Critical Thinking, Wisdom, and Paying Homage to the Human Experience

[Editor's Note: This excerpt is from a longer essay prepared by Amy St. Clair for her Honors Philosophy class, "Ideas Past and Present," taught by Prof. Daniel Polak, at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY, in Fall 2015. Prof. Polak asked his class to use critical thinking to discuss Stephen Alcorn's article, "Drawing the Line: Reflections on the Importance of Drawing by Hand in an Increasingly Digital Age," (Voices, Spring-Summer 2015). The assignment required the students to apply to what they had learned--the concepts, themes, and terms from the philosophers they had studied--to this discussion.] Throughout human evolution, we have been constantly striving toward making the use of technology in our lives greater and more complex. Beginning with the use of rocks as tools to the invention of the wheel, which revolutionized agriculture, technology has expanded to present-day attempts to create artificial intelligence (AI) that can learn, think, and feel. As modern technologies develop, and we become more and more dependent upon them, what must we sacrifice when we adopt them into all parts of our lives? Stephen Alcorn's article "Drawing the Line" discusses technology and its role in creation. Alcorn informs us throughout his essay that something important is lost when we forget the "essential role that tactile values have played in the practice of drawing since time immemorial" (Alcorn 2015, 16). His article is prognostic for a greater pattern happening all over the world, one that has been developing for hundreds of years. Could the people who began the Industrial Revolution foresee the ecological effects and loss of life caused by the rise of factory systems, chemical manufacturing, machine tools, coal burning, and mining? We now know that the practices that began during that time have had widespread and detrimental long-term effects on the planet. It is essential for humans at this time in our evolution to begin to identify what is being lost through our utter dependence on technology and to determine how it may affect humanity long term. Furthermore, we must not think only of the long-term effects: we must also ask ourselves about the intentions of our actions. If we look to some of the great thinkers of antiquity who sought to educate others about the importance of fostering critical societies, they can help us see the flaws and fissures in our modern thinking, because they were able to ask important questions, foresee consequences, analyze outcomes, and pierce through clever manipulations. William Graham Sumner, in his Folkways (1906), illustrates one way that our societies would be affected if critical thinking was included in general education: 'The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe....' (Elder and Cosgrove 2013). Alcorn suggests that the use of technology allows us to be more human, because we can rely on these labor-saving tools to be more productive and because his art can live on indefinitely through the digital world (Alcorn 2015). Clearly, there are many ways that technology enhances our lives, and like mediums in art, provide us with tools that help us do our work. But at what point is it too much, and where do we draw the line with the use of technology, in order to preserve our important human faculties? Although Socrates believed that the written word would make us less wise (Plato, Phaedrus, 274c-279d) and would cause us to develop poor memory, it is now a widely promoted activity, with claims that it enhances brain function (see, for example, Klemm 2013). I would question, though: has it made us wiser? As with anything in life, we must recognize the wisdom of balance--just as in nature, there must be accord for all things to function. True critical thinking must be informed by more than just the intellect, by also what Einstein skillfully pointed out in book, Ideas and Opinions (1954): It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. …