A concise introduction to critical thinking.

[Ichingcarpenter]

This paper presents a concise introduction to critical thinking. It is intended as a handy tool to help anyone evaluate or develop sound reasoning and arguments.


Introduction

What Critical Thinking is Not

Step 1: Adopt the Attitude of a Critical Thinker

Step 2: Recognize & Avoid Critical Thinking Hindrances

Step 3: Identify & Characterize Arguments

Step 4: Evaluate Information Sources

Step 5: Evaluate Arguments

Argument Checklist

Tables of Critical Thinking Hindrances

Introduction

There have been many definitions of critical thinking. From a practical perspective, it may be defined as:

A process by which we use our knowledge and intelligence to effectively arrive at the most reasonable and justifiable positions on issues, and which endeavors to identify and overcome the numerous hindrances to rational thinking.

Not everyone values the need for critical thinking. Often, being methodically objective is viewed as cold, sterile, and worst of all, boring. To those who say “Have faith and let your feelings guide you to the truth,” or “Don’t let facts get in the way of an inspiring or interesting story,” these words will probably not resonate. But for those who truly understand and appreciate the importance of critical thinking, this paper, including the attached tables, can become a useful reference for daily life.

Just because you are intelligent or have great knowledge does not mean you can think critically. A profound genius may have the most irrational of beliefs or the most unreasonable of opinions. Critical thinking is about how we use our intelligence and knowledge to reach objective and rationale viewpoints. Opinions and beliefs based on critical thinking stand on firmer ground compared to those formulated through less rational processes. Additionally, critical thinkers are usually better equipped to make decisions and solve problems compared to those who lack this ability.



What Critical Thinking Is Not

Thinking critically is not thinking negatively with a predisposition to find fault or flaws. It is a neutral and unbiased process for evaluating claims or opinions, either someone else’s or our own.

Critical thinking is not intended to make people think alike. For one reason, critical thinking is distinct from one’s values or principles (see Figure 1), which explains why two people who are equally adept at critical thinking, but have different values or principles, can reach entirely different conclusions. Additionally, there will always be differences in perception and basic emotional needs (see Figure 1) which prevent us from all thinking the same way.

Critical thinking does not threaten one’s individuality or personality. It may increase your objectivity, but it will not change who you are.

It is not a belief. Critical thinking can evaluate the validity of beliefs, but it is not a belief by itself – it is a process.

Critical thinking does not discourage or replace feelings or emotional thinking. Emotions give our lives meaning, pleasure, and a sense of purpose. Critical thinking cannot possibly fulfill this role. Still, emotional decisions that are also critical decisions (such as deciding to get married or have children) should embody critical thinking.

Critical thinking does not blindly support everything based on science. For example, our culture is full of bogus scientific claims that are used to market everything from breakfast cereal to breast enhancement pills.

It is also important to understand that arguments based on critical thinking are not necessarily the most persuasive. Perhaps more often than not, the most persuasive arguments are those designed to appeal to our basic human/emotional needs rather than to our sense of objectivity. For that reason, it is common for highly persuasive arguments by politicians, TV evangelists, and sales people, among others, to intentionally lack critical thinking


http://skepdic.com/essays/Haskins.html#1


ok class is over there will be a test next week.............

[Android3.14]

1. Thank you-thank you-thank you

the current vaxxer debate truly needs critical thinking rather than the two extremes we've been seeing.

[lovemydog]

2. k & r

[OnyxCollie]

3. More info.

Changing Minds: Political Arguments and Political Persuasion
Michael D. Cobb; James H. Kuklinski
American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41, No. 1. (Jan., 1997), pp. 88-121.

When politicians debate policy, their goal is to persuade the public that their position is the right one. Persuasion in turn requires effective argument, a reality that politicians do not take lightly. They choose arguments strategically, on the basis of assumptions about what will and will not work. Sometimes the arguments prove effective, other times they do not. In short, the choice of political argument often determines which side wins and which loses. And this is normally true whether the issue itself, in Carmines and Stimson's terms, is hard or easy.

For purposes here, hard arguments tend to be long and complex, and focus primarily on the antecedents of a proposal. Because X and Y conditions exist, Z will occur. Hard arguments, in other words, begin with a set of existing conditions and show logically that a proposal is or is not desirable. Comprehending hard arguments takes considerable mental work, cognitively requiring multiple processing steps. Finally, hard arguments elicit relatively little effect. Largely factual and argumentative in content, they contain little to which an individual can viscerally react.

Easy arguments represent the flip side of hard arguments. Short, simple, and symbolic, they conjure up readily accessible images. They also elicit more effect than hard arguments. Whereas hard arguments focus on antecedents, easy arguments focus primarily on the consequences of a proposal. If X is adopted, Y will be the consequence. Easy arguments eschew explanations of why something will happen. Rather than take the form, "You will lose your job if NAFTA passes because. . . ," they take the abbreviated and more simplistic form, "You will lose your job if NAFTA passes." It takes little mental effort to absorb an easy argument: hear it, take it at face value, and incorporate it into your prior beliefs.

Unable to attend to and comprehend all the stimuli that come their way, people routinely use heuristics (for an overview, see Fiske and Taylor 1991). Whether these heuristics play an especially dominant role in the evaluation of politics, a domain in which the lack of interest and knowledge looms large, is unclear. Nor is it certain that people's use of informational shortcuts always leads to the right judgment (Kuklinski and Hurley 1994). But there can be no doubt that people commonly employ heuristics to make sense of a complex and tumultuous political environment (Popkin 1991; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991). Economist Anthony Downs argued 40 years ago (1957) that rational citizens should do nothing else.

Suppose Downs and an ever burgeoning literature in political psychology are right. Then what kind of heuristic might people use when evaluating a political argument, and what does its use imply for the relative effectiveness of hard and easy arguments? An increasingly influential body of literature points to emotion7 Especially relevant here, Schwarz and Clore (1983, 1988; Schwarz 1990; also see Lazarus 1966, 1982; Marcus et al. 1995) demonstrate that people routinely use their feelings as information. When confronted with a social event or situation, they ask themselves, "How do I feel?" If they answer "good," they will positively evaluate the event or situation. Conversely, feeling "badM-sad, angry, afraid-leads to a negative evaluation. In a dramatic demonstration of how emotion and feelings dominate decision making, neurologist Antonio Damasio (1994) reports that brain-damaged patients who cannot ascertain how they feel often fail to reason properly.

Terrorists and Democrats: Individual Reactions to International Attacks

Alice F. Healy; Joshua M. Hoffman; Francis A. Beer; Lyle E. Bourne, Jr.
Political Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Special Issue: 9/11 and Its Aftermath: Perspectives from Political Psychology. (Sep., 2002), pp. 439-467.

Many approaches in political psychology are based on the assumption of rational choice by decision-makers (McGraw, 2000). Indeed, in classical international relations theory, decision-making is conceived as rational behavior. Decisions are made on the basis of all available information with the aim to achieve optimal results for the decision-maker or his or her country. But, psychologically, it is unlikely that individuals can process or even access all of the information they need to make a fully rational decision in every circumstance (McGraw, 2000).

Rather, they make decisions that are heuristically good enough and lead to reasonable or acceptable outcomes. Simon (1956) labeled this kind of decision-making as bounded rationality and described the results as "satisficing." His argument was that decision-making, even by experts, is typically influenced by nonrational cognitive processes.

Rational choice models are not fully consistent with contemporary findings in cognitive psychology, in which nonrational choice processes are often observed (see, e.g., Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; McGraw, 2000). McGraw thinks that political psychologists need to be wary of claims of compatibility of rational choice with cognitive psychological models. Psychological factors might play a more important role in international relations than has generally been acknowledged. Thus, whenever a political situation involves choice, there may be nonrational as well as rational cognitive processes involved. When individuals are required to choose among various alternatives for international actions, non rational factors might play an influential role.

Image theory is an example of a psychological nonrational choice model that has been applied to international relations by Herrmann, Voss, Schooler, and Ciarrochi (1997; see also Sylvan & Voss, 1998, for related discussions). Image theory asserts that decision-makers rely on an accumulation of mental representations (or images) acquired from previous experience to interpret an immediate situation and to decide on a course of action. For example, politicians are likely to have images that apply to other countries, categorizing them as allies, enemies, colonies, or other types (Voss, Kennet, Wiley, & Schooler, 1992), and the image of a particular country functions as a schema to guide decisions about how to react to an immediate situation involving that country. Decisions will differ according to whether the image is that of an ally, enemy, or colony (Herrmann et al., 1997).

Television News and Citizen’s Explanations of National Affairs
Shanto Iyengar

Citizens are only fleetingly acquainted with current events and very few utilize ideological precepts to organize their political beliefs (for a review of research, see Kinder and Sears 1985). The low level of political knowledge and the absence of ideological reasoning has lent credence to charges that popular control of government is illusory (with respect to U.S. public opinion, for example, see Schumpeter 1950; Toqueville 1954).

~snip~

Explanation is an essential ingredient of human knowledge. To explain events or outcomes is to understand them: to transform the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of today's world into orderly and meaningful patterns. Psychological research has demonstrated that causal relationships feature prominently in individuals' perceptions of social phenomena (Nisbett and Ross 1980; Weiner 1985). In fact, causal thinking is so ingrained in the human psyche that we even invent causation where none exists, as in purely random or chance events. (see Langer 1975; Wortman 1976).

Explanatory knowledge is important to political thinking for two reasons. First, answers to causal questions abound in popular culture, making the task of explanation relatively inexpensive. One need not devour the pages of the Wall Street Journal or study macroeconomics to "know" why there is chronic unemployment. Second and more important, explanatory knowledge is connotative knowledge. To "know" that unemployment occurs because of motivational deficiencies on the part of the unemployed is relevant to our attitudes toward the unemployed and our policy preferences regarding unemployment. In other words, explanatory knowledge is usable knowledge. Simple factual knowledge, on the other hand (e.g., the current rate of unemployment), does not so readily imply political attitudes and preferences. It is not surprising, then, that opinions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors in a multitude of domains are organized around beliefs about causation (for illustrative research, see Schneider, Hastorf, and Ellsworth 1979, chap. 2). In fact, causal attributions exert such a powerful hold on behavior that "misattribution" techniques have proven effective in treating behavior disorders (see Fiske and Taylor 1984, 36-39), in inducing "prosocial" behaviors (see Schneider, Hastorf, and Ellsworth 1979, 93-95), and even in strengthening the general sense of psychological well-being (see Langer and Rodin 1976).

[Avalux]

4. Really good stuff! Thank you.

Our society, as a whole, has moved away from using the critical thinking process. Looking at the way hysteria is passed off and accepted as legitimate, I can't come to any other conclusion.

From my perspective, the movie Idiocracy may become a reality if we keep going down this path.