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ABOUT DOGMATIC THINKING
Fernando Alcoforado *
Man uses various types of narratives to explain the phenomena that surround it. Are
reports or stories from someone to someone else, in order to convey an idea, a thought.
While we may consider, originally these critical knowledge as they perform the function
of dogmatic knowledge that when one hears or reads, sees them as a true representation
of things, driven solely by belief in who announces.
Depending on the behavior of those who receive certain information, knowledge will be
critical or dogmatic. A knowledge will be critical if the receiver is willing to examine
the internal logic of the theory, investigating it and questioning it, positioning itself
critically at what is transmitted to him, tending to only take as speech "true" what their
analysis indicate. Knowledge will be dogmatic if there is acceptance of information
without prior rational analysis.
To become dogmatic knowledge it has a key ingredient: trust (faith or belief) in the
receiver of the message. It performs epistemologically because the hearer of the story
relies on the truthfulness of the story, but does not because of logical relations contained
in the bulge of the speech, believing that the storyteller is worthy of credibility which
acts as an authority before that. In dogmatic thinking the relationship is one-sided
because there is no debate, discussion or controversy. This promotes uniformity of
thought and action.
But who is this authority that has the power to make us believe the stories he tells?
Normally, we think this behavior before the act of knowing is by ancient man, who
relied on the reports of the diviners, poets and seers. We can also imagine that this
discourse is itself religion where God takes the authorship of revealed truth, justifying
the belief or faith in what it is said. But this authority also arises when we believe in a
thought that we have faith in who proclaims, even if the storyteller is not the divinity,
since to accept the discourse unchallenged. At this time, we become liabilities of
intellectual standpoint.
But how is it possible that contemporary man, technological and scientific behave
naively before the act of knowing? Regardless of social class to which he belongs,
initially we are guided by parents, then by the teacher, the Church or the churches and
institutions of the dominant power that assume this task. Then the media takes its role as
protector of the ideology of the society in which we live by imposing dogmatic thinking
in the interest of the ruling classes and the dominant power holders. All these characters
(and many others) contribute to build our perception of reality. We have become
accustomed to both the world reported by them that dare not refer to the beliefs that we
have acquired to the test of criticism.
So even without researching or investigating the foundations of many natural and
human phenomena, we believe with all the strength of our spirit in the stories that we
listened. People believe, supported only on trust in the narrator, that the Earth revolves
around the Sun, even though we have never observed the movement of the heavenly
bodies; people believe a body "falls" because it is attracted to another body of greater
mass, without which we studied Newton's laws, people believe that there is only one
God, who is eternal and has no beginning or end with no such evidence, people believe
that in God there are three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that each has the

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divine essence which is numerically the same without having been duly proven; people
believe that all that exists was created by God from nothing without having the
necessary evidence, people believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God with no evidence,
etc.. People do not examine the validity of these and other thoughts we have, just
believing that they are true in the same way that the Greeks believed in the Iliad and
Odyssey. Simply accept them because they were told by the so-called "authorities".
Thus, the dogma, prejudice, fixed thought crystallize in our intellect, without being
subjected to the dictates of a simple rational analysis. Continue, even today, to acquire
(receive) knowledge passively as if we were not able to investigate, search and
interrogate nature. Dogmatism is a term used in philosophy and religion. Dogmatism is
any doctrine that says a man's ability to achieve the absolute truth and indisputable. In
religion, corresponds to a set of dogmas and in philosophy is contrary to current
thinking of skepticism that denies the possibility of full knowledge of the truth.
Dogmatism is a kind of intellectual fundamentalism which expresses truths that are not
subject to review or critique.
In general, the dogmas express truths not subject to any review or criticism. Dogmatism
can be understood primarily as a complete submission, certain principles or the
authority that imposes or reveals. Already it is dogmatic thinking (led by the "dogmas of
faith," the molds of religions) is the setting for conceptualizations obscure,
misconceptions, erroneous reasoning, despite clarifying questions, demonstration of
false assessments and errors of reasoning and methodologies.
Dogmatism refers to the narrowness of thought, to blind faith in immutable and
unshakable beliefs. It is the act of thinking about dogmas, no doubts, no reason,
therefore, to accept arguments already finished. It is the opposite of scientific thought.
Dogmatism is confused with the idealism that seeks to explain the reality based on
ideas, not the ideas based on reality. Let yourself be carried by ideal-type, ideal theories
preconceived disconnected from the concrete world, in other words, idealism is the act
of creating worlds which hover above reality, divine and untouchable, without ever
being bothered by facts. Here what matters is the theory, the idea, not practical,
concrete.
In the West, the Roman Catholic Church created several dogmas conditioners behavior
of people and institutions which now constitute absolute truths, outright, immutable,
infallible, unquestionable and absolutely safe upon which no doubt cannot hover. The
dogmatic thinking must be fought in all fields of knowledge and of life in general
because it acts as a brake on human progress as evidenced by the facts of human history
over the centuries. Besides being contrary to human progress, dogmatic thinking is
maintainer of the status quo in favor of the dominant social classes and of those in
power. We must break with the passivity of the intellectual standpoint burying
definitely dogmatic thinking.
* Alcoforado, Fernando, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the
University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic planning, business planning,
regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,
1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do
desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social

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Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
(Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) and Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), among others.