Open AccessCritical Thinking Education and Debiasing (AILACT Essay Prize Winner 2013)
Author(s) -
Tim Kenyon,
Guillaume Beaulac
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
informal logic
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.368
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 2293-734X
pISSN - 0824-2577
DOI - 10.22329/il.v34i4.4203
Subject(s) - debiasing , situational ethics , taxonomy (biology) , critical thinking , epistemology , confirmation bias , computer science , psychology , engineering ethics , social psychology , mathematics education , philosophy , engineering , botany , biology
There are empirical grounds to doubt the effectiveness of a common and intuitive approach to teaching debiasing strategies in critical thinking courses. We summarize some of the grounds before suggesting a broader taxonomy of debiasing strategies. This four-level taxonomy enables a useful diagnosis of biasing factors and situations, and illuminates more strategies for more effective bias mitigation located in the shaping of situational factors and reasoning infrastructure. The question, we contend, then becomes how best to teach the construction and use of such infrastructures.