Lecture 1. What Is Critical Thinking PDF

Critical Thinking Dr. Abderrahim Benlahcene Assistant Professor of Psychology College of Humanities and Sciences Fall of 2024-2025 Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. —Bertrand Russell (quoted in Macmillan, 1989)  "Think...

Critical Thinking Dr. Abderrahim Benlahcene Assistant Professor of Psychology College of Humanities and Sciences Fall of 2024-2025 Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. —Bertrand Russell (quoted in Macmillan, 1989)  "Think about it!" How many times have you heard this phrase or said it yourself? Look around you. Watch a student solving a calculus problem, or a programmer "debugging" a computer program, or a politician arguing that the Strategic Defense Initiative will not work. Watch a child absorbed in a fairy tale, or an architect designing a skyscraper, or a senior citizen planning to live on a fixed income. What are they doing that makes their faces appear so serious, so quizzical—so much like Rodin's famous statue, "The Thinker," which inspired the pose for the beautiful woman thinker on the cover of this book? They are all "lost in thought," yet lost seems like a strange word to describe the process of thinking—maybe "creating knowledge in thought" would be a more appropriate phrase. Critical Thinking  Critical thinking skills are not just about learning information: they’re part of metacognition, meaning the higher-order skills that equip us to adapt and to continue learning throughout our lives.  Metacognition: thinking about thinking itself; the higher-order skills that allow you to successfully keep on learning, improving and adapting.  As a starting point, let’s approach it as the opposite of something we are all guilty of sometimes – uncritical thinking – in which we take things at face value without pausing to consider whether this is sensible or justified  Critical Thinking  Critical thinking is what a college education is all about. In many high schools, the emphasis tends to be on “lower-order thinking.”  Students are simply expected to passively absorb information and then repeat it back on tests. In college, by contrast, the emphasis is on fostering “higher-order thinking”: the active, intelligent evaluation of ideas and information.  This doesn’t mean that factual information and rote learning are ignored in college. But it is not the main goal of a college education to teach students what to think.  The main goal is to teach students how to think—that is, how to become independent, self-directed thinkers and learners.  Critical Thinking  Often when we use the word critical we mean “negative and fault-finding.” This is the sense we have in mind, example, when we complain about a parent or a friend who we think is unfairly critical of what we do or say.  But critical also means “involving or exercising skilled judgment or observation” In this sense, critical thinking means thinking clearly and intelligently.  More precisely, critical thinking is “the general term given to a wide range of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions needed to effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments and truth claims; to discover and overcome personal preconceptions and biases; to formulate and present convincing reasons in support of conclusions; and to make reasonable, intelligent decisions about what to believe and what to do.” Critical thinking definition  Setting out actively to understand what is really going on by using reasoning, evaluating evidence and thinking carefully about the process of thinking itself.  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, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. (Michael Scriven & Richard Paul). Critical thinking  Try to think critically about each of the 4 claims below. Are they reasonable and reliable, or should you think twice before accepting them? Why?  Scepticism: not automatically accepting something you hear, read or see as true.  Objectivity: trying to understand something from a more neutral perspective, rather than relying on a single opinion or the first piece of information that comes to hand. “They say it’s probably the best oranges in the world? It must be great: I’ll buy some” (Skepticism or objectivity) Statement (1) – that I should buy something which claims to be the best beer in the world – is a piece of uncritical thinking that needs to be viewed with scepticism.  Scepticism: means refusing to take something at face value, and instead asking questions about its reliability. In this case, skeptical reflection should lead us to realize that this is an advertising slogan, and thus unlikely to embody an expert assessment of every beer in the world. “She wrote the world’s leading psychology textbook: her views on psychology must be worth taking seriously” (Skepticism or objectivity) “French fries are delicious. I’m going to eat them all the time. (Skepticism or objectivity) “The video my friend posted on Facebook is pathetic. I’m going to post an insulting personal comment” (Skepticism or objectivity) Critical thinking  Both objectivity and skepticism are also possible only to a degree, you can never be entirely objective, and you can never distrust absolutely everything you think you know.  Thinking is always rooted in who you are, what you have experienced and what you feel.  The trick is reaching an accommodation with this: knowing yourself better and practicing techniques that help you understand the world as carefully and realistically as possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eEBuqwY-nE