Dr.

Abdalla

Chapter Two

Basic principles of critical thinking

Essential Intellectual Standards of Critical Thinking

We postulate that there are at least nine intellectual standards important to skilled
reasoning in everyday life. These are :-

1) Clarity
2) Precision
3) Accuracy
4) Relevance
5) Depth
6) Breadth
7) Logicalness
8) Significance
9) and fairness
 Clarity: Understandable, the meaning can be grasped; to free from confusion or
ambiguity, to remove obscurities.
 Clarity is a “gateway” standard. If a statement is unclear, one cannot determine
whether it is accurate or relevant.
 For example, here is an unclear question: “What can be done about the education
system in America?” To adequately address the question, a clearer understanding of
how the person asking the question is conceptualizing the “problem” Is needed. A
clearer question might be
 Questions that focus on clarity in thinking include:

 Could you give me an example? or Should I provide an example?

 Let me state in my own words what I think you just said. Am I clear about your
meaning?

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 I hear you saying “___.” Am I hearing you correctly, or have I misunderstood

you?

 Accuracy: free from errors, mistakes or distortions; true, correct. A statement can be
clear but not accurate, as in “Most dogs weigh more than 300 pounds.”
 Questions that focus on accuracy in thinking include:

 How could I check that to see if it is true?

 Precision: exact to the necessary level of detail, specific. A statement can be both
clear and accurate, but not precise, as in “Jack is overweight.” (One doesn’t know
how overweight Jack is, one pound or 500 pounds.)
 Questions that focus on precision in thinking include:

 Could you give me more details about that?

 Relevance: bearing upon or relating to the matter at hand; implies a close logical
relationship with, and importance to, the matter under consideration.

A statement can be clear, accurate, and precise but not relevant to the question at
issue. For example, students often think that the amount of effort they put into a course
should be used in raising their grade in a course. Often, however, “effort” does not
measure the quality of student learning, and when this is so, effort is irrelevant to their
appropriate grade.

 Questions that focus on relevance in thinking include:

 I don’t see how what you said bears on the question. Could you show me
how it is relevant?
 Depth: containing complexities and multiple interrelationships, implies thoroughness
in thinking through the many variables in the situation, context, idea, or question.

A statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (i.e., lack
depth). For example, the statement “Just Say No,” which was used for a number of years
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to discourage children and teens from using drugs, is clear, accurate, precise, and
relevant. Nevertheless, those who take this injunction to solve the social problem of
unhealthy drug use fail to appreciate the true complexities in the problem.
Their thinking is superficial at best.

 Questions that focus on depth in thinking include:

 Is this question simple or complex? Is it easy or difficult to answer well and

truly?

 Breadth: encompassing multiple viewpoints, comprehensive in view, wide-ranging

and broadminded in perspective.

A line of reasoning may be clear, accurate, precise, relevant, and deep but lack
breadth (as in an argument from either the conservative or liberal standpoints which
details the complexities in an issue, but only recognizes insights from one perspective).

 Questions that focus on breadth in thinking include:

 What points of view are relevant to this issue?

 Logic: the parts make sense together, no contradictions; in keeping with the
principles of sound judgment and reasonability.
 Questions that focus on logic include:

 Does all this fit together logically?

 Does this really make sense?

 Significance: having importance, being of consequence; having considerable or

substantial meaning.
 Questions that focus on significance include:

 What is the most significant information needed to address this issue?

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 How is that fact important in context?

 Fairness: free from bias, dishonesty, favoritism, selfish-interest, deception or

injustice.
 Questions that focus on fairness include:

 Does a particular group have some vested interest in this issue that causes them
to distort other relevant viewpoints?

 Am I sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others?

Core Critical Thinking Skills

There are six core critical thinking skills involved in critical thinking processes
according to Facione (1998). “The skills are:

1) Interpretation is “to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide

variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs,
rules, procedures, or criteria.” Interpretation includes the sub-skills of categorization,
decoding significance, and clarifying meaning.
2) Analysis is “to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among
statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation
intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or
opinions”.
3) Evaluation is “to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which
are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation,
judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or
intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other
forms of representation.”
4) Inference is “to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions;
to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to reduce

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the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments,

beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of
representation.” As sub-skills of inference the experts list querying evidence,
conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions.
5) Explanation is “being able to present in a cogent and coherent way the results of
one’s reasoning”. This means to be able to give someone a full look at the big picture:
both “to state and to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual,
methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one’s
results were based; and to present one’s reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.”
6) Self-regulation is “self-consciously to monitor one’s cognitive activities, the
elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying
skills in analysis, and evaluation to one’s own inferential judgments with a view
toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one’s reasoning or
one’s results.” The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction.
 And therefore, good critical thinkers are able to interpret, analyze, evaluate, infer and
explain what they think and how they come out with their judgments.

Critical Thinking Steps

The steps that the thinker can take to achieve critical thinking skills can be
identified as follows:

1) Gathering a series of studies, research, information and facts related to the subject
of the study.
2) Review the different opinions related to the topic.
3) A discussion of different opinions to determine the correct ones and the incorrect
ones.
4) Distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of opposing opinions.
5) Evaluate opinions in an objective way, free from bias and subjectivity.
6) Demonstrating and presenting an argument for the validity of the opinion or
judgment being approved.
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7) Refer to more information if evidence and argument require it.

Characteristics of Critical Thinkers56

Characteristics of critical thnkers are as follows:-

1- Curiosity

2- Compassion

3- Awareness

4- Decisiveness

5- Honesty

6- Willingness

Characteristics of Critical and Uncritical Thinkers58 Critical

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Three Parts of Critical Thinking59

Full-fledged critical thinking involves three parts:

1-Critical thinking involves asking questions.

 It involves asking questions that need to be asked, asking good questions,

questions that go to the heart of the matter. Critical thinking involves noticing
that there are questions that need to be addressed.

2-Critical thinking involves trying to answer those questions by reasoning them out.

 Reasoning out answers to questions is different from other ways of answering

questions.
 It is different from giving an answer we have always taken for granted but
never thought about. It is different from answering impressionistically (“That
reminds me of . . .”), or answering simply according to the way we were
raised, or answering in accordance with our personality. It is also different
from answering by saying the first thing that comes into our mind, and then
using all our power of reasoning to defend that answer.

3- Critical thinking involves believing the results of our reasoning.

 Critical thinking is different from just engaging in a mental exercise.

 When we think through an issue critically, we internalize the results.
 We don’t give merely verbal agreement: we actually believe the
results because we have done our best to reason the issue out and we know
that reasoning things out is the best way to get reliable answers.

Obstacles to Critical Thinking60

Many aspects of the world we live in can be Obstacles to learning to think more
critically:

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1) Forming a Picture of the World on the Basis of the News.

2) Forming a Picture of the World on the Basis of Movies, TV, Advertising,
Magazines
3) All-or-Nothing Thinking (Black-and-White Thinking), Us Versus-Them Thinking,
Stereotyping.
4) Fears
Although, as we have seen, all fears are not automatically an Obstacle to critical
thinking, some fears do tend to become obstacles. That’s especially true of

■ fear of making mistakes

■ fear of trying something new, of sticking your neck out ■ fear of

looking foolish

5) Egocentrism
Egocentrism interferes with critical thinking on all levels, from the deepest to the
most superficial. It stands in the way of the empathy that is such an important part
of critical thinking. If I am in the health-care professions, for example, it’s easy to
stay bound up in my own desires and needs and not see things from the patient’s
point of view.
Egocentrism stands in the way of fair-mindedness too, another essential
component of critical thinking
6) Previous Commitments, Previous Personal Experience

How Deep Is Our Need for Critical Thinking?

One of the great things about critical thinking is its versatility. It is valuable at all
levels of our thinking.

1. At the Level of Practical Decision Making

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 Critical thinking helps when we are simply trying to deal with ordinary tasks:
how to study more efficiently, find a strategy when we are stuck in an airport,
decide what kind of clothes to buy.
2. At the Level of Meaningfulness
 Learning to think critically also helps people deal with the much larger issues
of living their life.
3. At the Level of Concepts
 We think in terms of concepts, and these inevitably shape our life to a
considerable degree.
 Very often the concepts we think in terms of are ones we accept uncritically.
 We may understand what love is from movies and from the way we feel.

Critical and Creative Thinking

 In understanding critical thinking, it is important to recognize the interrelationship of

critical and creative thought.
 These two modes of thinking, though often misunderstood, are inseparable in
everyday reasoning.
 Creativity masters a process of making or producing, criticality a process of assessing
or judging.
 The mind when thinking well must simultaneously both produce and assess, both
generate, and judge, the products it constructs. Sound thinking requires both
imagination and intellectual discipline.

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