Appreciative thinking

The Berkeley psychology professor Seth Roberts has an interesting post on what he calls appreciative thinking (in contrast to critical thinking). He worries that students are too inculcated with the tendency to tear apart any academic they receive, to find its flaws. He suggests instead that students be taught to first appreciate what the work achieves because just about any published piece has some worth.

This is a good point. In my first reading of a work, I always try to give the author the benefit of the doubt and give it my most generous reading. But I do have two quibbles with his worries. The first is that I think it applies more to graduate students than undergrads who are often too appreciative, assuming that if we assign a work then it must be both correct and important. Second, I think appreciation is a good first step but needs to be followed by criticism. Almost all academic work challenges the conclusions of some previous work. If we simply appreciate, then it is difficult to know what to believe. If two scholars disagree, then at least one of them has to wrong.