Critical thinking/critically thinking about critical thinking

critically thinking about critical thinking blog by blokey357

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March 17, Monday 2008

Critical thinking can be a pain in the arse. Both for yourself and for others. But once you get the hang of it, it is less of a pain (at least for you).

Critical thinking skills, like any other ability, take time to develop. Less and less now do I have to strain myself to ask basic critical questions when I'm thinking about something more seriously, as the basic questions are now almost like reflex actions. Less often now do I kick myself for thinking "Damn! Why didn't I ask that obvious question?" after a discussion with someone on some heated topic.

For example, if someone says to me "It's been proven by researchers at X University that members of The Corporation are in fact the top 10% of students", I immediately ask things now which seem like obvious questions, like; Who are the researches? When was this study done? Where can I find a copy of the results of this study? By what criteria are they measuring these students? Does this study just merely demonstrate a correlation, or does it explain a cause for the results it has found?.

All these things are to me now pretty basic questions to ask, and it's always surprising to see people who are themselves shocked or unprepared to have such questions asked of them, and how defensive they can become. Asking questions to true believers (of any belief system, ideology, product or pseudoscience) quickly demonstrates to them that you yourself are not a true believer.

To me, the defensiveness of others sometimes comes across as a sign that they haven't really thought about the subject matter in much detail, and are in fact just parroting second or third hand information, which was probably parroted off to them by someone else. This was probably the case with the above example, as figures and statistics of dubious factual basis were are thrown around quite frequently in The Corporation without much thought.

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