Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice by The Advocacy Foundation, Inc.

The e-Advocate Quarterly Magazine

Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice 1 Timothy 1:1-11

“Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential”

Vol. VI, Issue XXIII – Q-1 January| February| March 2020

The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. Preparing Individuals, Organizations & Communities to Achi eve Their Full Potential

Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice

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Biblical Authority 1 Timothy 1:1-11 (AMP) 1 Paul, an apostle (special messenger) of Christ Jesus by appointment and command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus (the M essiah), our Hope, 2

To Timothy, my true son in the faith: Grace (spiritual blessing and favor), mercy, and [heart] peace [be yours] from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3

As I urged you when I was on my way to M acedonia, stay on where you are at Ephesus in order that you may warn and admonish and charge certain individuals not to teach any different doctrine, 4

occupy themselves with legends genealogies, which foster and and questionings rather Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s administration and faith ([a]in that leaning of personality on God in confidence)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

purpose of our love, which springs good (clear) (unfeigned) faith.

have missed the mark have wandered away discussions and

Nor to give importance to or (fables, myths) and endless promote useless speculations than acceptance in faith of the divine training that is in the entire human absolute trust and Whereas the object and instruction and charge is from a pure heart and a conscience and sincere But certain individuals on this very matter [and] into vain arguments and purposeless talk. 7

They are ambitious to be doctors of the Law (teachers of the M osaic ritual), but they have no understanding either of the words and terms they use or of the subjects about which they make [such] dogmatic assertions. 8

Now we recognize and know that the Law is good if anyone uses it lawfully [for the purpose for which it was designed], 9

Knowing and understanding this: that the Law is not enacted for the righteous (the upright and just, who are in right standing with God), but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinful, for the irreverent and profane, for those who strike and beat and [even] murder fathers and strike and beat and [even] murder mothers, for manslayers,

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[For] impure and immoral persons, those who abuse themselves with men, kidnapers, liars, perjurersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and whatever else is opposed to wholesome teaching and sound doctrine 11

As laid down by the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.

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Table of Contents ______ Biblical Authority I.

Introduction

II.

Fundamentals of Critical Thinking

III. Deductive Reasoning IV. Inductive Reasoning V. Logic VI. Critical Social Theory VII. The Critique of Ideology VIII.Enlightenment ______

Attachment A: Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts Attachment B: The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking

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Introduction Critical Thinking noun 1. disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence - Dictionary.com

Critical thinking...the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself.

Critical thinking is a rich concept that has been developing throughout the past 2500 years. The term "critical thinking" has its roots in the mid-late 20th century. We offer here overlapping definitions, together which form a substantive, transdisciplinary conception of critical thinking. Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987 A statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection,

National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking The

defines it as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. ______ reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-atissue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic Page 9 of 45

thinking, moral thinking, philosophical thinking.

and

Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results. Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own, or one's groupsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, vested interest. As such it is typically intellectually flawed, however pragmatically successful it might be. When grounded in fairmindedness and intellectual integrity, it is typically of a higher order intellectually, though subject to the charge of "idealism" by those habituated to its selfish use. Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or

irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor. Another Brief Conceptualization Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is self-guided, selfdisciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest. They strive to improve the Page 10 of 45

world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living , because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world.

of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them. The Result A well cultivated critical thinker: •

•

~ Linda Elder, September, 2007 ______ Why Critical Thinking? The Problem Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. A Definition Critical thinking is that mode of thinking - about any subject, content, or problem in which the thinker improves the quality

•

raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely; gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and selfcorrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism. (Taken from Richard Paul and Linda Elder, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, Foundation for Critical Thinking Press, 2008)

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Critical Thinking Defined by Edward Glaser In a seminal study on critical thinking and education in 1941, Edward Glaser defines critical thinking as follows â&#x20AC;&#x153;The ability to think critically, as conceived in this volume, involves three things: ( 1 ) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences, (2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods. Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. It also generally requires ability to recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems, to gather and

marshal pertinent information, to recognize unstated assumptions and values, to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discr imination, to interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments, to recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between propositions, to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations, to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives, to reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience, and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life. (Edward M. Glaser, An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking, Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College, Columbia University, 1941)

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Fundamentals of Critical Thinking No one always acts purely objectively and rationally. We connive for selfish interests. We gossip, boast, exaggerate, and equivocate. It is "only human" to wish to validate our prior knowledge, to vindicate our prior decisions, or to sustain our earlier beliefs. In the process of satisfying our ego, however, we can often deny ourselves intellectual growth and opportunity. We may not always want to apply critical thinking skills, but we should have those skills available to be employed when needed. Critical thinking includes a complex combination of skills. Among the main characteristics are the following:

Rationality We are thinking critically when we • • •

rely on reason rather than emotion, require evidence, ignore no known evidence, and follow evidence where it leads, and are concerned more with finding the best explanation than being right analyzing apparent confusion and asking questions.

Self-awareness We are thinking critically when we • •

weigh the influences of motives and bias, and recognize our own assumptions, prejudices, biases, or point of view.

Honesty We are thinking critically when we recognize emotional impulses, selfish motives, nefarious purposes, or other modes of self-deception.

Open-Mindedness We are thinking critically when we • • • • • •

evaluate all reasonable inferences consider a variety of possible viewpoints or perspectives, remain open to alternative interpretations accept a new explanation, model, or paradigm because it explains the evidence better, is simpler, or has fewer inconsistencies or covers more data accept new priorities in response to a reevaluation of the evidence or reassessment of our real interests, and do not reject unpopular views out of hand.

Discipline We are thinking critically when we • • •

are precise, meticulous, comprehensive, and exhaustive resist manipulation and irrational appeals, and avoid snap judgments. Page 13 of 45

Judgment We are thinking critically when we • •

recognize the relevance and/or merit of alternative assumptions and perspectives recognize the extent and weight of evidence

In sum, • • •

Critical thinkers are by nature skeptical. They approach texts with the same skepticism and suspicion as they approach spoken remarks. Critical thinkers are active, not passive. They ask questions and analyze. They consciously apply tactics and strategies to uncover meaning or assure their understanding. Critical thinkers do not take an egotistical view of the world. They are open to new ideas and perspectives. They are willing to challenge their beliefs and investigate competing evidence.

Critical thinking enables us to recognize a wide range of subjective analyses of otherwise objective data, and to evaluate how well each analysis might meet our needs. Facts may be facts, but how we interpret them may vary. By contrast, passive, non-critical thinkers take a simplistic view of the world. • • • •

They see things in black and white, as either-or, rather than recognizing a variety of possible understanding. They see questions as yes or no with no subtleties. They fail to see linkages and complexities. They fail to recognize related elements.

Non-critical thinkers take an egotistical view of the world • • •

They take their facts as the only relevant ones. They take their own perspective as the only sensible one. They take their goal as the only valid one.

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Deductive Reasoning Deductive reasoning, also deductive logic or logical deduction or, informally, "topdown" logic, is the process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion. Deductive reasoning links premises with conclusions. If all premises are true, the terms are clear, and the rules of deductive logic are followed, then the conclusion reached is necessarily true. Deductive reasoning (top-down logic) contrasts with inductive reasoning (bottomup logic) in the following way: In deductive reasoning, a conclusion is reached reductively by applying general rules that hold over the entirety of a closed domain of discourse, narrowing the range under consideration until only the conclusion is left. In inductive reasoning, the conclusion is reached by generalizing or extrapolating from initial information. As a result, induction can be used even in an open domain, one where there is epistemic uncertainty. Note, however, that the inductive reasoning mentioned here is not the same as induction used in mathematical proofs – mathematical induction is actually a form of deductive reasoning. An example of a deductive argument: 1. All men are mortal. 2. Socrates is a man. 3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. The first premise states that all objects classified as "men" have the attribute "mortal". The second premise states that "Socrates" is classified as a "man" – a member of the set "men". The conclusion

then states that "Socrates" must be "mortal" because he inherits this attribute from his classification as a "man". The law of detachment (also known as affirming the antecedent and Modus ponens) is the first form of deductive reasoning. A single conditional statement is made, and a hypothesis (P) is stated. The conclusion (Q) is then deduced from the statement and the hypothesis. The most basic form is listed below: 1. P → Q (conditional statement) 2. P (hypothesis stated) 3. Q (conclusion deduced) In deductive reasoning, we can conclude Q from P by using the law of detachment. However, if the conclusion (Q) is given instead of the hypothesis (P) then there is no definitive conclusion. The following is an example of an argument using the law of detachment in the form of an if-then statement: 1. If an angle satisfies 90° < A < 180°, then A is an obtuse angle. 2. A = 120°. 3. A is an obtuse angle. Since the measurement of angle A is greater than 90° and less than 180°, we can deduce that A is an obtuse angle. The law of Syllogism takes two conditional statements and forms a conclusion by combining the hypothesis of Page 15 of 45

one statement with the conclusion of another. Here is the general form: 1. P → Q 2. Q → R 3. Therefore, P → R. The following is an example: 1. If Larry is sick, then he will be absent. 2. If Larry is absent, then he will miss his classwork. 3. Therefore, if Larry is sick, then he will miss his classwork. We deduced the final statement by combining the hypothesis of the first statement with the conclusion of the second statement. We also allow that this could be a false statement. This is an example of the Transitive Property in mathematics. The Transitive Property is sometimes phrased in this form: 1. A = B. 2. B = C. 3. Therefore A = C. The law of Contrapositive states that, in a conditional, if the conclusion is false, then the hypothesis must be false also. The general form is the following: 1. P → Q. 2. ~Q. 3. Therefore we can conclude ~P. The following are examples: 1. If it is raining, then there are clouds in the sky. 2. There are no clouds in the sky. 3. Thus, it is not raining.

Deductive arguments are evaluated in terms of their Validity and Soundness. An argument is valid if it is impossible for its premises to be true while its conclusion is false. In other words, the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. An argument can be valid even though the premises are false. An argument is sound if it is valid and the premises are true. It is possible to have a deductive argument that is logically valid but is not sound. Fallacious arguments often take that form. The following is an example of an argument that is valid, but not sound: 1. Everyone who eats carrots is a quarterback. 2. John eats carrots. 3. Therefore, John is a quarterback. The example's first premise is false – there are people who eat carrots and are not quarterbacks – but the conclusion must be true, so long as the premises are true (i.e. it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false). Therefore the argument is valid, but not sound. Generalizations are often used to make invalid arguments, such as "everyone who eats carrots is a quarterback." Not everyone who eats carrots is a quarterback, thus proving the flaw of such arguments. In this example, the first statement uses categorical reasoning, saying that all carroteaters are definitely quarterbacks. This theory of deductive reasoning – also known as term logic – was developed by Aristotle, but was superseded by propositional (sentential) logic and predicate logic.

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Deductive reasoning can be contrasted with inductive reasoning, in regards to validity and soundness. In cases of inductive reasoning, even though the premises are true and the argument is "valid", it is possible for the conclusion to be false (determined to be false with a counterexample or other means).

teaching or training. As a result of this belief, deductive reasoning skills are not taught in secondary schools, where students are expected to use reasoning more often and at a higher level. It is in high school, for example, that students have an abrupt introduction to mathematical proofs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which rely heavily on deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is generally thought of as a skill that develops without any formal

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Inductive Reasoning Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is supposed to be certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is supposed to be probable, based upon the evidence given. The philosophical definition of inductive reasoning is more nuanced than simple progression from particular/individual instances to broader generalizations. Rather, the premises of an inductive logical argument indicate some degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion but do not entail it; that is, they suggest truth but do not ensure it. In this manner, there is the possibility of moving from general statements to individual instances (for example, statistical syllogisms, discussed below). M any dictionaries define inductive reasoning as reasoning that derives general principles from specific observations, though some sources disagree with this usage. Inductive reasoning is inherently uncertain. It only deals in degrees to which, given the premises, the conclusion is credible according to some theory of evidence. Examples include a many-valued logic, Dempsterâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Shafer Theory, or probability theory with rules for inference such as Bayes' rule . Unlike deductive

reasoning, it does not rely on universals holding over a closed domain of discourse to draw conclusions, so it can be applicable even in cases of epistemic uncertainty (technical issues with this may arise however; for example, the second axiom of probability is a closed-world assumption). A statistical syllogism is an example of inductive reasoning: 1. Almost all people are taller than 26 inches 2. Gareth is a person 3. Therefore, Gareth is almost certainly taller than 26 inches As a stronger example: 100% of biological life forms that we know of depend on liquid water to exist. Therefore, if we discover a new biological life form it will probably depend on liquid water to exist. This argument could have been made every time a new biological life form was found, and would have been correct every time; however, it is still possible that in the future a biological life form not requiring water could be discovered. As a result, the argument may be stated less formally as: All biological life forms that we know of depend on liquid water to exist.

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All biological life probably depends on liquid water to exist. Inductive v. Deductive Reasoning Unlike deductive arguments, inductive reasoning allows for the possibility that the conclusion is false, even if all of the premises are true. Instead of being valid or invalid, inductive arguments are either strong or weak, which describes how probable it is that the conclusion is true. A classical example of an incorrect inductive argument was presented by John Vickers: All of the swans we have seen are white. Therefore, all swans are white. Note that this definition of inductive reasoning excludes mathematical induction, which is a form of deductive reasoning. Criticism & Biases Although the use of inductive reasoning demonstrates considerable success, its application has been questionable. Recognizing this, Hume highlighted the fact that our mind draws uncertain conclusions from relatively limited experiences. In deduction, the truth value of the conclusion is based on the truth of the premise. In induction, however, the dependence on the premise is always uncertain. As an example, let's assume "all ravens are black." The fact that there are numerous black ravens supports the assumption. However, the assumption becomes inconsistent with the fact that there are white ravens. Therefore, the general rule of "all ravens are black" is inconsistent with the existence of the white raven. Hume further argued that it is impossible to justify inductive reasoning:

specifically, that it cannot be justified deductively, so our only option is to justify it inductively. Since this is circular he concluded that our use of induction is unjustifiable with the help of "Hume's Fork". However, Hume then stated that even if induction were proved unreliable, we would still have to rely on it. So instead of a position of severe skepticism, Hume advocated a practical skepticism based on common sense, where the inevitability of induction is accepted.

Biases Inductive reasoning is also known as hypothesis construction because any conclusions made are based on current knowledge and predictions. As with deductive arguments, biases can distort the proper application of inductive argument, thereby preventing the reasoner from forming the most logical conclusion based on the clues. Examples of these biases include the availability heuristic, confirmation bias, and the predictable-world bias. The availability heuristic causes the reasoner to depend primarily upon information that is readily available to him/her. People have a tendency to rely on information that is easily accessible in the world around them. For example, in surveys, when people are asked to estimate the percentage of people who died from various causes, most respondents would choose the causes that have been most prevalent in the media such as terrorism, and murders, and airplane accidents rather than causes such as disease and traffic accidents, which have been technically "less accessible" to the individual since they are not emphasized as heavily in the world around him/her.

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The confirmation bias is based on the natural tendency to confirm rather than to deny a current hypothesis. Research has demonstrated that people are inclined to seek solutions to problems that are more consistent with known hypotheses rather than attempt to refute those hypotheses. Often, in experiments, subjects will ask questions that seek answers that fit established hypotheses, thus confirming these hypotheses. For example, if it is hypothesized that Sally is a sociable individual, subjects will naturally seek to confirm the premise by asking questions that would produce answers confirming that Sally is in fact a sociable individual.

not been proved to exist, either at all or at a particular level of abstraction. Gambling, for example, is one of the most popular examples of predictable-world bias. Gamblers often begin to think that they see simple and obvious patterns in the outcomes and, therefore, believe that they are able to predict outcomes based upon what they have witnessed. In reality, however, the outcomes of these games are difficult to predict and highly complex in nature. However, in general, people tend to seek some type of simplistic order to explain or justify their beliefs and experiences, and it is often difficult for them to realize that their perceptions of order may be entirely different from the truth.

The predictable-world bias revolves around the inclination to perceive order where it has

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Logic •

Formal logic is the study of inference with purely formal content. An inference possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as a particular application of a wholly abstract rule, that is, a rule that is not about any particular thing or property. The works of Aristotle contain the earliest known formal study of logic. M odern formal logic follows and expands on Aristotle. In many definitions of logic, logical inference and inference with purely formal content are the same. This does not render the notion of informal logic vacuous, because no formal logic captures all of the nuances of natural language.

•

S ymbolic logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of logical inference. Symbolic logic is often divided into two branches: propositional logic and predicate logic.

•

Mathematical logic is an extension of symbolic logic into other areas, in particular to the study of model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory.

Logic (from the Ancient Greek: λογική, logike) is the use and study of valid reasoning. The study of logic features most prominently in the subjects of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science. Logic was studied in several ancient civilizations, including India, China, Persia and Greece. In the West, logic was established as a formal discipline by Aristotle, who gave it a fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic was part of the classical trivium, which also included grammar and rhetoric. Logic was further extended by Al-Farabi who categorized it into two separate groups (idea and proof). Later, Avicenna revived the study of logic and developed relationship between temporalis and the implication. In the East, logic was developed by Buddhists and Jains. Logic is often divided into three parts: inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning. The concept of logical form is central to logic, it being held that the validity of an argument is determined by its logical form, not by its content. Traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic logic are examples of formal logics. •

Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments. The study of fallacies is an especially important branch of informal logic. The dialogues of Plato are good examples of informal logic.

Logical form M ain article: Logical form

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Logic is generally considered formal when it analyzes and represents the form of any valid argument type. The form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical language to make its content usable in formal inference. If one considers the notion of form too philosophically loaded, one could say that formalizing simply means translating English sentences into the language of logic. This is called showing the logical form of the argument. It is necessary because indicative sentences of ordinary language show a considerable variety of form and complexity that makes their use in inference impractical. It requires, first, ignoring those grammatical features irrelevant to logic (such as gender and declension, if the argument is in Latin), replacing conjunctions irrelevant to logic (such as "but") with logical conjunctions like "and" and replacing ambiguous, or alternative logical expressions ("any", "every", etc.) with expressions of a standard type (such as "all", or the universal quantifier ∀). Second, certain parts of the sentence must be replaced with schematic letters. Thus, for example, the expression "all As are Bs" shows the logical form common to the sentences "all men are mortals", "all cats are carnivores", "all Greeks are philosophers", and so on. That the concept of form is fundamental to logic was already recognized in ancient times. Aristotle uses variable letters to represent valid inferences in Prior Analytics, leading Jan Łukasiewicz to say that the introduction of variables was "one of Aristotle's greatest inventions". According to the followers of Aristotle (such as Ammonius), only the logical principles stated in schematic terms belong to logic,

not those given in concrete terms. The concrete terms "man", "mortal", etc., are analogous to the substitution values of the schematic placeholders A, B, C, which were called the "matter" (Greek hyle) of the inference. The fundamental difference between modern formal logic and traditional, or Aristotelian logic, lies in their differing analysis of the logical form of the sentences they treat. •

In the traditional view, the form of the sentence consists of (1) a subject (e.g., "man") plus a sign of quantity ("all" or "some" or "no"); (2) the copula, which is of the form "is" or "is not"; (3) a predicate (e.g., "mortal"). Thus: all men are mortal. The logical constants such as "all", "no" and so on, plus sentential connectives such as "and" and "or" were called "syncategorematic" terms (from the Greek kategorei – to predicate, and syn – together with). This is a fixed scheme, where each judgment has an identified quantity and copula, determining the logical form of the sentence.

•

According to the modern view, the fundamental form of a simple sentence is given by a recursive schema, involving logical connectives, such as a quantifier with its bound variable, which are joined by juxtaposition to other sentences, which in turn may have logical structure. The modern view is more complex, since a single judgement of Aristotle's system involves two or more logical connectives. For example, the sentence "All men are mortal" involves, in term logic, two non-logical terms "is a man" (here

•

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M) and "is mortal" (here D): the sentence is given by the judgement A(M ,D). In predicate logic, the sentence involves the same two nonlogical concepts, here analyzed as and , and the sentence is given by , involving the logical connectives for universal quantification and implication. •

But equally, the modern view is more powerful. M edieval logicians recognized the problem of multiple generality, where Aristotelian logic is unable to satisfactorily render such sentences as "Some guys have all the luck", because both quantities "all" and "some" may be relevant in an inference, but the fixed scheme that Aristotle used allows only one to govern the inference. Just as linguists recognize recursive structure in natural languages, it appears that logic needs recursive structure.

Deductive and inductive reasoning, and abductive inference Deductive reasoning concerns what follows necessarily from given premises (if a, then b). However, inductive reasoning—the process of deriving a reliable generalization from observations—has sometimes been included in the study of logic. Similarly, it is important to distinguish deductive validity and inductive validity (called "cogency"). An inference is deductively valid if and only if there is no possible situation in which all the premises are true but the conclusion false. An inductive argument can be neither valid nor invalid; its premises give only some degree of probability, but not certainty, to its conclusion.

The notion of deductive validity can be rigorously stated for systems of formal logic in terms of the well-understood notions of semantics. Inductive validity on the other hand requires us to define a reliable generalization of some set of observations. The task of providing this definition may be approached in various ways, some less formal than others; some of these definitions may use mathematical models of probability. For the most part this discussion of logic deals only with deductive logic. Abduction is a form of logical inference that goes from observation to a hypothesis that accounts for the reliable data (observation) and seeks to explain relevant evidence. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) first introduced the term as "guessing". Peirce said that to abduce a hypothetical explanation from an observed surprising circumstance is to surmise that may be true because then would be a matter of course. Thus, to abduce from involves determining that is sufficient (or nearly sufficient), but not necessary, for .

Consistency, validity, soundness, and completeness Among the important properties that logical systems can have: •

•

Consistency, which means that no theorem of the system contradicts another. Validity, which means that the system's rules of proof never allow a false inference from true premises. A logical system has the property of Page 25 of 45

soundness when the logical system has the property of validity and uses only premises that prove true (or, in the case of axioms, are true by definition).

arithmetic formal systems with equality can be complete and consistent.

Rival conceptions of logic M ain article: Definitions of logic

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Completeness, of a logical system, which means that if a formula is true, it can be proven (if it is true, it is a theorem of the system). S oundness, the term soundness has multiple separate meanings, which creates a bit of confusion throughout the literature. M ost commonly, soundness refers to logical systems, which means that if some formula can be proven in a system, then it is true in the relevant model/structure (if A is a theorem, it is true). This is the converse of completeness. A distinct, peripheral use of soundness refers to arguments, which means that the premises of a valid argument are true in the actual world.

Some logical systems do not have all four properties. As an example, Kurt GĂśdel's incompleteness theorems show that sufficiently complex formal systems of arithmetic cannot be consistent and complete; however, first-order predicate logics not extended by specific axioms to be

Logic arose (see below) from a concern with correctness of argumentation. M odern logicians usually wish to ensure that logic studies just those arguments that arise from appropriately general forms of inference. For example, Thomas Hofweber writes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that logic "does not, however, cover good reasoning as a whole. That is the job of the theory of rationality. Rather it deals with inferences whose validity can be traced back to the formal features of the representations that are involved in that inference, be they linguistic, mental, or other representations". By contrast, Immanuel Kant argued that logic should be conceived as the science of judgement, an idea taken up in Gottlob Frege's logical and philosophical work. But Frege's work is ambiguous in the sense that it is both concerned with the "laws of thought" as well as with the "laws of truth", i.e. it both treats logic in the context of a theory of the mind, and treats logic as the study of abstract formal structures.

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Critical Social Theory The Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of neoMarxist interdisciplinary social theory associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties. Meanwhile, many of these theorists believed that traditional Marxist theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development. Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind, thus sharing the same assumptions and being preoccupied with similar questions. In order to fill in the perceived omissions of traditional Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines. The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber and Lukács.

Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social change and the establishment of rational institutions. Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of human reality. Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas's work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity" More recently, critical theorists such as Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change which originally gave purpose to critical theory's various projects—for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of "conditions of possibility" for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.

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The Critique of Ideology The Frankfurt School's work cannot be fully comprehended without equally understanding the aims and objectives of critical theory. Initially outlined by Max Horkheimer in his Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), critical theory may be defined as a self-conscious social critique that is aimed at change and emancipation through enlightenment, and does not cling dogmatically to its own doctrinal assumptions. The original aim of critical theory was to analyze the true significance of "the ruling understandings" generated in bourgeois society, in order to show how they misrepresented actual human interaction in the real world, and in so doing functioned to justify or legitimize the domination of people by capitalism. A certain sort of story (a narrative) was provided to explain what was happening in society, but the story concealed as much as it revealed. The Frankfurt theorists generally assumed that their own task was mainly to interpret all the other areas of society which Marx had not dealt with, especially in the superstructure of society. Horkheimer opposed it to "traditional theory", which refers to theory in the positivistic, scientistic, or purely observational mode â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that is, which derives generalizations or "laws" about different aspects of the world. Drawing upon Max Weber, Horkheimer argued that the social sciences are different from the natural sciences, inasmuch as generalizations cannot be easily made from so-called experiences, because the understanding of a "social" experience

itself is always fashioned by ideas that are in the researchers themselves. What the researcher does not realize is that he is caught in a historical context in which ideologies shape the thinking; thus theory would be conforming to the ideas in the mind of the researcher rather than the experience itself:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as receptive and passive in the act of perception.

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For Horkheimer, approaches to understanding in the social sciences cannot simply imitate those in the natural Page 30 of 45

sciences. Although various theoretical approaches would come close to breaking out of the ideological constraints which restricted them, such as positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, Horkheimer would argue that they failed, because all were subject to a "logico-mathematical" prejudice which separates theoretical activity from actual life (meaning that all these schools sought to find a logic which would always remain true, independently of and without consideration for ongoing human activities). According to Horkheimer, the appropriate response to this dilemma is the development of a critical theory. The problem, Horkheimer argued, is epistemological: we should not merely reconsider the scientist but the knowing individual in general.[19] Unlike orthodox Marxism, which merely applies a readymade "template" to both critique and action, critical theory seeks to be selfcritical and rejects any pretensions to absolute truth. Critical theory defends the primacy of neither matter (materialism) nor consciousness (idealism), arguing that both epistemologies distort reality to the benefit, eventually, of some small group. What critical theory attempts to do is to place itself outside of philosophical strictures and the confines of existing structures. However, as a way of thinking and "recovering" humanity's selfknowledge, critical theory often looks to Marxism for its methods and tools. Horkheimer maintained that critical theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), just as it should improve understanding of society by integrating

all the major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology. While critical theory must at all times be self-critical, Horkheimer insisted that a theory is only critical if it is explanatory. Critical theory must therefore combine practical and normative thinking in order to "explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify actors to change it, and provide clear norms for criticism and practical goals for the future." Whereas traditional theory can only mirror and explain reality as it presently is, critical theory's purpose is to change it; in Horkheimer's words the goal of critical theory is "the emancipation of human beings from the circumstances that enslave them". Frankfurt School theorists were explicitly linking up with the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, where the term critique meant philosophical reflection on the limits of claims made for certain kinds of knowledge and a direct connection between such critique and the emphasis on moral autonomy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as opposed to traditionally deterministic and static theories of human action. In an intellectual context defined by dogmatic positivism and scientism on the one hand and dogmatic "scientific socialism" on the other, critical theorists intended to rehabilitate Marx's ideas through a philosophically critical approach.

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Whereas both Marxist-Leninist and Social-Democratic orthodox thinkers viewed Marxism as a new kind of positive science, Frankfurt School theorists, such as Horkheimer, rather based their work on the epistemological base of Karl Marx's work, which presented itself as critique, as in Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. They thus emphasized that Marx was attempting to create a new kind of critical analysis oriented toward the unity of theory and revolutionary practice rather

than a new kind of positive science. Critique, in this Marxian sense, meant taking the ideology of a society – e.g. the belief in individual freedom or free market under capitalism – and critiquing it by comparing it with the social reality of that very society – e.g. social inequality and exploitation. The methodology on which Frankfurt School theorists grounded this critique came to be what had before been established by Hegel and Marx, namely the dialectical method.

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Enlightenment Enlightenment refers to the "full comprehension of a situation". It is commonly used to denote the Age of Enlightenment, but is also used in Western cultures in a religious context. It translates several Buddhist terms and concepts, most notably bodhi, kensho and satori. Related terms from Asian religions are moksha (liberation) in Hinduism, Kevala Jnana in Jainism and ushta in Zoroastrianism. In Christianity, the word "enlightenment" is rarely used, except to refer to the Age of Enlightenment and its influence on Christianity. Roughly equivalent terms in Christianity may be illumination, kenosis, metanoia, revelation and conversion. Perennialists and Universalists view enlightenment and mysticism as equivalent terms for religious or spiritual insight.

Christianity See also: Religious Divinization

conversion

and

The word "enlightenment" is not generally used in Christian contexts for religious understanding or insight. M ore commonly used terms in the Christian tradition are religious conversion and revelation. Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1952), one of the founders of Dispensationalism, uses the word "illuminism". Christians who are "illuminated" are of two groups, those who have experienced true illuminism (biblical) and those who experienced false illuminism (not from the Holy Spirit).

Christian interest in eastern spirituality has grown throughout the 20th century. Notable Christians, such as Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle and AM A Samy, have participated in Buddhist training and even become Buddhist teachers themselves. In a few places Eastern contemplative techniques have been integrated in Christian practices, such as centering prayer. But this integration has also raised questions about the borders between these traditions.

Western esotericism and mysticism M ain articles: Mysticism, Western esotericism and Perennial philosophy Western and M editerranean culture has a rich tradition of esotericism and mysticism. The Perennial philosophy, basic to the New Age understanding of the world, regards those traditions as akin to Eastern religions which aim at awakening/ enlightenment and developing wisdom. All mystical traditions possibly share a "common core", a hypothesis which is central to New A ge, but contested by a diversity of scientists like Katz and Proudfoot. Judaism includes the mystical tradition of Kabbalah. Islam includes the mystical tradition of Sufism. In the Fourth Way teaching, enlightenment is the highest state of M an (humanity).

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Nondualism M ain articles: Nondualism, New A ge, Syncretism and Neo-Advaita A popular western understanding sees "enlightenment" as "nondual consciousness", "a primordial, natural awareness without subject or object". It is used interchangeably with Neo-Advaita. This nondual consciousness is seen as a common stratum to different religions. Several definitions or meanings are combined in this approach, which makes it possible to recognize various traditions as having the same essence. According to Renard, many forms of religion are based on an experiential or intuitive understanding of "the Real" This idea of nonduality as "the central essence" is part of a modern mutual exchange and synthesis of ideas between western spiritual and esoteric traditions and Asian religious revival and reform movements. Western predecessors are, among others, New Age, Wilber's synthesis of western psychology and Asian spirituality, the idea of a Perennial Philosophy, and Theosophy. Eastern influences are the Hindu reform movements such as Aurobindo's Integral Yoga and Vivekananda's Neo-Vedanta, the Vipassana movement, and Buddhist modernism. A truly syncretistic influence is Osho and the Rajneesh movement, a hybrid of eastern and western ideas and teachings, and a mainly western group of followers. ______ The second phase of Frankfurt School critical theory centres principally on two works: Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and

Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951). The authors wrote both works during the Institute's exile in America. While retaining much of a Marxian analysis, in these works critical theory shifted its emphasis. The critique of capitalism turned into a critique of Western civilization as a whole. Indeed, the Dialectic of Enlightenment uses the Odyssey as a paradigm for the analysis of bourgeois consciousness. Horkheimer and Adorno already present in these works many themes that have come to dominate the social thought of recent years; indeed, their exposition of the domination of nature as a central characteristic of instrumental rationality in Western civilization was made long before ecology and environmentalism had become popular concerns. The analysis of reason now goes one stage further. The rationality of Western civilization appears as a fusion of domination and of technological rationality, bringing all of external and internal nature under the power of the human subject. In the process, however, the subject itself gets swallowed up, and no social force analogous to the proletariat can be identified that will enable the subject to emancipate itself. Hence the subtitle of Minima Moralia: "Reflections from Damaged Life". In Adorno's words,

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For since the overwhelming objectivity of historical movement in its present phase

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consists so far only in the dissolution of the subject, without yet giving rise to a new one, individual experience necessarily bases itself on the old subject, now historically condemned, which is still for-itself, but no longer initself. The subject still feels sure of its autonomy, but the nullity demonstrated to subjects by the concentration camp is already overtaking the form of subjectivity itself.

Consequently, at a time when it appears that reality itself has become the basis for ideology, the greatest contribution that critical theory can make is to explore the dialectical contradictions of individual subjective experience on the one hand, and to preserve the truth of theory on the other. Even dialectical progress is put into doubt: "its truth or untruth is not inherent in the method itself, but in its

intention in the historical process." This intention must be oriented toward integral freedom and happiness: "the only philosophy which can be responsibly practiced in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption". Adorno goes on to distance himself from the "optimism" of orthodox Marxism: "beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption [i.e. human emancipation] itself hardly matters." From a sociological point of view, both Horkheimer's and Adorno's works contain a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence which gave rise to the "pessimism" of the new critical theory over the possibility of human emancipation and freedom. This ambivalence was rooted, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology. For Adorno and Horkheimer, state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production" and "material productive forces of society"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a tension which, according to traditional Marxist theory, constituted the primary contradiction within capitalism. The previously "free" market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and "irrevocable" private property of Marx's epoch have gradually been replaced by the centralized state planning and Page 36 of 45

socialized ownership of the means of production in contemporary Western societies.[35] The dialectic through which Marx predicted the emancipation of modern society is thus suppressed, effectively being subjugated to a positivist rationality of domination. Of this second "phase" of the Frankfurt School, philosopher and critical theorist Nikolas Kompridis writes that:

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According to the now canonical view of its history, Frankfurt School critical theory began in the 1930s as a fairly confident interdisciplinary and materialist research program, the general aim of which was to connect normative social cr iticism to the emancipatory potential latent in concrete historical processes. Only a decade or so later, however, having revisited the premises of their philosophy of

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history, Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment steered the whole enterprise, provocatively and selfconsciously, into a skeptical cul-de-sac. As a result they got stuck in the irresolvable dilemmas of the "philosophy of the subject," and the original program was shrunk to a negativistic practice of critique that eschewed the very normative ideals on which it implicitly depended.

Kompridis claims that this "sceptical culde-sac" was arrived at with "a lot of help from the once unspeakable and unprecedented barbarity of European fascism," and could not be gotten out of without "some well-marked [exit or] Ausgang, showing the way out of the ever-recurring nightmare in which Enlightenment hopes and Holocaust horrors are fatally entangled." However, this Ausgang, according to Kompridis,

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would not come until later â&#x20AC;&#x201C; purportedly in the form of JĂźrgen Habermas's work

on the intersubjective communicative rationality.

bases

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References ______ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766 http://www.criticalreading.com/critical_thinking.htm http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/critical+thinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_%28spiritual%29#Western_culture

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Attachment A Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts

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Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts Peter A. Facione The late George Carlin worked “critical thinking” into one of his comedic monologue rants on the perils of trusting our lives and fortunes to the decision-making of people who were gullible, uninformed, and unreflective. Had he lived to experience the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009, he would have surely added more to his caustic but accurate assessments regarding how failing to anticipate the consequences of one’s decisions often leads to disastrous results not only for the decision maker, but for many other people as well. After years of viewing higher education as more of a private good which benefits only the student, we are again beginning to appreciate higher education as being also a public good which benefits society. Is it not a wiser social policy to invest in the education of the future workforce, rather than to suffer the financial costs and endure the fiscal and social burdens associated with economic

weakness, public health problems, crime, and avoidable poverty? Perhaps that realization, along with its obvious advantages for high level strategic decision making, is what lead the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to comment on critical thinking in his commencement address to a graduating class of military officers.

Teach people to make good decisions and you equip them to improve

© 1992, 1998, 2004, 2006, 2011 Peter A. Facione, Measured Reasons and The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA Permission to Reprint for Non-Commercial Uses This essay is published by Insight Assessment. The original appeared in 1992 and has been updated many times over the years. Although the author and the publisher hold all copyrights, in the interests of advancing education and improving critical thinking, permission is hereby granted for paper, electronic, or digital copies to be made in unlimited amounts, provided that their distribution is free of charge provided that whenever material from this essay is cited or extracted in whole or in part that appropriate citation is made by indicating this essay’s full title, author’s name, publisher’s name, year, and page or pages where it appears in this edition. For permission for reprints intended for sale contact Insight Assessment by phone at 650-697-5628 or by email to jmorante@insightassessment.com. ISBN 13: 978-1-891557-07-1. To support the expenses of making this essay available free for non-commercial uses, the publisher has inserted information about its critical thinking testing instruments. These tools assess the critical thinking skills and habits of mind described in this essay. To build critical thinking skills and habits of mind use Dr. Facione’s newest book THINK_Critically, Pearson Education 2011.

their own futures and become contributing members of society, rather than burdens on society. Becoming educated and practicing good judgment does not absolutely guarantee a life of happiness, virtue, or economic success, but it surely offers a better chance at those things. And it is clearly better than enduring the consequences of making bad decisions and better than burdening friends, family, and all the rest of us with the unwanted and avoidable consequences of those poor choices.

commonly used concept contains? Take care, though, we would not want to make the definition so broad that all movie violence would be automatically “offensive.” And check to be sure your way of defining “offensive violence” fits with how the rest of the people who know and use English would understand the term. Otherwise they will not be able to understand what you mean when you use that expression.

Defining “Critical Thinking”

What you just did with the expression “offensive violence” is very much the same as what had to be done with the expression “critical thinking.” At one level we all know what “critical thinking” means — it means good thinking, almost the opposite of illogical, irrational, thinking. But when we test our understanding further, we run into questions. For example, is critical thinking the same as creative thinking, are they different, or is one part of the other? How do critical thinking and native intelligence or scholastic aptitude relate? Does critical thinking focus on the subject matter or content that you know or on the process you use when you reason about that content?

Yes, surely we have all heard business executives, policy makers, civic leaders, and educators talking about critical thinking. At times we found ourselves wondering exactly what critical thinking was and why is it considered so useful and important. This essay takes a deeper look at these questions. But, rather than beginning with an abstract definition – as if critical thinking were about memorization, which is not the case – give this thought experiment a try: Imagine you have been invited to a movie by a friend. But it’s not a movie you want to see. So, your friend asks you why. You give your honest reason. The movie offends your sense of decency. Your friend asks you to clarify your reason by explaining what bothers you about the film. You reply that it is not the language used or the sexuality portrayed, but you find the violence in the film offensive. Sure, that should be a good enough answer. But suppose your friend, perhaps being a bit philosophically inclined or simply curious or argumentative, pursues the matter further by asking you to define what you mean by “offensive violence.” Take a minute and give it a try. How would you define “offensive violence” as it applies to movies? Can you write a characterization which captures what this Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

Did you come up with a definition that works? How do you know?

It might not hurt at all if you formed some tentative preliminary ideas about the questions we just raised. We humans learn better when we stop frequently to reflect, rather than just plowing from the top of the page to the bottom without coming up for air. Fine. So how would you propose we go about defining “critical thinking.” You do not really want a definition plopped on the page for you to memorize, do you? That would be silly, almost counterproductive. The goal here is to help you sharpen your critical thinking skills and cultivate your critical thinking spirit. While memorization definitely has many valuable uses, fostering critical thinking is not among them. So, let’s look back at what you might have done to define “offensive violence” and see if we can learn from you. Did you think of some 2011 update

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scenes in movies that were offensively violent, and did you contrast them with other scenes that were either not violent or not offensively violent? If you did, good. That is one (but not the only) way to approach the problem. Technically it is called finding paradigm cases. Happily, like many things in life, you do not have to know its name to do it well.

Back to critical thinking – let’s ask ourselves to come up with possible examples of strong critical thinking? How about the adroit and clever questioning of Socrates or a good attorney or interviewer? Or, what about the clever investigative approaches used by police detectives and crime scene analysts? Would we not want to also include people working together to solve a problem as they consider and discuss their options? How about someone who is good at listening to all sides of a dispute, considering all the facts, and then deciding what is relevant and what is not, and then rendering a thoughtful judgment? And maybe too, someone who is able to summarize complex ideas clearly with fairness to all sides, or a person who can come up with the most coherent and justifiable explanation of what a passage of written material means? Or the person who can readily devise sensible alternatives to explore, but who does not become defensive about abandoning them if they do not work? And also the person who can explain exactly how a particular conclusion was reached, or why certain criteria apply? Or, considering the concept of critical thinking from the opposite direction, we might ask what the consequences of failing to use our critical thinking might be. Imagine for a moment what could happen Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

when a person or a group of people decides important matters without pausing first to think things through.

Expert Opinion An international group of experts was asked to try to form a consensus about the meaning of critical thinking.1 One of the first things they did was to ask themselves the question: Who are the best critical thinkers we know and what is it about them that leads us to consider them the best? So, who are the best critical thinkers you know? Why do you think they are strong critical thinkers? Can you draw from those examples a description that is more abstract? For example, consider effective trial lawyers, apart from how they conduct their personal lives or whether their client is really guilty or innocent, just look at how the lawyers develop their cases in court. They use reasons to try to convince the judge and jury of their client’s claim to guilt or innocence. They offer evidence and evaluate the significance of the evidence presented by the opposition lawyers. They interpret testimony. They analyze and evaluate the arguments advanced by the other side. 1

Many useful characterizations of critical thinking by noted theorists and teachers are captured in Conversations with Critical Thinkers , John Esterle and Dan Clurman (Eds.). Whitman Institute. San Francisco, CA. 1993

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Now, consider the example of the team of people trying to solve a problem. The team members, unlike the courtroom’s adversarial situation, try to collaborate. The members of an effective team do not compete against each other. They work in concert, like colleagues, for the common goal. Unless they solve the problem, none of them has won. When they find the way to solve the problem, they all have won. So, from analyzing just two examples we can generalize something very important: critical thinking is thinking that has a purpose (proving a point, interpreting what something means, solving a problem), but critical thinking can be a collaborative, noncompetitive endeavor. And, by the way, even lawyers collaborate. They can work together on a common defense or a joint prosecution, and they can also cooperate with each other to get at the truth so that justice is done. We will come to a more precise definition of critical thinking soon enough. But first, there is something else we can learn from paradigm examples. When you were thinking about “offensive violence” did you come up with any examples that were tough to classify? Borderline cases, as it were — an example that one person might consider offensive but another might reasonably regard as non-offensive. Yes, well, so did we. This is going to happen with all abstract concepts. It happens with the concept of critical thinking as well. There are people of whom we would say, on certain occasions this person is a good thinker, clear, logical, thoughtful, attentive to the facts, open to alternatives, but, wow, at other times, look out! When you get this person on such-and-such a topic, well it is all over then. You have pushed some kind of button and the person does not want to hear what anybody else has to say. The person’s mind is made up ahead of time. New facts are pushed aside. No other point of view is tolerated. Do you know any people that might fit that general description? Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

Good. What can we learn about critical thinking from such a case? Maybe more than we can learn from just looking at the easy cases. For when a case is on the borderline, it forces us to make important distinctions. It confronts us and demands a decision: In or Out! And not just that, but why? So, our friend who is fair-minded about some things, but close-minded about others, what to do? Let’s take the parts we approve of because they seem to us to contribute to acting rationally and logically and include those in the concept of critical thinking, and let’s take the parts that work against reason, that close the mind to the possibility of new and relevant information, that blindly deny even the possibility that the other side might have merit, and call those poor, counterproductive, or uncritical thinking.

Now, formulate a list of cases — people that are clearly strong critical thinkers and clearly weak critical thinkers and some who are on the borderline. Considering all those cases, what is it about them that led you to decide which were which? Suggestion: What can the strong critical thinkers do (what mental abilities do they have), that the weak critical thinkers have trouble doing? What skills or approaches do the strong critical thinkers 2

Spoken by the Vampire Marius in Ann Rice’s book The Vampire Lestat Ballantine Books. New York, NY. 1985.

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habitually seem to exhibit which the weak critical thinkers seem not to possess?

Core Critical Thinking Skills Above we suggested you look for a list of mental skills and habits of mind, the experts, when faced with the same problem you are working on, refer to their lists as including cognitive skills and dispositions. As to the cognitive skills here is what the experts include as being at the very core of critical thinking: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and selfregulation. (We will get to the dispositions in just a second.) Did any of these words or ideas come up when you tried to characterize the cognitive skills — mental abilities — involved in critical thinking? Quoting from the consensus statement of the national panel of experts: interpretation is “to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria.”3 Interpretation 3

The findings of expert consensus cited or reported in this essay are published in Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. Peter A. Facione, principle investigator, The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA, 1990. (ERIC ED 315 423). In 1993/94 the Center for the Study of Higher

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

includes the sub-skills of categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning. Can you think of examples of interpretation? How about recognizing a problem and describing it without bias? How about reading a person’s intentions in the expression on her face; distinguishing a main idea from subordinate ideas in a text; constructing a tentative categorization or way of organizing something you are studying; paraphrasing someone’s ideas in your own words; or, clarifying what a sign, chart or graph means? What about identifying an author’s purpose, theme, or point of view? How about what you did above when you clarified what “offensive violence” meant? Again from the experts: analysis is “to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.” The experts include examining ideas, detecting arguments, and analyzing arguments as sub-skills of analysis. Again, can you come up with some examples of analysis? What about identifying the similarities and differences between two approaches to the solution of a given problem? What about picking out the main claim made in a newspaper editorial and tracing back the various reasons the editor offers in support of that claim? Or, what about identifying unstated assumptions; constructing a way to represent a main conclusion and the various reasons given to support or criticize it; sketching the relationship of sentences or paragraphs to each other and to the main Education at The Pennsylvania State University undertook a study of 200 policy-makers, employers, and faculty members from two-year and four-year colleges to determine what this group took to be the core critical thinking skills and habits of mind. The Pennsylvania State University Study, under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Jones, was funded by the US Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Instruction. The Penn State study findings, published in 1994, confirmed the expert consensus described in this paper.

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purpose of the passage? What about graphically organizing this essay, in your own way, knowing that its purpose is to give a preliminary idea about what critical thinking means? The experts define evaluation as meaning “to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.” Your examples? How about judging an author’s or speaker’s credibility, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of alternative interpretations, determining the credibility of a source of information, judging if two statements contradict each other, or judging if the evidence at hand supports the conclusion being drawn? Among the examples the experts propose are these: “recognizing the factors which make a person a credible witness regarding a given event or a credible authority with regard to a given topic,” “judging if an argument’s conclusion follows either with certainty or with a high level of confidence from its premises,” “judging the logical strength of arguments based on hypothetical situations,” “judging if a given argument is relevant or applicable or has implications for the situation at hand.” Do the people you regard as strong critical thinkers have the three cognitive skills described so far? Are they good at interpretation, analysis, and evaluation? What about the next three? And your examples of weak critical thinkers, are they lacking in these cognitive skills? All, or just some? To the experts inference means “to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to educe the consequences flowing from data, Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation.” As sub-skills of inference the experts list querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions. Can you think of some examples of inference? You might suggest things like seeing the implications of the position someone is advocating, or drawing out or constructing meaning from the elements in a reading. You may suggest that predicting what will happen next based what is known about the forces at work in a given situation, or formulating a synthesis of related ideas into a coherent perspective. How about this: after judging that it would be useful to you to resolve a given uncertainty, developing a workable plan to gather that information? Or, when faced with a problem, developing a set of options for addressing it. What about, conducting a controlled experiment scientifically and applying the proper statistical methods to attempt to confirm or disconfirm an empirical hypothesis? Beyond being able to interpret, analyze, evaluate and infer, strong critical thinkers can do two more things. They can explain what they think and how they arrived at that judgment. And, they can apply their powers of critical thinking to themselves and improve on their previous opinions. These two skills are called “explanation” and “self-regulation.” The experts define explanation as being able to present in a cogent and coherent way the results of one’s reasoning. This means to be able to give someone a full look at the big picture: both “to state and to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one’s results were based; and to present one’s reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.” The sub-skills under explanation are describing methods and results, justifying procedures, proposing and defending with good reasons one’s causal 2011 update

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and conceptual explanations of events or points of view, and presenting full and wellreasoned, arguments in the context of seeking the best understandings possible. Your examples first, please... Here are some more: to construct a chart which organizes one’s findings, to write down for future reference your current thinking on some important and complex matter, to cite the standards and contextual factors used to judge the quality of an interpretation of a text, to state research results and describe the methods and criteria used to achieve those results, to appeal to established criteria as a way of showing the reasonableness of a given judgment, to design a graphic display which accurately represents the subordinate and superordinate relationship among concepts or ideas, to cite the evidence that led you to accept or reject an author’s position on an issue, to list the factors that were considered in assigning a final course grade. Maybe the most remarkable cognitive skill of all, however, is this next one. This one is remarkable because it allows strong critical thinkers to improve their own thinking. In a sense this is critical thinking applied to itself. Because of that some people want to call this “metacognition,” meaning it raises thinking to another level. But “another level” really does not fully capture it, because at that next level up what self-regulation does is look back at all the dimensions of critical thinking and double check itself. Selfregulation is like a recursive function in mathematical terms, which means it can apply to everything, including itself. You can monitor and correct an interpretation you offered. You can examine and correct an inference you have drawn. You can review and reformulate one of your own explanations. You can even examine and correct your ability to examine and correct yourself! How? It is as simple as stepping back and saying to yourself, “How am I doing? Have I missed anything important? Let me double check before I go further.” Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

The experts define self-regulation to mean “self-consciously to monitor one’s cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis, and evaluation to one’s own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one’s reasoning or one’s results.” The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction. Examples? Easy — to examine your views on a controversial issue with sensitivity to the possible influences of your personal biases or self-interest, to check yourself when listening to a speaker in order to be sure you are understanding what the person is really saying without introducing your own ideas, to monitor how well you seem to be understanding or comprehending what you are reading or experiencing, to remind yourself to separate your personal opinions and assumptions from those of the author of a passage or text, to double check yourself by recalculating the figures, to vary your reading speed and method mindful of the type of material and your purpose for reading, to reconsider your interpretation or judgment in view of further analysis of the facts of the case, to revise your answers in view of the errors you discovered in your work, to change your conclusion in view of the realization that you had misjudged the importance of certain factors when coming to your earlier decision. 4

The California Critical Thinking Skills Test, and the Test of Everyday Reasoning, the Health Science Reasoning Test, the Military and Defense Reasoning Profile, The Business Critical Thinking Skills Test, and the Legal Studies Reasoning Profile along with other testing instruments authored by Dr. Facione and his research team for people in K-12, college, and graduate / professional work target the core critical thinking skills identified here. These instruments are published in English and several authorized translations exclusively by Insight Assessment. 2011 update

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The Delphi Research Method The panel of experts we keep referring to included forty-six men and women from throughout the United States and Canada. They represented many different scholarly disciplines in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and education. They participated in a research project that lasted two years and was conducted on behalf of the American Philosophical Association. Their work was

Facione, PA, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Countsâ&#x20AC;?

published under the title Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. (The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA, 1990). You may download the executive summary of that report free. Visit http://www.insightassessment.com You might be wondering how such a large group of people could collaborate on

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this project over that long a period of time and at those distances and still come to consensus. Good question. Remember we’re talking the days before e-mail. Not only did the group have to rely on snail mail during their two-year collaboration; they also relied on a method of interaction, known as the Delphi Method, which was developed precisely to enable experts to think effectively about something over large spans of distance and time. In the Delphi Method a central investigator organizes the group and feeds them an initial question. [In this case it had to do with how college level critical thinking should be defined so that people teaching at that level would know which skills and dispositions to cultivate in their students.] The central investigator receives all responses, summarizes them, and transmits them back to all the panelists for reactions, replies, and additional questions.

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

Wait a minute! These are all wellknown experts, so what do you do if people disagree? And what about the possible influence of a big name person? Good points. First, the central investigator takes precautions to remove names so that the panelists are not told who said what. They know who is on the panel, of course. But that is as far as it goes. After that each experts’ argument has to stand on its own merits. Second, an expert is only as good as the arguments she or he gives. So, the central investigator summarizes the arguments and lets the panelists decide if they accept them or not. When consensus appears to be at hand, the central investigator proposes this and asks if people agree. If not, then points of disagreement among the experts are registered. We want to share with you one important example of each of these. First we will describe the expert consensus view of the dispositions which are absolutely vital to strong critical thinking. Then we will note a point of separation among the experts.

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The Disposition Thinking

Toward

Critical

What kind of a person would be apt to use their critical thinking skills? The experts poetically describe such a person as having “a critical spirit.” Having a critical spirit does not mean that the person is always negative and hypercritical of everyone and everything. The experts use the metaphorical phrase critical spirit in a positive sense. By it they mean “a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information.” Almost sounds like Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or Sherlock Holmes The kind of person being described here is the kind that always wants to ask “Why?” or “How?” or “What happens if?”. The one key difference, however, is that in fiction Sherlock always solves the mystery, while in the real world there is no guarantee. Critical thinking is about how you approach problems, questions, issues. It is the best way we know of to get to the truth. But! There still are no guarantees — no answers in the back of the book of real life. Does this characterization, that strong critical thinkers possess a “critical spirit, a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind...” fit with your examples of people you would call strong critical thinkers? But, you might say, I know people who have skills but do not use them. We cannot call someone a strong critical thinker just because she or he has these cognitive skills, however important they might be, because what if they just do not bother to apply them? One response is to say that it is hard to imagine an accomplished dancer who never dances. After working to develop those skills it seems such a shame to let

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

them grow weak with lack of practice. But dancers get tired. And they surrender to the stiffness of age or the fear of injury. In the case of critical thinking skills, we might argue that not using them once you have them is hard to imagine. It’s hard to imagine a person deciding not to think. Considered as a form of thoughtful judgment or reflective decision-making, in a very real sense critical thinking is pervasive. There is hardly a time or a place where it would not seem to be of potential value. As long as people have purposes in mind and wish to judge how to accomplish them, as long as people wonder what is true and what is not, what to believe and what to reject, strong critical thinking is going to be necessary. And yet weird things happen, so it is probably true that some people might let their thinking skills grow dull. It is easier to imagine times when people are just too tired, too lax, or too frightened. But imagine it you can, Young Skywalker, so there has

to be more to critical thinking than just the list of cognitive skills. Human beings are more than thinking machines. And this brings us back to those all-important attitudes which the experts called “dispositions.” The experts were persuaded that critical thinking is a pervasive and purposeful human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker can be characterized not merely by her or his cognitive skills but also by how she or he approaches life and living in general. This is a bold claim. Critical 2011 update

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thinking goes way beyond the classroom. In fact, many of the experts fear that some of the things people experience in school are actually harmful to the development and cultivation of strong critical thinking. Critical thinking came before schooling was ever invented, it lies at the very roots of civilization. It is a corner stone in the journey human kind is taking from beastly savagery to global sensitivity. Consider what life would be like without the things on this list and we think you will understand. The approaches to life and living which characterize critical thinking include: * * * * * * * * * * * *

inquisitiveness with regard to a wide range of issues, concern to become and remain well-informed, alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking, trust in the processes of reasoned inquiry, self-confidence in one’s own abilities to reason, open-mindedness regarding divergent world views, flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions understanding of the opinions of other people, fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning, honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies, prudence in suspending, making or altering judgments, willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted.

What would someone be like who lacked those dispositions? It might be someone who does not care about much of anything, is not interested in the facts, prefers not to think, mistrusts reasoning as a way of finding things out or solving problems, holds his or her own reasoning abilities in low esteem, is close-minded, inflexible, insensitive, cannot understand what others think, is unfair when it comes to judging the quality of arguments, denies his or her own biases, jumps to conclusions or delays too long in making judgments, and never is willing to reconsider an opinion. Not someone

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

prudent people would want to ask to manage their investments! The experts went beyond approaches to life and living in general to emphasize that strong critical thinkers can also be described in terms of how they approach specific issues, questions, or problems. The experts said you would find these sorts of characteristics: * * * * * * *

clarity in stating the question or concern, orderliness in working with complexity, diligence in seeking relevant information, reasonableness in selecting and applying criteria, care in focusing attention on the concern at hand, persistence though difficulties are encountered, precision to the degree permitted by the subject and the circumstances.

So, how would a weak critical thinker approach specific problems or issues? Obviously, by being muddle-headed about what he or she is doing, disorganized and overly simplistic, spotty about getting the facts, apt to apply unreasonable criteria, easily distracted, ready to give up at the least hint of difficulty, intent on a solution that is more detailed than is possible, or being satisfied with an overly generalized and uselessly vague response. Remind you of anyone you know? Someone positively disposed toward using critical thinking would probably agree with statements like these: “I hate talk shows where people shout their opinions but never give any reasons at all.” “Figuring out what people really mean by what they say is important to me." “I always do better in jobs where I'm expected to think things out for myself.” “I hold off making decisions until I have thought through my options.” “Rather than relying on someone else's notes, I prefer to read the material myself.” “I try to see the merit in another’s opinion, even if I reject it later.” “Even if a problem is tougher than I expected, I will keep working on it.” “Making intelligent decisions is more important than winning arguments.”

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A person disposed to be averse or hostile toward using critical thinking would probably disagree with the statements above but be likely to agree with these: “I prefer jobs where the supervisor says exactly what to do and exactly how to do it." “No matter how complex the problem, you can bet there will be a simple solution.” "I don't waste time looking things up." “I hate when teachers discuss problems instead of just giving the answers.” “If my belief is truly sincere, evidence to the contrary is irrelevant." “Selling an idea is like selling cars, you say whatever works."

We used the expression “strong critical thinker” to contrast with the expression “weak critical thinker.” But you will find people who drop the adjective “strong” (or “good”) and just say that someone is a “critical thinker” or not. It is like saying that a soccer (European “football”) player is a “defender” or “not a defender”, instead of saying the player’s skills at playing defense are strong or weak. People use the word “defender” in place of the phrase “is good at playing defense.” Similarly, people use “critical thinker” in Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

place of “is a strong critical thinker” or “has strong critical thinking skills.” This is not only a helpful conversational shortcut, it suggests that to many people “critical thinker” has a laudatory sense. The word can be used to praise someone at the same time that it identifies the person, as in “Look at that play. That’s what I call a defender!”

“If we were compelled to make a choice between these personal attributes and knowledge about the principles of logical reasoning together with some degree of technical skill in manipulating special logical processes, we should decide for the former.” John Dewey, How We Think, 1909. Republished as How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educational Process. D. C. Heath Publishing. Lexington, MA. 1933.

We said the experts did not come to full agreement on something. That thing has to do with the concept of a “strong critical thinker.” This time the emphasis is on the word “good” because of a crucial

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ambiguity it contains. A person can be good at critical thinking, meaning that the person can have the appropriate dispositions and be adept at the cognitive processes, while still not being a good (in the moral sense) critical thinker. For example, a person can be adept at developing arguments and then, unethically, use this skill to mislead and exploit a gullible person, perpetrate a fraud, or deliberately confuse and confound, and frustrate a project.

would prefer to think that critical thinking, by its very nature, is inconsistent with the kinds of unethical and deliberately counterproductive examples given. They find it hard to imagine a person who was good at critical thinking not also being good in the broader personal and social sense. In other words, if a person were “really” a “strong critical thinker” in the procedural sense and if the person had all the appropriate dispositions, then the person simply would not do those kinds of exploitive and aggravating things.

The experts were faced with an interesting problem. Some, a minority,

This self-rating form also appears in Chapter 3 of Think Critically, Pearson Education, 2011. For a fuller and more robust measure of critical thinking dispositions see the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) by Facione and Facione, published in 1992, by Insight Assessment.

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The large majority, however, hold the opposite judgment. They are firm in the view that strong critical thinking has nothing to do with any given set of cultural beliefs, religious tenants, ethical values, social mores, political orientations, or orthodoxies of any kind. Rather, the commitment one makes as a strong critical thinker is to always seek the truth with objectivity, integrity, and fair-mindedness. The majority of experts maintain that critical thinking conceived of as we have described it above, is, regrettably, not inconsistent with abusing one’s knowledge, skills, or power. There have been people with superior thinking skills and strong habits of mind who, unfortunately, have used their talents for ruthless, horrific, and immoral purposes. Would that it were not so! Would that experience, knowledge, mental horsepower, and ethical virtue were all one and the same. But from the time of Socrates, if not thousands of years before that, humans have known that many of us have one or more of these without having the full set. Any tool, any approach to situations, can go either way, ethically speaking, depending on the character, integrity, and principles of the persons who possess them. So, in the final analysis the majority of experts maintained that we cannot say a person is not thinking critically simply because we disapprove ethically of what the person is doing. The majority concluded that, “what ‘critical thinking’ means, why it is of value, and the ethics of its use are best regarded as three distinct concerns.” Perhaps this realization forms part of the basis for why people these days are demanding a broader range of learning outcomes from our schools and colleges. “Knowledge and skills,” the staples of the educational philosophy of the mid-twentieth century, are not sufficient. We must look to a broader set of outcomes including habits of mind and dispositions, such as civic engagement, concern for the common good, and social responsibility.

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

“Thinking” in Popular Culture We have said so many good things about critical thinking that you might have the impression that “critical thinking” and “good thinking” mean the same thing. But that is not what the experts said. They see critical thinking as making up part of what we mean by good thinking, but not as being the only kind of good thinking. For example, they would have included creative thinking as part of good thinking. Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things. The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations. But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of possible solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships which challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways. The experts working on the concept of critical thinking wisely left open the entire question of what the other forms good thinking might take. Creative thinking is only one example. There is a kind of purposive, kinetic thinking that instantly coordinates movement and intention as, for example, when an athlete dribbles a soccer ball down the field during a match. There is a kind of meditative thinking which may lead to a sense of inner peace or to profound insights about human existence. In contrast, there is a kind of hyper-alert, instinctive thinking needed by soldiers in battle. In the context of popular culture one finds people proposing all kinds of thinking or this-kind of intelligence or that-kind of intelligence. Some times it is hard to sort out the science from the pseudo-science – the kernel of enduring truth from the latest cocktail party banter.

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“Thinking” in Cognitive Science Theories emerging from more scientific studies of human thinking and decisionmaking in recent years propose that thinking is more integrated and less dualistic than the notions in popular culture suggest. We should be cautious about proposals suggesting oversimplified ways of understanding how humans think. We should avoid harsh, rigid dichotomies such as “reason vs. emotion,” “intuitive vs. linear,” “creativity vs. criticality,” “right brained vs. left brained,” “as on Mars vs. as on Venus.” There is often a kernel of wisdom in popular beliefs, and perhaps that gem this time is the realization that some times we decide things very quickly almost as spontaneous, intuitive, reactions to the situation at hand. Many accidents on the freeways of this nation are avoided Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

precisely because drivers are able to see and react to dangerous situations so quickly. Many good decisions which feel intuitive are really the fruit of expertise. Decisions good drivers make in those moments of crisis, just like the decisions which practiced athletes make in the flow of a game or the decisions that a gifted teacher makes as she or he interacts with students, are borne of expertise, training, and practice. At the same time that we are immersed in the world around us and in our daily lives, constantly making decisions unreflectively, we may also be thinking quite reflectively about something. Perhaps we’re worried about a decision which we have to make about an important project at work, or about a personal relationship, or about a legal matter, whatever. We gather information, consider our options, explore 2011 update

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possibilities, formulate some thoughts about what we propose to do and why this choice is the right one. In other words, we make a purposeful, reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do – precisely the kind of judgment which is the focus of critical thinking. Recent integrative models of human decision-making propose that the thinking processes of our species is not best described as a conflictive duality as in “intuitive vs. reflective” but rather an integrative functioning of two mutually supportive systems “intuitive and reflective.” These two systems of thinking are present in all of us and can act in parallel to process cognitively the matters over which we are deciding. One system is more intuitive, reactive, quick and holistic. So as not to confuse things with the notions of thinking in popular culture, cognitive scientists often name this system, “System 1.” The other (yes, you can guess its name) is more deliberative, reflective, computational and rule governed. You are right, it is called “System 2.” In System 1 thinking, one relies heavily on a number of heuristics (cognitive maneuvers), key situational characteristics, readily associated ideas, and vivid memories to arrive quickly and confidently at a judgment. System 1 thinking is particularly helpful in familiar situations when time is short and immediate action is required. While System 1 is functioning, another powerful system is also at work, that is, unless we shut it down by abusing alcohol or drugs, or with fear or indifference. Called “System 2,” this is our more reflective thinking system. It is useful for making judgments when you find yourself in unfamiliar situations and have more time to figure things out. It allows us to process abstract concepts, to deliberate, to plan ahead, to consider options carefully, to Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

review and revise our work in the light of relevant guidelines or standards or rules of procedure. While System 2 decisions are also influenced by the correct or incorrect application of heuristic maneuvers, this is the system which relies on well articulated reasons and more fully developed evidence. It is reasoning based on what we have learned through careful analysis, evaluation, explanation, and self-correction. This is the system which values intellectual honesty, analytically anticipating what happens next, maturity of judgment, fair-mindedness, elimination of biases, and truth-seeking. This is the system which we rely on to think carefully trough complex, novel, highstakes, and highly integrative problems.5 Educators urge us to improve critical thinking skills and to reinforce disposition to use those skills because is perhaps the best way to develop refine our System 2 reasoning.

our our that and

System 1 and System 2 are both believed to be vital decision-making tools when stakes are high and when uncertainty is an issue. Each of these two cognitive systems are believed to be capable of functioning to monitor and potentially override the other. This is one of the ways our species reduces the chance of making foolish, sub-optimal or even dangerous errors in judgment. Human thinking is far from perfect. Even a good thinker makes both System 1 and 2 errors. At times we misinterpret things, or we get our facts wrong, and we make mistakes as a result. 5

Chapters 9 and 10 of Think Critically, Pearson Education, 2011, locate critical thinking within this integrative model of thinking. The cognitive heuristics, which will be described next, and the human capacity to derive sustained confidence decisions (right or wrong),-- known as “dominance structuring,” – are presented there too. There are lots of useful exercises and examples in that book. You may also wish to consult the references listed at the end of this essay. The material presented in this section is derived from these books and related publications by many of these same authors and others working to scientifically explain how humans actually make decisions.

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But often our errors are directly related to the influences and misapplications of cognitive heuristics. Because we share the propensity to use these heuristics as we make decisions, let’s examine how some of them influence us.

Cognitive heuristics are thinking maneuvers which, at times, appear to be almost hardwired into our species. They influence both systems of thinking, the intuitive thinking of System 1 and the reflective reasoning of System 2. Five heuristics often seem to be more frequently operating in our System 1 reasoning are known as availability, affect, association, simulation, and similarity. Availability, the coming to mind of a story or vivid memory of something that happened to you or to someone close to you, inclines a person make inaccurate estimates of the likelihood of that thing’s happening again. People tell stories of things that happened to themselves or their friends all the time as a way of explaining their own decisions. The stories may not be scientifically representative, the events may be mistaken, misunderstood, or misinterpreted. But all that aside, the power of the story is to guide, often in a good way, the decision toward one choice rather than another. The Affect heuristic operates when you have an immediate positive or an Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

negative reaction to some idea, proposal, person, object, whatever. Sometimes called a “gut reaction” this affective response sets up an initial orientation in us, positive or negative, toward the object. It takes a lot of System 2 reasoning to overcome a powerful affective response to an idea, but it can be done. And at times it should be, because there is no guarantee that your gut reaction is always right. The Association heuristic is operating when one word or idea reminds us of something else. For example, some people associate the word “cancer” with “death.” Some associate “sunshine” with “happiness.” These kinds of associational reasoning responses can be helpful at times, as for example if associating cancer with death leads you not to smoke and to go in for regular checkups. At other times the same association may influence a person to make an unwise decision, as for example if associating “cancer” with “death” were to lead you to be so fearful and pessimistic that you do not seek diagnosis and treatment of a worrisome cancer symptom until it was really too late to do anything. The Simulation heuristic is working when you are imagining how various scenarios will unfold. People often imagine how a conversation will go, or how they will be treated by someone else when they meet the person, or what their friends or boss or lover will say and do when they have to address some difficult issue. These simulations, like movies in our heads, help us prepare and do a better job when the difficult moment arrives. But they can also lead us to have mistaken expectations. People may not respond as we imagined, things may go much differently. Our preparations may fail us because the ease of our simulation misled us into thinking that things would have to go as we had imagined them. And they did not. The Similarity heuristic operates when we notice some way in which we are like someone else and infer that what 2011 update

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happened to that person is therefore more likely to happen to us. The similarity heuristic functions much like an analogical argument or metaphorical model. The similarity we focus on might be fundamental and relevant, which would make the inference more warranted. For example, the boss fired your coworker for missing sales targets and you draw the reasonable conclusion that if you miss your sales targets you’ll be fired too. Or the similarity that comes to mind might be superficial or not connected with the outcome, which would make the inference unwarranted. For example you see a TV commercial showing trim-figured young people enjoying fattening fast foods and infer that because you’re young too you can indulge your cravings for fast foods without gaining a lot of excess unsightly poundage. Heuristics and biases often appearing to be somewhat more associated with System 2 thinking include: satisficing, risk/loss aversion, anchoring with adjustment, and the illusion of control. Satisficing occurs as we consider our alternatives. When we come to one which is good enough to fulfill our objectives we often regard ourselves as having completed our deliberations. We have satisficed. And why not? The choice is, after all, good enough. It may not be perfect, it may not be optimal, it may not even be the best among the options available. But it is good enough. Time to decide and move forward. The running mate of satisficing is temporizing. Temporizing is deciding that the option which we have come to is “good enough for now.” We often move through life satisficing and temporizing. At times we look back on our situations and wonder why it is that we have settled for far less than we might have. If we had only studied harder, worked out a little more, taken better care of ourselves and our relationships, perhaps we would not be living as we are now. But, at

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

the time each of the decisions along the way was “good enough for the time being.” We are by nature a species that is averse to risk and loss. Often we make decisions on the basis of what we are too worried about losing, rather than on the basis of what we might gain. This works out to be a rather serviceable approach in many circumstances. People do not want to lose control, they do not want to lose their freedom, they do not want to lose their lives, their families, their jobs, their possessions. High stakes gambling is best left to those who can afford to lose the money. Las Vegas didn’t build all those multi-million dollar casino hotels because vacationers are winning all the time! And so, in real life, we take precautions. We avoid unnecessary risks. The odds may not be stacked against us, but the consequences of losing at times are so great that we would prefer to forego the possibilities of gain in order not to lose what we have. And yet, on occasion this can be a most unfortunate decision too. History has shown time and time again that businesses which avoid risks often are unable to compete successfully with those willing to move more boldly into new markets or into new product lines. Any heuristic is only a maneuver, perhaps a shortcut or impulse to think or act in one way rather than another, but certainly not a failsafe rule. It may work out well much of the time to rely on the heuristic, but it will not work out for the best all of the time. For example, people with something to lose tend toward conservative choices politically as well as economically. Nothing wrong with that necessarily. Just an observation about the influence of Loss Aversion heuristic on actual decision making. We are more apt to endure the status quo, even as it slowly deteriorates, than we are to call for “radical” change. Regrettably, however, when the call for change comes, it often requires a far 2011 update

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greater upheaval to make the necessary transformations, or, on occasion, the situation has deteriorated beyond the point of no return. In those situations we find ourselves wondering why we waited so long before doing something. The heuristic known as Anchoring with Adjustment is operative when we find ourselves making evaluative judgments. The natural thing for us to do is to locate or anchor our evaluation at some point along whatever scale we are using. For example, a professor says that the student’s paper is a C+. Then, as other information comes our way, we may adjust that judgment. The professor, for example, may decide that the paper is as good as some others that were given a B-, and so adjust the grade upward. The interesting thing about this heuristic, is that we do not normally start over with a fresh evaluation. We have dropped anchor and we may drag it upward or downward a bit, but we do not pull it off the bottom of the sea to relocate our evaluation. First impressions, as the saying goes, cannot be undone. The good thing about this heuristic is that it permits us to move on. We have done the evaluation; there are other papers to grade, other projects to do, other things in life that need attention. We could not long endure if we had to constantly re-evaluate every thing anew. The unfortunate thing about this heuristic is that we sometimes drop anchor in the wrong place; we have a hard time giving people a second chance at making a good first impression. The heuristic known as Illusion of Control is evident in many situations. Many of us over-estimate our abilities to control what will happen. We make plans for how we are going to do this or that, say this or that, manipulate the situation this way or that way, share or not share this information or that possibility, all the time thinking that some how our petty plans will enable us to control what happens. We act as if others are dancing on the ends of the strings that we are pulling, when in actuality the influences our words or actions have on Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

future events may be quite negligible. At times we do have some measure of control. For example we may exercise, not smoke, and watch our diet in order to be more fit and healthy. We are careful not to drink if we are planning to drive so that we reduce the risks of being involved in a traffic accident. But at times we simply are mistaken about our ability to actually exercise full control over a situation. Sadly we might become ill even if we do work hard to take good care of ourselves. Or we may be involved in an accident even if we are sober. Our business may fail even if we work very hard to make it a success. We may not do as well on an exam as we might hope even if we study hard. Related to the Illusion of Control heuristic is the tendency to misconstrue our personal influence or responsibility for past events. This is called Hindsight Bias. We may over-estimate the influence our actions have had on events when things go right, or we may underestimate our responsibility or culpability when things go wrong. We have all heard people bragging about how they did this and how they did that and, as a result, such and such wonderful things happened. We made these great plans and look how well our business did financially. Which may be true when the economy is strong; but not when the economy is failing. It is not clear how much of that success came from the planning and how much came from the general business environment. Or, we have all been in the room when it was time to own up for some thing that went wrong and thought to ourselves, hey, I may have had some part in this, but it was not entirely my fault. “It wasn’t my fault the children were late for school, hey I was dressed and ready to go at the regular time.” As if seeing that the family was running late I had no responsibility to take some initiative and help out.

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“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome.” Albert Einstein Research on our shared heuristic patterns of decision-making does not aim to evaluate these patterns as necessarily good or bad patterns of thinking. I fear that my wording of them above may not have been as entirely neutral and descriptive as perhaps it should have been. In truth, reliance on heuristics can be an efficient ways of deciding things, given how very complicated our lives are. We cannot devote maximal cognitive resources to every single decision we make. Those of us who study these heuristic thinking phenomena are simply trying to document how we humans do think. There are many useful purposes for doing this. For example, if we find that people repeatedly make a given kind of mistake when thinking about a commonly experienced problem, then we might find ways to intervene and to help ourselves not repeat that error over and over again. This research on the actual patterns of thinking used by individuals and by groups might prove particularly valuable to those who seek interventions which could improve how we make our own heath care decisions, how we make business decisions, how we lead teams of people to work more effectively in collaborative settings, and the like. Popular culture offers one other myth about decision-making which is worth questioning. And that is the belief that when we make reflective decisions we carefully weigh each of our options, giving due consideration to all of them in turn, before deciding which we will adopt. Although perhaps it should be, research on human decision-making shows that this simply is

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

not what happens.6 When seeking to explain how people decide on an option with such conviction that they stick to their decision over time and with such confidence that they act on that decision, the concept that what we do is build a Dominance Structure has been put forth. In a nutshell this theory suggests that when we settle on a particular option which is good enough we tend to elevate its merits and diminish its flaws relative to the other options. We raise it up in our minds until it becomes for us the dominant option. In this way, as our decision takes shape, we gain confidence in our choice and we feel justified in dismissing the other options, even though the objective distance between any of them and our dominant option may not be very great at all. But we become invested in our dominant option to the extent that we are able to put the other possibilities aside and act on the basis of our choice. In fact, it comes to dominate the other options in our minds so much that we are able to sustain our decision to act over a period of time, rather than going back to re-evaluate or reconsider constantly. Understanding the natural phenomenon of dominance structuring can help us appreciate why it can be so difficult for us to get others to change their minds, or why it seems that our reasons for our decisions are so much better than any of the objections which others might make to our decisions. This is not to say that we are right or wrong. Rather, this is only to observe that human beings are capable of unconsciously building up defenses around their choices which can result in the warranted or unwarranted confidence to act on the basis of those choices.

Henry Montgomery, “From cognition to action: The search for dominance in decision making.” In Process and Structure in Human Decision-Making, Montgomery H, Svenson O (Eds). John Wiley & Sons: Chichester, UK, 1989. For a more accessible description along with reflective exercises on how to avoid becoming “locked in” to a poor decision prematurely, see chapter 10 of Think Critically.

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Realizing the power of dominance structuring, one can only be more committed to the importance of education and critical thinking. We should do all that we can to inform ourselves fully and to reflect carefully on our choices before we make them, because we are, after all, human and we are as likely as the next person to believe that we are right and they are wrong once the dominance structure begins to be erected. Breaking through that to fix bad decisions, which is possible, can be much harder than getting things right in the first place. There are more heuristics than only those mentioned above. There is more to learn about dominance structuring as it occurs in groups as well as in individuals, and how to mitigate the problems which may arise by prematurely settling on a “good enough” option, or about how to craft educational programs or interventions which help people be more effective in their System 1 and System 2 thinking. There is much to learn about human thinking and how to optimize it in individuals of different ages; how to optimize the thinking of groups of peers and groups where organizational hierarchies influence interpersonal dynamics. And, happily, there is a lot we know today about human thinking and decision-making that we did not know a few years ago.

Why critical thinking? Let us start with you first. Why would critical thinking be of value to you to have the cognitive skills of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation? Apart from, or maybe in light of, what we said at the beginning of this essay about the utility of positive critical thinking and about the problems that failures of critical thinking contribute to, why would it be of value to you to learn to approach life and to approach specific concerns with the critical thinking dispositions listed above? Would Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

you have greater success in your work? Would you get better grades? Actually the answer to the grades question, scientifically speaking, is very possibly, Yes! A study of over 1100 college students shows that scores on a college level critical thinking skills test significantly correlated with college GPA.7 It has also been shown that critical thinking skills can be learned, which suggests that as one learns them one’s GPA might well improve. In further support of this hypothesis is the significant correlation between critical thinking and reading comprehension. Improvements in the one are paralleled by improvements in the other. Now if you can read better and think better, might you not do better in your classes, learn more, and get better grades. It is, to say the least, very plausible. Learning, Critical Thinking, and Our Nation’s Future “The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning... nations that want high incomes and full employment must develop policies that emphasize the acquisition of knowledge and skills by everyone, not just a select few.” Ray Marshall & Marc Tucker, Thinking For A Living: Education And The Wealth of Nations, Basic Books. New York. 1992.

But what a limited benefit — better grades. Who really cares in the long run? Two years after college, five years out, what does GPA really mean? Right now college 7

Findings regarding the effectiveness of critical thinking instruction, and correlations with GPA and reading ability are reported in “Technical Report #1, Experimental Validation and Content Validity” (ERIC ED 327 549), “Technical Report #2, Factors Predictive of CT Skills” (ERIC ED 327 550), and “Gender, Ethnicity, Major, CT Self-Esteem, and the California Critical Thinking Skills Test” (ERIC ED 326 584). These findings remain consistent in research using the tools in the California Critical Thinking Skills Test family of instruments published by Insight Assessment.

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level technical and professional programs have a half-life of about four years, which means that the technical content is expanding so fast and changing so much that in about four years after graduation your professional training will be in serious need of renewal. So, if the only thing a college is good for is to get the entry level training and the credential needed for some job, then college would be a time-limited value.

The APA Delphi Report, Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction 1990 ERIC Doc. NO.: ED 315 423

Is that the whole story? A job is a good thing, but is that what a college education is all about, getting started in a good job? Maybe some cannot see its further value, but many do. A main purpose, if not the main purpose, of the collegiate experience, at either the two-year or the four-year level, is to achieve what people have called a “liberal education.” Not liberal in the sense of a smattering of this and that for no particular purpose except to fulfill the unit requirement. But liberal in the sense of “liberating.” And who is being liberated? You! Liberated from a kind of slavery. But from whom? From professors. Actually from dependence on professors so that they no longer stand as infallible authorities delivering opinions beyond our capacity to

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

challenge, question, and dissent. In fact, this is exactly what the professors want. They want their students to excel on their own, to go beyond what is currently known, to make their own contributions to knowledge and to society. [Being a professor is a curious job — the more effective you are as a teacher, less your students require your aid in learning.] Liberal education is about learning to learn, which means learning to think for yourself on your own and in collaboration with others. Liberal education leads us away from naive acceptance of authority, above self-defeating relativism, and beyond ambiguous contextualism. It culminates in principled reflective judgment. Learning critical thinking, cultivating the critical spirit, is not just a means to this end, it is part of the goal itself. People who are weak critical thinkers, who lack the dispositions and skills described, cannot be said to be liberally educated, regardless of the academic degrees they may hold. Yes, there is much more to a liberal education, than critical thinking. There is an understanding of the methods, principles, theories and ways of achieving knowledge which are proper to the different intellectual realms. There is an encounter with the cultural, artistic and spiritual dimensions of life. There is the evolution of one’s decision making to the level of principled integrity and concern for the common good and social justice. There is the realization of the ways all our lives are shaped by global as well as local political, social, psychological, economic, environmental, and physical forces. There is the growth that comes from the interaction with cultures, languages, ethnic groups, religions, nationalities, and social classes other than one’s own. There is the refinement of one’s humane sensibilities through reflection on the recurring questions of human existence, meaning, love, life and death. There is the sensitivity, appreciation and critical 2011 update

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appraisal of all that is good and all that is bad in the human condition. As the mind awakens and matures, and the proper nurturing and educational nourishment is provided, these others central parts of a liberal education develop as well. Critical thinking plays an essential role in achieving these purposes. Any thing else? What about going beyond the individual to the community?

scale economic disaster would become extremely likely. So, given a society that does not value and cultivate critical thinking, we might reasonably expect that in time the judicial system and the economic system would collapse. And, in such a society, one that does not liberate its citizens by teaching them to think critically for themselves, it would be madness to advocate democratic forms of government.

The experts say critical thinking is fundamental to, if not essential for, “a rational and democratic society.” What might the experts mean by this? Well, how wise would democracy be if people abandoned critical thinking? Imagine an electorate that cared not for the facts, that did not wish to consider the pros and cons of the issues, or if they did, had not the brain power to do so. Imagine your life and the lives of your friends and family placed in the hands of juries and judges who let their biases and stereotypes govern their decisions, who do not attend to the evidence, who are not interested in reasoned inquiry, who do not know how to draw an inference or evaluate one. Without critical thinking people would be more easily exploited not only politically but economically. The impact of abandoning critical thinking would not be confined to the micro-economics of the household checking account. Suppose the people involved in international commerce were lacking in critical thinking skills, they would be unable to analyze and interpret the market trends, evaluate the implications of interest fluctuations, or explain the potential impact of those factors which influence large scale production and distribution of goods and materials. Suppose these people were unable to draw the proper inferences from the economic facts, or unable to properly evaluate the claims made by the unscrupulous and misinformed. In such a situation serious economic mistakes would be made. Whole sectors of the economy would become unpredictable and large Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

Is it any wonder that business and civic leaders are maybe even more interested in critical thinking than educators? Critical thinking employed by an informed citizenry is a necessary condition for the success of democratic institutions and for competitive free-market economic enterprise. These values are so important that it is in the national interest that we should try to educate all citizens so that they can learn to think critically. Not just for their personal good, but for the good of the rest of us too. Generalizing, imagine a society, say, for example, the millions of people living in the Los Angeles basin, or in New York and along the east coast, or in Chicago, or Mexico City, Cairo, Rome, Tokyo, Baghdad, Moscow, Beijing, or Hong Kong. They are, de facto, entirely dependent upon one another, and on hundreds of thousands of other people as well for their external supplies of food and water, for their survival. Now imagine that these millions permitted their schools and colleges to stop teaching people how to think critically and effectively.

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Imagine that because of war, or AIDS, or famine, or religious conviction, parents could not or would not teach their children how to think critically. Imagine the social and political strife, the falling apart of fundamental systems of public safety and public health, the loss of any scientific understanding of disease control or agricultural productivity, the emergence of paramilitary gangs, strong men, and petty warlords seeking to protect themselves and their own by acquiring control over what food and resources they can and destroying those who stand in their path. Look at what has happened around the world in places devastated by economic embargoes, one-sided warfare, or the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Or, consider the problem of global climate change, and how important it is for all of us to cooperate with efforts to curtail our uses of fossil fuels in order to reduce emissions of harmful greenhouse gases.

Consider the “cultural revolutions” undertaken by totalitarian rulers. Notice how in virtually every case absolutist and dictatorial despots seek ever more severe limitations on free expression. They label “liberal” intellectuals “dangers to society” and expel “radical” professors from teaching posts because they might “corrupt the youth.” Some use the power of their governmental or religious authority to crush not only their opposition but the moderates as well -- all in the name of maintaining the purity of their movement. They intimidate journalists and those media outlets which dare to comment “negatively” on their political and cultural goals or their heavy handed methods. The historical evidence is there for us to see what happens when schools are closed or converted from places of education to places for indoctrination. We know what happens when children are no longer being taught truth-seeking, the skills of good reasoning, or the lessons of human history and basic science: Cultures disintegrate; communities collapse; the machinery of civilization fails; massive numbers of people die; and sooner or later social and political chaos ensues. Or, imagine a media, a religious or political hegemony which cultivated, instead of critical thinking, all the opposite dispositions? Or consider if that hegemony reinforced uncritical, impulsive decision making and the “ready-shoot-aim” approach to executive action. Imagine governmental structures, administrators, and community leaders who, instead of encouraging critical thinking, were content to make knowingly irrational, illogical, prejudicial, unreflective, short-sighted, and unreasonable decisions. How long might it take for the people in this society which does not value critical thinking to be at serious risk of foolishly harming themselves and each other? The news too often reports about hate groups, wanton shooting, terrorists and

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violently extreme religious zealots. Education which includes a good measure of critical thinking skills and dispositions like truth-seeking and open-mindedness, is a problem for terrorists and extremists of every stripe because terrorists and extremists want to control of what people think. They are ideologists of the worst kind. Their methods include indoctrination, intimidation, and the strictest authoritarian orthodoxy. In the “black-and-white” world of “us vs. them” a good education would mean that the people might begin to think for themselves. And that is something these extremists do not want.

intellectuals, or regulations aimed at suppressing research and frustrating the fair-minded, evidence-based, and unfettered pursuit of knowledge, can happen wherever and whenever people are not vigilant defenders of open, objective, and independent inquiry.

History shows that assaults on learning, whether by book burning, exile of

Maybe. But, really, should we have to?

Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

Does this mean that society should place a very high value on critical thinking? Absolutely! Does this mean society has the right to force someone to learn to think critically?

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EXPERT CONSENSUS STATEMENT REGARDING CRITICAL THINKING AND THE IDEAL CRITICAL THINKER “We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, wellinformed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating strong critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.” READINGS and REFERENCES American Philosophical Association, Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. "The Delphi Report," Committee on Pre-College Philosophy. (ERIC Doc. No. ED 315 423). 1990 Brookfield, Stephen D.: Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting. JoseyBass Publishers. San-Francisco, CA. 1987. Browne, M. Neil, and Keeley, Stuart M.: Asking the Right Questions. Prentice-Hall Publishers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 2003. Costa, Arthur L., & Lowery, l Lawrence F.: Techniques for Teaching Thinking. Critical Thinking Press and Software. Pacific Grove, CA. 1989. Facione, Noreen C, and Facione Peter A.: Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment in the Health Sciences - An International Teaching Anthology. The California Academic Press, Millbrae CA. 2008. Facione, Noreen C. and Facione, Peter A. : Critical Thinking Assessment and Nursing Education Programs: An Aggregate Data Analysis. The California Academic Press. Millbrae, CA 1997. Facione, Noreen. C., and Facione, Peter A., Analyzing Explanations for Seemingly Irrational Choices, International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 15 No. 2 (2001) 267-86. Facione, Peter A and Noreen C,: Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making. The California Academic Press. Millbrae CA, 2007 Facione, Peter A, Think Critically, Pearson Education: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2011. Facione, P.A., Facione, N.C., Talking Critical Thinking, Change: The Magazine of Higher Education, March-April, 2007. Facione, P.A., Facione N. C., and Giancarlo, C: The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking: Its Character, Measurement, and Relationship to Critical Thinking Skills, Journal of Informal Logic, Vol. 20 No. 1 (2000) 61-84. Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

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Gilovich, Thomas; Griffin, Dale; and Kahneman, Daniel: Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. Cambridge University Press. 2002. Goldstein, William, and Hogarth, Robin M. (Eds.): Research on Judgment and Decision Making. Cambridge University Press. 1997. Esterle, John, and Clurman, Dan: Conversations with Critical Thinkers. The Whitman Institute. San Francisco, CA. 1993. Janis, I.L. and Mann, L: Decision-Making. The Free Press, New York. 1977. Kahneman, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; and Tversky, Amos: Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge University Press. 1982. Kahneman Daniel: Knetsch, J.L.; and Thaler, R.H.: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 1991, 5;193-206. King, Patricia M. & Kitchener, Karen Strohm: Developing Reflective Judgment. Josey-Bass Publishers. San Francisco, CA. 1994 Kurfiss, Joanne G., Critical Thinking: Theory, Research, Practice and Possibilities, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report # 2, Washington DC, 1988. Marshall, Ray, and Tucker, Marc, Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations, Basic Books. New York, NY. 1992. Resnick, L. W., Education and Learning to Think, National Academy Press, 1987. Rubenfeld, M. Gaie, & Scheffer, Barbara K., Critical Thinking in Nursing: An Interactive Approach. J. B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia PA, 1995. Siegel, Harvey: Educating Reason: Rationality, CT and Education. Routledge Publishing. New York. 1989. Sternberg, Robert J.: Critical Thinking: Its Nature, Measurement, and Improvement. National Institute of Education, Washington DC, 1986. Toulmin, Stephen: The Uses of Argument. Cambridge University Press, 1969. Wade, Carole, and Tavris, Carol: Critical & Creative Thinking: The Case of Love and War. Harper Collins College Publisher. New York. NY 1993.

GOVERNMENT REPORTS U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) Documents National Assessment of College Student Learning: Getting Started, A Summary of Beginning Activities. NCES 93-116. National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identification of the Skills to Be Taught, Learned, and Assessed, A Report on the Proceedings of the Second Design Workshop, November 1992. NCES 94-286. National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identifying College Graduates' Essential Skills in Writing, Speech and Listening, and Critical Thinking. NCES 95-001.

About the Author Dr. Peter A. Facione and his co-investigators have been engaged in research and teaching about reasoning, decision-making, and effective individual and group thinking processes since 1967. Over the years they developed instruments to measure the core skills and habits of mind of effective thinking, these instruments are now in use in many different languages throughout the world. Since 1992 Dr. Facione has presented hundreds of workshops about effective teaching for thinking and about leadership, decision-making, leadership development, planning and budgeting, and learning outcomes assessment at national and international professional association meetings and on college and university throughout the nation. Dr. Facione, is a principal of the research and consulting firm, Measured Reasons, and a Senior Researcher with Insight Assessment. He earned his Ph.D. at Michigan State in 1971, and in subsequent years chaired the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, served as Dean of the School of Human Development and Community Service at California State University Fullerton, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University, and Provost of Loyola University Chicago. In 1999-2000 Dr. Facione was Chair of the American Conference of Academic Deans. He has been on many boards and panels, including the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the ACE Presidents’ Task Force on Education. He Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”

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has contributed articles to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Change - The Magazine of Higher Education, and Liberal Education. With Dr. Noreen Facione he co-authored Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making (2007) and Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment in the Health Sciences (2008). From 1988 through 1990 Dr. Facione was the principal investigator for the American Philosophical Association research project which culminated in the Delphi Report – An Expert Consensus Conceptualization of Critical Thinking. The executive summary of that report is available free of charge from Insight Assessment. His email is pfacione@measuredreasons.com Visit his website www.measuredreasons.com and the Insight Assessment website, www.insightassessment.com

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Attachment B The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking

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The Miniature Guide to

Critical Thinking C oncepts

and

T ools

By Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder

The Foundation for Critical Thinking www.criticalthinking.org 707-878-9100 cct@criticalthinking.org

LIMITED DOWNLOAD COPY Why A Critical Thinking Mini-Guide? This miniature guide focuses on of the essence of critical thinking concepts and tools distilled into pocket size. For faculty it provides a shared concept of critical thinking. For students it is a critical thinking supplement to any textbook for any course. Faculty can use it to design instruction, assignments, and tests in any subject. Students can use it to improve their learning in any content area. Its generic skills apply to all subjects. For example, critical thinkers are clear as to the purpose at hand and the question at issue. They question information, conclusions, and points of view. They strive to be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant. They seek to think beneath the surface, to be logical, and fair. They apply these skills to their reading and writing as well as to their speaking and listening. They apply them in history, science, math, philosophy, and the arts; in professional and personal life. When this guide is used as a supplement to the textbook in multiple courses, students begin to perceive the usefulness of critical thinking in every domain of learning. And if their instructors provide examples of the application of the subject to daily life, students begin to see that education is a tool for improving the quality of their lives. If you are a student using this mini-guide, get in the habit of carrying it with you to every class. Consult it frequently in analyzing and synthesizing what you are learning. Aim for deep internalization of the principles you find in itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;until using them becomes second nature. If successful, this guide will serve faculty, students, and the educational program simultaneously.

Richard Paul Center for Critical Thinking

Linda Elder Foundation for Critical Thinking

LIMITED DOWNLOAD COPY The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

Contents Why Critical Thinking? � �� 4 The Elements of Thought � �� 5 A Checklist for Reasoning �� 6 Questions Using the Elements of Thought �� 8 The Problem of Egocentric Thinking �� 9 Universal Intellectual Standards ��10 Template for Analyzing the Logic of Articles and Textbooks ��13 Criteria for Evaluating Reasoning ��14 Essential Intellectual Traits � ��15 Three Kinds of Questions � ��18 A Template for Problem-Solving ��19 Analyzing and Assessing Research � ��20 What Critical Thinkers Routinely Do � ��21 Stages of Critical Thinking Development � ��22 Fourth Edition © 2006 Foundation for Critical Thinking

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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

Why Critical Thinking? The Problem: Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. A Definition: Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. The Result: A well cultivated critical thinker: • raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely; • gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively; • comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; • thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and • communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems. Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It requires rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism. © 2006 Foundation for Critical Thinking

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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

The Elements of Thought

Point of View frame of reference, perspective, orientation

Purpose goal, objective

Question at issue

Implications and Consequences

problem, issue

Assumptions

Information

presupposition, taking for granted

Concepts

data, facts, observations, experiences

theories, Interpretation definitions, axioms, and inference laws, principles, conclusions, models solutions

Used With Sensitivity to Universal Intellectual Standards Clarity  Accuracy  Depth  Breadth  Significance Precision Relevance

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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

Clarity

Could you elaborate further? Could you give me an example? Could you illustrate what you mean?

Accuracy

How could we check on that? How could we find out if that is true? How could we verify or test that?

Precision

Could you be more specific? Could you give me more details? Could you be more exact?

Relevance

How does that relate to the problem? How does that bear on the question? How does that help us with the issue?

Depth

What factors make this a difficult problem? What are some of the complexities of this question? What are some of the difficulties we need to deal with?

Breadth

Do we need to look at this from another perspective? Do we need to consider another point of view? Do we need to look at this in other ways?

Logic Significance Fairness

Does all this make sense together? Does your first paragraph fit in with your last? Does what you say follow from the evidence? Is this the most important problem to consider? Is this the central idea to focus on? Which of these facts are most important? Do I have any vested interest in this issue? Am I sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others?

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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

Intellectual Integrity Intellectual Autonomy

Intellectual Empathy

Intellectual Humility

Intellectual Traits or Virtues

Confidence in Reason

Intellectual Perseverance

Intellectual Courage Fairmindedness

ÂŠ 2006 Foundation for Critical Thinking

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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

Critical thinkers routinely apply the intellectual standards to the elements of reasoning in order to develop intellectual traits.

T h e S ta n da r d s Clarity Accuracy Relevance Logicalness Breadth

Precision Significance Completeness Fairness Depth

Must be applied to

T h e E l e m e n ts As we learn to develop

Purposes Questions Points of view Information

Inferences Concepts Implications Assumptions

I n t e l l e c t ua l T r a its Intellectual Humility Intellectual Perseverance Intellectual Autonomy Confidence in Reason Intellectual Integrity Intellectual Empathy Intellectual Courage Fairmindedness

ÂŠ 2006 Foundation for Critical Thinking

www.criticalthinking.org

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