Blog 4

At first, I thought using dispositions while critical thinking would be a piece of cake, I mean how hard could it be. Until I went home and researched a topic and found out how hard it is to actually use them. I found it problematic to rely on a disposition, like not being biased and being open minded in consideration while picking a side. I started asking myself how can I not be biased, there is not a switch that just goes off you have to actually separate your feelings from the truth. I caught myself being biased about a topic and then pushing it in class so everyone can agree with my side. However, that's not how it works and I soon realized that. I know now that I need to research a topic before I choose a side, so I have real facts to back up my opinion. This will also help me if one of my classmates are curious or skeptical about my opinion and need further explanation on it. I will have facts and not just feelings to back me up. That is the true way people can have a discussion, because if you are not open-minded to your classmates than you cannot have a proper discussion.With this being said, you will only believe you are right and not taking the pieces apart to analyze the situation and that will lead to not fully critical thinking.  The valuable part in this situation is that I was able to see my weaknesses while in a discussion with the class because it forces you to be open-minded and view everyone's opinion. I also started got become curious and wanting to know what other people think because I find it amazing how different people think outside the box from yourself.

Blog 3

    In the beginning I thought that critical thinking would be a piece of cake until I was actually sitting in a circle full of other students being put to the test. I soon found out that critical thinking could be very problematic even though it is a valuable way to think. Coming up with a solution is the easy part, but supporting it with facts and reasonings without being biased is the hard part. I found it very hard to put these skills to use while trying to decide who should go to college for free. A topic that I thought would be easy, was difficult for the whole class. On Monday the whole class thought that college should be free but when we were given 5 case scenarios on Wednesday, we couldn't even agree to give one of them a free ride. After we had the discussion, I felt like the class including myself was being biased and couldn't give clear reasons to back ourselves up. These skills exposed to me that I am biased with my thoughts and with that I can not give valid reasons to back my opinion up with. I also noticed that I need to be open minded that maybe I am wrong and someone else is right, so I should respect everyones point of view on a topic, not just mine. Over the weeks I have been researching the topic to get a better understanding about it before I can pick a side in class, that way I can have reasons to back myself up. I also will try not to be sensitive about topics and allow other people to have completely different opinions than mine. Keeping most of my feelings pout of a topic will allow me to back it up with real facts and I will be able to control my biased thoughts and keep them out of my discussion.

Blog 2

            After being in this class for a couple weeks now, I have to say that argument and argumentation has definitely impacted my thoughts about critical thinking. I didn't realize how my thoughts could change while having a discussion in class. Its like as soon as I hear other students arguments about a topic my mind expands and I'm able to think out of the box more and understand where they are coming from. However, before this class I would usually think I'm right with out wanting to change my thoughts, but I have learned when you are having an argumentation you are forced to listen to the other view points and reflect on it.
             I would have to say that this has impacted my views on my thinking hero. I believe Freud might be septible to making these crucial errors. I feel like he searched for many reasons for people to believe and follow what he was saying and that may have made some bias reasonings along with it. Although, I don't think I want to view him as my thinking hero anymore, I do believe he would be good at constructing arguments because he did explore the human mind and knows how to persuade it.

Thinking Hero

I would have to say my thinking hero is Sigmund Freud. Although some people don't agree with his thoughts about the development of children, I think he opened a path for everyone else to explore. He studied the human mind before anyone else and did a good job especially for his time without much technology. He also emphasized on how the unconscious mind also affects our behavior, in which I agree with as well. Our class definition is pretty much the same as Freud's, except I agree with the ours more because we stated how thinking is exploring and generating new information where as Freud didn't focus on that as much.