myra williams mcwethy - critical and creative...

University of Massachusetts -Boston

Capstone Synthesis Project

Master of Arts

Critical and Creative Thinking

May, 2016

Myra Williams McWethy

Two Years ago at my place of Work…

A professional company,

running on a multi-million dollar annual

budget…

Why would a person

make a decision to

do such a thing?

To search for answers, I looked into…

Humanities

Religion

Sociology

Psychology

History

Communications

Anthropology

Biology

The Findings of my Initial Search: • Strategic Decision Making Michigan State College of Business

• Quantitative Analysis: Decision Making San Diego State University Economics

• Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics

• Problem Solving and Decision Making Central Piedmont CC Business

• Decision Making and Problem Solving FEMA Independent Study

• Thinking, Judgment, and Decision Making Swarthmore College Psychology

• Problem Solving and Decision Making South Texas College Business Administration

• Global Business Leadership Ethics University of San Diego School of Business

• Decision Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty Yale University School of Management

• Decision Making Models for Managers UC San Diego Rady School of Management

• Foreign Policy Analysis USC School of International Relations

• Strategic Planning and Decision Making New England College of Business MBA Capstone course

• Legal Environment of Business University of Texas College of Business & Engineering

• Organizational Theory and Behavior Rockefeller College SUNY Albany Public Affairs & Policy

• Leadership and Decision Making Harvard University Government

• Medical Decision Making University of Illinois Department of Medical Education

• Mathematics in Decision Making University of Northern Iowa Mathematics

• Marketing Strategies and Decision Making University of Georgia Terry College of Business

• Sex, Health, and Decision-Making University of South Florida College of Public Health

• National Security Decision Making U.S. Naval War College

• Effective Problem-Solving and Decision Making University of California at Irvine Business

• Thinking and Decision Making Columbia University Department of Psychology

• Ethics and Values Northwestern University Part of Freshman Seminar

• Introduction to Public Administration Bradley University Political Science

• Introduction to Resource Economics UMASS-Amhurst Dept. of Resource Economics

• Think Critically: Effective Decision Making in Business UMass-Boston Corporate & Professional Development

Philosophy options… • Judgment and Decision Making

Loyola University, Chicago (Psychology, investor, medical, etc. emphasis)

• Discernment and Christian Decision Making College of St. Benedict

• Moral Values and Ethical Decisions Mount Saint Mary’s University

• Ethical Decision Making University of Denver Case Studies

• Probability, Data and Decision Making Ohio State University Department of Philosophy

• Ethical Decision Making Stanford University Emphasis on Drafting Ethical Code

• Conflict Resolution UMass-Boston Decision Making is a Master’s Degree “Skill” that’S expected in the course “Learning Outcomes”

The closest… but still 90% Lecture

• Critical Reasoning Elmhurst College, IL PHL 106 – This course provides the fundamentals of reasoning

necessary for academic and everyday life.

– The course will examine informal fallacies, rhetorical devices, induction and deduction, argument analysis, argument construction, the writing process, problem solving and decision making, the scientific method, and traditional syllogistic argument forms to assure that students are well equipped for understanding and formulating arguments concerning crucial issues in their educations and lives.

Philosophy

I “met” these people, and tried to understand the wisdoms gleaned thought Philosophy, Socratic Thinking, and the rational search for truths…

• I Googled Five Words

“philosophy critical thinking masters creative”

What can I do to help set a better “base line” for decision making?

To outline a totally original college course that

would allow students to practice solutions to

everyday decisions so there would

be far less Really Rotten Incidents in the world...

I had created and taught writing classes in the past at:

College of DuPage

Waubonsee College

Kroch’s & Brentano’s Bookstores

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Various writers conferences around the Midwest.

My Foundational Question:

Why put together a class in

“Philosophy and

Making Better Decisions”

for college

freshman/sophomores?

• The $$$ Answer

Employers want employees

with sensible overall decision-

making skills.

The Millennial Answer

• The Media / WWW Answer

The Balanced Life Answer…

The Deeply Human Answer…

• Justice

• Family, Love, Relationships

• Communication Responsibility

• Dealing with reality.

I found out that most people CRAVE to Talk About Life’s Decision Issues!

• Beyond the pro/con lists

• Beyond the “Well, it’s up to you,” brush off.

• Beyond the “Black and White.”

• Beyond the “Our ___________ say it is so.”

• Beyond the “It’s just ________ to do nothing.”

• Beyond the “It’s all about ME.”

• Beyond the groupthink mentality.

• Beyond the loneliness of tough decisions made alone.

• Start Date: January, 2015

• CCT 615 Holistic & Transformative Teaching

• CCT 612 Seminar in Creativity

• CCT 618 Collaboration & Organizational Change

• CCT 601 Critical Thinking

• CCT 651L Advanced Cognitive Psychology

• CCT 692 Research & Engagement Process

• CCT 616 Dialogue Processes

• CCT 693 Action Research for Change

• CCT 694 Synthesis Theory & Practice Seminar

• CCT 619 Biomedical Ethics

• Counseling 605 Principles of Vocational, Educational & Psychological Assessment

• Expected Graduation Date: 25AUG2016

1. Welcome, Roll, and Check-in

2. Story Time

3. Lecture

4. Interactive: Small Group Activity

5. Summary of Interactivity

6. Lesson Review

7. “The Charge”

So what topics would be needed in such a course?

(Plus a mid-term and final exam)

-- Philosophical Support Structure

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Lecture: “Out of the Cave and into a Wider World”

After taking this class, you can never fully go

back into the cave again.

--Philosophical Support Structure

The SPA Guys

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and a few more to lay a starting foundation.

Story: In the Vineyard

Lecture:

“Under the Olive Trees”

How do we learn to talk about reasoning, critical thinking, and decision-making?


Maslow, Darwin, Calvin, Wittgentein, Kahneman, Einstein, Theory of the Meek

Story: The Driving Lesson

Lecture:

“Actualizing Yourself:

Where are you now? Where do you want to be?”

• You make different choices depending on where you are on the pyramid, how your brain processes, and other very human

functions.


God/god, Hume, Schopenhauer, Herodotus, Patricia Churchland, Rousseau, Socrates,

Mencius

Story: Ring of Gyges

Lecture:

“Why Be Good?” • Is there a point in the whole scheme of things if I choose

good or bad – or even make no choice at all?


Religion, Ethics and Morals, Virtue, Solipsism, Bentham and Utilitarianism, Wollstonecraft, Kahneman, Tversky,

Introspection Illusion

Story: Prison in Vietnam

Lecture:

“How To Build a Solid Foundation” • How can we find, strengthen, change, or/and

plan a solid foundation?


Prejudice, Social Cognition, Bias, Pascal’s Dilemma, Kant’s Categorical Imperative,

Hilary Putnam’s Words & Environment, Are people responsible for their implicit

biases?

Story: Which Bags are Yours? Which Bags are Mine?

Lecture:

“I Don’t Have Bias… or Do I?” • Can we take an honest look at our process of thought, or is it

just safer, easier, or/and better to just turn a blind eye?


Logic Modeling, Robert Ennis, Matthew

Lipman, Arthur Schopenhauer, getting to

the “Base.”

Story: Le Penseur

Lecture:

“Philosophy, Critical Thinking, & Reasoning” • Why think critically?

How do we learn to think critically?


Kant, Plato, John Searle, Edward DeBono,

Csiksgentmilhalyi, Creative Modeling, August

Comte’s Positive Philosophy, Dweck

Story: A Thousand Answers

Lecture:

“What Color Hat Are You Wearing?

• Are there just a couple of pathways? Are there a thousand? How can I click into the creative thinking side of me when I

need to make a critical decision?


Derrida, Wittgenstein, Searle, Austin,

Scharmer, Bohm, Russell, etc.

Story: American Airlines Flight 173

Lecture:

“Listening, Speaking, Thriving Conversation,

Socratic Dialogue, & Generative Dialogue”

• We can’t make good decisions if we don’t know how to listen, speak, have conversations, look for truths,

and seek answers.


Is/Ought Problem, Avicenna of Persia, Francis Bacon’s Knowledge is Power, Hume, John

McDowell’s Is there a question at all?

Story: Myths, Legends and Tall Tales

– Lecture:

“Asking the Right Questions and Listening to the Answers That You Actually Get

(as opposed to the answers you want.)” • Continuing on from the last session, more about how you gather

information on which you try to make better decisions…


Lecture: “Now that We Have The Information We Need,

What Next?” • Having a good foundation, having good information, and having

critical and creative skills are great, but how do you put them all together to come up with an answer(s)?

--Philosophical Support Structure Realitivism, Aristotle’s Egregious Errors of spontaneous Generations, Descartes’s

What Can We Know For Sure, Spinoza’s Deductive Reasoning, Leibniz’s Sufficient

Reason, Nietsche’s Guilt, Hypatia’s Level’s of Reality, Popper’s Falsification

Principles, de Beauvoir’s Gender Bias, Chalmers’s Property of the Mind

Story: “O” Rings and Things

Lecture:

“Nothing Comes from Nothing” There are so many competing views! What’s the right answer?

How can I sift through them all? Or if I learn about them now, will they be in by subconscious forever, nudging me in better directions?


Daniel Kahneman, John Stewart Mill’s Can you

have it both ways, Pascal’s Wager to be safe

either way, Burke’s All that is necessary…idea.

Story: Polaroid

Lecture:

“Seriously, What Are My Options Here?”

If you grow deep roots, you are more steady. But that doesn’t mean the perfect option always magically reveals itself to you.

So how do you evaluate options in a thoughtful way?


Distortion of the Framework, Time, False Efficiency, Mulla Sadra, Fredrich Nietzsche, Michael Goucault,

Time, etc.

Story: The Rain, the Soil, & the Trees in Southern California

Lecture:

“Conditions on the Field” In times of stress and duress, it is easy to fall back into patterns

that are less critical and creative. How can you hope to function well in traumatic situations – whether they are

traumatic just to you, or a wider crisis?


As mentioned in previous lectures.

Review of above topics in preparation for the

mid-term examination.

Lecture:

“Building a Scaffolding”

Class #16


Thales of Miletus – The Most difficult thing in life

is to know yourself.

Story: The Curious Case of Phineas Gage

Lecture:

“How Does My Brain Work When I Decide?” • In deciding, it helps to know how your brain works, what

helps your brain, and what hurts your brain.


Grameen Bank, Kant, Derek Parfit’s Who Am I Today, Saul Kripke’s There are True Statements, Kant, Bentham, Berkeley, Native American Philosophy

Story: “Little House on the Prairie”

Lecture:

“Finding the Right Answers: A Process” Depending where you are in the world physically, the

backgrounds (cultural, religious, etc.,) are taken into account, you may be reading the situation entirely wrong. Can you put a

worldview into your life?


Meditation, Peirce’s Battles and Consequences, Aquinas’s Just War, Spinoza’s God or Nature, C.S. Lewis’s Rational Discussion, The Bhagavad Geeta’s One Decision

– One Choice.

Story: “Mere Things”

Lecture:

“Here’s How We Are Going To Proceed” Trying to get everyone on the same page so that you can make a better

decision, let alone implement and sustain that decision takes an understanding by everyone that the world has changed, and they must

change too. And here are the ground rules.


Irving Janis, Csikszentmihalyl, Feist, Religion, Cults, Family,

Neighborhood, The Computer Age, Social Norms, Rousseau’s Man is

born free but everywhere in chains, Cornel West’s Race Matters.

Story: Kennedy & The Bay of Pigs / Kennedy & the Missies

of October

Lecture:

“Who Do You Listen To?

The Voice in Your Head, or the Voice from the “Gang.”

There are all sorts of external pressures to make “your own” decisions based on what is really the decision’s while you are consciously or

unconsciously in the cave. What can you do to make your own choices?


Burton, Sandel, Socrates, Guru Nanak Dev, Thomas Paine’s

Common Sense in an Age of Reason, Sharmer’s

Communications, Neerja Raman’s Solution’s vs. Conflict.

Story: Follow the Money

Lecture:

“Hitting the Books, Hitting the Streets”

Sometimes, to make a better decision, you must do the work it takes to get to the real answers. That means doing the research, on the street,

in the library, in person, on the internet, etc.


Maslow’s Wants vs. Needs, Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance,

Santayana’s Impulse, Hobbes.

Story: The Fire Jumpers

Lecture:

“Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty” In the end, it’s the little details that get lost. How can you avoid the pitfalls that are either so large you miss them, or so small, you can

barely notice them?


Fuzzy Sets, Utilitarianism, The Aliens, Russell’s Analytical

Philosophy, Lao-Tau’s Harmony with Nature, Sun Tau’s The

Art of War, Adam Smith’s The Invisible Hand, Kinsey & West’s

Moral Arguments

Story: The Monte Carlo Simulation

Lecture:

“Best Case Scenario” Economics, Psychology, Business, the Military, Conflict Resolutions,

Math, Game Theory, and what is best?


Epicurus, Satre, Buddha, Machiavelli, Thoreau,

Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil, Goldman

Story: Donald S. Frey

Lecture:

“Hell Can Be Other People”

What is good? What is bad? Psychopaths and Saints. When we have no final control over the behavior of others,

why bother at all?


Michael Sandel, Susan Haack, Dharma’s What is

Right?, Rawls’s Theory of Justice, the Introspection

Illusion, Evaluation, Judging.

Story: The Great Venture

Lecture:

“Dark Side of the Moon” If you make bad decisions, what happens? What is Justice?

What is the right thing to do when faced with an impossible situation?

--Philosophical Support Structure Sophia’s The Dark and the Hidden, Xenophanes, Camus’s

Absurdist, Levinas’s Intersubjectivity – How do we relate to each other on a core level? And is Free Thinking Free from

Downs, Sartre, & Singer

Story: Funeral, 1988

Lecture:

“In the Silence and in the Noise – What is and What Is Not Being Said?”

Secrets and Lies. We have a right to our own private thoughts, so when does a secret destroy? When is everything just too absurd? When do

we know it’s time to deal with issues at a core level?


Hume’s Proofs, Goldman’s Anarchy, Rawls’s

Entitlement, Creative Forms, Martin Heidegger,

Peter Senge and the 5th Discipline Field Book

Story: Red Emma

Lecture:

“Models of Thinking” Looking deeper into the models of Critical Decision Making and testing

them out. Are they are helpful, and if so, how?


Beauty/Ugly, Sin/Choice, Art/Crap, Us/The, Lucretius’s

Swerves of Fortune, Hegel’s Reasonable, True, Rational, Carl

Marx’s Economic structure, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution

Story: The Myth of Sisyphus – The Stone and the Hill

Lecture:

“In a Crazy World, What Can I Do?” With all the paradoxes, phases, and ever-changing landscape, how and

why do better decision matter?


Austin’s Performative Utterances, Is Self-Identity Logically

Consistent, Voltaire’s Disagree/Fight for Your Right, Sandel &

Bernstein’s Righting Past Wrongs, Discrimination vs. Membership

Story: I Do.

Lecture:

“Creating Your Own Life,

One Decision At A Time” Your decisions create the tale of your life. Are you willing to deal with the real-life consequences of your decisions? Even when they affect

others negatively?

--Philosophical Support Structure Moore’s Goodness, Confucius’s Hold faith and sincerity as first principles,

Leibniz’s We Live in the Best of All Possible Worlds, James’s The Greatest

Use of Life is To Spend It, Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life, Ponty’s Mind

and Body, Donald Davidson’s The Principle of Charity. Daniel Dennett’s

Who am I, Cornel West’s Real World Issues.

Story: Where is the Exit?

Lecture:

“Bring On The Rain” When you open yourself up to the world, you expose your mind, heart and will to an audience sometimes ready to eat you alive. What is the worth in a worthwhile life?


Cornel West’s Real World Issues, Daniel Dennett’s “Who Am

I?” and all the foundations learned over the past half-

semester.

Story: Being and Somethingness

Lecture:

“Making Better Decisions:

Where Do We Go From Here?”

Final Exam

The Final Charge…

And thought, Wow!

6.) On Class Day:

Bring or wear something purple to class.

(Examples: A shirt, a pen, a troll, a piece of hard candy…)

Approximate Time Needed to Accomplish: 1 minute

(Your total homework/prep time: 28 -30 minutes.)

I look forward to seeing you on Monday!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOCmJevigw

With thanks to Professor Luannee Witkowski, and my creative classmates: Amy, Angelica, David, Eileen, Erin, Mare, Stephen,William & Wipa

Taught by Professor Arthur Millman. Thanks a billion to an amazing on-line and in-class hybrid group of fellow students!!

Thanks to Professor Davis and my amazing classmates!

• Reflections on my journey

Artwork by our fellow UMASS CCT Masters student: David Kooharian

I might have

started off a

bit naïve…

And believe

me… I’ve

been ready

to throw

everything in

the trash the

night before

a term paper

(or two

or three)

were due…

Looked at the mess that was now my office…

and blessed my husband, children, and friends

for being so patient!

But I’ve been blessed

with Boston…

To learn anew what it means to be a “Class”

Photos courtesy of my

friend Karole Foreman’s

husband, Peter Zokosky.

• To all of my UMass Professors, and my amazing world-wide

fellow classmates who have been a special part of my quest!

myra williams mcwethy - critical and creative...

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