This definition of intellectual perseverance leaves me with many questions. Am I capable of separating fact from belief? I would assume that as a person with a background in journalism, the answer should be clear. I have been formally trained to keep a discerning eye and to realize the objective and subjective portions of conversation and thought. But is this true of even the most prevalent and professional media? Are FOX, MSNBC, CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera all highlighting the same stories? Are they all deemed fair and balanced? Do they report without bias, without a modus operandi? I struggle to say that I view each outlet as equal to the others. I watch each with a different set of glasses. I regard BBC as the least bias on American issues. I am quite critical of FOX News, as I find their reports quite slanted toward the conservative, 1950s heyday American. I appreciate Al Jazeera’s focus on G8 influence in the Middle East, as I believe “truth is on the side of the oppressed,” as Civil Right-era leader Malcolm X noted.
The declaration to “firm
adherence to rational principles” against an apparent ignorant and irrational
public seems unattainable. Perhaps I need to ask myself: What is a rational principle?
The Free Dictionary states rational as “Having or exercising the ability to
reason,” or to be “Of sound mind; sane.” I wonder, if the example given, “man
is a rational being” is true statement. Our
macro actions, then, should show that we are rational. Is war rational? In this
country alone, I see us split. According to a 2006 CNN poll, sixty percent of
Americans opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. Perhaps if we described the action in
detail without using such a general word, we would sway opinion on its
legitimacy. Is the act of slaughtering foreign (and at times, domestic) strangers
to solve issues that no one fighting caused, which drains tax dollars from
education and social security, a concrete route to peace and a stable economy?
What about abortion? A 2014
Gallup poll states Americans are split on this issue: 47% are pro-choice, 46% are
pro-life. Is it better to be a defender of a woman, or a potential life? Or is
it all semantics for murder? Is pro-life the same as anti-woman? How does the
wording of an issue affect where we stand on it? How does one find the rational
answer of what is right and wrong on an issue with so many passionate arguers?
According to Sir Karl Popper,
an Austrian-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics
(regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century) his
'principle of rationality' empirically bare and untrue in the social arena, but
even so, useful. Popper was applying his theory to natural science, but then
segments social science into how scientists or social scientists (which I would
argue, all leaders are) understand and solve issues. Popper states “there is
only one way of learning to understand a problem… and that is to try to solve
it and fail.”
Then intellectual perseverance
must be the ability to seek the facts, build a grand defense for one’s
argument, presenting not only the information which supports your reasoning,
but the reasoning against your stance. It also involves expressing your biases
before your conversational adversary does, and accounting for why your research
is devoid influence from your personal biases. This complex process directly
ties back to a leading researcher in critical thinking, Richard Paul, who
stated that “critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you're
thinking in order to make your thinking better.” How does one think about their
think while in conversation? I suppose I have always attempted to filter my
replies and defenses with listening to the entire complaint or argument or the
other(s), questioning how my defense of opinion may be perceived due to a
plethora of traits. I often question how passionate or invested I should be
into conversation which directly affects my being. I am passionate about women’s,
minority and religious issues because I am a multicultural woman from a
non-Christian background in America. I feel far more comfortable in discussion
about minority groups I do not represent, because I feel that others will see
me as less-invested in issues involving other minority groups because I think
they assume I am only interested in defending “my groups;” however, I see all
minority groups (as equally-yoked in defensibility.
So again I ask myself: What
is Intellectual Perseverance? Perhaps it is the ability to be vigilant of the
inherent biases in ourselves and in others, and the realization that one’s
truth may not align with reality, while also noting that our reality may not be
identical to others.
References
CNN.com (2006). Poll: 60
percent of Americans oppose Iraq war. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/09/iraq.poll/
Foundation for Critical Thinking (September 2014). Valuable Intellectual Virtues. Retrieved from www.criticalthinking.org
Houghton Mifflin Company
(2009). The American Heritage® Dictionary
of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rational
Nosich, Gerald (2011). Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to
Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum (pp. 1-2)
Popper, Karl (1994). The myth of framework (pp. 154-158).
London: Routledge.
Saad, Lydia (2014). U.S. Still Split on Abortion: 47%
Pro-Choice, 46% Pro-Life. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro-choice-pro-life.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment