Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy
Critical Reasoning, Philosophy at Secondary Schools, and the Education of Democratic Citizens (REASCHOOL)
Duration: 2023 - 2027
Code: PID2022-141952NB-I00
Principal Investigator
All researchers
Thomas Sturm (U. Autónoma de Barcelona)Roger Deulofeu (UAB)
Work team: David Bakhurst (Queens University, Canada), Michael Bishop (Florida State University, USA), Anne Burkhard (University of Göttingen, Germany), Roger Deulofeu (UAB), Philip Kitcher (Columbia University, USA), David Löwenstein (University of Düsseldorf, Germany), Joshua Shepherd (ICREA & UAB), Harvey Siegel (University of Miami, USA), Åsa Wikforss (University of Stockholm, Sweden)
Summary
Democracies depend upon citizens having sufficiently high levels of information and the capacity to carefully discuss and critically evaluate a plurality of positions and arguments backing them up - in short, that they use critical reasoning (CR). The distribution of this skill is threatened by a mixture of factors such as excessively heated political discourse on internet-based social media or decreased trust in traditional media or in science. Strategies of propaganda, populism, and polarisation (PPP) all pose a challenge to the democracy: they frequently weaken citizens’ abilities to argue rationally, to evaluate given arguments critically, to accept good arguments, and to even detect genuine arguments and distinguish them from other sorts of speech. Strategies need to be developed or enhanced to counter PPP tendencies. Traditionally, philosophy is the discipline that helps people to think for themselves, to critically question beliefs and authorities, and to replace arguments of force by the force of arguments. Philosophers use theories of CR developed from antiquity to today - especially formal and informal logic, theories of probability or rational choice, as well as basic insights of epistemology and philosophy of science. Psychologists have developed theories of human reasoning and its strengths, and weaknesses. However, the training in CR at schools in Spain and most other countries is deficient. Introducing a systematic course in CR at high school level could help to boost and bolster CR in our democratic societies.
The project will be based on three related work packages:
I: A comparison of school education in philosophy in Spain and other countries in order to take stock of existing curricula, especially looking at how (far) they include the teaching of CR.
II: Empirical studies for determining the best time frame for teaching CR, the efficacy of different normative models and didactical methods, as well as the requirements for long-term habitualization of CR skills, carried out at selected Spanish schools.
III: The development of a school curriculum for Spanish schools integrating CR in a more sustained and systematic manner within philosophy, with an eye towards its uses at the earliest time possible, and efficacy for boosting adolescentss CR skills in contexts of democratic debates and decision-making.
Total budget: 66.450 Euro
