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I'm not sure about that myself. I only came up with it because I am reading a pretty bad book right now and can't stop being critical about it.
 
Without delving too much into it, I'd say critical opinion comes with empiricism. This might include education but not in its current form.
 
Could we define empiricism in this context as a critical evaluation of your own education? I think it is difficult to identify something you see if you have not been taught so. You can make limited observations on your own, but I think that in order to survive, you need to have been educated in how to interpret these observations. I think we can say that is something that distinguishes man from beast, because our ability of critical thinking has largely made us lose our instincts.
 
Yes, absolutely. That's why I said that education is included, but I'd say this is a combination of experience and best practices being passed on, rather than purely theoretical concepts being explained.
 
But is education purely theoretical? Almost every theory of education includes a practical component, which could be described as the gathering of self-made experiences based on previous sensitisation, which would be the theoretical component. In other words, the explanation of a Maths problem at school, and the experience of doing your homework.
 
Perun said:
But is education purely theoretical?
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No, of course not and thank god. It would be totally useless then.

My point is that empirical evidence lies at the heart of civilization and evolution. It can be obtained personally, through trial-and-error activities, or through an analysis of other people's attempts and achievements at a given task, which is still a form of empiricism.
 
You've got a good point there, but the question remains whether the ability of forming a critical opinion comes with empiricism, or whether empiricism presupposes the ability of forming a critical opinion. I would say that empiricism involves critical evaluation from the start, because otherwise it would simply be observation.
 
But if that's true, how did critical evaluation appear in the first place?
I'd say that the ability to critically analyze things evolved, when a series of what you call observations started exhibiting common traits that led a person to spot the similarities/differences and draw a conclusion.
 
I suppose that is a chicken/egg question. Perhaps you'd need to analyse the behaviour of chimpanzees and evaluate what is based on pure observation and what could be called empiricism. The main difference is that while chimpanzees are able to learn, they are not able to educate, i.e. positively pass on their knowledge to others. I've always been of the opinion that that is the core of the evolutionary leap that turned an ape into a human. And since we've established that education and critical thinking are linked together (although we might disagree about the precise relation), I would think that critical evaluation appeared at the very same evolutionary threshold. Unfortunately, I am far from knowledgeable in the field of neurology, but I suppose that the step evolution took here physically is a mutation in the brain that gave the first hominid this capability.
 
Hmm... Are you sure chimps can't teach their young ones how to react in certain situations? I'm not challenging your opinion here, I'm just asking because I have no clue on this. If they are able to solve problems, why not figure out a way to show this to other chimps.
 
I'm not entirely sure where I read that (although possibly in a book that I have at home), but that was a pretty striking revelation to me, so I'm rather sure that my memory of it is accurate. I agree that it is pretty difficult to accept, and the only explanation I can think of is the lack of sophisticated communication with chimps. So again, we have a chicken/egg thing, is language (in the broadest sense) a product of education, or is education only possible with language? Either way, I think this is the root of hominid evolution. Of course, animals are able to communicate with one another, but just how sophisticated are these methods? What are they actually telling each other?

In any case, it is the only reasonable explanation to me why chimps don't have civilisation: If language is the basis for education, and education is the basis for intellectual development, I think we must assume that chimps either don't have language, or that they don't know how to educate.

Anyway, I'm off for lunch, so I'll log back in later.
 
Sounds logical.

But I'm pretty sure that the development of language led to education and not the other way round.
 
Ariana said:
Sounds logical.

But I'm pretty sure that the development of language led to education and not the other way round.
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Then riddle me this: How do you use language if you haven't learned it? I could see us reaching a consensus in the idea that education and the development of language went hand in hand.

Ariana said:
I'm not sure how representative this is but still:

http://www.livescience.com/19190-chimps-learn-sounds-parents.html
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That's pretty fascinating, but as you noted, it's difficult to figure out how representative it is. The article notes that itself by saying, "Not all captive chimps make these calls, though researchers aren't sure why." I could see a variety of reasons, ranging from gender to age. But I think that an important factor that should be taken into account is the degree of interaction with humans the chimps have experienced. If chimps could reach a new stage of evolution by interaction with higher-developed species, thus essentially through education by humans, then perhaps Kubrick was right and we had alien help in our evolution after all. ;)
 
Now I'll see if I can get a first preliminary rough draft of my term paper done.
 
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