Donald Hatcher

Introduction

In practice, Western culture--and especially our institutions of education--has praised certain intellectual abilities and habits of mind, while being critical of others. These skills and dispositions have turned out to be pretty much co-extensive with what teachers of critical thinking try to teach. For example, we have praised people who are openminded, while criticizing those who are dogmatic or exhibited what Epictetus called a "certain paralysis of the mind." We have praised figures such as Socrates, Jesus, and Gandhi for questioning authority, and criticized those, such as the German SS officers, who follow unquestioningly the dictates of those in power. We extol the works of creative thinkers, both scientists and artists, who break the bonds of staid conceptual frames and look at problems from a new perspective, while being critical of thinkers who merely repeat, copy, or parrot the ideas of others. Student papers that exemplify rigor and clarity of thought are praised and given high marks, while those lacking in these qualities are criticized. So, in practice, we commend works or persons who exemplify certain intellectual skills and dispositions while criticizing those found lacking. In other words, we commend people who are good critical thinkers and critical of those who are not.

What though is the foundation of these judgments? Are these judgments which ascribe intellectual virtue and vice grounded only on practical concerns, e.g., how can our workers better compete in a global economy or how can we better educate lawyers and doctors? Or are intellectual virtues simply behaviors useful for success in life, e.g., teaching people to think more clearly about lifeÕs goals and the means of achieving them?1 Perhaps so. However, if the justification for teaching critical thinking is limited to practical concerns, like Kant's hypothetical imperatives, our duty to acquire critical thinking skills and dispositions is not obligatory, but contingent on our specific needs and values.2 If the duty to acquire certain epistemic virtues is conditional, then we can form our beliefs in any manner we please, as long as we are willing to accept the consequences. If, on the other hand, there is a moral obligation for all humans to develop intellectual virtues akin to critical thinking, then the justification for teaching students to be critical thinkers is absolute, or, as Kant would say, "categorical." If people can be held morally accountable for the quality of their beliefs just as people are held accountable for other behaviors or character traits, e.g., honesty, showing respect for persons, temperance, and benevolence, then teachers have a duty to help students understand and successfully meet these ethical obligations.

But what sense does it make to say people have a moral obligation to be critical thinkers? I shall argue that how we behave with respect to forming our beliefs is as morally significant as other morally significant actions. As a result, there is a moral imperative to teach critical thinking, and teachers are under a moral obligation to help students acquire those skills and dispositions commonly associated with critical thinking. Not to do so may well be unethical.

Some Preliminary Distinctions

Before beginning, two distinctions need to be made. First, when considering questions of rights and duties, we should always distinguish ethical from legal rights. Questions of whether persons have a right to believe anything or form their beliefs in any manner should not be construed as a legal issue. Of course, legally, people have a right to believe anything and think in any manner they want, but it does not follow that they are behaving morally in doing so. In other words, not all behaviors that are legal are ethical. For example, I suppose legally one has a right to try to seduce another person's spouse, but it does not follow that one is acting morally by doing so, as that would be to try to get a person to break a contract solely for personal benefit. When considering the question of one's right to believe in whatever fashion one chooses, keeping the notion of legal rights separate from ethical rights is important because it allows us to focus on the ethical question while all First Amendment questions can be left to the legal scholars.

Next, it will be helpful if we are clear on the meaning of the phrase "quality of beliefs." When discussing our epistemic obligations, we need to distinguish the content of beliefs from the process or the manner in which beliefs are formed. Epistemic obligations refer to the latter and have little to do with the actual content of our beliefs. This is because if we assume that an ethics of belief is possible, then we must be able to control that for which they are held responsible. From Aristotle on, philosophers have understood that we cannot be held accountable for what we cannot help doing. In many cases, however, what we believe is indeed beyond our control. Just as the conclusion of an argument depends on its prior premises, so what persons in fact believe is dependent on such variables as the nature of available evidence, the social and historical situation, the available tools for investigation, and the development of our inferential and investigative powers. For example, we would not judge Haitian children who believed in voodoo as ethically remiss for shirking their epistemic obligations. This is because the nature of evidence and the particular social situation of Haitian children make it quite reasonable for them to hold such beliefs. In a like manner, we would not condemn Ptolemy for shirking his epistemic obligations because he believed the earth was the center of the solar system. His beliefs, while false, were a function of the available evidence in Greece in the 2nd century. So if there are such duties as epistemic obligations, they must apply only to our manner of forming beliefs and not to the end product or the content of the belief.

Yet, here, some might object to the distinction by pointing out the strong relationship between a person's manner of forming beliefs and what is actually believed. For example, if one believed that only those claims that were the product of scientific investigation or based on empirical evidence should be endorsed, then particular beliefs about the supernatural might be precluded. Hence, in some cases at least, the manner in which one forms beliefs determines what is believed. Yet all of this can be admitted without undermining the claim that whether one holds "right" beliefs or "wrong" ones is not an ethical issue. The ethical issue is with the manner in which we form beliefs. That is what the phrase "quality of beliefs" means. The position is analogous to that of math teachers who refuse to give students credit for right answers unless the process by which the answer was derived is made obvious. In a like manner, those who believe in epistemic obligations cannot pass moral judgment on persons for holding a belief, void of relevant information as to how the belief was formed. If we were to begin by looking only at the belief, we could not know whether the person had been brainwashed, acquired the belief as a sponge acquires water, or had chosen the belief for very good reasons. Because we cannot know which, we cannot pass judgment. We can judge only when we know the manner in which the belief came into existence. So even if there is a correlation between how one forms one's belief and what one believes, we cannot judge the content without first knowing the conditions under which the belief was formed.

Another way to illustrate the distinction between what is believed and one's manner of acquiring beliefs is to employ Harvey Siegel's distinction between the truth of a belief and the warrant or justification for the belief.3 Siegel claims that when we teach students to be critical thinkers we should not be concerned with whether the beliefs are true or false, but rather with how the beliefs have been warranted or justified. This is because, from his fallibilist perspective, we can never be sure whether any belief is true; all we can do is hold those beliefs for which we have the best reasons. As Siegel says, "Truth . . . must be seen by the critical thinking theorist as independent of justification."4 We can be justified in believing many things which, in fact, turn out to be false. The history of science is filled with examples. If we are to conclude that humans have epistemic obligations, we must only consider how the person went about acquiring the belief, not the belief per se.

The Foundations of Epistemic Obligations

As a way of leading to the arguments in support of treating epistemic obligations as ethical obligations, let us look at three objections to holding people responsible for how they form their beliefs. The first two focus on two problems with moral judgment: A) the lack of rational standards to support such judgment and B) the lack of freedom when it comes to forming beliefs. A third objection is that, apart from acting on unfounded or irrational beliefs, simply forming such beliefs harms no one and, so, is of no moral significance.

The first argument is based on claims made by epistemological relativists. From Plato on, philosophers have recognized that one of the conditions for the possibility of passing ethical judgment is there exists some standard to which we can appeal in order to justify the judgment. Otherwise judgment becomes a mere expression of personal or social bias. For example, we judge duplicitous behavior as morally wrong because we believe in the standard of honesty or forthrightness as being morally good. To deviate from the standard (unless of course there are overriding moral reasons) is wrong. If we did not assume such standards, we could not adequately justify our moral judgments. But what, a relativist might ask, is the objective standard for evaluating the ethics of how a person forms beliefs? From the position of epistemological relativism, the reasonableness of all beliefs is relative to some specific context, e.g., one's culture, historical period, social class, Gestalt, cognitive framework, languagegame, peer group, gender, or scientific paradigm--to name a few of the many notions of context used by epistemological relativists. If so, then there are no objective standards that transcend specific contexts by which one could evaluate whether or not persons were fulfilling their epistemic obligations. For epistemological relativists, the only existing standards of reasonableness are those found within a particular discipline, practice, or context. Hence, what counts as fulfilling one's epistemic obligations in one context may not be satisfactory in another. Furthermore, because there are no transcendent standards, no ethical judgment of epistemic obligations between contexts is possible. Rationality is indeed context-dependent, and so any proposed "ethics of belief" would only be the attempt to apply some specific standards of rationality to all contexts, and so would be illegitimate.

In spite of the enduring popularity of the epistemological relativism, there are many arguments against any position that contextualizes the rationality of beliefs. There is not time to cover all (or even most) of them.5 For our purposes, let's look at three of the more obvious criticisms. They are sufficient, I believe, to cast serious doubt on the reasonableness of the relativist position. These are what I call the incoherence argument, the evidential argument, and the identification argument, i.e., the idea of a "distinct epistemological context" is itself so illdefined that it becomes nonsensical.6 If epistemological relativism is shown to be unacceptable, then it is indeed possible to talk of standards of rationality necessary for an ethics of belief.

The incoherence argument begins by showing that the relativists' claim, "All claims are to be judged reasonable or unreasonable by virtue of their contexts" entails the claim that "There are no claims whose reasonableness or unreasonableness can be determined by objective standards." If there are no objective standards for measuring the rationality of a belief, then each context or culture determines its own standards of rationality.

The problem with the position is that epistemological relativists want us to believe that it is reasonable to believe their position; that is, the claim "There are no claims whose reasonableness or unreasonableness can be determined by objective standards" is itself objectively reasonable to believe, regardless of one's discipline, culture, history, or background. But if it is objectively reasonable, then the claim, "There are no objectively reasonable claims" must be false. Hence, if the relativists' position is accepted as reasonable, the claims which make up its own epistemology must be false.7 Hence, epistemological relativism is a logically incoherent position.

A second argument is what I call the evidential argument.8 It begins by assuming that reasonable persons ought to choose one theory over its alternatives because of the superior evidence. If people do not make such an assumption, it is difficult to see how one might decide how to reject any belief or settle disputes. If, however, the relativist epistemology is considered to be true, the reasonableness of all claims, including those that might count as evidence for relativism, is context-dependent. But if the claims making up the evidence for relativist epistemologies are themselves contextdependent, then such evidence bears no epistemic warrant for those who are not convinced of the reasonableness of such relativism. If, on the other hand, relativists claim that the evidence for their epistemology has objective merit, such that any person with properly functioning epistemic faculties should see the reasonableness of their theory, then their claims about the contextual nature of all rationality must be false; that is, the reasonableness of at least some claims, those that support relativism, is not contextdependent. So relativists are faced with the following dilemma: if their contextual epistemology were correct, there could never be objective evidence in its support, and if there were objective evidence, their epistemology would be false. So, if epistemological relativism cannot be supported by evidence, then the position is more like an ideology than a philosophical theory based on compelling evidence and arguments.

The identification argument begins with the simple question of how we might determine what counts for a "context." When two people disagree over the reasonableness of a belief, rather than saying that one is right while the other is wrong, relativists claim that each is operating from a different context or contextual frame. But, we should ask, "How could we know if someone were operating from a different context? What properties constitute a context?" Do culture, religion, sex, age, academic discipline, marital status, race, hair color, or geographic location count as sufficient conditions to claim that persons who disagree with us are not judging falsely but are judging the reasonableness of a belief from a different context?9 Which of the myriad of individual differences is sufficient to constitute an epistemologically distinct context? There seems to be no way of deciding. (Even if we could decide, from what context would we agree on the defining properties?) If we are unable to say what constitutes a context when there is disagreement, then, theoretically, any difference could be sufficient to warrant a distinct context and thus explain the disagreement. There could be Protestanttruths, maleProtestanttruths, male-Protestant-over-40truths, or maleProtestant marriedover-40truths, and so on. Any set of personal differences could be used as evidence for the claim that competing claims are not real disagreements but simply contextual differences for which there is no resolution. Pushed to its logical extremes, the notion of a distinct contextual frame is empty. There is no way to determine what differences between persons would be sufficient to constitute a different epistemological context. At best, it seems a convenient way to avoid deciding on the rationality of competing claims.

So, given these three arguments, it seems reasonable to conclude that epistemological relativism is a flawed theory, and it does not provide good reasons for humans to conclude that there are no objective standards to decide the rationality of beliefs. Hence, being held ethically accountable for how we form our beliefs remains possible.

A second sort of objection to an ethics of belief might come from the Heideggerian camp. I have claimed that, if there is such a thing as an ethics of belief, what is subject to ethical judgment is the manner in which we form our beliefs. This claim assumes that how we exercise our epistemic or investigative faculties is within our power, even though many of our specific beliefs are not. Persons who adopt a Heideggerian account of the human condition might reject this assumption on the grounds that we are not responsible for the willful exercise of our epistemic faculties. From Heidegger's perspective, we cannot simply decide whether to employ our investigative faculties. Prior to the investigation of the reasonableness of any belief, there must be some prior inclination to doubt whether the belief is true. Yet this needed inclination to exercise one's investigative faculties is itself a function of external events quite beyond our control. According to Heidegger, humans exist for the most part in a state he calls "averageeverydayness."10 In this state, humans are not inclined to question much of anything, let alone "exercise their investigative faculties." A questioning or investigative attitude occurs only when there is a problem or what he calls "a breakdown" in one's normal interpreted world or belief system.11 Apart from such breakdowns, humans tend to be absorbed in their social or historical situations and are not inclined to employ their critical or investigative faculties. Humans in "average everydayness" have no reason to question the reasonableness of their beliefs. If this is the case, then whether or not one exercises one's investigative faculties in forming beliefs is a function of external events or breakdowns. The occurrence of such events, however, is a matter of chance, and so, beyond our power. Hence, individuals cannot be held responsible for the manner in which they form their beliefs or for not properly exercising their investigative faculties. Because "ought implies can," without the needed freedom, there can be no epistemic obligations necessary for an ethics of belief. Hence, if we accept this account, an ethics of belief is impossible.

It is not clear, however, even if the Heideggerian account is accepted, that such a conclusion follows. Heidegger may well be correct in his description of human nature when he claims we are inclined to exist unquestioningly in "averageeverydayness." It does not follow, however, that we must behave in that way, no matter how natural or how typical the behavior is. Humans have many natural inclinations. We all recognize that. At the same time we hold that humans need not act on their inclinations, and in fact in many cases ought not to act. For example, humans may naturally be inclined to be lazy and selfish, but it does not follow that persons must be lazy or act selfishly. In fact, we condemn those who are lazy or selfish, and praise those who are not. Such praising and blaming assumes humans need not follow their inclinations and can, through an act of choice, rise above them. So, even if persons are naturally inclined to be mentally lazy and not exercise their investigative faculties with respect to forming their beliefs, it does not follow that they ought to remain so and cannot be blamed for not performing their epistemic duties. So it seems that an ethics of belief is at least possible, even if one accepts the Heideggerian account that humans are not inclined to think critically.

Along these same lines, even if we assume that people do not question beliefs until there is reason to do so, from the beginning of time humans have recognized that some of their beliefs have been wrong. (Mistaken beliefs are not something new to the post-modern age.) As Descartes pointed out, the fact that we are sometimes mistaken about some things should create a "crisis" in our belief systems. Any mistaken belief should create a desire to exercise one's investigative faculties and evaluate the veracity of others' beliefs. Not to do so is a sign of cowardice or laziness. Hence, there need not be a general breakdown or crisis in our entire conceptual framework in order for people to think critically about their beliefs. Anyone who has ever made an error or been confronted with conflicting beliefs is in a position to begin to investigate his or her beliefs in general. So again, even if we accept Heidegger's view of human nature, an ethics of belief is possible. Only if we are automatons lacking all freedom is an ethics of belief impossible. But, if so, all talk of duties and obligations is meaningless.

A third objection to holding people ethically accountable for how they form beliefs has nothing to do with either the existence of moral standards or the nature of human beings, but rather with the consequences of how we form our beliefs. Some may ask whether or not our manner of forming beliefs has any effect on anyone but ourselves. Unlike one's actions, one's manner of forming beliefs harms no one. If a behavior harms no one, it is not ethically significant. This is John Stuart Mill's position in On Liberty.12 Even if beliefs may be the foundations for our actions, they are, at best, necessary, but not sufficient conditions for them. So, even if people secretly believed that women were inferior to men, as long as they did not act on the belief, no one would be harmed. The same could be said for the manner in which we formed our beliefs. People could be an intellectually lazy, dogmatic bigots, forming entirely irrational beliefs, but as long as they did not act on any particular belief, no matter how illconceived, then no ethical issue arises. Forming one's beliefs and having beliefs are, in Mill's terminology, "selfregarding acts." As selfregarding acts there are no epistemic obligations concerning the formation of beliefs. So, if there is to be an ethics of belief, one must show that the manner in which people form beliefs, indeed, harms others, even if they do not act on the beliefs. The response to this problem will lead us directly to the reasons why how we form our beliefs is ethically significant.

The objection is clear: 1) Actions that harm no one are not of moral significance. 2) Neither beliefs nor the formation of beliefs harms others as long as one does not act on the belief. 3) Hence, to talk of epistemic obligations apart from actions is senseless. Beliefformation has no ethical significance.

There are (at least) two weaknesses with this argument. First, the major premise in the argument ignores the realm of ethics which deals with positive duties to self and others; that is, acts of omission which themselves are not actions, but nonetheless result in the continued suffering of others. One example is not giving to charity when there are people in need. While the action does not overtly harm any specific person, it does have obvious ethical significance. The behavior tells us something about the character of the person. The lack of action does harm others, and if it became widespread, would harm many. So, whether or not an act directly harms any specific individual is not the only issue with respect to the ethical acceptability of the act. Acts of omission are unethical if they conflict with a positive duty, such as helping those in need.

Along Kantian lines, one could reject Mill's first premise by arguing that persons who fail to exercise their mental faculties could hardly will that this become a general behavior-guiding principle practiced by all persons. As a general law of nature, no one would exercise his or her mental faculties. The problem with this is shown by Kant's example of the person who is contemplating whether to realize his or her human capacities or simply to live off the efforts of others. The consequences of one person engaging in this behavior would hardly be detectable. But, if all willed to live off of the efforts of others, there would be no surplus fruits of labor. In order for there to be an excess to feed the lazy, some must work. Hence, to choose a life of not realizing one's capacities is to choose a way of life that cannot be made a universal law.13 Kant's argument applies to mental laziness just as easily as to physical laziness. If no one exercised his or her epistemic virtues, the quality of life in the society would be greatly lowered.

Hence, while Mill and other consequentialist thinkers might claim that acts that harm no one are not of moral significance, Kantians can reject the claim on the grounds that whether or not anyone is actually harmed is not the issue. We can think of many instances where a particular act harms no one but has great moral significance. For example, imagine that I intend to poison my wife, but mistakenly add sugar rather than arsenic to her morning coffee. Is such an act void of moral significance simply because no one was harmed? Surely not. Morality involves more than actual consequences. The ethical issue is whether or not a maxim describing the behavior can be made, without logical inconsistency or hypocrisy, into a universal law of nature.

One could of course alter Mill's major premise from "Actions that (in fact) harm no one are not of moral significance," to "Actions of a certain kind that tend to harm no one are of no moral significance." Such a change would cast the argument in a rule utilitarian light, rather than act utilitarian.

If this move is made, what we might do is to look at the claim of the second premise; i.e., "Neither beliefs nor the formation of beliefs harms others so long as one does not act on the beliefs," and see whether the manner in which persons form beliefs effects others. There is, I believe, a strong argument for the position that how one forms one's beliefs does indeed affect others. If so, then belief forming behavior is not simply a selfregarding act, void of moral significance.

In his famous paper, "The Ethics of Belief," W. K. Clifford argued with near religious fervor that to hold a belief based on insufficient evidence was "one long sin against mankind."14 To engage in proper belief formation behavior was to believe in proportion to the evidence. The moral issue, according to Clifford, goes beyond acting on one's beliefs and beyond questions of whether anyone is or tends to be harmed. The moral issue is the manner in which we go about forming beliefs, whether the belief was gained through intellectual integrity or slovenly habits of mind. For Clifford, unethical belief formation occurs when one seeks only evidence that supports one's favorite prejudices, or when one closes off inquiry out of fear of what one might find, or when, out of mental laziness, one simply refuses to employ one's investigative faculties. To exemplify a life of uncritical mental laziness was, for him, ethically reprehensible.

Unfortunately, these are only claims. We must show why one's belief formation behavior affects others and hence has moral significance. What then is the argument for Clifford's position? How is it that we can be held morally responsible for how we form our beliefs, even though we do not act on the beliefs? It is the reasoning behind Clifford's position that most of Clifford's objectors ignore.15

The argument for Clifford's ethics of beliefs is one that has, in other contexts, become quite familiar. It is similar to the existentialist ethics proposed by JeanPaul Sartre in his now familiar essay "Existentialism is a Humanism."16 Sartre claims that whenever we engage in a behavior (such as belief formation) we are implying to the rest of humanity that this sort of behavior is ethically acceptable, not only for us, but for all persons. "When we say that man chooses himself, . . . we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men . . . such as he believes he ought to be."17 All behavior (or lack of it) indicates to others what state of affairs, what human qualities, what values, and what principles we endorse. In defining one's self, through a particular behavior, one implicitly endorses certain behaviorguiding principles that define humans as we believe humans ought to be.

Sartre argues that if the behavior endorses certain general principles which, if practiced, would undermine human autonomy and wellbeing, then the behavior is immoral. One would then have a duty to avoid such behavior and oppose it in others. For example, Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Second Sex that women have become an oppressed class because they have been made to believe that certain behaviors and lifestyles were beneficial when, in fact, adopting these behaviors and lifestyles make sure women as a class remain politically, economically, and professionally secondrate. For example, to continue to engage in such "typically feminine behaviors" as emphasizing appearance over reality, passivity over activity, emotion over reason, and choosing to be housewives/mothers over independent women is to endorse the very ways of life or social institutions that have resulted in women as a class lacking political and economic power and hence being oppressed. Even though no one is directly harmed, such behavior is judged immoral.18

If we apply such thinking to our question concerning the ethics of belief, Cliffordians would say that to form beliefs without proper evidence, or, more importantly, to refuse to exercise one's investigative powers and honestly evaluate alternative positions, i.e., to be "an uncritical thinker," endorses certain general habits of mind which, if widely practiced, would undermine human wellbeing, and hence, is the "one long sin against mankind." Clifford's response to Mill's position that how we form our beliefs harms no one is that our belief-forming behavior is not really a "self-regarding" act. The example we set always says to others that this sort of behavior is O.K. for all. Our example invites others, especially naive children, to follow. This fact has been emphasized since Plato. In addition, because beliefs are often the wellsprings of human action, the quality of our beliefs will have a direct effect upon how we behave.

So, if one accepts the Sartrean argument as it applies to belief-forming behaviors, we are indeed ethically responsible for the manner in which we employ our epistemic faculties. We are under an obligation to exercise these faculties in a certain way, i.e., we should set a proper example for others by examining the evidence, honestly considering alternative positions, being open to objections to our current beliefs, and being willing to withhold judgment when evidence is lacking. In short, if my argument is correct, we have an ethical obligation to exemplify those habits of mind lauded by the members of the current critical thinking movement.

The Obligation of Teachers

What consequences for teachers can we draw from this analysis? If human beings have a moral obligation to be critical thinkers, then teachers have a duty to teach students to form their beliefs as critical thinkers would. Conversely, to teach in a manner that would undermine the cultivation of students' capacity for critical thought is immoral.

In practical terms, teachers must teach students "to evaluate honestly their beliefs with respect to available evidence and arguments."19 To this end, students must be taught to identify and evaluate arguments. This entails that some instruction in logic is necessary. Instruction in logic and its application to real arguments is not an option; it is a duty. Students will not be able to evaluate evidence and arguments unless they understand what makes a good argument good, and conversely, what makes a bad argument bad. An understanding of deduction and induction supplies the general standards of criticism for most arguments; i.e., bad arguments are usually either invalid or the premises are unacceptable. While the rules of inference are universal, evaluating the strength of evidence requires instruction in the standards of evidence proper to each discipline, e.g., what is it that makes for a good study in psychology to support some claim about human motivation or behavior? What is it that makes for a bad study? What is it that makes for a "good" historical account or explanation? What should students look for in identifying bad explanations?

If teachers have a duty to help students become more proficient critical thinkers, then to ignore that duty or to allow students to maintain their natural inclination toward mental laziness is a moral vice. How is it that teachers ignore this duty? First, some teach ideas that are themselves counter to students' developing intellectual virtues associated with critical thinking. They choose to teach students that values, beliefs, and rationality are all relative to one's perspective and that there is no objective way to answer questions concerning the justification of one's beliefs, values, or life-style.20 Teaching such a position makes honest inquiry into "what to do and believe" trivial at best and impossible at worst.21 Rather than dogmatically communicating to students the belief that the search for objective truth is like looking for a black cat in a dark closet that contains no cat, in the spirit of Sir Karl Popper's "fallibilism," we should adopt a critical attitude.22 As difficult as it is in practice, teachers should seek arguments both for and against their prized beliefs and let their students evaluate them honestly.23 One exciting quality of philosophy is how the debates over the major issues continue, and a major goal of a teacher who teaches critically is to equip students to enter the dialogue, to become seekers in their own right.

Second, we ignore our duties to create critical thinkers when we teach ideas, including the values and methods of critical thinking, in a dogmatic authoritarian manner. Through our example, we model the very epistemic vices we should oppose. Teaching critical thinking itself should be done critically, with every value (including reason), every logical skill, and every disposition supported by argument, and the arguments carefully critiqued for their weaknesses.

Some may say that this is impossible because one cannot support the value of reasoning and logic without assuming the value of reasoning. But for such skeptics, we should remember Epictetus' famous quote that to ask if reasoning has value is to assume that it does, for how else could we evaluate the explanation for whether reason did or did not have value.24 To evaluate the strength of any claim, even the claim that "Reason is not the final judge of the merit of a position" is to employ reason. It is to evaluate the reasons to support the claim. This is to evaluate an argument, i.e., to ask the basic questions of logic: Are the claims made in the premises and conclusion clearly understood? Do the premises support the conclusion? Are the premises themselves true or acceptable? What evidence do we have for believing them? Are there counterexamples to the claims made in the premises? Are any common fallacies committed? Are there alternative accounts that need to be considered?

When we have asked such questions, we have honestly evaluated a position, and we have certainly come a long way in upholding our epistemic duties. In doing this, we have provided an answer to the skeptic who claims, "There are no standards of rationality." The methods by which we think carefully and critically about claims in any discipline provide us with a view of the nature of such a standard.25

So, in conclusion, because how people form their beliefs has ethical significance, teachers have a duty to help students develop their critical thinking skills and dispositions. Teaching critical thinking empowers students to fulfill their epistemic obligations as rational human beings. Instruction in critical thinking is not then something teachers might do on top of other teaching duties, but is essential if students are to fulfill their own ethical obligations. Teachers, then, have a moral obligation to teach critical thinking.

Endnotes

1 For a lengthy set of arguments providing practical and utilitarian reasons for students learning critical thinking skills and dispositions, see Chapter One of my text (with L. Anne Spencer) Reasoning and Writing: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (Lanham, Md.: Rowland and Littlefield, 1993).

2 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. Lewis White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), pp. 31-34.

3 Harvey Siegel, "Epistemology, Critical Thinking, and Critical Thinking Pedagogy, Argumentation 3, #2 (1989), 127-140.

4 Siegel, 136.

5 See, for example, Plato's Theaetetus; Maurice Mandelbaum's "Subjective, Objective, and Conceptual Relativism," Monist 62, #4 (1979), 403-423; Donald Davidson's now famous paper "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Proceedings of the APA 47 (1973-74), 5-20; Roger Trigg's Reason and Commitment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), Harvey Siegel's Relativism Refuted (Boston: D. Reidel, 1988); and James Harris' Against Relativism (LaSalle, Illinois, 1992).

6 See Jean Grimshaw's Philosophy and Feminist Thinking (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), especially Chapters Three and Four. She does a fine job of showing the problems with defining relevant characteristics of a distinct conceptual scheme.

7 See Siegel's Relativism Refuted, Chapter One.

8 See Siegel's Relativism Refuted, p. 21.

9 See Jean Grimshaw's Philosophy and Feminist Thinking, 84-90.

10 Martine Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 105.

11 Heidegger, 105. The similarity between Heidegger's treatment of how a questioning attitude occurs and Kuhn's treatment of how scientific revolutions occur is remarkable. I mention this because today far more people are familiar with Kuhn's description of how scientific paradigms progress from normal science to a crisis and then to a paradigm shift than with Heidegger's Being and Time.

12 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 92.

13 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 40-41.

14 W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief," Lectures and Essays (London: Macmillan, 1879).

15 See, for example, Jack Meiland, "What Ought We Believe or The Ethics of Belief Revisited," American Philosophical Quarterly, 17, #1 (1980), 15-24. Meiland attacks Clifford's position by offering counter-examples to the claim that we should never believe without proper evidence. Meiland claims there are relevant non-evidential reasons for believing.

16 Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism," tr. P. Mairet, Existentialism, ed. Robert Solomon (New York: Modern Library, 1974), 196-205.

17 Sartre, 198.

18 For a full exposition and defense of this argument see my "Existential Ethics and Why It's Immoral to be a Housewife," The Journal of Value Inquiry (1989) 23, 59-68.

19 This is our definition of critical thinking in Reasoning and Writing: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, p. 18.

20 See, for example, Robert Sutton's "The Right Method?" Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, Vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 12-15. Sutton seems to agree with Richard Rorty that "truth" is not something we (or our students) should seek because there is no objective truth. See my "Should Anti-Realists Teach Critical Thinking?," forthcoming in Inquiry.

21 This is from Robert Ennis's definition of critical thinking as "reasonable reflective thinking about what to believe and do." "A Conception of Critical Thinking--With Some Curricular Suggestions," APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, Summer 1987, p. 1.

22 Karl Popper, "The Myth of the Framework," The Abdication of Philosophy and the Public Good (la Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1976), 45-46.

23 See Karl Popper's "Conjectures and Refutations," Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1963).

24 Epictetus, Discourses, Book II, Chapter 25.

25 See my "Critical Thinking, Postmodernism, and Rational Evaluation," forthcoming Informal Logic.