Session Objectives
•To relate the concept of “critical thinking” to work
performed by legislative auditors and evaluators
•To provide a definition of “critical thinking”
•To introduce elements of “critical thinking”
•To provide classroom exercises for the application of
“critical thinking” elements
Legislative evaluators and auditors must have the
ability to assess and evaluate information and make
intelligent decisions or conclusions based on that
information.
To assist them in doing their jobs, legislative evaluators
and auditors must have good critical thinking skills.
A definition:
“…the intellectually disciplined process of actively and
skillfully
conceptualizing,
applying,
analyzing,
synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered
from, or generated by, observation, experience,
reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to
belief and action.” (Michael Scriven and Richard Paul)
Critical thinking
components:
can be seen as having
two
•A set of skills to process and generate information and
beliefs
•The habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using
those skills to guide behavior
Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any
individual; everyone is subject to episodes of
undisciplined or irrational thought.
•Inference vs. observation
•Faulty thinking
•Thinking creatively
•Inference vs. observation
Analyze assumptions and biases
•Deciding the difference between inference and
observation
For the following fifteen statements, decide which are
based on OBSERVATION versus INFERENCE (or
interpretation)
The man in the drugstore fell to the floor clutching his
chest and the other customers turned in his direction
when he screamed.
The pigeon which had been pecking at the disk was
distracted by the sound of the door slamming, and it
hesitated while it considered whether to keep pecking
or not.
When the dinner with her husband’s parents was over,
she was so anxious to leave and go home that she left
her coat behind.
The old man looked both ways several times before he
stepped off the curb and slowly walked across the
street.
Shoppers in the mall assumed that the man talking
loudly to himself was crazy, and they walked quickly
around him, avoiding eye contact.
He beeped the horn several times in rapid succession,
turned into the oncoming lane, and sped around the
stalled car.
During the lecture, Daren stared at the ceiling for
minutes at a time, took no notes, and looked at the
clock twelve times.
Karen’s grief was apparent as the tears began to
moisten her cheek as she spoke about her recently
deceased grandmother.
When Ken confronted Barbie about seeing her with
another man, she paced back and forth with her arms
folded and her head down.
Even though Jennifer didn’t say anything, I could tell by
her expression that she was having a good time.
Chad drank his beer slowly, stopping every two or three
sips to pop some peanuts in his mouth, but never said a
word to anyone around him.
Melanie cleared her throat, pushed the hair back from
her eyes, and sighed before beginning her presentation
to the school board.
John became more agitated with Sarah the more she
talked about having her mother come to stay for a
week.
When Chandra left Reggie’s car to go inside, he sat
silently in front of her house for awhile, daydreaming
and pondering their future.
Jason stared at the computer screen for two minutes,
opened his eyes wide, and started typing on the
keyboard very rapidly.
•Faulty thinking
Avoid oversimplification, overgeneralization fallacies
•Faulty thinking: Common fallacies
Appeal to ignorance—argues that some claim is true
because it cannot be proven to be false, or the opposite;
that some claim must be false because it cannot be
proven to be true.
•Faulty thinking: Common fallacies
Slippery slope—If the first step in a “possible” series of
events occurs, the other possible steps in the series must
inevitably occur.
•Faulty thinking: Common fallacies
False alternatives—This involves “either/or” thinking
in which some classification is presumed to be exclusive
or exhaustive, such as when we overlook the alternatives
that exist between the extremes of two poles.
•Faulty thinking: Common fallacies
Hasty generalizations—If we tend to form a general
conclusion based on an exceptional case, or on a very
small sample, or on a biased sample, we may have
overgeneralized.
•Faulty thinking: Common fallacies
Questionable analogies—We may sometimes try to
compare apples to oranges, or try to make two situations
seem more similar than they are.
•Identifying faulty thinking
For each of the following fifteen statements, identify
the type of fallacious reasoning.
If a child gets attention for crying, before long the child
will be crying more and more and will start
misbehaving in other ways to get attention.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
We cannot conclusively prove the existence of the
unconscious mind, therefore it is a fiction; it does not
exist.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
Schizophrenia is either an inherited brain disease or
the result of neglectful parenting.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
Freud, after careful and extensive analysis of five of his
patients, concluded that most peoples level of anxiety
in life is motivated by unconscious, repressed impulses
and memories.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
Since the therapist’s client had no memory of
childhood abuse, she concluded that no abuse had ever
taken place.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
The brains of elderly rats exposed to a boring,
unchallenging environment shrink in size and weight,
which is good argument for not putting elderly people
in lifeless, unstimulating nursing homes.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
Parents who reward their children for good grades
should recognize that bribing them won’t make them
like school. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t
make him drink.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
If Abe Lincoln can raise himself above poverty and odd
looks to become one of the greatest Americans who
ever lived, anyone can do the same.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
I don’t let any student take a make-up test, because if I
let one student do it, pretty soon others are asking to
make-up tests, and before long I’m giving make-up
tests to almost everyone.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
There are two kinds of people: “Type A” (workaholics
and go-getters) and “Type B” (relaxed and
unmotivated).
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
Why do people need to go to a psychologist? Heck,
back in grandpa’s day people didn’t have any
psychologists and they seemed to get by just fine.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
Both Uncle Albert and cousin Mary Ann committed
suicide, which makes me think it must run in my
family.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
I believe in reincarnation because no one can know for
sure that it doesn’t happen.
HINT: Types of fallacious reasoning
•Appeal to ignorance
•Slippery slope
•False alternatives
•Hasty generalizations
•Questionable analogies
•Thinking creatively
Consider alternative
“outside the box”
explanations—i.e.,
thinking
•Thinking creatively
For each of the following, think creatively to develop a
solution or answer.
Consider an empty soft drink can. Given three
minutes, list all of the things that you can think of that
this can, by itself or in quantity, could be used for.
Traffic jams in your city, particularly at rush hours with
commuters going to work, have gotten horrible. What
are some ways you can think of to alleviate these traffic
problems?
List as many improvements as you can think of for a
grocery store shopping cart.
What can we do to reduce the amount of trash that is
generated in the world everyday?
Credit: “Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum Project”
Longview Community College
Lee’s Summit, Missouri, USA