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I was listening to some young children in my family the other day talking to each other. The one Nephew told the one Niece. Only boys play with cars to which the she replies well then my sister is a boy because she also likes playing with cars. I was left thinking well that is a good reply. You may even say that she was following the statement to its logical conclusion.

So I was left wondering if there has been any investigations into whether we are born with some innate sense of critical thinking or is this simply the product of an education?

stoicfury
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Neil Meyer
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    It's interesting, but is this a philosophical question? – Drux Sep 19 '14 at 07:35
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    It looks like a developmental psychology question to me. According to Piaget logical reasoning does not develop before 6 years of age. "Preoperational Stage occurs from 2 years - 6 years. During this stage, children are able to represent the world with words and images, but they're still not able to use true logical reasoning." http://www.alleydog.com/topics/child-psychology.php – Conifold Sep 19 '14 at 17:22
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    @Conifold - If you read Piaget and then watch children, you will be endlessly surprised. I do not recommend Piaget for anything beyond entertainment these days. He played an important historical role, but modern child psychology is more on target. – Rex Kerr Sep 19 '14 at 19:28
  • Now I am curious, what's the threshold age according to modern psychology? And is this still true: "Although subjecting his ideas to massive scrutiny led to innumerable improvements and qualifications of his original model... Piaget's original model has proved to be remarkably robust"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget#Developmental_psychology – Conifold Sep 19 '14 at 23:25
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    Rex is basically correct in that Piaget is like the Freud of child development psychology — we tip our hats in respect to his work but we have to take care in how we apply his observations and theories today. But to answer the question, obviously we have to be born with *some* critical thinking skills, otherwise we couldn't form conclusions about things. I couldn't even conclude that a strange shape before me is a person speaking to me rather than a rock. The question is *how much* are we born with, and we don't have an answer for that. This is a question psychology is trying to figure out. – stoicfury Sep 19 '14 at 23:31
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    @stoicfury, it is an interdisciplinary question. So I think it remains on-topic. Plus many philosophers have discussed this question in their works. – infatuated Sep 20 '14 at 04:27
  • I agree that the "idea of critical thinking" is related to philosophy, but this question is still not posed in a way that philosophy experts would be able to contribute. It would be one thing if you could ask "is it logically possible to acquire a skill without being taught?" (bad example, but something along those lines), but this answer directly seeks knowledge from psychologists who have inductively tested this kind of thing, rather than philosophers trying to come to a conclusion about it through reasoning (which doesn't seem to make sense here). – stoicfury Sep 20 '14 at 18:27
  • I'll tell you what though. This currently has 2 reopen votes. Normally you need 5, but if you get just 2 more I'll cast the last one. If it is indeed on-topic, that shouldn't be difficult (I imagine you should get those votes in a day). I only closed by using the guidelines I've been using for the last 2 years, but if a sizable portion of the community deems these type of questions okay, then I'm cool with that. :) – stoicfury Sep 20 '14 at 18:33
  • @stoicfury, thank you! But I really think it is wrong to assume that this is only a psychological question or that it can be answered solely by psychology at all. Generally we know that there are very big overlaps between this discipline and philosophical fields such as epistemology and philosophy of mind, and I think this question falls very well into those overlapping areas. Plus philosophy as the most general science draws on (has to actually) findings of all branches of science if it is supposed to make final conclusive judgements about full reality of things. – infatuated Sep 20 '14 at 20:20
  • @infatuated - I'm not sure what you are getting at with the term "assume" here; are you suggesting that I'm just arbitrarily leaping to conclusions about questions I close? :'( On the contrary, I take great care in every close decision I make. It is not enough for a question to overlap disciplines in its topic — the (potential) answers must also overlap. In this case, answers would almost exclusively come from psychology, which makes it outside of our expertise. Mozibur, however, recently posted a much better [philosophy version of this question](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/16046/). – stoicfury Sep 21 '14 at 20:08
  • @stoicfury, I simply meant 'think' (an English slip on my part perhaps). And I'm not questioning your merits as a moderator, and I never thought you make arbitrary decisions, judging on the fact that you're a trusted high rep mod. But simply thought it could be left open for good reasons, and thought a discussion on the closure reasons could help me better understand your rationale. I may not still agree with you on this, though; however I DO respect your decision and your evaluation. :) – infatuated Sep 22 '14 at 01:30
  • I'm completely on the fence as to whether this is on-topic. On-topic answers are possible to this question but I fear it's going to attract a mixture of my-personal-philosophy.se and non-philosophical answers. – virmaior Sep 24 '14 at 09:59
  • @Conifold (Almost) Any 2yo+ child knows that if you add an apple to a small bunch of apples, the bunch becomes larger. Don't know about earlier, but with no reasoning at all, you can't even interact with the world. If something blocks your way (invisible) then there is something. Most insects and some birds do not know that at any age, but humans know that very early. I guess one can't separate deductive reasoning from inductive one (or simply the learning mechanism) as the former is produced by the latter. – rus9384 Jan 24 '19 at 10:53

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Chomsky defended his notion of a universal grammar in the human subject on two grounds; first that linguistic analysis tends to show structural affinities across widely separated languages; secondly that children learnt language from a minute number of fragmentary sentences (think of the massive case training by typical neural networks for natural language learning.

This theory of an inate potentia of language in a subject attacked the then prevalent theory by Skinner, which was an aspect of his behaviouralist paradigm (he denied the subject in the human subject), and determined language acquisition purely environmentally.

In Platos Meno, Socrates expounds on his theory of anamnesis:

He suggests that the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity (86b), but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the trauma of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten.

This is illustrated by:

Socrates asking a slave boy questions about geometry. At first the boy gives the wrong answer; when this is pointed out to him, he is puzzled, but by asking questions Socrates is able to help him to reach the true answer. This is intended to show that, as the boy wasn't told the answer, he could only have reached the truth by recollecting what he had already known but forgotten.

Using Aristotles terminology - in this picture we already know language in potentia (or dunamis) but only becomes language in actualite (or energia) when expressed in the world, and by the world (the world as a midwife).

Finally thinking of grammar as a kind of formal logic; the same is likely for logic; and then the same for critical thinking.

Mozibur Ullah
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  • Even assuming grammar=logic isn't Chomsky's "genetic grammar" incosistent with patterns in existing languages and relationships among their families? – Conifold Sep 19 '14 at 23:17
  • @Conifold: In what way, what patterns are you referring to? Given that languages form just a few language families; one need only establish a linguistic analysis across the grammar of certain proto-languages; and I suppose thats the task of transformative grammars; but the point ought to be plausible from *poetics*; where one can see that atypical constructions such as inverting S-V-O are still easily understood. – Mozibur Ullah Sep 19 '14 at 23:59
  • Linguistic commonalities that universal grammar predicts are not present across different families, and some individual languages do not manifest recursive patterns it predicts either. Or under more generous reading, the evidence does not support their presence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar#Criticisms – Conifold Sep 20 '14 at 00:25
  • @Conifold: Lets take software languages as an example - C, Java, Haskell; one wouldn't use a turing machine to predict the characteristics of each language; even though each can be reduced to one; not that I'm directly comparing natural languages to constructed ones... – Mozibur Ullah Sep 20 '14 at 18:52
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No, we are not born with any sense of critical thinking. We are born only with our material sense perceptions. However, upon recurring sensual perceptions, and as a result, subsequent conception of the first abstract thoughts in human mind, the ability to think and reason emerges.

'Unity' (or 'identity' or 'sameness') and 'difference' are the very first two abstract thoughts that the human young forms. They emerge after recognition of differences or similarities among sensory data that we absorb. Comparison between these sensory data allow us to categorize their differences under new abstract thoughts such as 'size', 'color', 'shape' from which we differentiate concepts like 'length', 'depth', 'width', 'long', 'short', 'big' ,'small', 'red', 'blue' etc. Or 'weight', 'heavy', 'light', 'soft', 'rough', 'stinky', delicious', 'sweet' etc as thoughts inferred from data absorbed by sense of touch, smell, and a subsequent recognition of their distinct qualities.

It is these emergent abstract concepts that make us capable of rational thinking (e,g reasoning, analysis, negation, etc). Because all rational thinking requires these or other abstract concepts. Besides comparison, association is among the most primitive thinking process that humans develop. A new born baby soon establishes relations between the warmth of his/her mother's arms and feelings such as sense of security and hunger satisfaction. But upon negation of these perceived relations, he/she discovers new relations between phenomena such as certainty or uncertainty, hope or frustration, achievement or non-achievement etc. However these new concepts are usually permanently established after adequate recurrence of their underlying experiences.

The toddler will soon have the ability to reason that "Mom's arms sometimes mean milk" therefore "Not all mom's hugs mean milk; they may sometimes mean kiss." This is how a kid gradually develops ability for logical/critical thinking.

infatuated
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  • can you provide some references or are these your own ideas? – nir Sep 19 '14 at 09:04
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    @nir, My main source of inspiration for this was *The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism*, a voluminous Persian treatise on the Islamic tradition of Peripatetic-Neoplatonic philosophy by the highly renowned theist Persian philosopher [Muhammad Hussein Tabataba'e](http://books.google.com/books?id=hEzv08LMbocC&lpg=PR11&dq=%22The%20Principles%20of%20Philosophy%20and%20the%20Method%20of%20Realism%22&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Principles%20of%20Philosophy%20and%20the%20Method%20of%20Realism%22&f=false). However I'm not sure if the book has been ever translated in full to English. – infatuated Sep 19 '14 at 10:03
  • But as for the ideas I laid out here, they are mostly easy to verify through introspection. – infatuated Sep 19 '14 at 10:04
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    "we are not born with any sense of critical thinking"... how do you know that? That's a scientific (testable), psychological statement, not a philosophical one. Introspection is great motivation but it is not a justification. Your introspection may be faulty and the rest of us do have not access to it. – Mitch Sep 19 '14 at 12:06
  • @Mitch, thinking hings upon memory. If we do not have memory we can never think, because thinking is a process that is applied to mental concepts that are already perceived by our mind and stored in our memory. So without concepts thinking is impossible. And there's no doubt that a new born baby has a very very faint memory (if not no memory at all); certainly no conceptual memory. Because if they did we would have been able to remember our infancy and even our fetus state. We evidently don't. – infatuated Sep 19 '14 at 12:24
  • How is it 'evident'? I have extremely faint to nonexistent memories of when I was 3 years old, but a 3 year old has _very_ vivid memories of the year before. Who is to say if before they could speak children have very vivid memories of earlier but just can't communicate by words that they have them? Likewise with making symbolic inferences. – Mitch Sep 19 '14 at 12:30
  • @MItch, but honestly have you ever seen any 3-year-old who can recall few months before, recalling anything beyond 2 years ago? I mean it is evident that they recognize their parents, their toys in that age, but hardly anything earlier than toddler age. Because if they did they could similarly recall and express it once they can talk. – infatuated Sep 19 '14 at 12:36
  • Infatuated, I don't _know_ any of that. I'm not being philosophical. I don't know because I haven't met enough toddlers or devised a method to extract that information from them without depending on their poor ability to communicate. There's lots of scientific evidence (see experiments in developmental psychology) that show that people younger than you are not as dumb as you think. Anyway, the philosophical part of the question s a definition of 'innate' and 'logic', but the rest is experimental (scientific) psychology, and simple introspection is considered an outdated non-scientific method. – Mitch Sep 19 '14 at 20:57
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    @mitch: 'infatuated' isn't just relying on introspection; but also on a text by *Tabataba'e*; which as he points out is peripatetic & neo-platonic. – Mozibur Ullah Sep 19 '14 at 23:03
  • If you develop "the ability to think and reason" prior to education, then we would say you are born with those things. Being born with the ability to learn how to critically think in these arguments the same as ability born with the ability to critical think. – stoicfury Sep 19 '14 at 23:33
  • @Mitch, Not totally dumb! Neoplatonists such as al-Farabi established as back as 900s AD that man is not born by any innate knowledge except some very vague sensual feelings of the womb or outside. And their proofs and evidences have so far remained undisputed AFA I know. But as for your allegation that modern psychology has disproved the above observation, I assume they only refer to these very dim sensual experiences during fetus state as sign of consciousness but *the ability to think*, meaning processing abstract concepts, is a much more advanced and later level of consciousness. – infatuated Sep 20 '14 at 04:03
  • @stoicfury, yes as you noticed 'ability' (to think) can be used in two different senses: 1) having actual thinking capability by birth or 2) having only a potential (that is undeveloped) faculty to think by birth. The question was asking about the former I thought. As for the 'education' hint, I regarded even pre-school mental experiences that starts during infancy as some sort of education and cultivation of human mind. – infatuated Sep 20 '14 at 04:08
  • @MoziburUllah and Mitch, as for the debate on 'introspection', it's a very extensive topic, but although introspection is only one method of acquiring knowledge but it lies at the core of all of our perceptions and scientific struggles. In short, introspection is not a rival of other scientific methods but makes all of them possible. – infatuated Sep 20 '14 at 04:14