CRITICAL THINKING
0. Introduction
Good Morning! My name is Sanjay Goel and this is Prof. Sal Belardo. We are both faculty in the school
of business and will give today’s lecture on critical thinking. We would both like to welcome you all to
SUNY Albany and to the School of Business. Let me introduce to some of the other faculty members who
are attending this lecture….
This is one of my favorite days at school – I get to meet all of you new students with great hopes and
aspirations. I sincerely hope that we can help you in achieving your goals and help you set your sights
even higher. This MBA program will offer you a wide spectrum of knowledge ranging from the
technology aspects of databases and programming and to the management side of human resources,
strategy, finance, and information systems. Needless to say that you will all have to work very hard. But
remember that we are all in this together and we will work hard with you. You are the primary reason we
(the faculty) are here so feel free to come to us when you need any help.
At some point during the class we will go through the introductions to get to know you all a little better,
but we would like to start with lecture first while you are all very fresh and go through the introductions
in the middle of the class to break the monotony of a four hour lecture.
1. Why are we here today?
The purpose of this lecture on critical thinking today is to make your learning more effective. We will
teach you how to become goal oriented, get focused, obtain clarity of thought and work efficiently. We
know students come from different countries with different levels of English language skills. What we
want to teach you today transcends language differences and teaches you basic learning and thinking
skills. This will prepare you better for the MBA program by making you better learners, better writers,
better speakers and most of all better thinkers.
2. What is Critical Thinking?
Critical thinking has been the subject of discussion for hundreds of years. Work of the three great Greek
philosophers Socrates, Aristotle and Plato is the foundation of the critical thinking literature. Socrates
critical thinking was based on the use of arguments, Aristotle’s approach was to separate the truth and
untruth and Plato propounded the concept of logic. Together they created a thinking system based on the
search for the "truth." This search was going to be carried out by the method of argument. Within
argument there was to be the critical thinking that sought to attack "untruth." This attack was going to use
the methodology of Aristotle's logic. To this day, argument is the basis of our normal thinking. The purest
form of this type of thinking is in the law courts where the prosecution takes one side of the argument and
the defense the other side. Each strives to prove the other side wrong. The "truth" is to be reached by
argument between the parties.
There has been a lot of analysis of critical thinking recently in order to make it relevant to the modern
World and to bring it down from the Ivory Towers of the Greek philosophers to be used in our day-to-day
activities. Critical Thinking is thinking about what you are thinking so that you can explain it in a logical
and defensible way. Critical thinking requires the systematic monitoring of thought such that any thought
should be analyzed and assessed for its clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth and logicalness.
Critical thinking also requires that reasoning occurs within a frame of reference and that reasoning
proceeds from some goal and objectives. You need to have a goal for everything you do: read a chapter,
write an essay, or deliver a marketing pitch. I have seen long papers written by students containing
mounds and mounds of uninteresting facts cobbled together.
No two people think alike. Each person’s thinking is based on the experiences that he or she has had and
the knowledge that they have acquired. Even identical twins think differently. Most people believe that
thinking is innate to human beings and some people are just better thinkers than the others. There is some
truth to it. It is also true that all human beings are able to critically think at some level. However, no
matter what each persons level is he/she can improve their intellect by training their minds to think
critically. Specific critical thinking skills can be taught so that people are able to structure and articulate
their thoughts in order to critically examine the facts independent of the subject that they are studying.
Improving your Critical Thinking skills can lead to improved learning, concise writing and clearer
articulation of ideas in speech. Thus in a shorter amount of time you can learn a lot more.
All of what we teach you in how to improve your thinking and learning is anchored in how your brain
works. So, we will start by showing you how the human mind functions and how you can assist in its
growth to improve your intellectual abilities. So the first part of today’s lecture will be a lesson in biology
where you will learn how the brain functions and the second part will be a lesson in psychology where
you will learn to control how your brain functions.
This brain is an amazing organ that has intrigued researchers through centuries For nearly twoand-a-half millennia, individuals have attempted to explain the brain's processing power by
noting its size, complexity and other features. People have sought all kinds of remedies to
improve the functioning of their brains. A deep understanding of its functioning has eluded them
until recently. Aristotle thought that the size of man's brain explained his great intellect. In On
the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, he says, "Of all animals, man has the largest brain in
proportion to his size; and it is larger in men than in women. Other researchers of the time also
believed that the size of the brain determined the intelligence. It was commonly believed that
women had smaller brains then men and were thus inferior. There was also a theory that nonEuropeans had smaller brains than Europeans and were thus inferior. Of course all this was
rubbish.
What is the truth?
This was later rejected and the current theory is that intelligence is related to the properties of
neurons and how neurons are interconnected.
Let us start by looking at your brain. This is a picture of your brain. It weighs about three pounds and
looks like a gnarled walnut. It is an ugly looking organ all wrinkly and gnarled. How can such a yucky
looking structure produce all these beautiful things- paintings, poetry, love, science, and mathematics?
Let us look a level deeper … Most of the intelligence comes from the neurons or the gray cells in your
brain that reside in the thin outer surface of the brain called the cortex. The gnarled shape is nature’s
solution to an important mechanical engineering problem: How do we pack enough neurons in the skull
to process all the information in this complex world and still be able to carry our heads around on our
shoulders. If we tried to fit in all the grey cells without wrinkling our brains, our heads would be so big
that we would just topple over. You can smooth out your brain too but then you would think like a rabbit
– just eat and multiply. There is actually a unit to measure this index called the gyrification index or GI
which is measured by tracing the ratio of the whole gyral contours to their outer, exposed contours. The
higher the index, the more the gnarled your brain is, the more grey cells you carry. A normal brain has an
index of 2.6. If you look at a rabbit brain it is very smooth with a GI close to 1. There is one fallacy to this
argument. The brain of an ass or a donkey is almost as convoluted as a human being however it displays
very little intelligence. Something went wrong its neurochemistry during evolution or it just pretends to
be dumb.
Your Brian
It consists of 100 billion neurons intricately connected to one another making learning, memory, thought,
consciousness, vision and other brain functions possible. It is through these interconnections that learning
takes place. Each day new interconnections are formed and old ones atrophy due to disuse. The
remarkable feature of the brain is the precision of its wiring. What is even more remarkable is the fact that
when a baby grows in the mother’s womb a hundred billion new neurons are generated in very precise
locations. The branches grow from these cells migrate to the right locations and form the right
interconnections. All this is done in a span of a few weeks. 100 billion is an astounding number The entire
blue print of your brain is already coded in your DNA passed to you from your parents. This is where the
concept of innate intelligence comes from. During the development of the fetus this blueprint is
implemented and is updated through out your life as you learn more.
This is what your neuron looks like – a star with a lot of intricate thread like extensions. It consists of
three parts: a cell body, a long extension to the cell body called the axon, and a lot of branching fibers
called the dendrites. When neurons are being created the axons propagate from the cell body, select the
right pathway and make a connection to a target neuron. These connections are what cause learning in the
brain. What you get at birth is an approximate pattern of your brain that reflects all your innate learning.
The number of neurons stays the same during the child’s growth however the mass of the brain keeps
increasing. As the child grows new interconnections are formed each second as the child learns new
things. The extra space is taken up by these interconnections. These connections form only when the brain
is stimulated by different sensory input. A child should be exposed to different sensory inputs to stimulate
the brain.
The largest portion of the brain is the association cortex that is devoted to establishing networks and
thereby linking everything together throughout the brain. You do not hear, see and feel separately while
watching a movie. It is a total experience. When you eat a burger you do not see, hear, smell, taste and
feel the burger separately it is a total experience. It is the association cortex that makes this possible. The
brain has different sensory stations corresponding to different sensory inputs like vision, speech, hearing,
taste etc. Whenever your brain receives a sensory input the cells in the corresponding region light up.
These cells stimulate the nerve cells around them via the dendrites of the cells. These stimulated cells in
turn communicate with other nerve cells by passing messages via their dendrites. Each neuron can receive
sensory input from a thousand different neurons via the dendrites. This communication is what causes the
sensory inputs to combine.
It is important to remember that our brain holds the key to everything that we will ever accomplish. It is
the gateway for all our sensations and all of our experiences. Most of us are convinced that exercise
increases our physical well being however we are unable to fathom the impact of mental exercise on our
brains.
It is also important to remember that your capacity to learn new things does not diminish as you
grow older and may actually increase as you get older because some neurons are generated in
certain regions of the brain. What diminishes your brain learning capacity is the atrophy caused
by lack of use. So learn to use it !!! The more you exercise your brain the better it performs and the
better it makes you feel. Also remember your brain does not wear out with repeated use.
Let us see how does brain work?
Neurons in the brain are designed to talk back and forth to one another as efficiently as possible. They all
consist of a cell body containing the nucleus and at least one axon of variable length. The axon carries the
electrical message from the cell body to the terminals that contain the chemical messengers. A fatty
insulation called myelin sheath protects these axons just like a plastic sheath that protects electrical wires.
The cell body as well as the axon branch into fine strands called dendrites through which enables the cells
to receive input from other neurons.
Communication between nerve cells starts with electrical activity. The specific voltage of a nerve cell
rises from –70 millivolts to –35 millivolts. The cell fires and sends an electrical charge down the axon,
ending at the terminal and causing the release of neurotransmitters. The neuro-transmitter moves from the
axon terminal across the synapse to a receptor in the dendrite of another neuron carrying the message.
Which is carried to the cell body via the axon.
A number of neurotransmitters are used for message transmissions. These are normally held in balance. It
is these neurotransmitters which control how you feel: too little or too much of any of these can cause
malfunction of your brain and lead to things like depression. Different recreational drugs affect the
balance of these neurotransmitters and inhibit this neurotransmission giving you different emotional
feelings. Too much alteration of this neurotransmission chemistry can screw up your brain and hurt its
functioning.
Cognition
Wouldn’t most of us like to be smarter? The big question is how do we do it? You could take a lot of
practice tests and improve your IQ. Would that necessarily mean better performance in your class or even
later on in life? NO!
The key to increasing mental abilities to enhance your accomplishments is to improve your cognitive
skills. Cognition refers to your ability to attend, identify and act or more informally it refers to our
thoughts, moods, inclinations, decisions and actions. More concretely, cognition includes alertness,
concentration, speed, learning, memory, problem solving, creativity and mental endurance. Critical
thinking skills will help you improve these skills in you.
Our goal is to provide you with skills to hone these connections faster by stimulating your brain through
critical thinking. This will make you efficient, give you a sense of purpose and make learning easier.
There are three kinds of activities.
Passive
Intellectual
Physical
Watching Television
Reading
Sports
Listening to Music
Writing
Biking
Partying
Solving Puzzles
Working Out
Talking on the Phone
Playing Music
Running
Painting
Golfing
Home Repairs
Gardening
These are different levels of intellectual pursuits based on how you do it. Reading and writing are more
passive when you are just browsing the news on the internet or copying a document verbatim from a
book. It becomes intellectual when you have to summarize, comprehend or extend what you are reading
or writing. This is what we will present. How you can learn better.
Learning
Learning is a process by which we acquire new knowledge and memory is the process by which we retain
knowledge over time. There are two kinds of learning explicit learning and implicit learning. Explicit
learning is one where you need a conscious record like your learning in classrooms. It is fast and may
occur after one trial. Implicit learning is slow and usually occurs by multiple repetitions of a task. It is the
explicit learning that is happening in the class room when you are studying and the topic of discussion
today. Learning is also related to memory & attention.
Memory – We are our memories. The personal identity, the sense of self that we all have is a composite
of the episodic memories that we have retained and draw on each time we think a thought, experience a
feeling or make a decision. Episodic memory, a sequentially time-linked memory system, permits us to
have a sense of future as well as a sense of past and present. As opposed to this we also have a semantic
memory related to words, facts, or information which is subjective rather than objective. The memory is
built in stages: Encoding, Consolidation, Storage, Retrieval, and Ecphory.
We are deluged with sensory input every second of our waking life: Smell of the coffee, Color of the
table, cars you pass by on the road. From all this information we choose a few bits and pieces of
information that we want to keep, at least briefly, by focusing our attention on these. That process is
called encoding, which puts the information in the short term buffer called the working memory.
Memories that are kept move from the short-term buffer to long-term storage so that they can be retained:
this process is called consolidation. Consolidated memories are stored in the long term memory. When we
recognize words of faces or remember facts we are retrieving memory from storage. When the retrieval is
successful the sense of gratification is called Ecphory.
As we learn new things initially we have to concentrate on what we are learning, but as the process
becomes smoother and more practiced, we seem to do it more efficiently and almost automatically. So the
more of a background you have on a subject the easier it gets to learn i.e. learning builds upon past
learning.
Learning requires attention. One of the key things we all have to do while learning is to pay attention and
focus on a single topic for sustained periods of time. It is very hard to keep your brain focused – it tends
to wander away. You have to learn to pull it back each time it wanders away. There is a biological reason
for this i.e. neurons fatigue very quickly and within three to five minutes of sustained activity, neurons
become less responsive. They recover quickly, and you can pull your mind back, however, after a few
cycles like this they become inefficient. The key to maintaining your focus is to stimulate different parts
of your brain so that the same neurons are not continuously being badgered. By thinking critically
thinking you are correlating the information that you are getting with knowledge you already have
thereby using different parts of your brain and balancing the load on the neurons. This is the reason when
you get mainly factual information in the classroom without any context your brain gets tired very quickly
and turns itself off. The onus is on the instructors to weave a storyline when they are teaching you in class
and make it interesting by discussion and humor otherwise you can claim neuronal incompetence when
you doze off in the middle of the class.
It wanders away because it is not being used effectively, it has spare capacity and it finds other things
which are more interesting. When you are thinking critically you are using your brain and the brain then
gives undivided attention to the tasks at hand.
Benjamin Bloom has clearly identified different stages of learning and formalized the learning process.
We will discuss Bloom’s Taxonomy and then provide you with a piece of literature to read and critically
evaluate.
Bloom's Taxonomy
(Reference: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html)
Benjamin Bloom identified three domains of educational activities i.e. cognitive, affective, and
psychomotor. Cognitive is for mental skills (Knowledge), affective is for growth in feelings or emotional
areas (Attitude), while psychomotor is for manual or physical skills (Skills). This taxonomy of learning
behaviors can be thought of as the Rosetta Stone for learning objectives. Cognitive domain is of most
interest in the context of critical thinking and learning.
Cognitive
The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. This includes the
recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of
intellectual abilities and skills. There are six major categories, which are listed in order below, starting
from the simplest behavior to the most complex. The categories can be thought of as degrees of
difficulties. That is, the first one must be mastered before the next one can take place.
Knowledge: Recall of data.
Comprehension: Understand the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and
problems. State a problem in one's own words.
Application: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was
learned in the classroom into novel situations in the workplace.
Analysis: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be
understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences.
Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with
emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.
Evaluation: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.
Affective
This domain includes the manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such as feelings, values,
appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations, and attitudes.
Receiving phenomena: Awareness, willingness to hear, selected attention.
Responding to phenomena: Active participation on the part of the learners. Attends and reacts to a
particular phenomenon. Learning outcomes may emphasize compliance in responding, willingness to
respond, or satisfaction in responding (motivation).
Valuing: The worth or value a person attaches to a particular object, phenomenon, or behavior. This
ranges from simple acceptance to the more complex state of commitment. Valuing is based on the
internalization of a set of specified values, while clues to these values are expressed in the learner’s overt
behavior and are often identifiable.
Internalizing values (characterization): Has a value system that controls their behavior. The behavior is
pervasive, consistent, predictable, and most importantly, characteristic of the learner. Instructional
objectives are concerned with the student's general patterns of adjustment (personal, social, emotional).
Psychomotor
The psychomotor domain includes physical movement, coordination, and use of the motor-skill areas.
Development of these skills requires practice and is measured in terms of speed, precision, distance,
procedures, or techniques in execution.
Perception: The ability to use sensory cues to guide motor activity. This ranges from sensory stimulation,
through cue selection, to translation.
Set: Readiness to act. It includes mental, physical, and emotional sets. These three sets are dispositions
that predetermine a person’s response to different situations (sometimes called mindsets).
Guided response: The early stages in learning a complex skill that includes imitation and trial and error.
Adequacy of performance is achieved by practicing.
Mechanism: This is the intermediate stage in learning a complex skill. Learned responses have become
habitual and the movements can be performed with some confidence and proficiency.
Complex Overt Response: The skillful performance of motor acts that involve complex movement
patterns. Proficiency is indicated by a quick, accurate, and highly coordinated performance, requiring a
minimum of energy. This category includes performing without hesitation, and automatic
performance. For example, players are often utter sounds of satisfaction or expletives as soon as they hit a
tennis ball or throw a football, because they can tell by the feel of the act what the result will produce.
Adaptation: Skills are well developed and the individual can modify movement patterns to fit special
requirements.
Origination: Creating new movement patterns to fit a particular situation or specific problem. Learning
outcomes emphasize creativity based upon highly developed skills.