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.