critical thinking skills in philosophy

8. Philosophy and Critical Thinking: The Value of Asking the Deep Questions

Although we’ve emphasized in this guide that critical thinking skills cannot be taught in isolation from subject matter, there is a great deal of critical thinking to be learned from a subject that studies thinking itself: namely, philosophy. Philosophy and critical thinking are a natural pair.

American schools, unlike schools in some other parts of the world, have been hesitant to adopt philosophy courses into the curriculum. (One exception is the International Baccalaureate curriculum which includes a course called “Theory of Knowledge.”) One reason for this is that philosophical texts are often thought of as too dense and difficult for primary and secondary school students. 

Philosophy does, of course, involve a corpus of often quite difficult texts from different traditions, but philosophical reasoning itself is not at all outside the reach of even young children. Indeed, children show an interest in philosophical questions at a very young age. 

Philosophical reasoning itself is not at all outside the reach of even young children. Indeed, children show an interest in philosophical questions at a very young age.

And older students, especially those who might be demotivated or struggle in other subjects, can be stimulated by the more open-ended, argumentative, and profound nature of philosophical thinking. Philosophical thinking also has a unique, interdisciplinary character that makes it ideal for helping students see connections across disciplines.

Philosophy for Kids

Philosophical reasoning is not something foreign to kids that needs to be forced on them from the outside. They all naturally ask philosophical questions like : 

• “How can we be sure that everything is not a dream?”
• “When Dad tells me to be good, what does he mean?”
• “Why is time so slow sometimes?”

Philosophy for kids programs and courses can help encourage this inquisitiveness and help kids to learn to channel it into a reflective frame of mind.

Many philosophy for kids programs attempt to initiate this type of thinking through narrative. For example, the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children ( IAPC ) at Montclair State University, which goes back to the work of Matthew Lipman in the 1970s, uses stories to stimulate discussion of a philosophical topic. Children then discuss the topic in a “community of inquiry” where the teacher acts as a facilitator, who “both guides the children and models for them — by asking open-ended questions, posing alternative views, seeking clarification, questioning reasons, and by demonstrating self-correcting behavior.”

Other philosophy for kids initiatives use other stimuli, like visuals, thought experiments, or simply probing questions. But they share the goal of building a “community of inquiry,” where students get a chance to discuss and refine their ideas with one another, undertake to understand outside perspectives, and consider big questions outside the scope of more standard learning.

There is evidence that these kinds of philosophical activities can have a positive impact on student achievement . The Education Endowment Foundation in the UK found in an initial study of Philosophy for Children for 8-10 year olds that the program was promising: students made gains in math and reading compared to those who did not participate.

Teaching Philosophy to Middle and High School Students

As they get older, students are ready for more complex philosophical reasoning as well as instruction in formal logic. Philosophy can, moreover, be a driver of interdisciplinarity during middle and high school, since reflecting on the state of knowledge in other disciplines is one of the core tasks of philosophy.

Philosophy can, moreover, be a driver of interdisciplinarity during middle and high school, since reflecting on the state of knowledge in other disciplines is one of the core tasks of philosophy.

This kind of interdisciplinarity may help address one of the thorniest problems with critical thinking instruction: namely, transferability. As we’ve noted, critical thinking skills in one domain do not easily transfer to other domains. Teaching general critical thinking skills without any context is thus generally not effective . But that doesn’t mean students shouldn’t spend time thinking about how the skills and knowledge they’ve gained in one domain relate to those gained in another. Philosophical reasoning is a perfect complement here. 

One way teachers can get middle and high school students to start thinking more philosophically in an interdisciplinary context is through epistemology, or the study of knowledge.

Idea for Discussion : What Is Knowledge?

Philosophy is concerned, more than many other disciplines, with definitions. It takes concepts that we might take for granted, like knowledge, and problematizes them, by asking questions like:

• How do we know something?
• Are there general principles for what counts as knowledge or does it depend on the discipline?
• How do we come to know things in science? In our daily lives? In religion or aesthetic experiences?

It’s easy for these conversations to become too abstract so it’s best to start with something concrete. Break students up and assign them each a particular subject matter: art, science, religion, and morality, for example. Ask them to define knowledge in each of these domains?

• How do you know a piece of artwork is good?
• How is a scientific theory known to be true?
• How do people know a religious belief they have is true?
• How do we know the difference between right and wrong moral actions?

Ask students to come up with a definition. As they discuss, circulate to make sure students are using examples from their own study and experiences and trying to develop a list of criteria for knowledge in these different domains.

Bring the class back together to evaluate the definitions. Ask students from other groups to scrutinize each others’ definitions. The teacher might raise certain objections to try and deepen discussion:

• In science, for example, a group might say a theory is known to be true because it is verified in experimental results. But Isaac Newton’s physics were eventually shown to be inaccurate in certain cases. Is it right to say that before Albert Einstein came along, with a new, more experimentally accurate theory, people knew Newton’s theory was true? Or did they only think they knew?

Then, ask students to reflect on whether there is anything shared among these different kinds of “knowledge.” Questions that might come up include:

• Are there any general shared principles of inquiry common to these different domains: for example, experimentation or learning from one’s predecessors?
• Is it just happenstance that we happen to apply the words “know” and “knowledge” to these very different activities?
• Can we draw a clean distinction between practical knowledge (“knowing how”) and theoretical knowledge (“knowing that”)?

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Sources and Resources

Goering, Sara, Nicholas J. Shudak, and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds (2013). Philosophy in schools: An introduction for philosophers and teachers . Routledge. Collection of essays on different aspects of pre-college philosophy education.

Lone, J. M. & Burroughs, M.D. (2016). Philosophy in education: Questioning and dialogue in schools . Rowman & Littlefield. Argument for introducing philosophy in the K-12 context, with lesson ideas for elementary, middle, and high school. 

Millett, S., & Tapper, A. (2012). Benefits of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools. Educational Philosophy and Theory , 44(5), 546-567. Overview on research into philosophy for kids and collaborative philosophical inquiry more broadly. 

Pritchard, Michael (2018). Philosophy for children . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Encyclopedia entry on the history of rationale for philosophy for children. Also offers details on different approaches and more resources.

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Unit 1: What Is Philosophy?

LOGOS: Critical Thinking, Arguments, and Fallacies

Heather Wilburn, Ph.D

Critical Thinking:

With respect to critical thinking, it seems that everyone uses this phrase. Yet, there is a fear that this is becoming a buzz-word (i.e. a word or phrase you use because it’s popular or enticing in some way). Ultimately, this means that we may be using the phrase without a clear sense of what we even mean by it. So, here we are going to think about what this phrase might mean and look at some examples. As a former colleague of mine, Henry Imler, explains:

By critical thinking, we refer to thinking that is recursive in nature. Any time we encounter new information or new ideas, we double back and rethink our prior conclusions on the subject to see if any other conclusions are better suited. Critical thinking can be contrasted with Authoritarian thinking. This type of thinking seeks to preserve the original conclusion. Here, thinking and conclusions are policed, as to question the system is to threaten the system. And threats to the system demand a defensive response. Critical thinking is short-circuited in authoritarian systems so that the conclusions are conserved instead of being open for revision. [1]

A condition for being recursive is to be open and not arrogant. If we come to a point where we think we have a handle on what is True, we are no longer open to consider, discuss, or accept information that might challenge our Truth. One becomes closed off and rejects everything that is different or strange–out of sync with one’s own Truth. To be open and recursive entails a sense of thinking about your beliefs in a critical and reflective way, so that you have a chance to either strengthen your belief system or revise it if needed. I have been teaching philosophy and humanities classes for nearly 20 years; critical thinking is the single most important skill you can develop. In close but second place is communication, In my view, communication skills follow as a natural result of critical thinking because you are attempting to think through and articulate stronger and rationally justified views. At the risk of sounding cliche, education isn’t about instilling content; it is about learning how to think.

In your philosophy classes your own ideas and beliefs will very likely be challenged. This does not mean that you will be asked to abandon your beliefs, but it does mean that you might be asked to defend them. Additionally, your mind will probably be twisted and turned about, which can be an uncomfortable experience. Yet, if at all possible, you should cherish these experiences and allow them to help you grow as a thinker. To be challenged and perplexed is difficult; however, it is worthwhile because it compels deeper thinking and more significant levels of understanding. In turn, thinking itself can transform us not only in thought, but in our beliefs, and our actions. Hannah Arendt, a social and political philosopher that came to the United States in exile during WWII, relates the transformative elements of philosophical thinking to Socrates. She writes:

Socrates…who is commonly said to have believed in the teachability of virtue, seems to have held that talking and thinking about piety, justice, courage, and the rest were liable to make men more pious, more just, more courageous, even though they were not given definitions or “values” to direct their further conduct. [2]

Thinking and communication are transformative insofar as these activities have the potential to alter our perspectives and, thus, change our behavior. In fact, Arendt connects the ability to think critically and reflectively to morality. As she notes above, morality does not have to give a predetermined set of rules to affect our behavior. Instead, morality can also be related to the open and sometimes perplexing conversations we have with others (and ourselves) about moral issues and moral character traits. Theodor W. Adorno, another philosopher that came to the United States in exile during WWII, argues that autonomous thinking (i.e. thinking for oneself) is crucial if we want to prevent the occurrence of another event like Auschwitz, a concentration camp where over 1 million individuals died during the Holocaust. [3] To think autonomously entails reflective and critical thinking—a type of thinking rooted in philosophical activity and a type of thinking that questions and challenges social norms and the status quo. In this sense thinking is critical of what is, allowing us to think beyond what is and to think about what ought to be, or what ought not be. This is one of the transformative elements of philosophical activity and one that is useful in promoting justice and ethical living.

With respect to the meaning of education, the German philosopher Hegel uses the term bildung, which means education or upbringing, to indicate the differences between the traditional type of education that focuses on facts and memorization, and education as transformative. Allen Wood explains how Hegel uses the term bildung: it is “a process of self-transformation and an acquisition of the power to grasp and articulate the reasons for what one believes or knows.” [4] If we think back through all of our years of schooling, particularly those subject matters that involve the teacher passing on information that is to be memorized and repeated, most of us would be hard pressed to recall anything substantial. However, if the focus of education is on how to think and the development of skills include analyzing, synthesizing, and communicating ideas and problems, most of us will use those skills whether we are in the field of philosophy, politics, business, nursing, computer programming, or education. In this sense, philosophy can help you develop a strong foundational skill set that will be marketable for your individual paths. While philosophy is not the only subject that will foster these skills, its method is one that heavily focuses on the types of activities that will help you develop such skills.

Let’s turn to discuss arguments. Arguments consist of a set of statements, which are claims that something is or is not the case, or is either true or false. The conclusion of your argument is a statement that is being argued for, or the point of view being argued for. The other statements serve as evidence or support for your conclusion; we refer to these statements as premises. It’s important to keep in mind that a statement is either true or false, so questions, commands, or exclamations are not statements. If we are thinking critically we will not accept a statement as true or false without good reason(s), so our premises are important here. Keep in mind the idea that supporting statements are called premises and the statement that is being supported is called the conclusion. Here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: Capital punishment is morally justifiable since it restores some sense of

balance to victims or victims’ families.

Let’s break it down so it’s easier to see in what we might call a typical argument form:

Premise: Capital punishment restores some sense of balance to victims or victims’ families.

Conclusion: Capital punishment is morally justifiable.

Example 2 : Because innocent people are sometimes found guilty and potentially

executed, capital punishment is not morally justifiable.

Premise: Innocent people are sometimes found guilty and potentially executed.

Conclusion: Capital punishment is not morally justifiable.

It is worth noting the use of the terms “since” and “because” in these arguments. Terms or phrases like these often serve as signifiers that we are looking at evidence, or a premise.

Check out another example:

Example 3 : All human beings are mortal. Heather is a human being. Therefore,

Heather is mortal.

Premise 1: All human beings are mortal.

Premise 2: Heather is a human being.

Conclusion: Heather is mortal.

In this example, there are a couple of things worth noting: First, there can be more than one premise. In fact, you could have a rather complex argument with several premises. If you’ve written an argumentative paper you may have encountered arguments that are rather complex. Second, just as the arguments prior had signifiers to show that we are looking at evidence, this argument has a signifier (i.e. therefore) to demonstrate the argument’s conclusion.

So many arguments!!! Are they all equally good?

No, arguments are not equally good; there are many ways to make a faulty argument. In fact, there are a lot of different types of arguments and, to some extent, the type of argument can help us figure out if the argument is a good one. For a full elaboration of arguments, take a logic class! Here’s a brief version:

Deductive Arguments: in a deductive argument the conclusion necessarily follows the premises. Take argument Example 3 above. It is absolutely necessary that Heather is a mortal, if she is a human being and if mortality is a specific condition for being human. We know that all humans die, so that’s tight evidence. This argument would be a very good argument; it is valid (i.e the conclusion necessarily follows the premises) and it is sound (i.e. all the premises are true).

Inductive Arguments : in an inductive argument the conclusion likely (at best) follows the premises. Let’s have an example:

Example 4 : 98.9% of all TCC students like pizza. You are a TCC student. Thus, you like pizza.

Premise 1: 98.9% of all TCC students like pizza

Premise 2: You are a TCC student.

Conclusion: You like pizza. (*Thus is a conclusion indicator)

In this example, the conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow; it likely follows. But you might be part of that 1.1% for whatever reason. Inductive arguments are good arguments if they are strong. So, instead of saying an inductive argument is valid, we say it is strong. You can also use the term sound to describe the truth of the premises, if they are true. Let’s suppose they are true and you absolutely love Hideaway pizza. Let’s also assume you are a TCC student. So, the argument is really strong and it is sound.

There are many types of inductive argument, including: causal arguments, arguments based on probabilities or statistics, arguments that are supported by analogies, and arguments that are based on some type of authority figure. So, when you encounter an argument based on one of these types, think about how strong the argument is. If you want to see examples of the different types, a web search (or a logic class!) will get you where you need to go.

Some arguments are faulty, not necessarily because of the truth or falsity of the premises, but because they rely on psychological and emotional ploys. These are bad arguments because people shouldn’t accept your conclusion if you are using scare tactics or distracting and manipulating reasoning. Arguments that have this issue are called fallacies. There are a lot of fallacies, so, again, if you want to know more a web search will be useful. We are going to look at several that seem to be the most relevant for our day-to-day experiences.

• Inappropriate Appeal to Authority : We are definitely going to use authority figures in our lives (e.g. doctors, lawyers, mechanics, financial advisors, etc.), but we need to make sure that the authority figure is a reliable one.

Things to look for here might include: reputation in the field, not holding widely controversial views, experience, education, and the like. So, if we take an authority figure’s word and they’re not legit, we’ve committed the fallacy of appeal to authority.

Example 5 : I think I am going to take my investments to Voya. After all, Steven Adams advocates for Voya in an advertisement I recently saw.

If we look at the criteria for evaluating arguments that appeal to authority figures, it is pretty easy to see that Adams is not an expert in the finance field. Thus, this is an inappropropriate appeal to authority.

• Slippery Slope Arguments : Slippery slope arguments are found everywhere it seems. The essential characteristic of a slippery slope argument is that it uses problematic premises to argue that doing ‘x’ will ultimately lead to other actions that are extreme, unlikely, and disastrous. You can think of this type of argument as a faulty chain of events or domino effect type of argument.

Example 6 : If you don’t study for your philosophy exam you will not do well on the exam. This will lead to you failing the class. The next thing you know you will have lost your scholarship, dropped out of school, and will be living on the streets without any chance of getting a job.

While you should certainly study for your philosophy exam, if you don’t it is unlikely that this will lead to your full economic demise.

One challenge to evaluating slippery slope arguments is that they are predictions, so we cannot be certain about what will or will not actually happen. But this chain of events type of argument should be assessed in terms of whether the outcome will likely follow if action ‘x” is pursued.

• Faulty Analogy : We often make arguments based on analogy and these can be good arguments. But we often use faulty reasoning with analogies and this is what we want to learn how to avoid.

When evaluating an argument that is based on an analogy here are a few things to keep in mind: you want to look at the relevant similarities and the relevant differences between the things that are being compared. As a general rule, if there are more differences than similarities the argument is likely weak.

Example 7 : Alcohol is legal. Therefore, we should legalize marijuana too.

So, the first step here is to identify the two things being compared, which are alcohol and marijuana. Next, note relevant similarities and differences. These might include effects on health, community safety, economic factors, criminal justice factors, and the like.

This is probably not the best argument in support for marijuana legalization. It would seem that one could just as easily conclude that since marijuana is illegal, alcohol should be too. In fact, one might find that alcohol is an often abused and highly problematic drug for many people, so it is too risky to legalize marijuana if it is similar to alcohol.

• Appeal to Emotion : Arguments should be based on reason and evidence, not emotional tactics. When we use an emotional tactic, we are essentially trying to manipulate someone into accepting our position by evoking pity or fear, when our positions should actually be backed by reasonable and justifiable evidence.

Example 8 : Officer please don’t give me a speeding ticket. My girlfriend broke up with me last night, my alarm didn’t go off this morning, and I’m late for class.

While this is a really horrible start to one’s day, being broken up with and an alarm malfunctioning is not a justifiable reason for speeding.

Example 9 : Professor, I’d like you to remember that my mother is a dean here at TCC. I’m sure that she will be very disappointed if I don’t receive an A in your class.

This is a scare tactic and is not a good way to make an argument. Scare tactics can come in the form of psychological or physical threats; both forms are to be avoided.

• Appeal to Ignorance : This fallacy occurs when our argument relies on lack of evidence when evidence is actually needed to support a position.

Example 10 : No one has proven that sasquatch doesn’t exist; therefore it does exist.

Example 11 : No one has proven God exists; therefore God doesn’t exist.

The key here is that lack of evidence against something cannot be an argument for something. Lack of evidence can only show that we are ignorant of the facts.

• Straw Man : A straw man argument is a specific type of argument that is intended to weaken an opponent’s position so that it is easier to refute. So, we create a weaker version of the original argument (i.e. a straw man argument), so when we present it everyone will agree with us and denounce the original position.

Example 12 : Women are crazy arguing for equal treatment. No one wants women hanging around men’s locker rooms or saunas.

This is a misrepresentation of arguments for equal treatment. Women (and others arguing for equal treatment) are not trying to obtain equal access to men’s locker rooms or saunas.

The best way to avoid this fallacy is to make sure that you are not oversimplifying or misrepresenting others’ positions. Even if we don’t agree with a position, we want to make the strongest case against it and this can only be accomplished if we can refute the actual argument, not a weakened version of it. So, let’s all bring the strongest arguments we have to the table!

• Red Herring : A red herring is a distraction or a change in subject matter. Sometimes this is subtle, but if you find yourself feeling lost in the argument, take a close look and make sure there is not an attempt to distract you.

Example 13 : Can you believe that so many people are concerned with global warming? The real threat to our country is terrorism.

It could be the case that both global warming and terrorism are concerns for us. But the red herring fallacy is committed when someone tries to distract you from the argument at hand by bringing up another issue or side-stepping a question. Politicians are masters at this, by the way.

• Appeal to the Person : This fallacy is also referred to as the ad hominem fallacy. We commit this fallacy when we dismiss someone’s argument or position by attacking them instead of refuting the premises or support for their argument.

Example 14 : I am not going to listen to what Professor ‘X’ has to say about the history of religion. He told one of his previous classes he wasn’t religious.

The problem here is that the student is dismissing course material based on the professor’s religious views and not evaluating the course content on its own ground.

To avoid this fallacy, make sure that you target the argument or their claims and not the person making the argument in your rebuttal.

• Hasty Generalization : We make and use generalizations on a regular basis and in all types of decisions. We rely on generalizations when trying to decide which schools to apply to, which phone is the best for us, which neighborhood we want to live in, what type of job we want, and so on. Generalizations can be strong and reliable, but they can also be fallacious. There are three main ways in which a generalization can commit a fallacy: your sample size is too small, your sample size is not representative of the group you are making a generalization about, or your data could be outdated.

Example 15 : I had horrible customer service at the last Starbucks I was at. It is clear that Starbucks employees do not care about their customers. I will never visit another Starbucks again.

The problem with this generalization is that the claim made about all Starbucks is based on one experience. While it is tempting to not spend your money where people are rude to their customers, this is only one employee and presumably doesn’t reflect all employees or the company as a whole. So, to make this a stronger generalization we would want to have a larger sample size (multiple horrible experiences) to support the claim. Let’s look at a second hasty generalization:

Example 16 : I had horrible customer service at the Starbucks on 81st street. It is clear that Starbucks employees do not care about their customers. I will never visit another Starbucks again.

The problem with this generalization mirrors the previous problem in that the claim is based on only one experience. But there’s an additional issue here as well, which is that the claim is based off of an experience at one location. To make a claim about the whole company, our sample group needs to be larger than one and it needs to come from a variety of locations.

• Begging the Question : An argument begs the question when the argument’s premises assume the conclusion, instead of providing support for the conclusion. One common form of begging the question is referred to as circular reasoning.

Example 17 : Of course, everyone wants to see the new Marvel movie is because it is the most popular movie right now!

The conclusion here is that everyone wants to see the new Marvel movie, but the premise simply assumes that is the case by claiming it is the most popular movie. Remember the premise should give reasons for the conclusion, not merely assume it to be true.

• Equivocation : In the English language there are many words that have different meanings (e.g. bank, good, right, steal, etc.). When we use the same word but shift the meaning without explaining this move to your audience, we equivocate the word and this is a fallacy. So, if you must use the same word more than once and with more than one meaning you need to explain that you’re shifting the meaning you intend. Although, most of the time it is just easier to use a different word.

Example 18 : Yes, philosophy helps people argue better, but should we really encourage people to argue? There is enough hostility in the world.

Here, argue is used in two different senses. The meaning of the first refers to the philosophical meaning of argument (i.e. premises and a conclusion), whereas the second sense is in line with the common use of argument (i.e. yelling between two or more people, etc.).

• Henry Imler, ed., Phronesis An Ethics Primer with Readings, (2018). 7-8. ↵
• Arendt, Hannah, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research, 38:3 (1971: Autumn): 431. ↵
• Theodor W. Adorno, “Education After Auschwitz,” in Can One Live After Auschwitz, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003): 23. ↵
• Allen W. Wood, “Hegel on Education,” in Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives, ed. Amelie O. Rorty (London: Routledge 1998): 302. ↵

LOGOS: Critical Thinking, Arguments, and Fallacies Copyright © 2020 by Heather Wilburn, Ph.D is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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[C01] What is critical thinking?

Module: Critical thinking

• C02. Improve our thinking skills
• C03. Defining critical thinking
• C04. Teaching critical thinking
• C05. Beyond critical thinking
• C06. The Cognitive Reflection Test
• C07. Critical thinking assessment
• C08. Videos and courses on critical thinking
• C09. Famous quotes
• C10. History of critical thinking

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- Blaise Pascal

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Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following :

• understand the logical connections between ideas
• identify, construct and evaluate arguments
• detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
• solve problems systematically
• identify the relevance and importance of ideas
• reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values

Critical thinking is not a matter of accumulating information. A person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. A critical thinker is able to deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform himself.

Critical thinking should not be confused with being argumentative or being critical of other people. Although critical thinking skills can be used in exposing fallacies and bad reasoning, critical thinking can also play an important role in cooperative reasoning and constructive tasks. Critical thinking can help us acquire knowledge, improve our theories, and strengthen arguments. We can use critical thinking to enhance work processes and improve social institutions.

Some people believe that critical thinking hinders creativity because it requires following the rules of logic and rationality, but creativity might require breaking rules. This is a misconception. Critical thinking is quite compatible with thinking "out-of-the-box", challenging consensus and pursuing less popular approaches. If anything, critical thinking is an essential part of creativity because we need critical thinking to evaluate and improve our creative ideas.

§1. The importance of critical thinking

Critical thinking is a domain-general thinking skill . The ability to think clearly and rationally is important whatever we choose to do. If you work in education, research, finance, management or the legal profession, then critical thinking is obviously important. But critical thinking skills are not restricted to a particular subject area. Being able to think well and solve problems systematically is an asset for any career.

Critical thinking is very important in the new knowledge economy. The global knowledge economy is driven by information and technology. One has to be able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. The new economy places increasing demands on flexible intellectual skills, and the ability to analyse information and integrate diverse sources of knowledge in solving problems. Good critical thinking promotes such thinking skills, and is very important in the fast-changing workplace.

Critical thinking enhances language and presentation skills . Thinking clearly and systematically can improve the way we express our ideas. In learning how to analyse the logical structure of texts, critical thinking also improves comprehension abilities.

Critical thinking promotes creativity . To come up with a creative solution to a problem involves not just having new ideas. It must also be the case that the new ideas being generated are useful and relevant to the task at hand. Critical thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating new ideas, selecting the best ones and modifying them if necessary

Critical thinking is crucial for self-reflection . In order to live a meaningful life and to structure our lives accordingly, we need to justify and reflect on our values and decisions. Critical thinking provides the tools for this process of self-evaluation.

Good critical thinking is the foundation of science and democracy . Science requires the critical use of reason in experimentation and theory confirmation. The proper functioning of a liberal democracy requires citizens who can think critically about social issues to inform their judgments about proper governance and to overcome biases and prejudice.

§2. The future of critical thinking

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which includes developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence and machine-learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3-D printing, and genetics and biotechnology, will cause widespread disruption not only to business models but also to labour markets over the next five years, with enormous change predicted in the skill sets needed to thrive in the new landscape.

The top three skills that supposed to be most relevant are thinking skills related to critical thinking, creativity, and their practical application. These are the cognitive skills that our website focuses on.

§3. For teachers

• The ideas on this page were discussed in a blog post on edutopia. The author uses the critical thinking framework here to apply to K-12 education. Very relevant to school teachers!

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critical thinking , in educational theory, mode of cognition using deliberative reasoning and impartial scrutiny of information to arrive at a possible solution to a problem. From the perspective of educators, critical thinking encompasses both a set of logical skills that can be taught and a disposition toward reflective open inquiry that can be cultivated . The term critical thinking was coined by American philosopher and educator John Dewey in the book How We Think (1910) and was adopted by the progressive education movement as a core instructional goal that offered a dynamic modern alternative to traditional educational methods such as rote memorization.

Critical thinking is characterized by a broad set of related skills usually including the abilities to

• break down a problem into its constituent parts to reveal its underlying logic and assumptions
• recognize and account for one’s own biases in judgment and experience
• collect and assess relevant evidence from either personal observations and experimentation or by gathering external information
• adjust and reevaluate one’s own thinking in response to what one has learned
• form a reasoned assessment in order to propose a solution to a problem or a more accurate understanding of the topic at hand

Theorists have noted that such skills are only valuable insofar as a person is inclined to use them. Consequently, they emphasize that certain habits of mind are necessary components of critical thinking. This disposition may include curiosity, open-mindedness, self-awareness, empathy , and persistence.

Although there is a generally accepted set of qualities that are associated with critical thinking, scholarly writing about the term has highlighted disagreements over its exact definition and whether and how it differs from related concepts such as problem solving . In addition, some theorists have insisted that critical thinking be regarded and valued as a process and not as a goal-oriented skill set to be used to solve problems. Critical-thinking theory has also been accused of reflecting patriarchal assumptions about knowledge and ways of knowing that are inherently biased against women.

Dewey, who also used the term reflective thinking , connected critical thinking to a tradition of rational inquiry associated with modern science . From the turn of the 20th century, he and others working in the overlapping fields of psychology , philosophy , and educational theory sought to rigorously apply the scientific method to understand and define the process of thinking. They conceived critical thinking to be related to the scientific method but more open, flexible, and self-correcting; instead of a recipe or a series of steps, critical thinking would be a wider set of skills, patterns, and strategies that allow someone to reason through an intellectual topic, constantly reassessing assumptions and potential explanations in order to arrive at a sound judgment and understanding.

In the progressive education movement in the United States , critical thinking was seen as a crucial component of raising citizens in a democratic society. Instead of imparting a particular series of lessons or teaching only canonical subject matter, theorists thought that teachers should train students in how to think. As critical thinkers, such students would be equipped to be productive and engaged citizens who could cooperate and rationally overcome differences inherent in a pluralistic society.

Beginning in the 1970s and ’80s, critical thinking as a key outcome of school and university curriculum leapt to the forefront of U.S. education policy. In an atmosphere of renewed Cold War competition and amid reports of declining U.S. test scores, there were growing fears that the quality of education in the United States was falling and that students were unprepared. In response, a concerted effort was made to systematically define curriculum goals and implement standardized testing regimens , and critical-thinking skills were frequently included as a crucially important outcome of a successful education. A notable event in this movement was the release of the 1980 report of the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities that called for the U.S. Department of Education to include critical thinking on its list of “basic skills.” Three years later the California State University system implemented a policy that required every undergraduate student to complete a course in critical thinking.

Critical thinking continued to be put forward as a central goal of education in the early 21st century. Its ubiquity in the language of education policy and in such guidelines as the Common Core State Standards in the United States generated some criticism that the concept itself was both overused and ill-defined. In addition, an argument was made by teachers, theorists, and others that educators were not being adequately trained to teach critical thinking.

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How can I develop my critical thinking skills?

I am a freshman engineering student going to college. I want to learn how to think critically and to become a critical thinker and a sharp arguer. I am interested in philosophy, because I am curious about the world, creationism, and everything, and philosophy answers many hard questions. I plan on taking a course or two in philosophy, because I want to improve my critical thinking skills. I was astonished and thrilled with all of your thinking skills when I read some of the posts here, and I want to be somewhat like you.

With that all said, what are your advice on becoming a critical thinker? What do you recommend me doing? I like writing and math and science. I know three and a half languages, and don't hate writing!

• linguistics
• knowledge-representation
• This isn't really a good fit for our format here, but I think it may make a good Community Wiki question. –  stoicfury Commented Sep 14, 2013 at 9:29
• 2 How does one know half a language? –  Mozibur Ullah Commented Sep 14, 2013 at 12:30
• @Mozibur Ullah- My apologizes for expressing myself vaguely and uncleanly. One knows half a language when one knows half a language period It's more like an expression.Since I only studied the language for 2 years, and know pretty much half(the basics and the intermediate ) of the language, I said I know half of the language, and also because I did not know the language well, or completely. –  Andy Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 0:50
• Critical thinking is one that needs to be developed in my point of view. coming to the question how to develop critical thinking woule be just follow the routine more carefully than you do it now and also try to get involved in mind games (Playing chess would be a good option as it requires lot of thinking). Also in my view critical thinking combined with positive attitude is must. May be I have not answered clearly but this is what I think... –  Siva Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 11:14
• 1 Does this answer your question? How do you progress in self-learning Critical Thinking, after completing an introductory textbook? –  User Commented Feb 6, 2023 at 9:42

7 Answers 7

I think it is very insightful of you to want to learn to be a better critical thinker. That action in and of itself makes me think you are already more of a critical thinker than many others — as merely a freshman you are carefully thinking about and planning what will best help you in the future.

Not the Answer You're Looking For Unfortunately, philosophy has no real answer to this; it falls more within the realm of psychology and even there you will find no definitive answer yet. The truth is we simply don't know what makes some people better at critical thinking than others. Most will agree that it is a dynamic mix of experience and genetics; the question is how much of each.

Nature vs. Nurture Take my answer as you will, but in my experience with studying philosophy, psychology, an engineering discipline (cog sci / comp sci), and also from tutoring/mentoring students, I've come to the conclusion more and more that the critical thinking "bug" is about 70% genetic. Either you are born with that kind of mind, or you are not. The rest is experience and personality — personality as classified by Myer's-Briggs typology. I say this because as I look back I realize that it's really something I had all along; I was always questioning things, trying to find the reasons behind events, trying to optimize processes, etc, even from a very young age. Furthermore, when trying to get people to critically think about things (students I mentored or even just people I tried to help in class), I saw that the scientist personality types (e.g. INTJ) tended as a whole to be much better than other personality types, and that little real progress in overall critical thinking ability occurred in a person over time. This would seem to correlate with personality theory, as while personality can change throughout one's life (as in, your typology), it does so gradually, if at all measurably.

So, It's Hopeless Then? No. On the contrary, while I believe there is some core genetic component, I believe that experience plays a very large role in honing someone's critical thinking skills. Taking Policy and Lincoln Douglas Debate high school definitely helped me learn how to construct strong arguments. Reading tons of philosophy in college helped me learn subtle ways of understanding concepts and dissecting arguments. There are a number of different ways of seeing things that can really open one's mind and help one form strong conclusions better and see flaws in arguments quicker. This is especially true learning to identify logical errors in arguments. Sometimes it's harder to put a finger on the exact way an argument goes wrong than to simply know that it's flawed. These things you can certainly improve upon.

Read lots of philosophy, especially counter-arguments to philosophy you just read. Write your own philosophy papers or book. Pick a topic you are interested in, and write about it. Make a persuasive argument. Have someone critique it (preferably in writing, so you have time to really think about their critique and develop a good response). People here will gladly look at some of your stuff, I'm sure. Just ping us in chat when you have something. :)

Also, be sure to ask your philosophy department professors this same question; this is by no means "the" answer, it is just my experience. :)

• 4 @stoicfury- Just the answer I was hoping for. Thank you so much! –  Andy Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 0:51

I highly recommend taking philosophy courses --I entered college planning on majoring in engineering, and left as a philosophy major. Please be aware, however, that philosophy courses vary widely based on the teacher and the school (because there is no universal consensus on which philosophical approaches are correct and important).

With that in mind, you might want to start by taking both basic and advanced logic. Logic is very mathematical, and will help you with your engineering work, but it also teaches you about the structures of good arguments, and how to tell the difference between them and arguments that are poorly structured.

I would like to answer your question directly and succintly.

First, you need to start reading a lot. Philosophy helps in that, it presents arguments that requires you to dissect those parts of the proposition, and reconsider it. Read introductory books on critical thinking, philosophy, but also expand your horizons and see what is going on in current affairs. This is because most of the fallacies are out there in the media, that often present a biased point of view, subtly or covertly.

Second, discuss with people good in understanding arguments. Not just any person who is familiar with philosophy or critical thinking, because such a person may not be a good arguer, or someone who understands argument.

Third, practice. With increasing practice breeds familiarity, and you will be good over time naturally. Doing nothing leads to no improvement and subsequently, nothing.

Well watch debates, the people involved often are very good at critical thinking. Try and study and learn their techniques. Also learn about all the logical fallacies, learn how to construct a proper argument. Learn as much as you can about critical thinking. While you are learning try and apply your skills. Argue with others just for the fun of it, and try and respond as quickly and as effectively as you can. You might be slow at first, but you will gain skill with time. Do the same thing in text. Reply to questions people ask, start arguments on forums. Just practice using your skills any way you can.

Unfortunately though no matter how hard you practice, as mentioned before you will likely find a lot of critical thinking is innate. There was an article on another site, where someone in law school mentioned that some people were just natural born debaters. He said that this sort of skill was something to be desired, and that while he could work to be a good speaker he was never as good as a natural born debater. I think there is a correlation to debating and critical thinking. Some people are just naturally good at analyzing information, and doing so quickly. These are just skills some people are born with. You can improve them, but please don't be discouraged if you can't match the skills of other people. What matters is are you seeing improvement. Are your skills getting better. If after you start trying to improve them, they improve keep at it. You may never match a natural critical thinker, but you can get a lot better at it.

Wow, that’s a great question Andy, you really put the community on the spot. You essentially told them to guide you to a place where you want to go and that you believe that they are presently at.

IMO, critical thinking is a way of contributing your knowledge on a subject to the greatest extent that your present knowledge, experiences, and beliefs could afford. As for structured arguments (aka debates) I always try to apply the 5 step of Armis critical thinking to such endeavors.

Armis is a high strategy board game that is present played online in over 130 countries. Certified Armis instructors teach critical thinking to students around the world though the Armis For Schools Worldwide program.

The 5 steps are as follows:

Analysis / Assessment

Planning (offensive and defensive strategies and tactics)

Risk Assessment

The Reaction, Effect, and Experience

Analysis and Assessment - before you start any endeavor is important to know the rules that govern it. For Armis you should read the rules, the equivalent for a structured debate it is knowing the rules. Then familiarize yourself with the environment, for Armis that means knowing the game board and player pieces, for the debate it means knowing your own team as well as the opposing team, try to know everyone’s strengths as well as their weaknesses, also get to know the physical environment where you will be debating so that you could take advantage of the audience, acoustics, seating arrangements, and also know as much as you can about the judges the moderator, and any others who may impact your success.

Now that you know what you are expected to do and where you are expected to perform the next step is to assess values so that you properly budget your efforts and resources.

Planning - In Armis there are over a million ways to properly setup, so after a setup is formed you should map and manage offensive and defensive strategies; for a debate you also need to fashion offensive and defensive strategies, making sure to incorporate an array of tactics (traditional to ‘neauve’ ). Factor in everything that can impact your goal achievement.

Risk Assessment - this is where you say "What if?", not just "What if he does?", but also "What if she doesn't?" for the game it is weighing probabilities that a player will do, or not do, certain actions, for the debate it is knowing not just the rules but also the consequences for breaking those rules. At times you may willingly choose to break a rule knowing that it will likely only lead to a minor disciplinary action. Know the risks for being first to answer, weigh the risks of independent thought vs group think, value the possibility of being wrong once, twice, three times.

Action - for Armis this is where you make your move, for the debate this is where you make your contribution either to the group, your audience, and or the judges.

5 Reaction, Effect, and Experience - for Armis it is as much how your opponent’s reacts (or lack of reaction) as much as what effect that specific move has on the rest of the game. For the debate it is also about your opponent’s reactions, but also the reaction of the judges, moderator, and especially the audience. Everything counts, as such the information that make up steps 1 - 5 including your opponent’s move is considered an experience for you to factor into your next move.

signed www.ArmisGame.com

• A very good answer.Armis seems to be an interesting game. Thanks @Marvin –  Andy Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 2:37
• This sounds very much like an add, that I would vote to delete, but at the same time Andy liked it... Weird. –  iphigenie Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 15:32
• Yes, I just noticed this myself. I can remove the hyperlink, but the whole post talks about this game such that obviously it will be googled and found anyways. The question is whether this answer is ok; I would think a more general answer describing, for example, how video games (in general) have been shown to increase critical thinking. For this specific game, we'd need sources to cite its efficacy. –  stoicfury Commented May 20, 2014 at 16:17

I believe, from my own experience, the study and mastery of logic while studying philosophy has turned me into a very critical thinker. I've been told several times that I should have been a lawyer. Also, as an engineer, don't you think analysis is critical? Math and logic are united more than quantum mechanics and relativity. I loved logic so much I took to computer programming which became my career. I never studied it formally. I love the study of the philosophy of mathematics. It is mental exercise to make complete sense of all there is. Logic, type theory, category theory, set theory, algorithms, algebra and more abstract algebra.

I would recommend that you read good philosophy. For philosophy of science "Realism and the Aim of Science" by Karl Popper, "The Fabric of Reality" and "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch. I do not recommend university philosophy courses. I have seen philosophy lecturers give entire courses on epistemology while completely ignoring Popper, who refuted most of what they said. I had one philosophy tutor say to me that an argument I made refuting something his favourite philosopher said could not be true because the argument I gave was written before the idea it refuted, as if it is impossible for his favourite philosopher to reinvent a bad and broken idea.

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Philosophy Behind Critical Thinking: A Concise Overview

The philosophy behind critical thinking delves into the deeper understanding of what it means to think critically and to develop the ability to reason, analyze, and evaluate information in a structured and systematic manner. Critical thinking has intricate connections with philosophy, mainly because it originated from ancient philosophical teachings. At its core, the concept of critical thinking is rooted in the Socratic method of questioning, which emphasizes the importance of inquiry and rational thinking as a means to achieve knowledge.

Key Takeaways

Understanding critical thinking, definition and process.

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It involves engaging in reflective and independent thinking . To understand the logical connections between ideas, one needs to identify, construct, and evaluate arguments.

Logic, Reason, Rationality

Logic, reason, and rationality are essential components of critical thinking. Logic refers to the systematic approach to reasoning and validating claims through principles and rules. Reasoning, on the other hand, is the process of drawing conclusions based on logic, evidence, and assumptions. Rationality encompasses the use of logic and reason to make well-informed decisions, judgments, and evaluations.

Strategies and Patterns

Justification and argumentation.

Justification and argumentation play a crucial role in critical thinking. Justification refers to providing reasons or evidence in support of a claim, while argumentation involves constructing and evaluating arguments . Both justification and argumentation require logical reasoning, analysis of evidence, and clear communication of ideas.

Clarity and Reflection

Clarity is essential for effective critical thinking. This entails expressing ideas and arguments in a clear, concise, and organized manner. Furthermore, critical thinkers must also engage in reflection — the process of examining their own thought processes, assumptions, and biases. Reflecting on one’s beliefs and values helps individuals refine their thinking and develop a more nuanced understanding of the world around them.

In conclusion, understanding critical thinking involves exploring its definition, process, and key components, such as logic, reason, rationality, strategies, patterns, justification, argumentation, clarity, and reflection. By cultivating a strong foundation in these areas, individuals can develop their ability to think critically and make well-informed decisions in various aspects of life.

Psychological Approach to Critical Thinking

Cognition and Pattern Recognition

Bias and judgments.

Another aspect of the psychological approach to critical thinking is the examination of biases and judgments. Bias refers to the systematic errors or distortions in human reasoning that can arise from emotions, beliefs, or external factors. When individuals possess a strong bias, it can impede their ability to think critically and accurately evaluate information. By being aware of these biases and actively seeking to minimize their influence, one can improve their critical thinking skills and make more accurate judgments.

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

Philosophical groundings, roots of critical thought.

The roots of critical thought can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the ideas developed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In their teachings, these philosophers emphasized the importance of questioning and examining beliefs, seeking evidence, and evaluating arguments logically. Through these pursuits, they laid a strong foundation for the development of critical thinking in modern times.

Major Philosophers and Approaches

Informal logic and its importance.

Informal logic plays a crucial role in critical thinking as it concerns the principles and methods used to analyze everyday arguments and reasoning beyond the scope of formal logic. It complements formal logic, which deals strictly with logical systems and symbols. Informal logic helps individuals assess the validity, soundness, and context of arguments encountered in daily life. By honing their skills in informal logic, individuals can become better critical thinkers and more adept at navigating complex situations and decision-making processes.

Critical Thinking in Cultural and Social Context

Race and gender perspectives.

Critical thinking is a universal skill that transcends cultural and social boundaries. However, it is essential to consider the impact of race and gender on the development and exercise of critical thinking skills. People from marginalized groups may experience unique challenges and perspectives that influence their critical thinking abilities. For example, in a cross-cultural study examining critical thinking among nurse scholars in Thailand and the United States, distinctive perspectives on critical thinking were observed due to cultural differences. Understanding the intersections of race, gender, and critical thinking can help create more inclusive education and workplace environments that foster critical thinking for everyone.

Critical Thinking in a Democratic Society

In a democratic society, critical thinking plays a crucial role in informed decision-making, civic engagement, and open discussion. The healthy functioning of a democracy relies on the citizens’ capacity to discern reliable information, assess arguments, and make rational choices. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , critical thinking includes abilities and dispositions that lead individuals to think critically when appropriate. Developing these skills allows members of democratic societies to engage in productive debates, evaluate policies, and hold leaders accountable.

Culture, Society, and Critical Thinking

Role of critical thinking in education, aims of education.

The primary aim of education is to foster the development of individuals’ cognitive capabilities, empowering them to grow into confident, knowledgeable and discerning adults. Critical thinking plays a significant role in education as it helps students acquire and apply knowledge more effectively, by analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information from diverse sources in a systematic manner, leading to more accurate and informed decisions.

Skills Development

Classroom activities focused on critical thinking are essential to help students develop a systematic approach to problem-solving and sharpen their analytical skills. Practical tasks, like debates, group discussions, case studies, or role plays, can be employed to engage students in active learning, thus enhancing their critical thought processes.

Standardized Tests vs. Critical Thought

While standardized tests have dominated the contemporary education system, there is growing concern regarding their effectiveness in promoting critical thinking. Some argue that standardized tests prioritize the acquisition of specific knowledge over the development of essential skills and abilities, leading to an education that is more focused on rote memorization than meaningful learning.

Importance of Open-Mindedness and Skepticism

Being skeptical vs. being cynical.

It is essential to understand the difference between being skeptical and being cynical. Skepticism in critical thinking involves questioning assertions and assumptions, seeking evidence, and evaluating arguments from a neutral, objective viewpoint. On the other hand, cynicism is a distrustful attitude, where one assumes negative intentions or outcomes.

Traits of an Open-Minded Thinker

Open-mindedness is an essential trait for critical thinkers. Some key characteristics of an open-minded thinker include:

Role of Curiosity and Empathy in Critical Thinking

Empathy, on the other hand, permits critical thinkers to comprehend and appreciate different perspectives by placing themselves in others’ shoes. An empathetic approach contributes to open-mindedness and cultivates a sense of humility, recognizing that individuals may hold contrasting opinions based on personal experiences or beliefs. The combination of curiosity and empathy enhances critical thinking by promoting a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of complex issues and scenarios.

Critical thinking equips individuals with the tools necessary to think carefully with clarity, depth, precision, accuracy, and logic 3 . It has applications across various domains, such as science, where great scientists like Albert Einstein have benefited from critical thinking skills to discover groundbreaking concepts.

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Critical thinking for problem solving, what is critical thinking, critical thinking: stop overthinking and make faster decisions, common critical thinking fallacies, download this free ebook.

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker?

Author: Carolina Flores Categories: Logic and Reasoning , Philosophy of Education , Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge Word count: 997

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We often urge others to think critically. What does that really mean? How can we think critically?

This essay presents a general account of what it is to be a critical thinker and outlines both traditional and more recent approaches to critical thinking.

1. What is Critical Thinking?

Speaking generally, critical thinking consists of reasoning and inquiring in careful ways, so as to form and update one’s beliefs based on good reasons . [1] A critical thinker is someone who typically reasons and inquires in these ways, having mastered relevant skills and developed the disposition to apply them. [2]

2. Traditional Components: Logic and Fallacies

Traditional views of critical thinking focus on deductive arguments. Arguments are sets of reasons given for a conclusion. Deductive arguments are arguments where the reasons given are supposed to be logically conclusive, that is, to guarantee the conclusion. E.g., the following is a deductive argument:

• Socrates is a man.
• All men are mortal.
• Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Arriving at new beliefs through deductive arguments is a way of forming beliefs based on good reasons. Accordingly, critical thinking traditionally focusses on these skills: [3]

• distinguishing arguments (instances where you are offered reasons for a conclusion) from mere assertions, rhetorical questions, and attempts at manipulation through irrelevant considerations;
• identifying conclusions of arguments (what the person offering the argument wants to persuade you to believe), and the reasons or premises for that conclusion;
• reconstructing streamlined, complete statements of arguments in standard form (as a numbered list of premises with the conclusion at the end), or using diagrams; [4]
• assessing the logical structure of deductive arguments: answering ‘Is there any way for the premises to be true while the conclusion is false?’
• understanding arguments’ claims: e.g., defining unclear terms;
• determining whether premises are true or likely;
• imagining, proposing, and charitably responding to objections, i.e, reasons given to doubt or deny arguments’ logic, premise(s), or conclusion. [5]

To develop these skills, traditional critical thinking courses typically include propositional logic and the study of common good argument forms. [6]

They also often teach how to identify fallacies —faulty patterns of reasoning that deceptively appear to be good arguments. [7] These include:

• affirming the consequent (“If Kat had won the prize, she would have had an A; Kat had an A; therefore, Kat won the prize”);
• the ad hominem fallacy—where people attack the person making an argument instead of considering their argument;
• begging the question —offering reasons for a conclusion that assume the conclusion, and many others. [8]

3. Additional Formal Tools: Evidence and Statistics

We often form beliefs based on observations that, unlike deductive arguments, do not provide conclusive reasons for a belief: e.g., you might conclude that your sibling is angry at you from their facial expressions or come to believe you have a cold because you have a runny nose. Here, these observations or evidence might support the belief formed but do not guarantee the truth of your belief.

Critical thinkers know how to adjust their beliefs appropriately in light of their evidence. [9] So critical thinking requires developing abilities to:

• assess evidence without being unduly swayed by what one already believes;
• recognize when a claim counts as evidence for (or against) a conclusion;
• identify when evidence is strong (or weak);
• determine the extent to which people’s views should change, given their evidence.

To develop these abilities, drawing on knowledge of probability can be helpful: e.g., basic probability offers a recipe for determining when an observation counts as evidence for a belief: when that observation is more likely if the belief is true than if it is not . It also teaches us that updating your beliefs when you get new evidence requires taking into account both (a) how confident you were on that belief beforehand and (b) how strongly the evidence supports that (new) belief. [10]

For these reasons, recent approaches to critical thinking often include instruction in probability. [11] And, because we often get evidence in the form of statistics, often presented through diagrams and graphs, such approaches tend to highlight the importance of basic statistical concepts, [12] and the ability to interpret diagrams and graphs. [13]

4. Applied Skills as Part of Being a Critical Thinker

Being a critical thinker requires more than having technical tools (such as the tools of logic or probability) stored away. It requires consistently applying them in the real world .

In recent discussions of what it is to be a critical thinker, there has been increased emphasis on navigating our informational environments in savvy ways. This requires avoiding false, misleading, manipulative, or distracting claims online, as well as making sure that one gathers information from a wide variety of reliable sources. [14] It also requires calibrating one’s trust well: one should remain open to hearing those who disagree and not let prejudice and implicit bias affect whom one trusts. [15] , [16]

Applying the tools of critical thinking throughout one’s life requires overcoming cognitive biases: [17] e.g.:

• not always accepting answers that come to mind first;
• resisting confirmation bias (the tendency to gather and interpret evidence in ways that confirm our beliefs), [18] and;
• avoiding motivated reasoning (the tendency to reason in ways that help us believe what we wish were true, and not what is true). [19]

More generally, becoming a critical thinker requires shifting from a defensive mindset to a truth-seeking one and developing intellectual virtues such as intellectual humility and open-minded curiosity. [20] , [21] Without those, the tools of critical thinking may end up being deployed to entrench false or unreasonable beliefs.

5. Conclusion

Critical thinking is about reasoning and inquiring so as to form and update one’s beliefs based on good reasons. Because critical thinking skills are valuable in a world that emphasizes the ability to navigate information, becoming a critical thinker is practically useful to us as individuals.

It is also of crucial social and political value: e.g., a well-functioning democracy requires citizens who think critically about the world. [22] And critical thinking has liberatory potential: it provides us with tools to criticize oppressive social structures and envisage a more just, fair society. [23]

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the Teaching Philosophy Facebook Group for literature recommendations. Thanks to Chelsea Haramia, Sabrina Huwang, Izilda Jorge, Thomas Metcalf, Nathan Nobis, Elise Woodard, and anonymous referees for feedback.

[1] This definition is similar to Ennis’s (1991) definition: critical thinking, in his view, is “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Ennis 1991, p. 6). See Hitchcock 2010 for an overview of definitions of critical thinking. 

[2] While I define critical thinking in a general way here, there is disagreement about whether there are any general tools for critical thinking, as opposed to merely topic-specific ones.

There are also closely related debates about the extent to which specific critical thinking skills transfer to new domains and tasks, and about whether we should teach critical thinking on its own or, instead, in the context of specific disciplines, with discipline-internal standards made clear and an emphasis on content acquisition. See Willingham 2019 for discussion, including references to relevant empirical research.

People who have mastered critical thinking skills in a domain or subject area tend to be experts in those areas. See Expertise: What is an Expert? by Jamie Carlin Watson

[3] See this Khan Academy/Wi Phi Philosophy course for an overview.

[4] An example of an argument in standard form is: 1. Socrates is a man; 2. All men are mortal; 3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. For other examples of arguments in standard form, see Anderson’s “Putting an Argument in Standard Form.” For examples of argument diagrams, as well as a useful program to construct such diagrams, see Cullen’s “Philosophy Mapped” website .

[5] Charitably responding involves responding to the strongest version of the objection.

[6] Propositional logic is the simplest branch of logic, i.e. the formal study of arguments and reasoning. See Tom Metcalf’s Formal Logic: Symbolizing Arguments in Sentential Logic by for an introduction.

[7] Wikipedia has extensive lists of good argument forms and of common fallacies . See Boardman et al. 2017, Howard-Snyder 2020, Lau 2011 , Vaughn 2018 for examples of critical thinking textbooks that take the traditional approach.

[8] To see why these are fallacies, note that, for all that is said, Kat could have had an A without winning the prize; perhaps she simply had high exam scores. And note that morally bad people can give good arguments.

[9] Philosophers also use the term ‘evidence’ in more technical senses than ‘relevant observations’. See Kelly 2016 for discussion of these different senses.

[10] Indeed, we can capture this insight into a domain-general formula for how to update beliefs: Bayes’ theorem. Bayes’ theorem tells us how to weigh our previous confidence and the strength of evidence. For a short explanation of Bayes’ Theorem, see Better Explained, “A Short and Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem” . For more detailed discussion of Bayesianism, see Joyce 2019.

[11] Manley 2019.

[12] See Gigerenzer et al. 2007 for discussion of the practical importance of these concepts. An especially important statistical concept is that of base rate . The base rate of a feature in a population is what fraction of the population have that feature. Neglecting the base rate leads to the base rate fallacy , where one ends up adjusting one’s beliefs incorrectly in response to evidence (for example, taking a fallible positive test for a rare disease to indicate that one is extremely likely to have that disease, where, given the rarity of the disease, that remains unlikely).

[13] Battersby 2016.

[14] See Bergstorm and West’s “Calling Bullshit” syllabus for a range of helpful tools for avoiding such claims, and The News Literacy Project for resources on developing a healthy news diet.

[15] See Nguyen’s “Escape the Echo Chamber.” for helpful discussion of common issues with trust calibration and with information gathering.

[16] Implicit bias involves believing and acting “on basis of prejudice and stereotypes without intending to do so”: see Brownstein 2019.

When one discredits members of marginalized groups due to (conscious or unconscious) prejudice, one commits an epistemic injustice: see Fricker 2007. For an introduction to epistemic injustice, see Huzeyfe Demitras’s Epistemic Injustice .

[17] Cognitive biases are systematic deviations from how we should reason. See Kahneman 2011 for an accessible overview of research on cognitive biases.

[18] Nickerson 1998 .

[19] Kunda 1990.

[20] An intellectual virtue is a personality trait or disposition that is helpful in reasoning well and acquiring knowledge. Some examples are intellectual humility, open-mindedness, curiosity, and perseverance. See Zagzebski 1996.

[21] See Galef’s TED talk “Why you think you’re right – even if you’re wrong” for discussion of the importance of these traits.

[22] Dewey 1923.

[23] Freire 1968/2018, hooks 2010.

Anderson, Jeremy. “Putting an Argument in Standard Form.”

Battersby, Mark. 2016. Is That a Fact?: A Field Guide to Statistical and Scientific Information . Broadview Press.

Bergstrom, Carl T. and West, Jevin. 2019. “Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World.” (website)

Better Explained. 2020. “A Short and Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem.” (website)

Boardman, Frank, Cavender, Nancy M, and Kahane, Howard . 2017. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life. Cengage Learning.

Brownstein, Michael, “Implicit Bias”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Cullen, Simon. “Philosophy Mapped: Open Resources for Philosophy Visualization.” 

Demirtas, Huzeyfe. 2020. “Epistemic Injustice.” 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology .

Dewey, John. 1923. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. Macmillan.

Ennis, Robert. 1991. “Critical Thinking: A Streamlined Conception.” Teaching Philosophy , 14(1):5-24.

Frankfurt, Harry G. 1986. On Bullshit . Princeton University Press.

Freire, Paulo. 2018 [1968]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed . Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing . Oxford University Press.

Galef, Julia. 2016. “Why You Think You’re Right – Even If You’re Wrong.” TED Talk.

Gigerenzer, Gerd, Gaissmaier, Wolfgang, Kurz-Milcke, Elke, Schwartz, Lisa M and Woloshin, Steven. 2007. “Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest , 8(2):53-96.

bell hooks. 2010. Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom . New York and London: Routledge.

Hitchcock, David. 2020. “ Critical Thinking ” , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Howard-Snyder, Frances, Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Wasserman, Ryan. 2020. The Power of Logic . McGraw-Hill.

Joyce, James, “ Bayes’ Theorem ” , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow . Macmillan.

Kelly, Thomas. 2016. “ Evidence ” , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Kunda, Ziva. 1990. “The Case for Motivated Reasoning.” Psychological Bulletin , 108(3):  480-498.

Lai, Emily R. 2011. “Critical Thinking: A Literature Review.” Pearson’s Research Reports , 6: 40-41.

Lau, Joe YF. 2011. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity: Think More, Think Better . John Wiley & Sons.

Manley, David. 2019. Reason Better: An Interdisciplinary Guide to Critical Thinking . Toronto, ON, Canada: Tophat Monocle.

Metcalf, Thomas. 2020. “Formal Logic: Symbolizing Arguments in Sentential Logic.” 1,000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology .

The News Literacy Project.

Nguyen, Thi. 2018. “Escape the Echo Chamber.” Aeon.

Nickerson, Raymond S. 1998. “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises.” Review of General Psychology , 2(2):175-220.

Pynn, Geoff. 2020. “Critical Thinking: Fundamentals.” Wireless Philosophy/Khan Academy .

Vaughn, Lewis. 2018. The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning About Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims . Oxford University Press.

Willingham, Daniel T. 2019. “How to Teach Critical Thinking.” Education: Future Frontiers , 1:1-17.

Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge . Cambridge University Press.

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Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

(10 reviews)

Matthew Van Cleave, Lansing Community College

Copyright Year: 2016

Publisher: Matthew J. Van Cleave

Language: English

Formats Available

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Reviewed by "yusef" Alexander Hayes, Professor, North Shore Community College on 6/9/21

Formal and informal reasoning, argument structure, and fallacies are covered comprehensively, meeting the author's goal of both depth and succinctness. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Formal and informal reasoning, argument structure, and fallacies are covered comprehensively, meeting the author's goal of both depth and succinctness.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The book is accurate.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

While many modern examples are used, and they are helpful, they are not necessarily needed. The usefulness of logical principles and skills have proved themselves, and this text presents them clearly with many examples.

Clarity rating: 5

It is obvious that the author cares about their subject, audience, and students. The text is comprehensible and interesting.

Consistency rating: 5

The format is easy to understand and is consistent in framing.

Modularity rating: 5

This text would be easy to adapt.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization is excellent, my one suggestion would be a concluding chapter.

Interface rating: 5

I accessed the PDF version and it would be easy to work with.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The writing is excellent.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

This is not an offensive text.

Reviewed by Susan Rottmann, Part-time Lecturer, University of Southern Maine on 3/2/21

I reviewed this book for a course titled "Creative and Critical Inquiry into Modern Life." It won't meet all my needs for that course, but I haven't yet found a book that would. I wanted to review this one because it states in the preface that it... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

I reviewed this book for a course titled "Creative and Critical Inquiry into Modern Life." It won't meet all my needs for that course, but I haven't yet found a book that would. I wanted to review this one because it states in the preface that it fits better for a general critical thinking course than for a true logic course. I'm not sure that I'd agree. I have been using Browne and Keeley's "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking," and I think that book is a better introduction to critical thinking for non-philosophy majors. However, the latter is not open source so I will figure out how to get by without it in the future. Overall, the book seems comprehensive if the subject is logic. The index is on the short-side, but fine. However, one issue for me is that there are no page numbers on the table of contents, which is pretty annoying if you want to locate particular sections.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

I didn't find any errors. In general the book uses great examples. However, they are very much based in the American context, not for an international student audience. Some effort to broaden the chosen examples would make the book more widely applicable.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

I think the book will remain relevant because of the nature of the material that it addresses, however there will be a need to modify the examples in future editions and as the social and political context changes.

Clarity rating: 3

The text is lucid, but I think it would be difficult for introductory-level students who are not philosophy majors. For example, in Browne and Keeley's "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking," the sub-headings are very accessible, such as "Experts cannot rescue us, despite what they say" or "wishful thinking: perhaps the biggest single speed bump on the road to critical thinking." By contrast, Van Cleave's "Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking" has more subheadings like this: "Using your own paraphrases of premises and conclusions to reconstruct arguments in standard form" or "Propositional logic and the four basic truth functional connectives." If students are prepared very well for the subject, it would work fine, but for students who are newly being introduced to critical thinking, it is rather technical.

It seems to be very consistent in terms of its terminology and framework.

Modularity rating: 4

The book is divided into 4 chapters, each having many sub-chapters. In that sense, it is readily divisible and modular. However, as noted above, there are no page numbers on the table of contents, which would make assigning certain parts rather frustrating. Also, I'm not sure why the book is only four chapter and has so many subheadings (for instance 17 in Chapter 2) and a length of 242 pages. Wouldn't it make more sense to break up the book into shorter chapters? I think this would make it easier to read and to assign in specific blocks to students.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The organization of the book is fine overall, although I think adding page numbers to the table of contents and breaking it up into more separate chapters would help it to be more easily navigable.

Interface rating: 4

The book is very simply presented. In my opinion it is actually too simple. There are few boxes or diagrams that highlight and explain important points.

The text seems fine grammatically. I didn't notice any errors.

The book is written with an American audience in mind, but I did not notice culturally insensitive or offensive parts.

Overall, this book is not for my course, but I think it could work well in a philosophy course.

Reviewed by Daniel Lee, Assistant Professor of Economics and Leadership, Sweet Briar College on 11/11/19

This textbook is not particularly comprehensive (4 chapters long), but I view that as a benefit. In fact, I recommend it for use outside of traditional logic classes, but rather interdisciplinary classes that evaluate argument read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This textbook is not particularly comprehensive (4 chapters long), but I view that as a benefit. In fact, I recommend it for use outside of traditional logic classes, but rather interdisciplinary classes that evaluate argument

To the best of my ability, I regard this content as accurate, error-free, and unbiased

The book is broadly relevant and up-to-date, with a few stray temporal references (sydney olympics, particular presidencies). I don't view these time-dated examples as problematic as the logical underpinnings are still there and easily assessed

Clarity rating: 4

My only pushback on clarity is I didn't find the distinction between argument and explanation particularly helpful/useful/easy to follow. However, this experience may have been unique to my class.

To the best of my ability, I regard this content as internally consistent

I found this text quite modular, and was easily able to integrate other texts into my lessons and disregard certain chapters or sub-sections

The book had a logical and consistent structure, but to the extent that there are only 4 chapters, there isn't much scope for alternative approaches here

No problems with the book's interface

The text is grammatically sound

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

Perhaps the text could have been more universal in its approach. While I didn't find the book insensitive per-se, logic can be tricky here because the point is to evaluate meaningful (non-trivial) arguments, but any argument with that sense of gravity can also be traumatic to students (abortion, death penalty, etc)

No additional comments

Reviewed by Lisa N. Thomas-Smith, Graduate Part-time Instructor, CU Boulder on 7/1/19

The text covers all the relevant technical aspects of introductory logic and critical thinking, and covers them well. A separate glossary would be quite helpful to students. However, the terms are clearly and thoroughly explained within the text,... read more

The text covers all the relevant technical aspects of introductory logic and critical thinking, and covers them well. A separate glossary would be quite helpful to students. However, the terms are clearly and thoroughly explained within the text, and the index is very thorough.

The content is excellent. The text is thorough and accurate with no errors that I could discern. The terminology and exercises cover the material nicely and without bias.

The text should easily stand the test of time. The exercises are excellent and would be very helpful for students to internalize correct critical thinking practices. Because of the logical arrangement of the text and the many sub-sections, additional material should be very easy to add.

The text is extremely clearly and simply written. I anticipate that a diligent student could learn all of the material in the text with little additional instruction. The examples are relevant and easy to follow.

The text did not confuse terms or use inconsistent terminology, which is very important in a logic text. The discipline often uses multiple terms for the same concept, but this text avoids that trap nicely.

The text is fairly easily divisible. Since there are only four chapters, those chapters include large blocks of information. However, the chapters themselves are very well delineated and could be easily broken up so that parts could be left out or covered in a different order from the text.

The flow of the text is excellent. All of the information is handled solidly in an order that allows the student to build on the information previously covered.

The PDF Table of Contents does not include links or page numbers which would be very helpful for navigation. Other than that, the text was very easy to navigate. All the images, charts, and graphs were very clear

I found no grammatical errors in the text.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The text including examples and exercises did not seem to be offensive or insensitive in any specific way. However, the examples included references to black and white people, but few others. Also, the text is very American specific with many examples from and for an American audience. More diversity, especially in the examples, would be appropriate and appreciated.

Reviewed by Leslie Aarons, Associate Professor of Philosophy, CUNY LaGuardia Community College on 5/16/19

This is an excellent introductory (first-year) Logic and Critical Thinking textbook. The book covers the important elementary information, clearly discussing such things as the purpose and basic structure of an argument; the difference between an... read more

This is an excellent introductory (first-year) Logic and Critical Thinking textbook. The book covers the important elementary information, clearly discussing such things as the purpose and basic structure of an argument; the difference between an argument and an explanation; validity; soundness; and the distinctions between an inductive and a deductive argument in accessible terms in the first chapter. It also does a good job introducing and discussing informal fallacies (Chapter 4). The incorporation of opportunities to evaluate real-world arguments is also very effective. Chapter 2 also covers a number of formal methods of evaluating arguments, such as Venn Diagrams and Propositional logic and the four basic truth functional connectives, but to my mind, it is much more thorough in its treatment of Informal Logic and Critical Thinking skills, than it is of formal logic. I also appreciated that Van Cleave’s book includes exercises with answers and an index, but there is no glossary; which I personally do not find detracts from the book's comprehensiveness.

Overall, Van Cleave's book is error-free and unbiased. The language used is accessible and engaging. There were no glaring inaccuracies that I was able to detect.

Van Cleave's Textbook uses relevant, contemporary content that will stand the test of time, at least for the next few years. Although some examples use certain subjects like former President Obama, it does so in a useful manner that inspires the use of critical thinking skills. There are an abundance of examples that inspire students to look at issues from many different political viewpoints, challenging students to practice evaluating arguments, and identifying fallacies. Many of these exercises encourage students to critique issues, and recognize their own inherent reader-biases and challenge their own beliefs--hallmarks of critical thinking.

As mentioned previously, the author has an accessible style that makes the content relatively easy to read and engaging. He also does a suitable job explaining jargon/technical language that is introduced in the textbook.

Van Cleave uses terminology consistently and the chapters flow well. The textbook orients the reader by offering effective introductions to new material, step-by-step explanations of the material, as well as offering clear summaries of each lesson.

This textbook's modularity is really quite good. Its language and structure are not overly convoluted or too-lengthy, making it convenient for individual instructors to adapt the materials to suit their methodological preferences.

The topics in the textbook are presented in a logical and clear fashion. The structure of the chapters are such that it is not necessary to have to follow the chapters in their sequential order, and coverage of material can be adapted to individual instructor's preferences.

The textbook is free of any problematic interface issues. Topics, sections and specific content are accessible and easy to navigate. Overall it is user-friendly.

I did not find any significant grammatical issues with the textbook.

The textbook is not culturally insensitive, making use of a diversity of inclusive examples. Materials are especially effective for first-year critical thinking/logic students.

I intend to adopt Van Cleave's textbook for a Critical Thinking class I am teaching at the Community College level. I believe that it will help me facilitate student-learning, and will be a good resource to build additional classroom activities from the materials it provides.

Reviewed by Jennie Harrop, Chair, Department of Professional Studies, George Fox University on 3/27/18

While the book is admirably comprehensive, its extensive details within a few short chapters may feel overwhelming to students. The author tackles an impressive breadth of concepts in Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4, which leads to 50-plus-page chapters... read more

While the book is admirably comprehensive, its extensive details within a few short chapters may feel overwhelming to students. The author tackles an impressive breadth of concepts in Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4, which leads to 50-plus-page chapters that are dense with statistical analyses and critical vocabulary. These topics are likely better broached in manageable snippets rather than hefty single chapters.

The ideas addressed in Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking are accurate but at times notably political. While politics are effectively used to exemplify key concepts, some students may be distracted by distinct political leanings.

The terms and definitions included are relevant, but the examples are specific to the current political, cultural, and social climates, which could make the materials seem dated in a few years without intentional and consistent updates.

While the reasoning is accurate, the author tends to complicate rather than simplify -- perhaps in an effort to cover a spectrum of related concepts. Beginning readers are likely to be overwhelmed and under-encouraged by his approach.

Consistency rating: 3

The four chapters are somewhat consistent in their play of definition, explanation, and example, but the structure of each chapter varies according to the concepts covered. In the third chapter, for example, key ideas are divided into sub-topics numbering from 3.1 to 3.10. In the fourth chapter, the sub-divisions are further divided into sub-sections numbered 4.1.1-4.1.5, 4.2.1-4.2.2, and 4.3.1 to 4.3.6. Readers who are working quickly to master new concepts may find themselves mired in similarly numbered subheadings, longing for a grounded concepts on which to hinge other key principles.

Modularity rating: 3

The book's four chapters make it mostly self-referential. The author would do well to beak this text down into additional subsections, easing readers' accessibility.

The content of the book flows logically and well, but the information needs to be better sub-divided within each larger chapter, easing the student experience.

The book's interface is effective, allowing readers to move from one section to the next with a single click. Additional sub-sections would ease this interplay even further.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

Some minor errors throughout.

For the most part, the book is culturally neutral, avoiding direct cultural references in an effort to remain relevant.

Reviewed by Yoichi Ishida, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Ohio University on 2/1/18

This textbook covers enough topics for a first-year course on logic and critical thinking. Chapter 1 covers the basics as in any standard textbook in this area. Chapter 2 covers propositional logic and categorical logic. In propositional logic,... read more

This textbook covers enough topics for a first-year course on logic and critical thinking. Chapter 1 covers the basics as in any standard textbook in this area. Chapter 2 covers propositional logic and categorical logic. In propositional logic, this textbook does not cover suppositional arguments, such as conditional proof and reductio ad absurdum. But other standard argument forms are covered. Chapter 3 covers inductive logic, and here this textbook introduces probability and its relationship with cognitive biases, which are rarely discussed in other textbooks. Chapter 4 introduces common informal fallacies. The answers to all the exercises are given at the end. However, the last set of exercises is in Chapter 3, Section 5. There are no exercises in the rest of the chapter. Chapter 4 has no exercises either. There is index, but no glossary.

The textbook is accurate.

The content of this textbook will not become obsolete soon.

The textbook is written clearly.

The textbook is internally consistent.

The textbook is fairly modular. For example, Chapter 3, together with a few sections from Chapter 1, can be used as a short introduction to inductive logic.

The textbook is well-organized.

There are no interface issues.

I did not find any grammatical errors.

This textbook is relevant to a first semester logic or critical thinking course.

Reviewed by Payal Doctor, Associate Professro, LaGuardia Community College on 2/1/18

This text is a beginner textbook for arguments and propositional logic. It covers the basics of identifying arguments, building arguments, and using basic logic to construct propositions and arguments. It is quite comprehensive for a beginner... read more

This text is a beginner textbook for arguments and propositional logic. It covers the basics of identifying arguments, building arguments, and using basic logic to construct propositions and arguments. It is quite comprehensive for a beginner book, but seems to be a good text for a course that needs a foundation for arguments. There are exercises on creating truth tables and proofs, so it could work as a logic primer in short sessions or with the addition of other course content.

The books is accurate in the information it presents. It does not contain errors and is unbiased. It covers the essential vocabulary clearly and givens ample examples and exercises to ensure the student understands the concepts

The content of the book is up to date and can be easily updated. Some examples are very current for analyzing the argument structure in a speech, but for this sort of text understandable examples are important and the author uses good examples.

The book is clear and easy to read. In particular, this is a good text for community college students who often have difficulty with reading comprehension. The language is straightforward and concepts are well explained.

The book is consistent in terminology, formatting, and examples. It flows well from one topic to the next, but it is also possible to jump around the text without loosing the voice of the text.

The books is broken down into sub units that make it easy to assign short blocks of content at a time. Later in the text, it does refer to a few concepts that appear early in that text, but these are all basic concepts that must be used to create a clear and understandable text. No sections are too long and each section stays on topic and relates the topic to those that have come before when necessary.

The flow of the text is logical and clear. It begins with the basic building blocks of arguments, and practice identifying more and more complex arguments is offered. Each chapter builds up from the previous chapter in introducing propositional logic, truth tables, and logical arguments. A select number of fallacies are presented at the end of the text, but these are related to topics that were presented before, so it makes sense to have these last.

The text is free if interface issues. I used the PDF and it worked fine on various devices without loosing formatting.

1. The book contains no grammatical errors.

The text is culturally sensitive, but examples used are a bit odd and may be objectionable to some students. For instance, President Obama's speech on Syria is used to evaluate an extended argument. This is an excellent example and it is explained well, but some who disagree with Obama's policies may have trouble moving beyond their own politics. However, other examples look at issues from all political viewpoints and ask students to evaluate the argument, fallacy, etc. and work towards looking past their own beliefs. Overall this book does use a variety of examples that most students can understand and evaluate.

My favorite part of this book is that it seems to be written for community college students. My students have trouble understanding readings in the New York Times, so it is nice to see a logic and critical thinking text use real language that students can understand and follow without the constant need of a dictionary.

Reviewed by Rebecca Owen, Adjunct Professor, Writing, Chemeketa Community College on 6/20/17

This textbook is quite thorough--there are conversational explanations of argument structure and logic. I think students will be happy with the conversational style this author employs. Also, there are many examples and exercises using current... read more

This textbook is quite thorough--there are conversational explanations of argument structure and logic. I think students will be happy with the conversational style this author employs. Also, there are many examples and exercises using current events, funny scenarios, or other interesting ways to evaluate argument structure and validity. The third section, which deals with logical fallacies, is very clear and comprehensive. My only critique of the material included in the book is that the middle section may be a bit dense and math-oriented for learners who appreciate the more informal, informative style of the first and third section. Also, the book ends rather abruptly--it moves from a description of a logical fallacy to the answers for the exercises earlier in the text.

The content is very reader-friendly, and the author writes with authority and clarity throughout the text. There are a few surface-level typos (Starbuck's instead of Starbucks, etc.). None of these small errors detract from the quality of the content, though.

One thing I really liked about this text was the author's wide variety of examples. To demonstrate different facets of logic, he used examples from current media, movies, literature, and many other concepts that students would recognize from their daily lives. The exercises in this text also included these types of pop-culture references, and I think students will enjoy the familiarity--as well as being able to see the logical structures behind these types of references. I don't think the text will need to be updated to reflect new instances and occurrences; the author did a fine job at picking examples that are relatively timeless. As far as the subject matter itself, I don't think it will become obsolete any time soon.

The author writes in a very conversational, easy-to-read manner. The examples used are quite helpful. The third section on logical fallacies is quite easy to read, follow, and understand. A student in an argument writing class could benefit from this section of the book. The middle section is less clear, though. A student learning about the basics of logic might have a hard time digesting all of the information contained in chapter two. This material might be better in two separate chapters. I think the author loses the balance of a conversational, helpful tone and focuses too heavily on equations.

Consistency rating: 4

Terminology in this book is quite consistent--the key words are highlighted in bold. Chapters 1 and 3 follow a similar organizational pattern, but chapter 2 is where the material becomes more dense and equation-heavy. I also would have liked a closing passage--something to indicate to the reader that we've reached the end of the chapter as well as the book.

I liked the overall structure of this book. If I'm teaching an argumentative writing class, I could easily point the students to the chapters where they can identify and practice identifying fallacies, for instance. The opening chapter is clear in defining the necessary terms, and it gives the students an understanding of the toolbox available to them in assessing and evaluating arguments. Even though I found the middle section to be dense, smaller portions could be assigned.

The author does a fine job connecting each defined term to the next. He provides examples of how each defined term works in a sentence or in an argument, and then he provides practice activities for students to try. The answers for each question are listed in the final pages of the book. The middle section feels like the heaviest part of the whole book--it would take the longest time for a student to digest if assigned the whole chapter. Even though this middle section is a bit heavy, it does fit the overall structure and flow of the book. New material builds on previous chapters and sub-chapters. It ends abruptly--I didn't realize that it had ended, and all of a sudden I found myself in the answer section for those earlier exercises.

The simple layout is quite helpful! There is nothing distracting, image-wise, in this text. The table of contents is clearly arranged, and each topic is easy to find.

Tiny edits could be made (Starbuck's/Starbucks, for one). Otherwise, it is free of distracting grammatical errors.

This text is quite culturally relevant. For instance, there is one example that mentions the rumors of Barack Obama's birthplace as somewhere other than the United States. This example is used to explain how to analyze an argument for validity. The more "sensational" examples (like the Obama one above) are helpful in showing argument structure, and they can also help students see how rumors like this might gain traction--as well as help to show students how to debunk them with their newfound understanding of argument and logic.

The writing style is excellent for the subject matter, especially in the third section explaining logical fallacies. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this text!

Reviewed by Laurel Panser, Instructor, Riverland Community College on 6/20/17

This is a review of Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, an open source book version 1.4 by Matthew Van Cleave. The comparison book used was Patrick J. Hurley’s A Concise Introduction to Logic 12th Edition published by Cengage as well as... read more

This is a review of Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, an open source book version 1.4 by Matthew Van Cleave. The comparison book used was Patrick J. Hurley’s A Concise Introduction to Logic 12th Edition published by Cengage as well as the 13th edition with the same title. Lori Watson is the second author on the 13th edition.

Competing with Hurley is difficult with respect to comprehensiveness. For example, Van Cleave’s book is comprehensive to the extent that it probably covers at least two-thirds or more of what is dealt with in most introductory, one-semester logic courses. Van Cleave’s chapter 1 provides an overview of argumentation including discerning non-arguments from arguments, premises versus conclusions, deductive from inductive arguments, validity, soundness and more. Much of Van Cleave’s chapter 1 parallel’s Hurley’s chapter 1. Hurley’s chapter 3 regarding informal fallacies is comprehensive while Van Cleave’s chapter 4 on this topic is less extensive. Categorical propositions are a topic in Van Cleave’s chapter 2; Hurley’s chapters 4 and 5 provide more instruction on this, however. Propositional logic is another topic in Van Cleave’s chapter 2; Hurley’s chapters 6 and 7 provide more information on this, though. Van Cleave did discuss messy issues of language meaning briefly in his chapter 1; that is the topic of Hurley’s chapter 2.

Van Cleave’s book includes exercises with answers and an index. A glossary was not included.

Reviews of open source textbooks typically include criteria besides comprehensiveness. These include comments on accuracy of the information, whether the book will become obsolete soon, jargon-free clarity to the extent that is possible, organization, navigation ease, freedom from grammar errors and cultural relevance; Van Cleave’s book is fine in all of these areas. Further criteria for open source books includes modularity and consistency of terminology. Modularity is defined as including blocks of learning material that are easy to assign to students. Hurley’s book has a greater degree of modularity than Van Cleave’s textbook. The prose Van Cleave used is consistent.

Van Cleave’s book will not become obsolete soon.

Van Cleave’s book has accessible prose.

Van Cleave used terminology consistently.

Van Cleave’s book has a reasonable degree of modularity.

Van Cleave’s book is organized. The structure and flow of his book is fine.

Problems with navigation are not present.

Grammar problems were not present.

Van Cleave’s book is culturally relevant.

Van Cleave’s book is appropriate for some first semester logic courses.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Reconstructing and analyzing arguments

• 1.1 What is an argument?
• 1.2 Identifying arguments
• 1.3 Arguments vs. explanations
• 1.4 More complex argument structures
• 1.5 Using your own paraphrases of premises and conclusions to reconstruct arguments in standard form
• 1.6 Validity
• 1.7 Soundness
• 1.8 Deductive vs. inductive arguments
• 1.9 Arguments with missing premises
• 1.10 Assuring, guarding, and discounting
• 1.11 Evaluative language
• 1.12 Evaluating a real-life argument

Chapter 2: Formal methods of evaluating arguments

• 2.1 What is a formal method of evaluation and why do we need them?
• 2.2 Propositional logic and the four basic truth functional connectives
• 2.3 Negation and disjunction
• 2.4 Using parentheses to translate complex sentences
• 2.5 “Not both” and “neither nor”
• 2.6 The truth table test of validity
• 2.7 Conditionals
• 2.8 “Unless”
• 2.9 Material equivalence
• 2.10 Tautologies, contradictions, and contingent statements
• 2.11 Proofs and the 8 valid forms of inference
• 2.12 How to construct proofs
• 2.13 Short review of propositional logic
• 2.14 Categorical logic
• 2.15 The Venn test of validity for immediate categorical inferences
• 2.16 Universal statements and existential commitment
• 2.17 Venn validity for categorical syllogisms

Chapter 3: Evaluating inductive arguments and probabilistic and statistical fallacies

• 3.1 Inductive arguments and statistical generalizations
• 3.2 Inference to the best explanation and the seven explanatory virtues
• 3.3 Analogical arguments
• 3.4 Causal arguments
• 3.5 Probability
• 3.6 The conjunction fallacy
• 3.7 The base rate fallacy
• 3.8 The small numbers fallacy
• 3.9 Regression to the mean fallacy
• 3.10 Gambler's fallacy

Chapter 4: Informal fallacies

• 4.1 Formal vs. informal fallacies
• 4.1.1 Composition fallacy
• 4.1.2 Division fallacy
• 4.1.3 Begging the question fallacy
• 4.1.4 False dichotomy
• 4.1.5 Equivocation
• 4.2 Slippery slope fallacies
• 4.2.1 Conceptual slippery slope
• 4.2.2 Causal slippery slope
• 4.3 Fallacies of relevance
• 4.3.1 Ad hominem
• 4.3.2 Straw man
• 4.3.3 Tu quoque
• 4.3.4 Genetic
• 4.3.5 Appeal to consequences
• 4.3.6 Appeal to authority

Answers to exercises Glossary/Index

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. As such, it is not a formal logic textbook, but is closer to what one would find marketed as a “critical thinking textbook.”

About the Contributors

Matthew Van Cleave ,   PhD, Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, 2007.  VAP at Concordia College (Moorhead), 2008-2012.  Assistant Professor at Lansing Community College, 2012-2016. Professor at Lansing Community College, 2016-

Contribute to this Page

Critical Thinking

I. definition.

Critical thinking is the ability to reflect on (and so improve ) your thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. It’s a combination of several skills and habits such as:

Curiosity : the desire for knowledge and understanding

Curious people are never content with their current understanding of the world, but are driven to raise questions and pursue the answers. Curiosity is endless — the better you understand a given topic, the more you realize how much more there is to learn!

Humility : or the recognition that your own understanding is limited

This is closely connected to curiosity — if you’re arrogant and think you know everything already, then you have no reason to be curious. But a humble person always recognizes the limitations and gaps in their knowledge . This makes them more receptive to information, better listeners and learners.

Skepticism : a suspicious attitude toward what other people say

Skepticism means you always demand evidence and don’t simply accept what others tell you. At the same time, skepticism has to be inwardly focused as well! You have to be equally skeptical of your own beliefs and instincts as you are of others’.

Rationality or logic: The formal skills of logic are indispensable for critical thinkers

Skepticism keeps you on the lookout for bad arguments, and rationality helps you figure out exactly why they’re bad. But rationality also allows you to identify good arguments when you see them, and then to move beyond them and understand their further implications.

Creativity: or the ability to come up with new combinations of ideas

It’s not enough to just be skeptical and knock the holes in every argument that you hear. Sooner or later you have to come up with your own ideas, your own solutions, and your own visions. That requires a creative and independent mind, but one that is also capable of listening and learning.

Empathy : the ability to see things from another person’s perspective

Too often, people talk about critical thinkers as though they’re solitary explorers, forging their own path through the jungle of ideas without help from others. But this isn’t true at all. Real critical thinking means you constantly engage with other people, listen to what they have to say, and try to imagine how they see the world. By seeing things from someone else’s perspective, you can generate far more new ideas than you could by relying on your own knowledge alone.

II. Examples

Although video games are sometimes simply a passive way to enjoy yourself, they sometimes rely on critical thinking skills. This is particularly true of puzzle games and role playing games (RPGs) that present your character with puzzles at critical moments. For example, at one stage in the classic RPG Neverwinter Nights , your character has the option to serve as a juror on another character’s trial. In order to save the innocent man, you have to talk to people throughout the town and, using a combination of empathy and skepticism, figure out what really happened.

In one episode of South Park , Cartman becomes obsessed with conspiracy theories and sings a song about needing to think for himself and find out the truth. The show is poking fun at conspiracy theorists, who often think that they are exercising critical thinking when in fact they are simply exercising too much skepticism towards common sense and popular beliefs, and not enough skepticism towards new, unnecessarily complicated explanations.

III. Critical Thinking vs. Traditional Thinking

Critical thinking, in the history of modern Western thought, is strongly associated with the Enlightenment, the period when European and American philosophers decided to approach the world with a rational eye, rejecting blind faith and questioning traditional authority. It was this moment in history that gave us modern medicine, democracy , and the early forms of industrial technology.

At the same time, the Enlightenment also came with many downsides, particularly the fact that it was so hostile to tradition. This hostility is understandable given the state of Europe at the time — ripped apart by bloody conflict between different religions, and oppressed by traditional monarchs who rooted their power in that of the Church. Enlightenment thinkers understandably rejected traditional thinking, holding it responsible for all this violence and injustice. But still, the Enlightenment sometimes went too far in the opposite direction. After all, rejecting tradition just for the sake of rejecting it is not really any better than accepting tradition just for the sake of accepting it! Traditions provide valuable resources for critical thinking, and without them it would be impossible. Think about this: the English language is a tradition, and without it you wouldn’t be sitting there reading these (hopefully useful) words about critical thinking!

So critical thinking absolutely depends on traditions. There’s no question that critical thinking means something more than just accepting traditions; but it doesn’t mean you necessarily reject them, either. It just means that you’re not blindly following tradition for its own sake ; rather, your relationship to your tradition is based on humility, creativity, skepticism, and all the other attributes of critical thinking.

IV. Quotes about Critical Thinking

“If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” (Isaac Newton)

Until Einstein, no physicist was ever more influential than Isaac Newton. Through curiosity and probable skepticism, he not only worked out the basic rules for matter and energy in the universe — he also realized that the force causing objects to fall was the same as the force causing celestial objects to orbit around each other (thus discovering the modern theory of gravity). He was also known for having a big ego and being a little arrogant with those he considered beneath his intellect — but even Newton had enough humility to recognize that he wasn’t doing it alone. He was deeply indebted to the whole tradition of scientists that had come before him — Europeans, Greeks, Arabs, Indians, and all the rest.

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses… and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.” (Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism )

In this quote, Carl Sagan offers a sensitive analysis of a tension within the idea of critical thinking. He points out that skepticism is extremely important to critical thinking, but at the same time it can go too far and become an obstacle. Notice, too, that you could replace the word “new” with “old” in this quote and it would still make sense. Critical thinkers need to be both open to new ideas and skeptical of them; similarly, they need to have a balanced attitude toward old and traditional ideas as well.

V. The History and Importance of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking has emerged as a cultural value in various times and places, from the Islamic scholars of medieval Central Asia to the secular philosophers of 18th-century America or the scientists and engineers of 21st-century Japan. In each case, critical thinking has taken a slightly different form, sometimes emphasizing skepticism above the other dimensions (as occurred in the European Enlightenment), sometimes emphasizing other dimensions such as creativity or rationality.

Today, many leaders in science, education, and business worry that we are seeing a decline in critical thinking. Education around the world has turned increasingly toward standardized testing and the mechanical memorization of facts, an approach that doesn’t leave time for critical thinking or creative arts. Some politicians view critical and creative education as a waste of time, believing that education should only focus on job skills and nothing else — an attitude which clearly overlooks the fact that critical thinking is an important job skill for everyone from auto mechanics to cognitive scientists.

a. Creativity

b. Skepticism

d. These are all dimensions of critical thinking

a. They are opposites

b. They are synonyms

c. They are in tension, but not incompatible

d. None of the above

a. The Enlightenment

b. The Renaissance

c. The current era

d. All of the above

a. Being constantly skeptical

b. Not being skeptical

c. Having a balance between too much skepticism and too little

d. No relation to skepticism

Critical & Creative Thinking - OER & More Resources: Philosophy & Thinking

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Ideas to ponder

Philosophy is love of wisdom, so it implies that one wants to know and understand something.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_philosophy
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_philosophy

Foundations, or the basis of study, started with the beginnings of questioning the world around us. Critical thinking looks at the facts, or most defensible facts. This is important because emotion often creates a filter to hide or ignore uncomfortable factoids.

• Creative thinking is combining known or imagined ideas in new ways.
• When people have cherished beliefs/world-views that conflict with new facts, they need to use critical thinking skills to question why they do not want to accept the new “facts”.
• In science, if multiple experiments find the same range of values in the results, then the results are expected to be a reliable foundation for further study.

Even scientists can be susceptible to the adage: I’ll see it when I believe it.”

The American Philosophical Association

• Statement on the Role of Philosophy Programs in Higher Education Discusses the value of philosophy to education: (1) a philosophy program’s fundamental contributions to education (2) a philosophy program’s contributions to an institution’s core curriculum. (3) philosophy’s relations to other areas of inquiry (4) the contributions that philosophers can make beyond the curriculum. (5) different levels of philosophy programs (6) how one might go about measuring the success of philosophy programs

Why study philosophy?

• Why study philosophy? (.jmu.edu) "The study of philosophy helps us to enhance our ability to solve problems, our communication skills, our persuasive powers, and our writing skills. Below is a description of how philosophy helps us develop these various important skills."..Including... 1. General Problem Solving Skills 2. Communication Skills 3. Persuasive Powers 4. Writing Skills 5. Understanding Other Disciplines 6. Development of Sound Methods of Research and Analysis
• philosophy phi·los·o·phy noun • Love of wisdom • The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.
• wisdom noun • The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment
• think verb • To have a particular opinion, belief, or idea about someone or something. • To direct one's mind toward someone or something; • To use one's mind actively to form connected ideas. noun: think; plural noun: thinks • an act of thinking.
• belief be·lief noun • an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. • trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.
• fallacy noun • a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument. • a failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid. • faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument.

College and University Faculty (criticalthinking.org)

• College and University Faculty (criticalthinking.org) The following articles on our website are directly relevant to higher education instruction in critical thinking and are offered complimentary.
• A Professional Development Model for Colleges and Universities that Fosters Critical Thinking
• Professional Development in Critical Thinking for Higher Education
• An Overview of How to Design Instruction Using Critical Thinking Concepts
• Recommendations for Departmental Self-Evaluation
• College-Wide Grading Standards
• Sample Course: American History: 1600 to 1800
• CT Class Syllabus
• A Sample Assignment Format
• Syllabus - Psychology I
• Critical Thinking Class: Grading Policies
• Critical Thinking Class: Student Understandings
• Grade Profiles
• John Stuart Mill: On Instruction, Intellectual Development, and Disciplined Learning
• Socratic Teaching
• Structures for Student Self-Assessment

Foundation for Critical Thinking

• Critical Thinking: Where to Begin

Philosophy - Thinking about how to think.

• What is Philosophy, and Why Should I Study It? (phil.washington.edu)

Learning about Philosophy Seems to Improve Critical Thinking

• College and University Students

Studying the following articles and pages will help you build a stronger understanding of the core concepts in critical thinking

• Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking
• Glossary of Critical Thinking Terms
• Universal Intellectual Standards
• Valuable Intellectual Traits
• Distinguishing Between Inferences and Assumptions
• Thinking With Concepts

In addition to the basic  review of the definition and concept of critical thinking , the following pages and articles are recommended reading for the college, university or pre-collegiate student.  

FUNDAMENTALS OF CRITICAL THINKING

Main Library of Critical Thinking Resources About Critical Thinking Fundamentals of Critical Thinking Richard Paul Anthology Classic Documenting the Problem Higher Education Instruction K-12 Instruction Strategies & Samples For Students Issues in Critical Thinking The Questioning Mind Reading Backwards: Classic Books Online

ISSUES IN CRITICAL THINKING Ethics Without Indoctrination Accelerating Change Applied Disciplines: A Critical Thinking Model for Engineering Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence Critical Thinking, Moral Integrity and Citizenship Diversity: Making Sense of It Through Critical Thinking Global Change: Why C.T. is Essential To the Community College Mission Natural Egocentric Dispositions

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

This supplement elaborates on the history of the articulation, promotion and adoption of critical thinking as an educational goal.

John Dewey (1910: 74, 82) introduced the term ‘critical thinking’ as the name of an educational goal, which he identified with a scientific attitude of mind. More commonly, he called the goal ‘reflective thought’, ‘reflective thinking’, ‘reflection’, or just ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’. He describes his book as written for two purposes. The first was to help people to appreciate the kinship of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry to the scientific attitude. The second was to help people to consider how recognizing this kinship in educational practice “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (iii). He notes that the ideas in the book obtained concreteness in the Laboratory School in Chicago.

Dewey’s ideas were put into practice by some of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study in the 1930s sponsored by the Progressive Education Association in the United States. For this study, 300 colleges agreed to consider for admission graduates of 30 selected secondary schools or school systems from around the country who experimented with the content and methods of teaching, even if the graduates had not completed the then-prescribed secondary school curriculum. One purpose of the study was to discover through exploration and experimentation how secondary schools in the United States could serve youth more effectively (Aikin 1942). Each experimental school was free to change the curriculum as it saw fit, but the schools agreed that teaching methods and the life of the school should conform to the idea (previously advocated by Dewey) that people develop through doing things that are meaningful to them, and that the main purpose of the secondary school was to lead young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18). In particular, school officials believed that young people in a democracy should develop the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems (Aikin 1942: 81). Students’ work in the classroom thus consisted more often of a problem to be solved than a lesson to be learned. Especially in mathematics and science, the schools made a point of giving students experience in clear, logical thinking as they solved problems. The report of one experimental school, the University School of Ohio State University, articulated this goal of improving students’ thinking:

Critical or reflective thinking originates with the sensing of a problem. It is a quality of thought operating in an effort to solve the problem and to reach a tentative conclusion which is supported by all available data. It is really a process of problem solving requiring the use of creative insight, intellectual honesty, and sound judgment. It is the basis of the method of scientific inquiry. The success of democracy depends to a large extent on the disposition and ability of citizens to think critically and reflectively about the problems which must of necessity confront them, and to improve the quality of their thinking is one of the major goals of education. (Commission on the Relation of School and College of the Progressive Education Association 1943: 745–746)

The Eight-Year Study had an evaluation staff, which developed, in consultation with the schools, tests to measure aspects of student progress that fell outside the focus of the traditional curriculum. The evaluation staff classified many of the schools’ stated objectives under the generic heading “clear thinking” or “critical thinking” (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942: 35–36). To develop tests of achievement of this broad goal, they distinguished five overlapping aspects of it: ability to interpret data, abilities associated with an understanding of the nature of proof, and the abilities to apply principles of science, of social studies and of logical reasoning. The Eight-Year Study also had a college staff, directed by a committee of college administrators, whose task was to determine how well the experimental schools had prepared their graduates for college. The college staff compared the performance of 1,475 college students from the experimental schools with an equal number of graduates from conventional schools, matched in pairs by sex, age, race, scholastic aptitude scores, home and community background, interests, and probable future. They concluded that, on 18 measures of student success, the graduates of the experimental schools did a somewhat better job than the comparison group. The graduates from the six most traditional of the experimental schools showed no large or consistent differences. The graduates from the six most experimental schools, on the other hand, had much greater differences in their favour. The graduates of the two most experimental schools, the college staff reported:

… surpassed their comparison groups by wide margins in academic achievement, intellectual curiosity, scientific approach to problems, and interest in contemporary affairs. The differences in their favor were even greater in general resourcefulness, in enjoyment of reading, [in] participation in the arts, in winning non-academic honors, and in all aspects of college life except possibly participation in sports and social activities. (Aikin 1942: 114)

One of these schools was a private school with students from privileged families and the other the experimental section of a public school with students from non-privileged families. The college staff reported that the graduates of the two schools were indistinguishable from each other in terms of college success.

In 1933 Dewey issued an extensively rewritten edition of his How We Think (Dewey 1910), with the sub-title “A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process”. Although the restatement retains the basic structure and content of the original book, Dewey made a number of changes. He rewrote and simplified his logical analysis of the process of reflection, made his ideas clearer and more definite, replaced the terms ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ by the phrases ‘control of data and evidence’ and ‘control of reasoning and concepts’, added more illustrations, rearranged chapters, and revised the parts on teaching to reflect changes in schools since 1910. In particular, he objected to one-sided practices of some “experimental” and “progressive” schools that allowed children freedom but gave them no guidance, citing as objectionable practices novelty and variety for their own sake, experiences and activities with real materials but of no educational significance, treating random and disconnected activity as if it were an experiment, failure to summarize net accomplishment at the end of an inquiry, non-educative projects, and treatment of the teacher as a negligible factor rather than as “the intellectual leader of a social group” (Dewey 1933: 273). Without explaining his reasons, Dewey eliminated the previous edition’s uses of the words ‘critical’ and ‘uncritical’, thus settling firmly on ‘reflection’ or ‘reflective thinking’ as the preferred term for his subject-matter. In the revised edition, the word ‘critical’ occurs only once, where Dewey writes that “a person may not be sufficiently critical about the ideas that occur to him” (1933: 16, italics in original); being critical is thus a component of reflection, not the whole of it. In contrast, the Eight-Year Study by the Progressive Education Association treated ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflective thinking’ as synonyms.

In the same period, Dewey collaborated on a history of the Laboratory School in Chicago with two former teachers from the school (Mayhew & Edwards 1936). The history describes the school’s curriculum and organization, activities aimed at developing skills, parents’ involvement, and the habits of mind that the children acquired. A concluding chapter evaluates the school’s achievements, counting as a success its staging of the curriculum to correspond to the natural development of the growing child. In two appendices, the authors describe the evolution of Dewey’s principles of education and Dewey himself describes the theory of the Chicago experiment (Dewey 1936).

Glaser (1941) reports in his doctoral dissertation the method and results of an experiment in the development of critical thinking conducted in the fall of 1938. He defines critical thinking as Dewey defined reflective thinking:

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. (Glaser 1941: 6; cf. Dewey 1910: 6; Dewey 1933: 9)

In the experiment, eight lesson units directed at improving critical thinking abilities were taught to four grade 12 high school classes, with pre-test and post-test of the students using the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test and the Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking (developed in collaboration with Glaser’s dissertation sponsor, Goodwin Watson). The average gain in scores on these tests was greater to a statistically significant degree among the students who received the lessons in critical thinking than among the students in a control group of four grade 12 high school classes taking the usual curriculum in English. Glaser concludes:

The aspect of critical thinking which appears most susceptible to general improvement is the attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experience. An attitude of wanting evidence for beliefs is more subject to general transfer. Development of skill in applying the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, however, appears to be specifically related to, and in fact limited by, the acquisition of pertinent knowledge and facts concerning the problem or subject matter toward which the thinking is to be directed. (Glaser 1941: 175)

Retest scores and observable behaviour indicated that students in the intervention group retained their growth in ability to think critically for at least six months after the special instruction.

In 1948 a group of U.S. college examiners decided to develop taxonomies of educational objectives with a common vocabulary that they could use for communicating with each other about test items. The first of these taxonomies, for the cognitive domain, appeared in 1956 (Bloom et al. 1956), and included critical thinking objectives. It has become known as Bloom’s taxonomy. A second taxonomy, for the affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia 1964), and a third taxonomy, for the psychomotor domain (Simpson 1966–67), appeared later. Each of the taxonomies is hierarchical, with achievement of a higher educational objective alleged to require achievement of corresponding lower educational objectives.

Bloom’s taxonomy has six major categories. From lowest to highest, they are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within each category, there are sub-categories, also arranged hierarchically from the educationally prior to the educationally posterior. The lowest category, though called ‘knowledge’, is confined to objectives of remembering information and being able to recall or recognize it, without much transformation beyond organizing it (Bloom et al. 1956: 28–29). The five higher categories are collectively termed “intellectual abilities and skills” (Bloom et al. 1956: 204). The term is simply another name for critical thinking abilities and skills:

Although information or knowledge is recognized as an important outcome of education, very few teachers would be satisfied to regard this as the primary or the sole outcome of instruction. What is needed is some evidence that the students can do something with their knowledge, that is, that they can apply the information to new situations and problems. It is also expected that students will acquire generalized techniques for dealing with new problems and new materials. Thus, it is expected that when the student encounters a new problem or situation, he will select an appropriate technique for attacking it and will bring to bear the necessary information, both facts and principles. This has been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others. In the taxonomy, we have used the term “intellectual abilities and skills”. (Bloom et al. 1956: 38)

Comprehension and application objectives, as their names imply, involve understanding and applying information. Critical thinking abilities and skills show up in the three highest categories of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The condensed version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956: 201–207) gives the following examples of objectives at these levels:

• analysis objectives : ability to recognize unstated assumptions, ability to check the consistency of hypotheses with given information and assumptions, ability to recognize the general techniques used in advertising, propaganda and other persuasive materials
• synthesis objectives : organizing ideas and statements in writing, ability to propose ways of testing a hypothesis, ability to formulate and modify hypotheses
• evaluation objectives : ability to indicate logical fallacies, comparison of major theories about particular cultures

The analysis, synthesis and evaluation objectives in Bloom’s taxonomy collectively came to be called the “higher-order thinking skills” (Tankersley 2005: chap. 5). Although the analysis-synthesis-evaluation sequence mimics phases in Dewey’s (1933) logical analysis of the reflective thinking process, it has not generally been adopted as a model of a critical thinking process. While commending the inspirational value of its ratio of five categories of thinking objectives to one category of recall objectives, Ennis (1981b) points out that the categories lack criteria applicable across topics and domains. For example, analysis in chemistry is so different from analysis in literature that there is not much point in teaching analysis as a general type of thinking. Further, the postulated hierarchy seems questionable at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, ability to indicate logical fallacies hardly seems more complex than the ability to organize statements and ideas in writing.

A revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) distinguishes the intended cognitive process in an educational objective (such as being able to recall, to compare or to check) from the objective’s informational content (“knowledge”), which may be factual, conceptual, procedural, or metacognitive. The result is a so-called “Taxonomy Table” with four rows for the kinds of informational content and six columns for the six main types of cognitive process. The authors name the types of cognitive process by verbs, to indicate their status as mental activities. They change the name of the ‘comprehension’ category to ‘understand’ and of the ‘synthesis’ category to ’create’, and switch the order of synthesis and evaluation. The result is a list of six main types of cognitive process aimed at by teachers: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The authors retain the idea of a hierarchy of increasing complexity, but acknowledge some overlap, for example between understanding and applying. And they retain the idea that critical thinking and problem solving cut across the more complex cognitive processes. The terms ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’, they write:

are widely used and tend to become touchstones of curriculum emphasis. Both generally include a variety of activities that might be classified in disparate cells of the Taxonomy Table. That is, in any given instance, objectives that involve problem solving and critical thinking most likely call for cognitive processes in several categories on the process dimension. For example, to think critically about an issue probably involves some Conceptual knowledge to Analyze the issue. Then, one can Evaluate different perspectives in terms of the criteria and, perhaps, Create a novel, yet defensible perspective on this issue. (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270; italics in original)

In the revised taxonomy, only a few sub-categories, such as inferring, have enough commonality to be treated as a distinct critical thinking ability that could be taught and assessed as a general ability.

A landmark contribution to philosophical scholarship on the concept of critical thinking was a 1962 article in the Harvard Educational Review by Robert H. Ennis, with the title “A concept of critical thinking: A proposed basis for research in the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability” (Ennis 1962). Ennis took as his starting-point a conception of critical thinking put forward by B. Othanel Smith:

We shall consider thinking in terms of the operations involved in the examination of statements which we, or others, may believe. A speaker declares, for example, that “Freedom means that the decisions in America’s productive effort are made not in the minds of a bureaucracy but in the free market”. Now if we set about to find out what this statement means and to determine whether to accept or reject it, we would be engaged in thinking which, for lack of a better term, we shall call critical thinking. If one wishes to say that this is only a form of problem-solving in which the purpose is to decide whether or not what is said is dependable, we shall not object. But for our purposes we choose to call it critical thinking. (Smith 1953: 130)

Adding a normative component to this conception, Ennis defined critical thinking as “the correct assessing of statements” (Ennis 1962: 83). On the basis of this definition, he distinguished 12 “aspects” of critical thinking corresponding to types or aspects of statements, such as judging whether an observation statement is reliable and grasping the meaning of a statement. He noted that he did not include judging value statements. Cutting across the 12 aspects, he distinguished three dimensions of critical thinking: logical (judging relationships between meanings of words and statements), criterial (knowledge of the criteria for judging statements), and pragmatic (the impression of the background purpose). For each aspect, Ennis described the applicable dimensions, including criteria. He proposed the resulting construct as a basis for developing specifications for critical thinking tests and for research on instructional methods and levels.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was an upsurge of attention to the development of thinking skills. The annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform has attracted since its start in 1980 tens of thousands of educators from all levels. In 1983 the College Entrance Examination Board proclaimed reasoning as one of six basic academic competencies needed by college students (College Board 1983). Departments of education in the United States and around the world began to include thinking objectives in their curriculum guidelines for school subjects. For example, Ontario’s social sciences and humanities curriculum guideline for secondary schools requires “the use of critical and creative thinking skills and/or processes” as a goal of instruction and assessment in each subject and course (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 30). The document describes critical thinking as follows:

Critical thinking is the process of thinking about ideas or situations in order to understand them fully, identify their implications, make a judgement, and/or guide decision making. Critical thinking includes skills such as questioning, predicting, analysing, synthesizing, examining opinions, identifying values and issues, detecting bias, and distinguishing between alternatives. Students who are taught these skills become critical thinkers who can move beyond superficial conclusions to a deeper understanding of the issues they are examining. They are able to engage in an inquiry process in which they explore complex and multifaceted issues, and questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 46).

Sweden makes schools responsible for ensuring that each pupil who completes compulsory school “can make use of critical thinking and independently formulate standpoints based on knowledge and ethical considerations” (Skolverket 2018: 12). Subject syllabi incorporate this requirement, and items testing critical thinking skills appear on national tests that are a required step toward university admission. For example, the core content of biology, physics and chemistry in years 7-9 includes critical examination of sources of information and arguments encountered by pupils in different sources and social discussions related to these sciences, in both digital and other media. (Skolverket 2018: 170, 181, 192). Correspondingly, in year 9 the national tests require using knowledge of biology, physics or chemistry “to investigate information, communicate and come to a decision on issues concerning health, energy, technology, the environment, use of natural resources and ecological sustainability” (see the message from the School Board ). Other jurisdictions similarly embed critical thinking objectives in curriculum guidelines.

At the college level, a new wave of introductory logic textbooks, pioneered by Kahane (1971), applied the tools of logic to contemporary social and political issues. Popular contemporary textbooks of this sort include those by Bailin and Battersby (2016b), Boardman, Cavender and Kahane (2018), Browne and Keeley (2018), Groarke and Tindale (2012), and Moore and Parker (2020). In their wake, colleges and universities in North America transformed their introductory logic course into a general education service course with a title like ‘critical thinking’ or ‘reasoning’. In 1980, the trustees of California’s state university and colleges approved as a general education requirement a course in critical thinking, described as follows:

Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought. (Dumke 1980)

Since December 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions at the three annual divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association. In December 1987, the Committee on Pre-College Philosophy of the American Philosophical Association invited Peter Facione to make a systematic inquiry into the current state of critical thinking and critical thinking assessment. Facione assembled a group of 46 other academic philosophers and psychologists to participate in a multi-round Delphi process, whose product was entitled Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction (Facione 1990a). The statement listed abilities and dispositions that should be the goals of a lower-level undergraduate course in critical thinking. Researchers in nine European countries determined which of these skills and dispositions employers expect of university graduates (Dominguez 2018 a), compared those expectations to critical thinking educational practices in post-secondary educational institutions (Dominguez 2018b), developed a course on critical thinking education for university teachers (Dominguez 2018c) and proposed in response to identified gaps between expectations and practices an “educational protocol” that post-secondary educational institutions in Europe could use to develop critical thinking (Elen et al. 2019).

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