Dialogue and Critical Thinking 1 DIALOGUE AS MEDIUM (AND MESSAGE) FOR TRAINING CRITICAL THINKING1 by

Standard internalist approaches to critical thinking insist that critical thinkers maintain conscious, deliberate access to the reasons for their beliefs and actions. A more useful approach is externalist, focusing on the reliability of different types of processes for generating beliefs and decisions under different circumstances. We describe an externalist approach to critical thinking based on dialogue. According to the theory, critical thinking is asking and answering questions about alternative possibilities in order to achieve some objective. Three perspectives are coordinated (by different individuals or inside a single head): a proponent, an opponent, and a referee. By asking and answering questions, the defender and challenger introduce new possibilities (mental models), understand them more completely, and learn one another’s beliefs and preferences. The referee, who represents an external perspective, regulates the dialogue so that it reliably achieves the participants ’ objectives within the available time. "Critical Thinking through Dialogue " training takes trainees through four phases of a critical dialogue (identifying a disagreement, deciding how to resolve it, challenging and defending