My first biology professor was called “The Birdman.” He was a sort of tall, mad ornithologist who, besides resembling a vulture with a tuft of white hair protruding from his head, frequently used the curse word “communist!” As was procedure for a 101 course, he covered the basic tenants of the scientific process, and introduced a term I was unfamiliar with: falsifiability. In order for a hypothesis to be viable, he told me (with wild eyes), you must be able to prove it false! Huh?
This confused me. I thought the goal of science was to determine whether a hypothesis was true. Later on, I understood that falsifiability, or testability, is one of the rules of the game of critical thinking that helps determine the viability of a claim. In other words, if you can’t determine whether a claim is false, you also can’t determine whether it is true.
For example: if I claim that there is an invisible pink unicorn that roams the cosmos rearing it’s majestic sparkly head, there is no way of demonstrating that such is NOT the case (the unicorn being invisible and untestable). While this is obviously unbelievable, people do have the audacity to make claims just like this about the supernatural... and expect to be believed. Have you ever heard someone pose the argument, “You can’t prove it’s false, therefore it’s true?” Sorry, but in the game of critical thinking, this is a losing argument. Contrary to intuition, lack of testability makes a claim weaker, not stronger. Lack of proof to the contrary is not proof itself. And just because a claim hasn’t been conclusively proven doesn’t mean that it’s false either.
At university, I took a basic critical thinking class with an assigned textbook called “How to Think About Weird Things.” I found it so enlightening and helpful that I still use it today. Although I had ceased attending church at the time of the class, I didn’t have any guidelines to help me decide what to believe. I was agnostic when it came to most problems because I figured that every explanation was equally plausible and therefore subject to my personal opinion.
One of the most life-changing lessons I took away from the class was that some explanations are better than others... and there are ways of discovering this information beyond a reasonable doubt. The class outlined the importance of evidence, double-blind studies, control groups, predictions, peer-reviewing, replication and consideration of alternative explanations. I finally felt I had solid ground to stand on when it came to making decisions that impact my life and the lives of others.
Critical thinking is a methodology I can get behind because it is a reflexive process emphasizing how to think not what to think. It is methodical and includes rules, challenges, interactions with others and goals. The “winners” of this game are those with common sense and honest reasoning skills. It enables me to be a conscious player in my life, rendering me more capable of making informed decisions that are in alignment with my values. Most of us think critically everyday, perhaps without even realizing it. And most fields of study are based upon it, namely science... and for good reason.
I also like to imagine life as a game. Rather than positing “winners” and “losers” in general terms, I imagine that within the closed system of my subjective experience, I win or lose at my own life-game, which exists within the larger sphere of objective reality, the realm of science, logic and reason. One of my personal rules is to not confuse subjectivity with objectivity but rather synthesize the two according to my reason, introspection, perception and memory. The game model helps me to focus on my values and reflect on my own thinking so that my time on earth is more likely to be spent efficiently, positively and joyfully. And it reminds me that my personal conviction alone does not have an impact on reality, even if based on a powerful experience, intuition or emotion.
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