ONLINE FIRST
published on March 12, 2022
Katharine Wolfe
https://doi.org/10.5840/teachphil202234160
Reclaiming Reasoning
A Cooperative Approach to Critical Thinking
This article traces my own pedagogical journey to find strategies for teaching critical thinking that emphasize intellectual cooperation, empathy, and argument repair, a journey that found me frequently turning to sources outside of philosophy, including work in intergroup dialogue and pedagogical work in rhetoric and composition. Theoretically, the article showcases Maureen Linker¡¯s notion of ¡®cooperative reasoning¡¯ (2015), sets it against the ¡®adversary paradigm¡¯ Janice Moulton critiques, and illustrates how Peter Elbow¡¯s challenges to critical thinking as a ¡®doubting game¡¯ resonate with Linker¡¯s work. Practically, it illustrates the structure and the role of peer-to-peer dialogues in my own reasoning classroom, an enactment of a cooperative, belief-based approach to reasoning inspired by Linker and Elbow alike, while also learning from the methodologies of intergroup dialogue.