History and Philosophy of Logic

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Critical Thinking
J. Haber, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2020. xviii + 207 pp. $15.95.
ISBN 978-0-262-53828-2

B. Musametov

To cite this article: B. Musametov (2021) Critical Thinking, History and Philosophy of Logic, 42:1,
97-99, DOI: 10.1080/01445340.2021.1882784

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2021.1882784

Published online: 10 Feb 2021.

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HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, 2021
Vol. 42, No. 1, 97–99, https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2021.1882784

BOOK REVIEW

J. Haber, Critical Thinking. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2020. xviii + 207
pp.$15.95. ISBN 978-0-262-53828-2

Reviewed by B. Musametov Department of Philosophy, Istanbul Medeniyet

University, Dumlupinar D100 Karayolu No: 98, 34720 Istanbul, Turkey
bahodir.musametov@gmail.com

© 2021 B. Musametov

In modern socio-economic conditions, one of the priority areas of higher education is the
training of a competent specialist with a high culture of thinking, capable of independently
making responsible and professional decisions, and acting creatively in non-standard sit-
uations. Haber argues that critical thinking (hereafter – CT) is an indispensable skill to
achieve this goal; moreover, current global burning issues point out that ‘acquiring and
applying this skill is vital to our survival as a society’ (xiii). So, Haber presents his
book as a guide for educators, students, as well as for everyone who wants to reinforce
his reasoning abilities (xviii). However, taking into account that in recent decades, hun-
dreds of valuable textbooks, guidelines were written on CT, one may ask how Haber is
going to avoid his book from being sunk in the ocean of this literature, and what kind of
characteristics make it special from other books on this topic.
It should be acknowledged that despite Haber’s book is not a comprehensive scientific
monograph or a textbook which provides educator/student with step-by-step instructions
including exercises to teach/obtain CT skills, it is well-structured, concise introductory
book with a clear and accurate text that reads very smoothly and evenly moves from one
chapter to another, giving the meanings of some terms not only as a glossary at the end,
but also throughout the book; hence, fully deserves being a part of ‘Essential Knowledge’
series.
Chapter 1 is concerned with the origins of the term CT and fairly argues that it is deeply
rooted in philosophy; more precisely, we are indebted to Aristotle for providing its foun-
dations (5). In addition to author’s words, we can state that Aristotle not only determined
the place of CT in the human cognition system, but through the composition of the Prior
and Posterior Analytics made a great contribution to the development of the CT procedure
itself. Leaving ancient philosophical interpretations, chapter proceeds to the next stage of
the evolution of the CT concept and we see that Scientific Revolution, which took place in
Medieval Europe, by calling ancient scientific thoughts into doubt, was in a sense the first
buds of CT. However, Haber claims that this was just ‘replacing one scientific paradigm
with another’ (11). Haber argues that psychology and Pragmatism played significant roles
in the creation of the concept; for Pragmatic philosophers offer activity-based learning
type arguing that ‘children’s minds should not be treated as blank slates to be written on
98 Book Review

by authority figures’ (21–22). Haber praises American intellectual John Dewey’s – who at
the same time provided the first of many definitions for CT (25) – efforts to establish pro-
gressive educational model in a US education system. Developments in various branches
of medical science, particularly in cognitive psychology in the second half of the twentieth
century, lead Haber to an assumption that various types of biases that arise from heuristics
also present an obstacle to sound judgments (32). Haber finishes the chapter noting that
1983 year was a turning point in teaching CT skills, since the then US presidential admin-
istration as well as the California state university system having admitted the catastrophic
situation in education issues which were leading a nation to a risk began to introduce
compulsory CT courses in the universities (34).
Having emphasized a vital significance of teaching CT skills, in Chapter 2 Haber moves
further to explain its necessary elements. First of those elements, that is, structured think-
ing consists of formal and informal logic which in turn use some set of common terms
(39). Likewise, according to Haber, inductive/deductive and syllogistic reasoning repre-
sent structured thinking which can be expressed both in a syllogistic chain and visually.
Providing with real world examples, Haber underlines the importance of informal logic in
the teaching of CT, since it allows turning everyday arguments into structured forms and
helps to distinguish valid and invalid arguments (49). Moreover, ill-structured arguments
lead to incorrect conclusions called fallacies. To avoid it, Haber urges that one should be
competent to translate normal human language into constituents of the syllogistic reason-
ing and this translation must be accurate, economical and charitable (72). Notwithstanding
the controversy between philosophy and rhetoric, Haber considers rhetoric as one of the
main and strong tools to make our arguments more persuasive remarking ‘if rhetoric can
make a bad argument seem more persuasive, imagine what it can do for a good one’ (78).
Haber points out on that one of the main components of CT, that is, background knowl-
edge – without of which ‘one cannot think critically about a subject if he/she doesn’t know
what he/she is talking about’ (89) – nowadays is confronting with two basic challenges,
namely information gap and being capable (or incapable) to distinguish useful data from
useless one, and argues that information literacy skill can help to accomplish this task (87).
In the last parts of the chapter, Haber emphasizes the crucial role of the creativity and dis-
positions, since ‘scientists do not draw their ideas only from facts or observations’ (90)
and intellectual virtues help us to demonstrate aforementioned CT skills in real-life situ-
ations (92). Haber finishes this chapter stating knowledge, skills and dispositions as main
ingredients of CT (97).
Chapter 3 addresses the question whether CT can be defined, taught and assessed. From
short survey of the various attempts to give a satisfactory definition which is described as
a ‘healthy debate’ Haber turns to a discussion of advantages of the group-thinking over
individual thinking (109), preferences and drawbacks of using CT itself in a broader sense.
Given the fact that important components of CT have been/are being taught at the educa-
tional institutions, Haber believes that it would be more appropriate to focus on the issues
of time, place and the methods of teaching CT skills. After analyzing various studies, Haber
argues that CT should be taught to children both in adolescence and at an early stage of
their childhood (117–121). It can be fulfilled at the primary and higher educational institu-
tions through separate CT courses or alongside traditional and cross-disciplinary subjects.
However, according to Haber, these teaching processes should be based on solving ill-
defined problems which help to develop student’s CT skills. Haber acknowledges that
despite the absence of unanimity about the definition of the CT concept does not prevent
from teaching CT using various approaches, the attempt to assess one’s CT ability requires
some definition to construct proper test (142), stating that those different assessment types
also suffer from shortcomings.
 Book Review 99

As concluding remarks, Haber once more emphasizes the essential significance of CT

that affects every aspect of our life and raises the question of the ways of creating people
who think critically (168). He declares that we have all the necessary resources to achieve
this goal, and all that remains is to put it all into practice. Haber ends his exploration of
this issue by offering various kinds of advice to teachers and families on how they can
contribute to create a culture of critical thinking in society (173–180).
One of the most serious challenges facing CT today is finding the balance Haber is
pointing to (167). But is it even possible? Sometimes, for various reasons, we have to
consciously sacrifice our CT skills and take a step back in order to preserve the relationship
between the people close to us. Besides, a person can brilliantly show his CT skills in
work and climb the career ladder, but at the same time completely fail in solving some
elementary family problems. Moreover, unfortunately, even a brilliant display of CT does
not guarantee the success of the task. Taken together, I think it requires in a sense a critical
approach to CT itself.
However, all the challenges I have listed that CT faces today do not in any way diminish
the importance of this book. Rather, it can serve as an excellent preparatory tutorial for
students of all kinds of specialties, before they begin to study their special courses.