written can be crucial. The ‘when’ is a vital bit of the context.
Offering evidence for a position is surprisingly easy — the real question is how you decide what counts as good evidence. For example, is a book with ten pages of sources at the back better than one with no sources offered (like this one)?
I'll stick my head out a bit here and say (contrary to much academic practice) that the key thing is the main text. A source looks grand and fine, but the question of ‘who says that and why’ is really just being passed on — it doesn't go away. Where did the author of the book used as a source get their info from? Authors should give as much evidence as readers need to make an independent assessment of an issue in the main body of the book. As a reader, you shouldn't be obliged to either take things on trust or to check up yourself on all the footnotes and sources offered in a library!
A connected issue is the question of whether a book argues just one perspective or several. As I explain in Chapter 10, a good book needs to have the feel of a debate carefully guided by a strong chairperson. For the Critical Reader, even if not for the general public, a book that presents opinions as facts and fails to indicate other views and approaches to the matter reduces its own credibility.
It's amazing how many different responses people can have to the same text. So it's important for Critical Readers not only to think about the author's reasons for writing something, but their own reasons for reading it!
The answers to these questions matter because, say, if your source is something you just happened to come across, it may not be representative of the consensus of opinion on the subject. It may be the point of a view of a small, activist minority — or just someone who doesn't really know their stuff. It's human nature to seek out views that reinforce ones we already hold, so beware ‘uncritical’ reading of articles and books you chose just because you liked the look of them. On the other hand, suppose that your source is a book that has been recommended to you by someone else, in such cases the recommendation is only as good as their judgement. If they are a professor in the subject, yes, that's normally a good start because they will surely have a good grasp of the general context (it's their job to), but equally they may have quite narrow, fixed views. You may be being steered towards a standard view at the expense of other, less conventional but maybe more fruitful ones. The point is to always be aware that you could — and maybe should — be reading something else!
The Internet makes ‘fact checking’ any document incredibly quick and easy — although there are a lot of wonky websites and you may make a worse mistake if you prefer a web page to a carefully researched book. But in any case, you need to look for several kinds of evidence when reading, of which ‘facts’ are only the most superficial layer.
In this section I describe the detective work that Critical Readers carry out to uncover the hidden premises or chains of reasoning in a text — that is, the implied but not stated assumptions.
Primary sources: Primary sources are a researcher's gold dust. They are original materials from the time period involved that have not been filtered through interpretation or evaluation. Primary sources present original thinking, present and report discoveries, or share new ideas or information.
Think about the Global Warming controversy and just how many facts exist on both sides in the debate. If you look at different websites, arguing over exactly the same piece of news (say, that the Greenland ice sheet has been reported as shrinking) you can find two authoritative and equally factual explanations that come to completely opposed conclusions.
When reading a primary source, a short quote provides you with gold-plated evidence for your argument — as well as being more interesting to read. For example, if you are waiting for an author to prove to you that a newspaper called the Daily Wail once warned that polar bears were in danger of dying out, then a quote from the paper itself doing just this is much better than anything else and certainly worth any number of experts recalling or remembering hearing that the Wail did do such things. The Daily Wail would be, in this case, the primary source.
Another way to be a Critical Reader is to strip texts down to their argumentative skeleton. What do I mean? Well, as I explain in more detail in Chapter 11, non-fiction texts consist of two sorts of arguments:
Explicit arguments: Signposted clearly in the text by discussing competing views and giving reasons why such-and-such is right or wrong. Explicit arguments often end up with marker terms such as ‘In conclusion’, ‘Therefore’ and ‘Thus it can be seen’.
All arguments — not just dodgy ones — are based on more assumptions than meet the eye. Check out the nearby sidebar ‘Breaking the argument chain’ for an example.
Philosophy has long had a dislike of astrology. It is, after all, irrational. And one of the most surprising, some would say alarming, facts about Ronald Reagan is that, as soon as he became the President of the United States, he appointed a personal astrologer to help him take decisions. But then, for thousands of years, all the Kings and Queens had their personal astrologers to do much the same thing. These were experts that they consulted on important state matters, such as when to invade the neighbouring country, when to harvest the crops — or how best to bring up baby.
Reagan had acquired the habit of consulting an expert in the Occult Arts when he was but a humble actor in California, doubtless the process helped him decide which role in which film he should accept — and we know where that ended: Breakfast with Bonzo (1951). But once he took high office, the role of astrology became even more in important.
Reagan consulted his personal astrologer, Joan Quigley, about the personality and inclinations of other world leaders, and used these insights to help him assess the prospects of meetings succeeding. It seems, for example, that the stars looked favourably upon one Mikhail Gorbachev, the then leader of the otherwise Evil Empire, and hence Reagan was encouraged to attempt the rapprochement that in due course led to the end of the Cold War. In fact, the timings of all policy initiatives had to be squared with the movements of the cosmos, and White House staff were instructed to liaise with her in all their plans. She was responsible, in short, for the success of all that Reagan did. And these days, Reagan is counted as a pretty successful President, although that judgement is itself by no means necessarily a very scientific one.
Of course, Ronald Reagan came in for a bit of stick for consulting astrologers. Just as more generally scientists and attached pundits love nothing better that to mock more humble folk who follow their forecasts in the newspapers and magazines. For many educated people, nothing better illustrates the gullibility and foolishness of the masses, and the need for the lead of a scientific elite than the continued activities of ‘unlicensed’ specialists in the influence of the stars and planets on human affairs. They don't seem to remember, or want to be told, that for a thousand years, Universities taught astrology as one of the core subjects, and that it was part of a sophisticated system of medical knowledge involving the different parts of the body and different herbs.
Even if that founding figure of sensible science, Isaac Newton, was brought up on a diet of esoteric knowledge, in which astrology ranked as one of the great studies of mankind, even if astronomy profited from the mystical approach of Pythagoras, even if the best of modern medicine is borrowed from herbalism and chemistry is a side-shoot of alchemy. Even if, in short, in Paul Feyerabend's words, everywhere science is enriched and sustained by unscientific methods and unscientific results, today astrology is firmly fallen out of favour with philosophers, let alone scientists. Little remains of the subject other than the superficial popular and psychological forms, yet astrology, like many of the now much derided esoteric studies of the distant past, still has the potential to inform and underpin our understandings of the universe. Because thousands of years of thinking are contained in those ancient astrological myths and legends. Science is just a blip in this long history. . .
I summarise his argument below, with my own clarifications:
First premise: Notions of right and wrong and human values in general all depend on the existence of conscious minds, because only conscious minds can experience pleasure and pain.
(In other words, morality is rooted in awareness of pain and pleasure, which are brain states.)
Second premise: Conscious minds are natural phenomena, and so they must be fully explained and constrained (limited) by the physical laws of the universe (whatever these turn out to be in the end).
(In other words, consciousness is reducible to physical states, such as electrical signals or chemical changes in brains.)
Now Sam draws speedily to his knock-out conclusion.
Therefore: All questions concerning human values must have objectively right and wrong answers, and these answers can be obtained through the techniques of natural science.
Sam adds that he means this ‘in principle’, if not in practice.
Okay, that's the argument. Now what assumptions do you think are present that ought to be brought out into the light and checked? Answers at the end of this chapter.
If only as much effort went into reducing words and arguments to their essentials, as goes into producing and expanding on them! The world would be a less wordy place, communication would be enhanced and knowledge would flourish like a well-pruned tree.
Alas, the world isn't like this, and you need to be quite ruthless in hacking away at all the verbiage. In this section, you can find out how — and why — to make your notes effective, and strategies to get your reading done in a fraction of the time you've been taught to do it in.
Ignoring irrelevant material saves you time and effort and improves the quality of your work, because it allows you to focus your efforts on what's genuinely useful. I discuss two tools in this section: effective note-making and skim-reading.
Note-taking requires you to use several key Critical Thinking skills: comprehension and analysis, synthesis, and writing and communication skills. Summarising is the ability to make use of information, and it helps you to make sense of material.
Reading a text, or listening to a lecture. Yes, that's right, you can't avoid it!
The art of summarising is in that last sentence. Anyone can write a summary: writing a useful one is much harder.
The things that most cry out for summaries are books. If most books on Critical Thinking are careful to include chapter summaries and so on — many, mainstream academic books don't do that. Instead you have to read from Chapter 1 to Chapter Zzzz — and maybe the index and footnotes too to find out the author's point. That's not good.
My own experience reading philosophy is that even the great works contain only one or two small ideas worth noting. I'm not making it up! After I read these books — or a rather skim-read them (see the next section) I usually find it requires just a few hundred words to sum up all the key points in a book of about 100,000 words. A few hundred words is a lot easier to write down, a lot easier to remember and a lot easier to develop and take forward for your own purposes later. But don't be too dogmatic — if something is full of important ideas, your summary is going to get a bit longer.
Remember, while you're making notes you can also be engaging purposefully and creatively with the topic, connecting up your own thoughts with the views of the author on the subjects.
Actually, as I explain in Chapter 7, even informal jottings frequently help you to find thoughts that previously you weren't aware of! When taking notes is done correctly, it is not a desperate effort to get down an accurate record of what's in the book or what the lecturer is saying — it is a much more constructive and personal activity. In effect, you ‘discover’ your own ideas through the apparently reverse activity of writing down someone else's.
Okay, okay, I know taking notes is boring. Much better to hope your brain remembers everything important and sorts out the information later subconsciously.
Dream on! Unless you're very unusual, your brain forgets 98 per cent of what you've carefully read and mangles the remaining 2 per cent. That's where factual notes come in. Look on them not as a chore, but as a powerful thinking tool. A note acts as a safe-deposit box that doesn't disappear overnight — and a page of notes is an organised store too.
Skim-reading is such a powerful technique — strange that it isn't taught more. Indeed, teachers and professors usually insist that if they set a chapter to read, you better read every last word of it! But Critical Readers are an unconventional lot and can afford to risk the odd frown of disapproval.
Only read sections of books that seem useful — and of course you don't need to read them all either. As I say, usually you can see whether a paragraph is useful to you by just reading the first line. As long as material seems relevant and useful, you keep reading, because you've ‘struck gold’. As soon as you sense the material isn't right for you, skim the first lines of the next few paragraphs and if (to quote Mick Jagger) you still ‘can't get no satisfaction’, start flicking pages until you get to the next marked out section. (And certainly pause at a new chapter).
When you seem to be in a useful part of the book, look more closely at the text than if you seem to be wading though irrelevant text. If (after about two minutes of skimming) the whole book seems a bit dull — stop and ask yourself, hey, why am I reading this? Maybe you could spend your time better.
Here I provide my thoughts on this chapter's two exercises.
I'm sure that you can find many things to say, but here are my notes.
The piece is an informal argument. The author argues that something useful may reside in astrology and that it's too often dismissed. To back this assertion up she gives a number of examples. The first one is that of Ronald Reagan, who it seems relied on astrological advice for all his key policy decisions. A specific example is given: Reagan's decision to work with the Russian president to end the Cold War was based on advice from his astrologer that this would be a good policy.
Another more general defence of astrology is that ‘for a thousand years, Universities taught astrology as one of the core subjects’. The hidden assumption, or implied premise, is that if something is taught at university it must be useful and important. The author adds that astrology was historically part of ‘a sophisticated system of medical knowledge involving the different parts of the body and different herbs’.
The point isn't made explicit but seems to be that astrology has aided the development of medical knowledge in general and herbalism in particular. But no evidence is offered for ‘how’ astrological notions aided and guided herbalism, and so this seems to be argument by positive association — sometimes called the association fallacy. Similarly, the reference to Isaac Newton seems to be included more to associate a great scientist with astrology rather than to demonstrate anything more substantial about astrology's scientific usefulness.
Here's one factual mistake in the piece that I spotted. The film referred to as Breakfast with Bonzo is actually Bedtime for Bonzo. This is a small mistake but does cast doubt on the author's other factual claims. In summary, the piece presents itself as a factual argument but seems to rest on subjective opinions.
I think the argument is basically that morality is reducible to calculations of the total amount of human ‘pleasure’ as opposed to the amount of human ‘pain’, and that these sensations are also reducible to physical states, such as electrical signals or chemical changes in brains. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that scientists can objectively measure and investigate such physical states.
So what are the hidden assumptions or implied premises? For starters:
No doubt plenty more hidden assumptions exist, so don't necessarily count yourself wrong if you have a different list!
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