What Does The Doubt Game And The Believing Game Mean

In Peter Elbow’s essay “The Doubting Game and the Believing Game” have rules that Elbow urges the reader to use in the two games (doubting and believing) to have one main goal of teaching critical thinking which yields intellectual “power”. These games are to help highlight curiosity, fair judgement and adaptability. All which are components of high-level reasoning (critical thinking). The intellectual way of being is seeking mental challenges and ask questions that stop at one answer but open up more questions. This develops the critical thinking on being rational and reflect on the reasonability of a person’s beliefs. For example, in the Doubting game the rules are laid out and simple. We must doubt an assertion to find the errors. To do that we must assume it is untrue and the truer it seems, the harder we have to doubt it. This teaches the way of thinking of seeking truth by indirection and use this process in the rational, disciplined way it is intended to be to avoid “deluding” ourselves. While in the Believing Game, we must try sharing perceptions and experiences to find the right answer. There will be no leverage and we put ourselves in a position to have fair judgement. Even if we start out with the right answer, we must still believe the opposing side to gain insight and build up trustworthiness. We go from a point and go through with it to understand it.