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The three essays propose to readers an interesting example of reasoning and decision-making process applied to different situations and events. One may question whether these problems are representative of those confronted in our day-to-day lives and whether techniques effective with the former will be so with the latter. It is reasonable to assume that procedures that are useful in solving problems such as those described in the essays. There is room for a range of opinions here. The important point, for present purposes, is that these problems are representative of those used to study problem-solving in the laboratory. approaches that work well in the one context are likely also to have some utility in the other. Problems also differ in terms of how apparent an appropriate approach to solving them may be. Investigators have used two quite different methods for identifying effective problem-solving strategies that work. The essays describe and show the process of reasoning and critical thinking applied to different situations and processes of everyday life.
In the essay, “The Ecology of Magic” David Abram depicts the process of knowledge acquisition and critical thinking skills applied to magic and its functioning. Among the less surprising findings from research on problem-solving is the fact that experts differ from novices in their problem-solving performance; not only are experts generally more effective, but their performance is qualitatively different. Of greater interest than the fact that differences exist, however, is the nature of those differences. Several investigators have studied differences between expert and novice performance in the hope of discovering what might be done to help transform novices into experts. Much of this work has focused on strategies. One difficulty associated with the study of expert performance to obtain insights to guide instruction is that there is no guarantee that the most important aspects of the expert’s performance will be visible to the observer. “The idea became less strange as I pondered the matter. The family compound, like most on this tropical island, had been constructed in the vicinity of several ant colonies” (Abram 72).
Similar to Abram, Anna Dillard uses problem-solving and critical thinking as a framework for her essay. Self-management or control processes of the type emphasized by Dillard, for example, typically are invisible in the world. As a counterpoint to the idea that expert behavior is the best place to look for generally useful strategies, The goal of producing descriptive theories of how people go about solving problems and the development of prescriptive approaches to problem-solving. He rejects the notion that descriptive theories are either necessary or sufficient to the development of useful prescriptions. Decision theorists and investigators of human decision-making have made a sharp distinction between prescriptive and descriptive models of decision making, and the large empirical literature in this area documents the many ways in which actual decision-making falls short of the optimality represented in prescriptive models. It would be surprising if what had proven true in decision-making would not hold also, at least to some degree, in other areas of cognitive performance. Dillard questions: “How can we see ourselves as only a new, temporary cast for a long-running show when a new batch of birds flies around singing and new clouds move? Living things from hyenas to bacteria whisk the dead away like stagehands hustling between scenes. To help a living space last while we live on it, we brush or haul away the blowing sand and hack or burn the greenery” (Dillard 61). This problem-answer structure helps readers to understand the main arguments and responses developed by Dillard.
Steven Johnson in The Myth of the Ant Queen underlines that one way to guarantee to find the shortest solution path would be to explore all possible paths and select the shortest one that terminates in a goal state. This strategy is called exhaustive search. One might develop an exhaustive solution tree by beginning with a node representing the initial state and branching to each of the states that could be realized by application of one of the four admissible operators. Each of these nodes could be expanded in turn, again by application of each of the operators, and the process continued until one or more goal states is reached. Nilsson distinguishes between breadth-first and depth-first search methods: the former expands nodes in the order in which they occur; the latter follows some branches to termination before other branches are expanded at all. The rules and measures that are used for narrowing a search and for evaluating intermediate states are referred to as evaluation functions. Usually, they assess the similarity of an intermediate state to a goal state, and typically they are developed empirically, often by a combination of guesswork and trial and error exploration.
The authors vividly portray that intelligence and human thinking are the main factors that help us to make decisions and understand the world around us. The efficiency of any critical thinking depends both on the length of the solution path that it finds, compared to the minimum length possible, and on the cost (in terms of time and resources required) of finding that path. Sometimes, it is possible to specify the minimum length of a solution path analytically, in which case one can judge the relative efficiency of the search technique directly. More often, the minimum path is not known, and one must then resort to a less direct means of assessment. There is no generally applicable procedure for generating evaluation functions. Indeed, what makes the whole area of problem-solving by machine so intriguing to the researcher is the paucity of formal procedures (excepting the generally impractical exhaustive-search techniques) that are guaranteed to come up with problem solutions. There are, however, numerous methods, principles, and rules of thumb that work reasonably well in many instances. These approaches that are not guaranteed to work, but often do, are referred to as procedures. “I found myself now observing the heron from outside its world, noting with interest its careful high-stepping walk, and the sudden dart of its beak into the water, but no longer feeling its tensed yet poised alertness with my own muscles” (Abram 77).
The authors vividly portray that the effort to develop general problem-solving techniques that may be programmed on computers is relevant, however, to the task of teaching problem-solving skills to human beings. A controversial question relating to this task is whether there are effective problem-solving strategies that are general enough to apply to a wide variety of problem types. Some investigators have argued that there probably are not and that the best one can hope to do is to teach people how to deal with specific problems. To the extent that computer scientists are successful in developing heuristic procedures that prove to be effective across a variety of problem types, they will have demonstrated that the idea of effective general strategies is a valid one, and provided one good reason to assume that generally useful strategies might be taught to human problem solvers. The idea here is to bring to bear as much of one’s prior knowledge as possible on the task of representing the problem. Sometimes what can be inferred about initial states and goal states can fundamentally alter the character of a problem so that it becomes easy to solve. This seems to happen often with so-called insight problems: insight often amounts to a radical reorganization of the representation that simplifies the rest of the problem-solving process. A good example is the checkerboard problem mentioned earlier; here the critical insight hinges on the realization that the two missing squares must be the same color. The creative products of the note must be highly appropriate and original. The creator can achieve this either in one stroke, without any critical filtering of possibilities, or piecemeal, by generating possibilities and filtering them to construct gradually a creative product. To make this more concrete, we can imagine a poet who, without hesitation, dashes off impressively finished poems, versus a poet who edits a lot. Although some of these qualities may be primary and others consequential, it seems useful to address each of them. Indeed, creativity may be an emergent property of the ensemble. With this in mind, we discuss in turn four plausible components of creativity: abilities, cognitive style, attitudes, and strategies.
In sum, the essays vividly portray that critical thinking and reasoning are the main tools that help authors to develop argumentation and explain their topics. In a cycle of generating possibilities and filtering, the product is the joint consequence of both operations. The output of the generating process may be a mix of more and less original options, and the filtering process may select for originality among other properties.
Works Cited
Abram, David. The Ecology of Magic. In The New Humanities Reader by Miller, R. E., Spellmeyer, K. Heinle; 2 edition, 2005.
Dillard, A. The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century’s Measure. In The New Humanities Reader by Miller, R. E.,, Spellmeyer, K. Heinle; 2 edition, 2005.
Johnson, S. The Myth of the Ant Queen In The New Humanities Reader by Miller, R. E., Spellmeyer, K. Heinle; 2 edition, 2005.
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