Enseñando a pensar críticamente mediante la analogía

Abstract

Detecting paradoxes with causal circularity can be important, both in the sen‐se of restructuring thinking and promoting dialectical, critical, creative, or com‐plex thinking. This study examines the role of analogy in teaching how to de‐tect circular paradoxes. Specifically, the influence of the extrapolation of the circular structure (as opposed to the role of merely superficial or mere-appea‐rance similarity) in detecting causal circularity is analyzed. In that sense, the results show that structural extrapolation does contribute to the detection of circularity. However, extrapolating a mere appearance similarity does not con‐tribute to detecting circularity. It is concluded that analogy facilitates the detec‐tion of circularity shared between two domains, which points to analogy's use‐fulness as an instructional strategy to teach the detection of circular parado‐xes and as a facilitator of critical, creative, and complex thinking (including feedback between causes and effects).