THE GAP IN CRITICAL THINKING: The skill of critical thinking is a foundational European discipline. It is the cornerstone of a democratic and academic culture. Ever since Kant ́s famous text on Enlightenment, critical thinking means to inform and think for oneself and to be able to make sound judgements, decisions and responsible actions. Critical thinking has traditionally been taught and trained text-based, as the learning of reasoning, argumentation and social critical theorizing. We encounter the limits of these conventional methods of training critical thinking in the students' discouragement and passivity to think independently in diverse fields. In order to cultivate and enhance the European heritage of the skill of critical thinking in our time, this project seeks to rise to the challenge by combining ICT based methodology and cutting-edge research on embodiment.
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EUROPEAN CULTURAL HERITAGE: There is lack of political participation of young people, distrust in social media information channels, and at the same time a growing concern and demonstrations for a sustainable world. TECT supports students/researchers to think for themselves in these contexts, to find their own voice and not to succumb to group thinking. To live up to their social responsibilities, it is not enough to be an expert in these times. TECT addresses this educational gap in higher education, in order to enhance a European tradition of critical thinking as a corner stone of democratic culture. Non-discrimination and active citizenship require learning integrative thinking outside the box of one's own field.
TACKLING THE GAP: New research in the cognitive sciences into the interaction of body, mind and environment, as well as into social and human interrelations shows that a full concept of critical thinking must take account of embodiment. That implies an experiential and an affective turn within the research of cognition. This turn acknowledges how situations, individual competences, interaction between people and their environment, feelings and concrete experience play a key role in the capacity of thinking (Varela, Thompson, Rosch 1993; Lakoff, Johnson 1999, Noë 2013, Di Paolo et al. 2018). The new understanding of the cognitive functions of the experiencing body implies the necessity of more integrative practices and methods of critical thinking. TECT involves partnerships of higher education organizations that combine their efforts in the development of these practices and methods. An interdisciplinary cooperation between the cognitive sciences, the computer science, the humanities, and environmental design join efforts to overcome disembodied methods of reflection by developing empowering pedagogical methods to think for oneself in this digital age.
FOSTERING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: The project strives to foster engagement by developing skills of critical and independent thinking. This requires adapting new methods of attention and thinking by integrating the students actual societal experience and public concerns for informed and reflective political engagement and social responsibility (Gendlin 2003, Scharmer 2018, Schoeller & Thorgeirsdottir 2019). TECT connects the dots between new methodologies to promote critical thinking in ways that can be used in research as well as outside academia. As seen by the partners involved in this project, an emphasis of TECT is on computer science, AI and environmental design. Increasing the skill of critical thinking in these vibrant fields of research will empower students and researchers to reflect the rapid technical and scientific developments they are part of in broader, socio-political, environmental and human terms. In order to make a difference, they need to be able to access their own differentiated experience of the world the live and work in.
MISMATCHES: Skillful access to the field of lived experience in the production of knowledge has been termed the “blind spot” in the Western theory of cognition (Thompson 2010). TECT matches the experiential turn with methods of critical thinking. Interlinking the different competences of fast and slow thinking (Kahneman 2011), EQ and IQ (Goleman 2006), first and third person perspective (Schoeller & Saller 2016), absencing and presencing (Scharmer 2018), doing mode and being mode (Kabat-Zinn 1991) needs to be learned to become better equipped for coping with the complexity of the world we inhabit. By deliberately including the lifeworld and the social and environmental context of the student and researcher, TECT has a maturing impact and promotes mental resilience.
NEED: As teachers of critical thinking and as teachers in areas of computational, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and environmental design, we encounter a crisis of chronic discouragement happening in the first years of study (Schoeller and Thorgeirsdottir, 2019). In specialized contexts it has become increasingly difficult for researchers to engage in a non-specialized public conversation. In computer science, we encounter a proliferation of computational ways of thinking, making students subordinate their thinking to digitalized networks and systems, while also lacking a more holistic understanding of the human, social and environmental situations in which their research is embedded (Denning and Tedre 2019).
LACK OF CIVIL ENGAGEMENT: TECT responds to a crisis of disengagement, passivity, and the negative effects of digitalization among students. Overly adapted, routinized and technical forms of thinking in different areas of the sciences insufficiently challenge students and researchers in their capacity to think for themselves. This kind of illiteracy is also noticeable in a lack of political interest and engagement in higher education institutions (Philipp 2017).
TARGET GROUPS: TECT ́s target group are students and researchers of the human, social, cognitive and computer sciences, with an emphasis on philosophy, environmental design, computer science and artificial intelligence.
THE CONSORTIUM BEHIND TECT: The TECT team consists of participants in several European countries that are leading in this budding field internationally. This European team consolidates their efforts to develop the groundbreaking field of embodied critical thinking. The TECT-consortium consists of the Embodied Critical Thinking-Team (ECT) at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Iceland, the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modelling of the University of Groningen, the Center of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, the German Network of Mindful Universities in the Digital Age (represented by its director Mike Sandbothe at the University of Applied Sciences in Jena), the Department of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion in Haifa, the Department of Computer Science, Informatics and Data Analytics, at the associate partners ETH in Zurich and the Microphenomenology Laboratory in Paris. The associate partners in France and Switzerland are of utmost important to the project, contributing revolutionary methods and relevant application fields of critical thinking. See below a more detailed description of the involvement of these associated partners.
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EUROPEAN CULTURAL HERITAGE: There is lack of political participation of young people, distrust in social media information channels, and at the same time a growing concern and demonstrations for a sustainable world. TECT supports students/researchers to think for themselves in these contexts, to find their own voice and not to succumb to group thinking. To live up to their social responsibilities, it is not enough to be an expert in these times. TECT addresses this educational gap in higher education, in order to enhance a European tradition of critical thinking as a corner stone of democratic culture. Non-discrimination and active citizenship require learning integrative thinking outside the box of one's own field.
TACKLING THE GAP: New research in the cognitive sciences into the interaction of body, mind and environment, as well as into social and human interrelations shows that a full concept of critical thinking must take account of embodiment. That implies an experiential and an affective turn within the research of cognition. This turn acknowledges how situations, individual competences, interaction between people and their environment, feelings and concrete experience play a key role in the capacity of thinking (Varela, Thompson, Rosch 1993; Lakoff, Johnson 1999, Noë 2013, Di Paolo et al. 2018). The new understanding of the cognitive functions of the experiencing body implies the necessity of more integrative practices and methods of critical thinking. TECT involves partnerships of higher education organizations that combine their efforts in the development of these practices and methods. An interdisciplinary cooperation between the cognitive sciences, the computer science, the humanities, and environmental design join efforts to overcome disembodied methods of reflection by developing empowering pedagogical methods to think for oneself in this digital age.
FOSTERING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: The project strives to foster engagement by developing skills of critical and independent thinking. This requires adapting new methods of attention and thinking by integrating the students actual societal experience and public concerns for informed and reflective political engagement and social responsibility (Gendlin 2003, Scharmer 2018, Schoeller & Thorgeirsdottir 2019). TECT connects the dots between new methodologies to promote critical thinking in ways that can be used in research as well as outside academia. As seen by the partners involved in this project, an emphasis of TECT is on computer science, AI and environmental design. Increasing the skill of critical thinking in these vibrant fields of research will empower students and researchers to reflect the rapid technical and scientific developments they are part of in broader, socio-political, environmental and human terms. In order to make a difference, they need to be able to access their own differentiated experience of the world the live and work in.
MISMATCHES: Skillful access to the field of lived experience in the production of knowledge has been termed the “blind spot” in the Western theory of cognition (Thompson 2010). TECT matches the experiential turn with methods of critical thinking. Interlinking the different competences of fast and slow thinking (Kahneman 2011), EQ and IQ (Goleman 2006), first and third person perspective (Schoeller & Saller 2016), absencing and presencing (Scharmer 2018), doing mode and being mode (Kabat-Zinn 1991) needs to be learned to become better equipped for coping with the complexity of the world we inhabit. By deliberately including the lifeworld and the social and environmental context of the student and researcher, TECT has a maturing impact and promotes mental resilience.
NEED: As teachers of critical thinking and as teachers in areas of computational, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and environmental design, we encounter a crisis of chronic discouragement happening in the first years of study (Schoeller and Thorgeirsdottir, 2019). In specialized contexts it has become increasingly difficult for researchers to engage in a non-specialized public conversation. In computer science, we encounter a proliferation of computational ways of thinking, making students subordinate their thinking to digitalized networks and systems, while also lacking a more holistic understanding of the human, social and environmental situations in which their research is embedded (Denning and Tedre 2019).
LACK OF CIVIL ENGAGEMENT: TECT responds to a crisis of disengagement, passivity, and the negative effects of digitalization among students. Overly adapted, routinized and technical forms of thinking in different areas of the sciences insufficiently challenge students and researchers in their capacity to think for themselves. This kind of illiteracy is also noticeable in a lack of political interest and engagement in higher education institutions (Philipp 2017).
TARGET GROUPS: TECT ́s target group are students and researchers of the human, social, cognitive and computer sciences, with an emphasis on philosophy, environmental design, computer science and artificial intelligence.
THE CONSORTIUM BEHIND TECT: The TECT team consists of participants in several European countries that are leading in this budding field internationally. This European team consolidates their efforts to develop the groundbreaking field of embodied critical thinking. The TECT-consortium consists of the Embodied Critical Thinking-Team (ECT) at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Iceland, the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modelling of the University of Groningen, the Center of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, the German Network of Mindful Universities in the Digital Age (represented by its director Mike Sandbothe at the University of Applied Sciences in Jena), the Department of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion in Haifa, the Department of Computer Science, Informatics and Data Analytics, at the associate partners ETH in Zurich and the Microphenomenology Laboratory in Paris. The associate partners in France and Switzerland are of utmost important to the project, contributing revolutionary methods and relevant application fields of critical thinking. See below a more detailed description of the involvement of these associated partners.