“There must be discussion to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it.

Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand.

In the case of any person whose judgement is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct.”

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, published in 1859

“the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”

― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

John Stuart Mill makes a persuasive case for hearing the best arguments for and against ideas before being able to properly form an opinion.

He also makes it clear that we need to hear about a subject from people of all types of opinions and backgrounds and from all different kinds of approaches to the subject.

I have heard of a professor who has classes on certain texts and he brings in people from different backgrounds to examine the topic from a historical perspective or a political perspective or another perspective in a different semester. Each year he tries to get one of several experts on different subjects to give their perspective.

People who have different philosophies and education on different topics give their own perspective on the subject to add more to the understanding of the professor and the class.

It’s somewhat against human nature to look for the evidence against what we believe or the best evidence for arguments against our beliefs. But it’s a foundation of good critical thinking.

I have seen efforts to explain phenomena in human behavior and sometimes information from a different subject is essential to finding a highly plausible explanation.

In psychology we have the difference between the Northern states and Southern states in the US in aggression and the hypothesis that the culture of the people who settled these areas and the honor culture of the people who settled the South is a highly plausible explanation and supported by empirical evidence from psychology research.

We also have the fact that since a peak in crime in America in the early nineties we had a huge decrease (by about half by some estimates). Research involving the harm leaded gas caused and the removal of lead from gas is recognized by many researchers and experts as extremely likely to be a major factor, if not the biggest factor, in causing the huge decrease in crime we have seen since the early nineties.

Without that information from another field we might never understand the huge reduction in American crime.

There are many other examples of information from a different perspective or subject being essential for understanding something important in a subject.

Without that you might have an incorrect conclusion. Now an important point to me is that you need a good basic grounding in a subject itself to form an educated opinion on the subject in general and specific ideas in particular.

I am not at all a fan of the “All you need to know is…” style of claims, regardless of the topic. That is anti critical thinking and anti looking at all the relevant information regarding a claim.

The opposite of this in some ways is something I have written about in the past that is worth mentioning to me.

I call it The Sixty Minutes approach. I saw an episode of the American news television show years ago and it introduced a way to evaluate something that’s worth using.

A woman was an assistant coach at a college basketball team and the head coach retired. She was not offered the head coaching position. A man who was far less qualified got the job.

The attorney for the woman coach put up a big piece of paper and put the names of her client on one side and the name of the man who got the job on the other side and below each person she listed all the major qualifications they had. The man had two years experience as an assistant coach.

The woman had decades of experience and winning numerous awards and the team she coached winning a tremendous number of games and the players she coached winning various awards and on and on and on.

At the end the male coach had his two years as an assistant and the woman coach had the entire side filled with both individual and team accomplishments that she could be given the credit for.

The jury found that the team did discriminate against her, because no other explanation was offered and no one believed that the woman was less qualified than the man.

I realized that this is useful for weighing the evidence for and against claims.

There are many situations in which you can use this.

I would have done far better in my life regarding Scientology and a million other things if I had adopted this mindset and applied these principles with personal discipline religiously to my life.

I frankly have found it’s especially useful for beliefs or an outlook that is strongly or deeply held. For most people this automatically includes religion, politics and similarly passionate or traditionally close minded beliefs.

Lots of incidents of hearing one thing from just one side and having beliefs that are not accurate can occur but if you look at the information from different sides in their best form you can often see that there is strong evidence that is credible for a different perspective or you might have an opinion that’s not what Democrats or Republicans or most media say on a political issue, for example, if you have looked at information from a variety of sources.

I ended up studying critical thinking as part of leaving Scientology and the sad fact is critical thinking is not allowed in Scientology.

Critical thinking is a subject and though no one knows everything about the subject I can tell you that some ideas and practices are essential fundamentals.

Among the very most basic are the idea that each claim must be examined on its own merits. The source of a claim is neither proof that a claim is incorrect or correct because we ALL can be right or wrong about anything. An expert can be wrong just as anyone else can.

In Scientology the appeal to authority fallacy is essential. As is the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is looking at the origin (genesis) of a claim to determine the truth. But a liar may tell the truth just as an authority may simply be wrong, no one is infallible.

In Scientology members are trained to accept claims by Hubbard as true blindly. They are also trained to reject claims that disagree with or criticize Hubbard and to denigrate the source with ad hominem attacks that are irrelevant non sequitur claims. Whether a person has alleged hidden evil purposes, for example, or not, they may have a valid claim.

This very basic idea in critical thinking is absent in Scientology.

Yes exactly. If she could speak on her own behalf (which she cannot do without further compromising her complaint) she would confirm this. Those who claim otherwise are assuming things they don’t actually know. In fact they know they are spreading lies — and knew before they started…

So what your saying Mike is that the person who made the allegations against Brian Kent that is a very good friend of yours never told you about it?

It seems you’re not paying attention other than to what YouTubers say. I found out when the rest of the board did after the complaint was leaked to Rabbit by one of the people who are alleging I knew and did nothing. In fact, they knew about it and did nothing.

@ John P,,

Great to have you posting here again.
Tthe data on Data Evaluation IS basic.

I took this course and afterwards I did not (nor do I now) consider myself a “master” of data evalution.

I can only state that after I completed it my eyes were opened to things going on in my that before the course I never questioned or didn’t even observe at all.

Ideal Org Fundraising; IAS Donations, Library Donations…endless fundraising, no auditors being trained…all in direct opposition to what Hubbard policy states that Scientology orgs should do or not do.

To make a long story short, that course started me firmly on the road OUT of Scientology. And interestingly enough, I had to fight to do this course.
The ONLY reason they delivered it to me was because some registrar had, a few years prior, sold me the course. I had the money on account for it, and yes it cost $750.

I really wanted to do it; staff at my little org tried VERY hard to talk me out of it, but I insisted, telling them, you sold it to me, now please deliver it to me.

They didn’t have much of a choice, and they were surprised that I stuck to my guns about doing it Instead of allowing myself to be persuaded to transfer the money to some other course or material or whatever.

To my knowledge they’re not delivering it any more.

Point being, it may well be super basic common sense and observation, and certainly my eyes being opened, data analysis-wise after I completed the course doesn’t say much for my prior analytical abilies 🙂 but what I learned on It set me on the correct path that led out of the Church of Scientology 12 years ago. Irony!

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No matter WHAT the Cult says to the contrary, critical thinking skills are the last skills they want their dump sheep to have!