Module-1-D Critical Thinking PDF

III. To Evaluate Thinking, We Must Understand and Apply Intellectual Standards Clarity: understandable, the meaning can be grasped Could you elaborate further? Could you give me an example? Could you illustrate what you mean? Accuracy: free from errors or distortions, true How could we check o...

III. To Evaluate Thinking, We Must Understand and Apply Intellectual Standards Clarity: understandable, the meaning can be grasped Could you elaborate further? Could you give me an example? Could you illustrate what you mean? Accuracy: free from errors or distortions, true How could we check on that? How could we find out if that is true? How could we verify or test that? Precision: exact to the necessary level of detail Could you be more specific? Could you give me more details? Could you be more exact? Relevance: relating to the matter at hand How does that relate to the problem? How does that bear on the question? How does that help us with the issue? Depth: containing complexities and multiple interrelationships 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? Intellectu al Standards Breadth: Do we need to look at Logic: the parts make Does all this make encompassing multiple this from another sense together, no sense together? Does viewpoints perspective? Do we contradictions your first paragraph fit need to consider in with your last? Does another point of view? what you say follow Do we need to look at from the evidence? this in other ways? Significance: Is this the most Fairness: justifiable, Do I have any vested focusing on the important problem to not self-serving or one- interest in this issue? important, not trivial consider? Is this the sided Am I sympathetically central idea to focus representing the on? Which of these viewpoints of others? facts are most important? * Recommended but not a complete list IV. Fair-minded Thinking Critical thinking can serve two incompatible ends: self-centeredness or fairmindedness. We can use basic intellectual skills in either a selfish or a fair- minded way (Ibid, 15). Weak-sense critical thinkers: while it is working well for the thinker in some respects, it is missing certain important, higher-level skills and values of critical thinking. Most significantly, it fails to consider, in good faith, viewpoints contradicting its own viewpoint. It lacks fairmindedness. Sophistry is the art of winning arguments regardless of whatever else. They make unreasonable thinking look reasonable, and reasonable thinking looks unreasonable. The traits of the mind essential for critical thinking are interdependent. Strong-sense critical thinkers Rather than use their thinking to manipulate others and hide the truth, they use their thinking in an ethical, reasonable manner. Requires that we develop fairmindedness while we learn basic critical thinking skills and, thus, begin to ”practice” fairmindedness in our thinking. Fair-mindedness requires intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual empathy, intellectual honesty, intellectual perseverance, confidence in reason (to be persuaded by good reasoning), and intellectual autonomy. The traits of the mind essential for critical thinking are interdependent. Intellectual Humility: Strive to discover the extent of your ignorance. The opposite of intellectual humility is intellectual arrogance, claiming to know more than what one actually knows. Intellectual Autonomy: Value Independence of Thought (to think for oneself). Intellectual autonomy means thinking for oneself while adhering to standards of rationality. Intellectual Courage: Develop the courage to challenge popular beliefs, our own prejudices and ignorance. The opposite of intellectual courage is intellectual cowardice, the fear of ideas that do not belong to one’s own.  Intellectual Perseverance: Refuse to give up easily; work your way through complexities and frustration. One has intellectual perseverance when one does not give up in the face of complexity or frustration. The opposite of intellectual perseverance is intellectual laziness, demonstrated in the tendency to give up quickly when faced with an intellectually challenging task. Intellectual Empathy: Learn to Enter Opposing Views Empathically. To have intellectual empathy is to put oneself imaginatively in the place of others on a routine basis to understand them genuinely. The opposite of intellectual empathy is intellectual self-centeredness, thinking centered on self. Intellectual Integrity: Hold Yourself to the same standards to which you hold others. Intellectual integrity means striving to be true to one’s own disciplined thinking and holding oneself to the same standards that one expects others to meet. The opposite of intellectual integrity is intellectual hypocrisy, a state of mind unconcerned with true honesty and often marked by unconscious contradictions and inconsistencies. Confidence in Reason: Respect Evidence and Reasoning and value them as tools for discovering the truth. The opposite of Confidence in Reason is intellectual distrust of reason. Group Assignment Open the 2014 book by Paul and Elder, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, to pp. 79-80. Read An Everyday Example: Jack and Jill. Create a scenario between at least 2 people with the same complexity as the Jack and Jill example, showing an improper use of at least 4 parts of thinking and showing how this is corrected by 5 standards of thinking. References Paul, Richard and Linda Elder. 2014. Critical Thinking: Tools for taking Charge of your Learning and your Life, 3rd edition. Pearson Education Limited, England. __________. 2006. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. The Foundation for Critical Thinking. Available from https://www.criticalthinking.org/files/Concepts_Tools.pdf. Accessed: 3 June 2023