(September 18, 2019 at 7:55 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(September 18, 2019 at 7:25 pm)mordant Wrote: Children should have a grasp of the basic logical fallacies and practice in correctly identifying them, before middle school in my view. Alas ... what we have at least in the US is nothing at all, and we will continue that way so long as conservative parents have anything to say about it.
I certainly agree that critical thinking is essential, that it can largely be taught, and that it should be valued.
Something to be careful of, though: logic and rationality, in the human world, are never applied independently of ideology. Indeed, the position that we should judge things based on logic and rationality is itself an ideology, and is itself something that critical thinking can examine.
This is not a problem if one's ideology is true.
