Peter Elbow The Doubt Game And Believing Game Analysis

In a short excerpt from Peter Elbow’s The Doubting Game and Believing Game- An Analysis of the Intellectual Enterprise, the comparison and contrasting methods of two ways that humans process information presents itself in an almost biased manner as one begins to form an opinion about which method of processing information is actually deemed supreme. The author describes the two components as a game. As any game would be played, there are two teams. (For example if you were to take into account this passage, the two teams would be belief and doubt.) These teams battle it out in the processing factors of human intelligence. However, both sides of how a human processes information is actually sought out in the beginning as a critical thought, it then evolves to whether or not one would deem it as truth or skepticism. …show more content…
Critical thinking is all but a mere judgement. Belief occurs when enough information is processed and brought together through a critical thought. Society only seems to believe in two different things, what is right and what is wrong. In the passage Elbow states that “by believing assertion” one can “climb higher and higher to a point from which more can be seen and understood—and finally get to the point where we can be more sure (sometimes completely sure) it is true.” What the reader can comprehend from this is that during a critical thought, the brain begins to process the information presented. It takes the facts and compares them to what we originally believed and an opinion is formed on whether or not we believe or disbelieve what is happening. Which brings the idea to question, does doubt really