Q&A: Critical Analysis
Critical Analysis
Question
Hello Rabbi, what I’m about to write is somewhere between a question and a personal struggle. I hope the Rabbi will be able to help.
Until I encountered what the Rabbi writes, my outlook was a “classic” religious one, from home and from yeshiva. That is, to nod along with the entire world of faith without examining it too much. I should note that I didn’t feel I was repressing things, and I didn’t feel distress. Even though I knew it didn’t really hold water. It was a kind of world set apart from all the outlooks outside it. (I’m not sure I explained that well enough, but it’s not all that crucial.)
In any case, when I encountered your writings, I felt they were straightening out my thinking. Suddenly I strongly identified with what you were saying, and I also felt that I could really stand behind it. So far, so good.
The question/problem is that I notice that because, in general, I was so impressed by you, and as I said, you “made things make sense” for me, I’ve found myself returning to that same old problem, just from the opposite direction. Meaning, I accept your words with nods and so on. I don’t mean that I currently have some specific example of something I disagree with and just “swallowed,” but the way I read your words is not alert enough to forming my own personal position.
If so, I understand that the problem is first of all in me, in my ability to shape my worldview. I’ll add that I’m not intellectually weak, whether in secular studies and the like or in analytical Talmud study, and even so, when it comes to ideas and worldview I feel lost.
I’ll try to sketch the situation as I analyze it. In the Talmud, and likewise in other fields of study, there is a certain mode of thinking, and it can be acquired and practiced. In the exact sciences this seems straightforward to me (at least as I know them—at the high school and undergraduate level), and in analytical Talmud study too there is an acquired style, so that after a while you know how to identify key directions in a passage and so on, as well as which questions will lead to cracking the issue.
By contrast, when it comes to shaping a worldview, I think it’s not like that—or at least I haven’t managed to grasp the style—and it’s not sufficiently clear to me what point I’m missing. Also, it could be that the difficulty comes from the fact that for a long time I got used to basing myself on a worldview I didn’t really stand behind, and that dulled my ability to think in this area.
Bottom line, I’d be glad if the Rabbi could comment on such a situation, and what he thinks is the right thing to do from where I am right now. It seems to me that I described where I’m standing fairly well, but if it’s not clear, I’d be glad if the Rabbi would ask me to sharpen it. I also saw that some time ago people asked the Rabbi whether he could give lessons on critical reading, and I of course join that request.
Sorry for the length, and thank you very much.
Answer
Hello.
You are diagnosing an important problem. Sometimes a revolution takes place and the revolutionary becomes the new tsar—the new tyrannical ruler. That has happened in quite a few places. You have to insist on being critical even toward critical positions, just as with anything else.
The main thing that can help is to summarize for yourself every claim or argument you encounter and examine whether you agree with it. There is no reason not to agree, of course, just for the sake of being critical. But you absolutely do have to examine your own position. If you get used to doing that, I assume you will develop a healthy critical stance.
As for a course on critical reading, some initiative in that direction is currently developing (for a fee). We’ll see what comes of it.
Discussion on Answer
I’m now opening a course (for a fee) on critical reading/thinking. Anyone interested can join the WhatsApp group as soon as possible using the link attached in the notice (starting tomorrow the course times will be set in coordination with the participants who joined the group):
With God’s help
Critical Thinking and Reading – Preliminary Syllabus
Michael Abraham
The course will be conducted on Zoom over ten sessions of about an hour each, for registrants only (if necessary there will be additional sessions). It will deal with the critique of arguments (not necessarily written ones). In fact, this is critical thinking and not only critical reading. The course includes homework assignments (not for submission), and also a final project for those interested.
For now, recordings will not be accessible except to participants who missed a class.
Registration is by joining the WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/LrEY99fgJmXB1kseMJgGHk
The cost of the course is 250 NIS per participant.
A. Logic
Sentences and claims.
Validity and truth: arguments and rules of inference.
Content-based and formal logic.
Axioms and theorems.
The emptiness of the analytic. Pluralism and narratives.
Deduction, induction, abduction, and analogy.
B. Principles in critiquing arguments
Premises, validity, and conclusion.
Counterexamples.
Raising difficulties and giving strained resolutions (the meaning of the starting point).
“The new criticism”: postmodernism.
C. Definitions
By extension and intension.
Circularity of definition.
The importance of definitions and their source.
Definition and truth.
D. Paradoxes
Defining paradox.
How to relate to them and to their conclusions.
What counts as a solution to a paradox?
Paradox as proof by negation.
E. Logic and everyday language
The principle of charity.
Completing arguments (enthymemes: incomplete arguments and “soft” arguments).
Exposing hidden premises.
F. How to deal with first assumptions
Intuition.
Logic and rhetoric.
Cognition and thought.
Examples and counterexamples.
G. Overcoming dichotomies
Dilemma arguments.
Compromise.
The third way.
H. Fallacies
Ad hominem, ad populum, and the like.
The naturalistic fallacy.
Begging the question: is it a fallacy?
Examples of begging the question in analytic arguments.
Falsifiability: science and argument. Corroboration and confirmation.
Correlation fallacies: illusory correlations. Correlation and causation.
The magic of using numbers and data: statistical fallacies.
I. Practical guidelines for critical reading
Suspending judgment.
A full and empathetic formulation of the argument being critiqued.
Clarifying one’s relation to the premises.
Testing validity.
The relation to the conclusion (paradoxicality).
J. Examples
Critical reading of articles and philosophical passages
K. Final project – for those interested
Each participant receives or chooses an article (preferably one that runs counter to his initial view), and presents a critical analysis of it.
On what date, and how many times a week?
Once a week. It will be determined in coordination with those who signed up on WhatsApp.
And what about someone who doesn’t have WhatsApp (because of filtering)?
He should send me a private email and I’ll contact him separately.
Mikyab@gmail.com
The WhatsApp isn’t working.
Any idea about the hours? It matters a lot for me.
You can contact me by email and I’ll reach out to you as well to make sure. It will probably be on one of the evenings Sunday through Wednesday at 8:00 or 9:00 PM. The time will be set in coordination with everyone.
Hello and blessings,
I’d like to calm you down a bit, based on my experience.
Many times in life we encounter a new way of looking at things or a new worldview, and our excitement about it grabs us completely, to the point of blinding us.
After a period of time, when the excitement fades, the weak points in the new approach are revealed, and we begin to compare the two outlooks, the new and the old.
Sometimes we manage to build a synthesis, and take the right points—objectively or subjectively right, meaning right for us—from each approach.
You simply have to let the new information sink in, and time does its work. Just patience.
Another point, regarding tools for judging worldviews.
In my opinion, the very fact of learning an additional worldview beyond what you knew until now gives you cognitive tools for judgment. Very often, in order to judge, you need contrast, a “counterpoint.” When you know only one way, it’s hard to determine whether it’s logical, whether it’s correct, because you can’t relate it to a different outlook.
Only when you encounter a new outlook can you judge any outlook—both the old one and the new one—from a broader perspective.