Critical thinking
Within the framework of skepticism, critical thinking is the mental process of acquiring information, then evaluating it to reach a logical conclusion or answer. Critical thinking is synonymous with informal logic. Increasingly, educators believe that schools should focus more on critical thinking than on memorization of facts.
Although no hard and fixed sequence of steps is required, the following is a useful sequence to follow:
- itemize opinions from all relevant sides of an issue
- collect up arguments supporting the various opinions
- break down the arguments into their constituent statements
- draw out various additional implications from these statements
- examine these statements and implications for internal contradictions
- locate opposing claims between the various arguments
- assign relative weights to opposing claims
- increase the weighting when the claims have strong support especially distinct chains of reasoning or different sources
- decrease the weighting when the claims have contradictions
- adjust weighting depending on relevance of information to central issue
- require sufficient support to justify that any incredible claims; otherwise, ignore these claims when forming a judgment
- tally up the weights of the various claims
- the opinion with the strongest supporting claims is more likely to be correct
- mind maps are an effective tool for organizing and evaluating this information; in the final stages, numeric weights can be assigned to various branches of the mind map
Of course, critical thinking doesn't assure reaching correct conclusions. First, one may not have all the relevant information; indeed, important information may not be discovered (see progress) or the information may not even be knowable (see New Mysterianism). Second, one's biases may prevent effective gathering and evaluation of the available information.
To reduce one's bias, measures can be taken during the process of critical thinking:
- instead of asking "How does this contradict my beliefs?", one should be asking "What does this mean?"
- in the earlier stages of gathering and evaluating information, one should:
- enter a state of suspension of judgment as one does when reading a novel or watching a movie
- adopt a perceptive rather than judgmental orientation; that is, move from perception to judgment as one applies critical thinking to an issue
- use white hat or blue hat thinking and delay black hat thinking for later stages (see Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats)
- be aware of one's own fallibility by:
- accepting that everyone has subconscious biases so question any reflexive judgments
- adopting an egoless and, indeed, humble stance
- recalling previous beliefs that one strongly held but, now, reject and even consider ridiculous; then, realize one likely has still numerous blind spots
See also
