I'm not wanting to continue a flame war here but generate an actual discussion about critical thinking. To that end, I would suggest keeping God out of it altogether. Let's discuss critical thinking as it relates to such things as alternative medicine, pseudo-science or other extraordinary and/or paranormal claims.

I've said elsewhere on this forum that critical thinking (for me) is simply thinking critically and generally what I mean by this is that I try to reserve judgment before deciding if something is true or not, realizing that many things aren't what they may first seem and also realizing that people are prone to making errors based on their own prejudices or lack of information. In other words, I'd say critical thinking is an attempt to bypass our own biases and limitations, focusing instead on real world data and impartial evidence in an effort to get as close to the truth as possible.

I came across an interesting blog by some guy named Jeffrey Ellis who defines critical thinking as "the set of practices and attitudes intended to get us as close as possible to the truth.” I like this definition, but Ellis goes into quite a lot more detail. He says specifically that critical thinking involves a set of cognitive skills, a set of characteristic habits, and specific values or commitments, as well as the relationships between these things.

For now I'll just go ahead and post this blog below and hope it generates some discussion. At the very least I hope it's food for thought.

http://jeffreyellis.org/blog/?p=60

My Model of Critical Thinking

Posted by Jeffrey Ellis, JAN 3

In this post I defined critical thinking as “the set of practices and attitudes intended to get us as close as possible to the truth.” But I’m not happy with that definition. It falls a bit short of fully capturing what critical thinking is really all about. Critical thinking is hard to define in a simple statement of meaning, and upon reflection I think a model is warranted rather than a definition.

In today’s post I’d like to introduce my own working model of critical thinking. And by “working” model, I mean it works good enough for now, but I’m not completely happy with it and it’s still a work in progress.

I begin by recognizing that critical thinking involves certain cognitive skills, various characteristic habits, and specific values or commitments, as well as the relationships between these things. For the mathematically inclined, we could formally define critical thinking using set theory notation as:

CT = { {S}, {H}, {V}, {R} }

where {S} is a set of cognitive skills, {H} is a set of characteristic habits, {V} is a set of values/commitments, and {R} is a set of relationships among the various elements in {S}, {H}, and {V}.

The set of cognitive skills include things like logic, analysis, evaluation, inference, interpretation, explanation, and synthesis. Alternatively I could have used Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills or some other list, and/or I could even decompose these into further more specific skills. For instance, analysis can be decomposed into deconstructing, contrasting and comparing, differentiating and discriminating, etc.; synthesis can be decomposed into organizing, classifying, composing, etc.; and so on. The point is that these are all fundamental reasoning skills, regardless of the specific list or taxonomy chosen to represent them.

Next is the set of characteristic habits. I use the term “characteristic habits” because these are the habits that characterize the critical thinker — i.e., the acquired behavior patterns that distinguish the critical thinker from the non-critical thinker. Richard Paul lists these as intellectual humility (an awareness of and willingness to admit to the prejudice of one’s viewpoint and the limits of one’s knowledge and abilities), intellectual courage (a willingness to challenge one’s own beliefs), intellectual empathy (ability and willingness to examine issues from others’ viewpoints in an open-minded manner), intellectual integrity (ability to consistently apply good standards of thinking), intellectual perseverance (willingness to overcome obstacles and adhere to rational principles despite irrational objections from others), faith in reason (belief that quality reasoning leads to quality outcomes), and fair-mindedness (treating all viewpoints equally without regard for one’s own feelings or vested interests). Based on other critical thinking sources, I might choose to also add introspection (routinely examining one’s own thought processes and seeking to overcome biases and errors introduced by human limitations) and possibly other traits such as inquisitiveness, flexibility, prudence, etc.

Last is the set of values/commitments. This is a small set with only one member: a commitment to the truth, or the true best answer, where by “best” I mean the most defensible choice based on the available evidence and reasoning.

At the highest level, the relationships {R} between the cognitive skills, characteristic habits, and values/commitments enable me to loosely assemble these components into a structural model of critical thinking as follows:



Values/commitments provide the foundation for critical thinking. It is the commitment to searching for the truth that motivates the need for intellectual humility, empathy, and the various other critical thinking traits, and these traits in turn regulate the way in which cognitive skills are applied to form opinions, make decisions, and solve problems.

One interesting thing about structuring the model this way is that the vertical axis roughly corresponds to intelligence. Elements towards the top of the model (i.e. cognitive skills) are those that are measured by conventional definitions of intelligence, i.e., IQ, and elements lower down decreasingly depend upon intelligence. As I’ve said before on The Thinker, critical thinking is much more than just IQ. A person’s “practical intelligence” — a person’s intelligence for all practical purposes in the real world, i.e., how well a person can come to the right opinions, make the best decisions, and formulate good solutions to problems in the real world, rather than their ability to solve logic puzzles on an IQ test — is determined more by their intellectual habits and attitudes (characteristic habits) than by their cognitive skills.

So, this is my initial model of critical thinking. It’s pretty austere, but I think it’s a good starting point to build on. In the future I might try to come up with a use for the horizontal axis and decompose each of the three sets (values/commitments, characteristic habits, and cognitive skills) to arrange them along that variable. The model is also only a structural model (showing components and their relationships), and does not show any dynamics or processes that occur during critical thinking; those would be nice additions too.

According to Ellis, these acquired behavior patterns (or valuable intellectual traits) distinguish the critical thinker from the non-critical thinker.

http://www.criticalthinking.org/article ... traits.cfm

Intellectual Humility: Having a consciousness of the limits of one's knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in which one's native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively; sensitivity to bias, prejudice and limitations of one's viewpoint. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one's beliefs.


Intellectual Courage: Having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or viewpoints toward which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part) and that conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must not passively and uncritically "accept" what we have "learned." Intellectual courage comes into play here, because inevitably we will come to see some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held in our social group. We need courage to be true to our own thinking in such circumstances. The penalties for non-conformity can be severe.


Intellectual Empathy: Having a consciousness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them, which requires the consciousness of our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions of long-standing thought or belief. This trait correlates with the ability to reconstruct accurately the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than our own. This trait also correlates with the willingness to remember occasions when we were wrong in the past despite an intense conviction that we were right, and with the ability to imagine our being similarly deceived in a case-at-hand.


Intellectual Integrity: Recognition of the need to be true to one's own thinking; to be consistent in the intellectual standards one applies; to hold one's self to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one's antagonists; to practice what one advocates for others; and to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one's own thought and action.


Intellectual Perseverance: Having a consciousness of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve deeper understanding or insight.


Faith In Reason: Confidence that, in the long run, one's own higher interests and those of humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason, by encouraging people to come to their own conclusions by developing their own rational faculties; faith that, with proper encouragement and cultivation, people can learn to think for themselves, to form rational viewpoints, draw reasonable conclusions, think coherently and logically, persuade each other by reason and become reasonable persons, despite the deep-seated obstacles in the native character of the human mind and in society as we know it.


Fairmindedness: Having a consciousness of the need to treat all viewpoints alike, without reference to one's own feelings or vested interests, or the feelings or vested interests of one's friends, community or nation; implies adherence to intellectual standards without reference to one's own advantage or the advantage of one's group.

Geo:
Critical thinking is a very interesting topic. I appreciate your initiative in starting a new thread that has the potential for true exploration. I also agree that religion should be put aside, since the topic of thinking critically is not directly linked to religion.

Thank you for the link provided.

Intellectual Humility, Intellectual Courage,
Intellectual Empathy, Intellectual Integrity, Intellectual Perseverance, Faith In Reason and, Fairmindedness

These above qualities can be great assests in a person's life, they can be explored and utilized and can expand one's perspective. These above qualities can enhance life and relationships. I, for one, am thankful that you rescued the topic of critical thinking from the fire, and placed it in a thread where it can be discussed rationally and purposefully.

P.S.

I just hope we are not infected by the red bird flu!

Let me sit upon this branch and sing sweet songs, and keep my distance from others whom I might infect with objectivity flu. Oh! There's a lovely worm! What is this truth that is supposed to be approachable through critical thinking. Sad songs it seems I must sing, for Ellis defines the approach to truth in terms of social values.

Wow, I'm glad I've joined this forum. Critical thinking is the theme of my English 101 class, and this is a good resource. We're focusing on criting thinking to analyzle writing, so we focus mainly on the author's motivations and sources they've used. Basically, don't passively accept the views that are being shown to you. Ask questions and do research to form an opinion on the subject. I like the way the website broke it down with Intellectual Humility, Intellectual Courage,
Intellectual Empathy, Intellectual Integrity, Intellectual Perseverance, Faith In Reason and, Fairmindedness. That's the best definition I've read. By the way, I'm new, so hi to everyone. I'm Angela. Nice to meet you.

Welcome to BookTalk, Angela. I am the BookTalk devil's advocate for critical thinking, who -- as a devil's advocate is supposed to do -- contends that its elevation is unmerited. Suzanne's Aunt Eileen Gambrill is a professor of critical thinking at Berkeley, and Suzanne is very defensive of her aunt. Geo is a fine fellow and unexpectedly sensible for a critical thinker. Now you know us all

Please tell us more about your experience of critical thinking. Do you know the sources for critical thinking that your teacher is using? That is, Who taught the teacher?

Tom

The self proclaimed, uninvited, irrational advocate.



More like ASSERTS without credible evidence… its no surprise that not a single person on this site sides with your stance TH… you are flat out and completely wrong about what critical thinking is, how it is used, and what it is used for.

Your assertion that critical thinking is atheist liberal propaganda is just foolish.

Later

Starting to sneeze!

The truth stands alone. Falsity needs a crowd. My objection to critical thinking is that it is a compulsory and subjective social activity, not thinking, which in my experience is best done quietly and alone. Angela is getting critical thinking (of which she apparently approves) in English 101, a compulsory course, necessary for graduation from college. If she were to resist critical thinking indoctrination, her options in life could be seriously impacted.

I hope, Frank, that you will rest your ad hominem arguments for awhile and give us your take on the Seven Virtues of critical thinking: "Intellectual Humility, Intellectual Courage, Intellectual Empathy, Intellectual Integrity, Intellectual Perseverance, Faith In Reason and, Fairmindedness."

Tom

Gesundheit!

TH: "My objection to critical thinking is that it is a compulsory and subjective social activity, not thinking,..."

You're convinced this is true? You're convinced that everyone who advocates critical thinking does so in exactly the way you see it? Your definition is the definition, and my own stressing of honesty and humility and precision is just a front to cover my membership in this cult? I'll take your faith and raise you my reason. Your religious faith is not a subjective social activity after all, right?

sigh.....
There you go again TH.

I just sent Geo a personal message about this thread, but I think I will share.

I apologized to Geo for making a stupid joke about "red bird flu", and in doing so, exposed everyone to infection. Geo's intention of creating a new thread that may actually be useful, could provide actual purposeful knowedge, and discussion has become a continuation of the library thread.

I am very disapointed.

Suzanne wrote:


Thomas Hood wrote:



Heil to cardinal hunters!

Let's cut to the chase, Interbane. Give me one example of how critical thinking has helped anyone to solve a problem or discover new knowledge. I refuse to believe in things that don't work.