Develop Intellectual Autonomy
Intellectual autonomy entails having independent, rational control
of your beliefs, values, assumptions and inferences. The ideal
of critical thinking is to learn to think for yourself and to gain
command over your thought processes. Intellectual autonomy
does not entail willfulness, stubbornness, or rebellion. It entails a
commitment to analyzing and evaluating beliefs on the basis of
reason and evidence, to question when it is rational to question,
to believe when it is rational to believe, and to agree when it is
rational to agree. The opposite of intellectual autonomy is
intellectual conformity.
Activity:
When Have You Been Intellectually Autonomous? When Have You Lacked Intellectual Autonomy?
Briefly review some of the variety of
influences to which you have been exposed
in your life (influence of culture, company,
family, religion, peer groups, media, personal
relationships). See if you can discriminate
between those dimensions of your thought
and behavior in which you have done
the least thinking for yourself and those
in which you have done the most. What
makes this activity difficult is that we often
perceive ourselves as thinking for ourselves
when we are actually conforming to others.
What you should look for, therefore, are
instances of your actively questioning
beliefs, values, or practices to which others
in your “group” were, or are, conforming.
Complete these statements:
Activity:
Articulate The Interrelationships Between And Among Intellectual Virtues
Begin with one of the intellectual virtues
and see if you can articulate some of the
important interrelationships between them.
How do you think they work together as a
cluster of ideas in thinking?
Interrelationships between and among intellectual virtues: