My notes on the opening a discussion on critical thinking. Chris Nordin asked me to present this topic to the Open Minds group: "Are there areas of experience, such as a spiritual quest, which are not subject to critical thinking or which are beyond logic?"
Critical Thinking Definitions
Critical thinking is the objective analysis of facts to form a judgment, thinking about one's thinking in a manner designed to organize and clarify, raise the efficiency of, and recognize errors and biases in one's own thinking.
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully
- conceptualizing,
- evaluating,
- analyzing,
- synthesizing,
- applying
information gathered from, or generated by,
- observation,
- experience,
- reflection,
- reasoning,
- or communication,
as a guide to belief and action.
Defining Critical Thinking - with citations.
Components of Critical Thinking
Critical thinking can be seen as having two components:
- information and belief generating and processing skills, and
- the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior.
What It Is Not
Critical thinking should be contrasted with:
- the mere acquisition and retention of information alone;
- the mere possession of a set of skills;
- the mere use of those skills without acceptance of their results.
Much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed.
Attributes of Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is:
- self-directed,
- self-disciplined,
- self-monitored,
- self-corrective.
Required Abilities
The ability to think critically involves:
- knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry,
- some skill in applying those methods.
Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence.
In particular, it requires abilities:
- to raise vital questions, formulating them precisely;
- to find workable means to resolve them,
- to gather information, interpret data, and appraise evidence;
- to recognize unstated assumptions and values,
- to comprehend and use language with accuracy and discrimination,
- to evaluate arguments,
- to recognize the existence or absence of logical relationships between propositions,
- to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations,
- to test them against relevant criteria and standards;
- to communicate effectively with others.
Logic Definitions
Logic is a systematic study of the form of valid inference. Logic is concerned with the most general laws of truth.
The subject matter of logic traditionally included
- the classification of arguments,
- the systematic exposition of the 'logical form' common to all valid arguments,
- the study of inference, including fallacies,
- the study of semantics, including paradoxes.
Aristotelian logic is called syllogism. A syllogism is the study of how to arrive at a conclusion from two or more assumptions.
