Critical Thinking - Chapter 1
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Prominent Features
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Is reflective
Involves standards (accuracy, relevance, depth etc)
Is authentic
Involves being reasonable
Three components
1.
Asking questions
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The most difficult part of critical thinking: noticing that there are questions to
ask
Engaging with the questions we ask (the difference between an empty and a
meaningful question lies in the spirit in which we ask it)
A good question is one we really want an answer to
2.
Reasoning them out
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o
3.
Not an answer we have always taken for granted and not
thought about
o Not an impressionistic answer
o Not before gathering information
o Not according to how we were raised (without examining it)
o Not in accordance with our personality (without examining its
influence on our reasoning)
o Not using reasoning to defend the first thing that comes to
mind
o Rethinking the question, reformulating it in a more neutral
way
o Noticing the resistance to doing it
o Two major obstacles
- Human spontaneous reaction
- Learned social responses
- Misunderstanding what reasoning means (not just
any discussion or debate; different spirit)
- Not reasoning out WELL
Believing the results of our reasoning (internalizing them, acting) - the litmus
test of critical thinking
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Resistance to internalizing them (What concepts am I bringing
to bear?)
Denial
Four indicators:
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I feel strong emotions as I reason something
out
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I end up believing contradictory things
o
I believe very strongly and I don’t need
reasons for the belief, it’s obvious
o
My actions don’t follow my reasoning
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What Critical Thinking is NOT
Not negative (critical – criteria)
Not judgmental (although judgments are essential to critical thinking,
and unavoidable)
We can distance ourselves from negativity (getting away from
childhood responses to negative feedback)
Not emotionless (while some emotions get in the way, others enhance
critical thinking, give us different kinds of data)
Not disconnected from feelings
Desires are the engine of critical thinking
Not ONLY problem solving (it poses the very problem we want to
solve)
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b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
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Impediments
o
The news, movies, TV, advertising, magazines as our source of
information about the world (distortion)
Stereotyping, all or nothing, us versus them etc (reductive)
Fears
Some educational practices
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Deeper, more pervasive impediments
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Egocentrism
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o
Developmental Patterns of Thinking
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Previous commitments, personal experience
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Difficult to see it in ourselves
Impediment to empathy
Impediment to fair mindedness
Impediment to looking at ourselves (and all that we identify as
‘us’) critically (with criteria)
Impediment to seeing the big picture clearly (grades!)
The importance of preponderance of evidence
Personal experience: impediment, enhancer
Limits of personal experience
The importance of the data underlying any conclusion
How deep is our need for critical thinking?
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Decision making
Meaningfulness
Concepts
 Our thinking, desires, emotions are based on concepts
 Concepts are culturally, socially, historically determined
 Reexamining concepts critically allows us to have healthier responses
(opposite to denial)
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 The experience of learning to think things through
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We will NOT feel we are progressing
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We will slow down our thinking
We will see questions we don’t have answers to
We start second guessing ourselves
Our bluff is called (I know exactly why, how …)
We feel discouraged
We are not able to apply critical thinking in practice
We don’t know whether we are applying it correctly
We feel confused when concepts overlap
We feel we will never get there
We go back and forth between certainty and doubt
We feel we know less than before
We feel the teacher is not doing a good job: she does not
answer questions, make things obvious, pacify our anxiety
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