Critical thinking skills
Clarify & delve deeper
Before taking action, it is essential to clarify a situation, a problem, an objective, or a directive. To achieve this, various cognitive skills will be employed by all participants during the dialogue.
"Common sense is the most widely shared thing in the world," but we do not all guide our reason along the same paths, said Descartes. And for meaning to be clear, one must properly guide one's reason.
Clarifying the dialogue involves using the following operations:
analyze : break down a message into its simpler elements in order to recompose it and more easily grasp its overall meaning.
To synthesize : to condense a complex speech to extract its essence and identify the speaker's intention.
interpret : in order to be able to grasp the meaning when it is general or vague
To explain : to verify that the meaning is shared by everyone
Identify the presuppositions : so that everyone's underlying assumptions become apparent through the discourse and everyone understands "where one is speaking from".
To argue : in order to build sound judgments and avoid hasty judgments or unfounded assertions
To provide examples : to avoid abstract flights of fancy and return to concrete matters
Uncover and solve problems
Let's take a broad view of the problem: anything that hinders a project is considered a problem. In the practice of dialogue, several projects are possible: getting to know each other better, exploring a topic in greater depth, solving a problem (precisely), gathering information, validating a hypothesis, making a decision, building an action plan...
Therefore, anything that hinders these projects will be identified as a problem worthy of attention. Let's list the main problems we encounter during the dialogue:
form of the question itself (rhetoric, implicit presuppositions, manipulation, confusion, question disguised as a statement, question "from the judge or the policeman", question to attract attention...)
Avoidance of the question due to fear (fear of giving the wrong answer, of appearing ridiculous, of offending others, of judging or being judged by others)
duplicity, hidden agenda, bad faith, lies
confusion, shift in meaning, loss of meaning
Emotional outburst, excessive reactivity
power struggles, ego clashes, defense of self-image
inconsistency, logical errors, cognitive biases
force of habit, automatic thinking, magical thinking
obsessions
stress-inducing emergency
The dialogue will therefore involve identifying all these problems and addressing them here and now.
One of the principles of dialogue in philosophical practice is that someone's problem becomes everyone's problem. Each person is thus invited to identify it, contemplate it, and even find enjoyment in it. The problem is then transformed into one or more questions to which answers will be sought, which we will call working hypotheses.
Each reasoned hypothesis is subjected to a filter of questions and objections, allowing for further exploration and clarification of its parameters. These hypotheses are then evaluated by the group, which decides on their relevance.
Each person is thus invited to see the problems and to see themselves, if necessary, as a problem for themselves or others (or both).
Question
Questioning is what allows thought to move: any problem can be turned into a question which will bring as many hypotheses to solve it.
Questioning is also about learning to discover oneself and others, to clarify a situation, a problem, an attitude, an intention, an argument.
However, asking questions is not easy because we often "load" our questions with too much: we introduce presuppositions that strongly influence the answer, we dilute the question by mixing it with an assertion or, worse, a criticism that we intend to soften. Yet a question should remain what it is: an invitation to delve deeper, to clarify, to be precise, to take action. A question is what we call a speech act: at the same time as we formulate the question, we are making a demand of others: that they answer it.
Thus, a good question will be one in which the questioner's opinion does not show through.
Object
An objection is a form of problematization, but a more specific one: it is limited to identifying a problem with the truth of a clear and definite hypothesis. Simply put, an objection consists of stating what is false in a hypothesis, and not, as is generally thought, of offering a different opinion from the one proposed.
Of course, to see the falsity of a hypothesis, one must first explore it, understand it, and thus, in a certain way, see what in it is true or at least makes sense within the "system" of the person who utters it. For if we start from the presupposition that we always put a little of ourselves into our assertions, whatever they may be, then to object to a hypothesis is also to discover the person who proposed it. In this, we remain within the bounds of "know thyself," inscribed on the frontispiece of the Temple of Delphi.
Conceptualize
A concept is a word that encapsulates a proposition. It is therefore the result of a process of synthesis, summarization, or selection from among other words. For example, regarding the proposition "students don't dare raise their hands because they are afraid of giving the wrong answer and being judged by their classmates," the concept chosen by the subject could be: "self-image," "fear," "judgment," or "mistake." It is therefore the process of selection that led to the concept, rather than the concept itself, that interests us. Because by making a choice, the subject reveals their preferences, their value system, and perhaps their underlying assumptions. They reveal their true self.
In this sense, a concept doesn't have to be "philosophical." Any word will do, provided it's general enough to be understood by common sense. In other words, a concept is nothing more than a common noun.