Critical thinking

The original purpose of this page was for me to write a draft of the "official" MORG front page spiel on "critical thinking", and for me to lay out my thoughts and researching on what critical thinking is.

This page is now a collaborative project anyone can participate in if they have something some thoughts to share about critical thinking.

No not really only joking. But seriously, Critical Thinking can help you discover whether you really have cholera or not, and whether we're really joking.

So what exactly is this page?

I was originally planning on this being a relatively private thing with just my own ideas (like a blog), but I want to share this with people and allow them to contribute if they want to.

So on this main page, we have a collection of links to people contributing to this page (see the subpages section), a list of resources to things about critical thinking, and a working draft of the MORG Critical Thinking spiel.

I also hope that this page can used to develop a shared definition of what critical thinking is and how to become a good critical thinker

So how can I contribute to this?

Here is how I propose that this piece of collaborative work on critical thinking should work:

The mini blog's

These are where we can keep our own detailed personal thoughts or personal research on critical thinking, as well as where the majority of personal opinion will reside. Try to keep personal opinion and rants to these pages. For example, in these pages, one can write about their own personal encounters with serious critical thought, people who don't use critical thinking, or pretty much whatever you like. Use it like a blog. Please do not edit other people's blogs. Please treat them as private. If you have something to say about someone's blog or something written in a mini blog, please post comments on their talk page, or somewhere else on the wiki.

The main article

This is the main page which describes the entire purpose of the page, what it sets out to achieve and how it will work. Please keep personal opinion, messy personal signatures and rants away from this page. Save them for your mini blog.

Use this page to pool resources in the resources section, and to write a general/specific, but hopefully non-opinionated definition of critical thinking

Subpages

Mini blogs

• critically thinking about critical thinking by blokey357
• Dr. Boy is Holier than thou

Other

Critical thinking definition

June 1, Friday, 2007

Peoples' understanding of what critical thinking is seems to differ a fair bit. For some, critical thinking seems to just be simple set of logical analysis skills that you pull out when you want to analyse something, and the use of 'critical thinking' is limited to only certain things or scenarios, such as working out if an advertisement for a product is being truthful, determining whether a politician is telling the truth or being fair in their statements/actions, or trying to make a decision on which car to purchase.

Critical thinking seems to encompass, or can encompass, the following (this list varies from the general to the specific);

• logic
  • using logic correctly
  • understanding logical fallacies
• reason
  • rationality
• evidence
  • types of evidence
  • limitations of evidence
• open mindedness
• intellectual humility
• inquiry
  • driving thought through questions
• finding the truth
  • understanding the limits of human knowledge
• freedom of thought
• understanding emotions and how they effect us
• understanding language and the use of language
• perseverance, intellectual energy, not being lazy

MORG Critical thinking draft

DRAFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

Research

See the Research page