批判性思维作为哲学践行的终极目标

Critical Thinking as the Ultimate Goal of Philosophical Practice

作为当代西方哲学的新范式,哲学践行主张回归苏格拉底,以对话法对人们的思想和思维方式进行揭示、考察与修正,其终极目标之一是培养人们的批判性思维。批判性思维的突出形式是质疑、诘问,而非批判性思维则通常缺乏这样的反思性、独立性。心理学与我们的日常生活可谓紧密相关,但是实际上人们在现实生活中应用心理学研究结果时很容易陷入非批判性思维的泥淖,犯下层出不穷的逻辑谬误。而在形成信念的三种基本方式中,非批判性思维很可能从正确的前提得出错误的结论,因此比起在事后修正人们的错误信念,一个更为明智的选择是在源头上进行把控,事先对批判性思维进行教育、训练,从而有望避免相关思想问题的产生。

Philosophical practice,also known as philosophical counseling or philosophical therapy,aims at helping people resolve the perplexities and problems of their thoughts that they encounter in their daily lives from a philosophical perspective.As a new emerging paradigm in contemporary western philosophy,philosophical practice actually turns back to Socrates,proposing to disclose,examine and revise the visitors ’thoughts and ways of thinking through dialogues,in the hope of finally promoting their capabilities of critical thinking.A way of thinking is a pattern in which people usually think and reason,and it is well manifested in the processes that people form their beliefs.The prominent feature of critical thinking is that it is skeptic and inquiring,while non-critical thinking is lack of such spirits of reflectiveness and independence.Psychology can be closely related to our daily life,but in reality,it is easy to fall into non-critical thinking and commit a variety of logical fallacies when applying psychological findings in real life.In the three fundamental ways of belief-formation,the non-critical thinking may infer false conclusions from even true premises.Therefore,compared to revising people’s false beliefs afterwards,it’s much wiser to control the possible source of falsity by developing and enhancing people ’s critical thinking in advance,so that the possible perplexities and problems in their mind could thus be avoided.