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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

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Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Critical thinking.

Critical Thinking is the process of using and assessing reasons to evaluate statements, assumptions, and arguments in ordinary situations. The goal of this process is to help us have good beliefs, where “good” means that our beliefs meet certain goals of thought, such as truth, usefulness, or rationality. Critical thinking is widely regarded as a species of informal logic, although critical thinking makes use of some formal methods. In contrast with formal reasoning processes that are largely restricted to deductive methods—decision theory, logic, statistics—the process of critical thinking allows a wide range of reasoning methods, including formal and informal logic, linguistic analysis, experimental methods of the sciences, historical and textual methods, and philosophical methods, such as Socratic questioning and reasoning by counterexample.

The goals of critical thinking are also more diverse than those of formal reasoning systems. While formal methods focus on deductive validity and truth, critical thinkers may evaluate a statement’s truth, its usefulness, its religious value, its aesthetic value, or its rhetorical value. Because critical thinking arose primarily from the Anglo-American philosophical tradition (also known as “analytic philosophy”), contemporary critical thinking is largely concerned with a statement’s truth. But some thinkers, such as Aristotle (in Rhetoric ), give substantial attention to rhetorical value.

The primary subject matter of critical thinking is the proper use and goals of a range of reasoning methods, how they are applied in a variety of social contexts, and errors in reasoning. This article also discusses the scope and virtues of critical thinking.

Critical thinking should not be confused with Critical Theory. Critical Theory refers to a way of doing philosophy that involves a moral critique of culture. A “critical” theory, in this sense, is a theory that attempts to disprove or discredit a widely held or influential idea or way of thinking in society. Thus, critical race theorists and critical gender theorists offer critiques of traditional views and latent assumptions about race and gender. Critical theorists may use critical thinking methodology, but their subject matter is distinct, and they also may offer critical analyses of critical thinking itself.

Table of Contents

• Argument and Evaluation
• Categorical Logic
• Propositional Logic
• Modal Logic
• Predicate Logic
• Other Formal Systems
• Generalization
• Causal Reasoning
• Formal Fallacies
• Informal Fallacies
• Heuristics and Biases
• The Principle of Charity/Humility
• The Principle of Caution
• The Expansiveness of Critical Thinking
• Productivity and the Limits of Rationality
• Classical Approaches
• The Paul/Elder Model
• Other Approaches
• References and Further Reading

The process of evaluating a statement traditionally begins with making sure we understand it; that is, a statement must express a clear meaning. A statement is generally regarded as clear if it expresses a proposition , which is the meaning the author of that statement intends to express, including definitions, referents of terms, and indexicals, such as subject, context, and time. There is significant controversy over what sort of “entity” propositions are, whether abstract objects or linguistic constructions or something else entirely. Whatever its metaphysical status, it is used here simply to refer to whatever meaning a speaker intends to convey in a statement.

The difficulty with identifying intended propositions is that we typically speak and think in natural languages (English, Swedish, French), and natural languages can be misleading. For instance, two different sentences in the same natural language may express the same proposition, as in these two English sentences:

Jamie is taller than his father. Jamie’s father is shorter than he.

Further, the same sentence in a natural language can express more than one proposition depending on who utters it at a time:

I am shorter than my father right now.

The pronoun “I” is an indexical; it picks out, or “indexes,” whoever utters the sentence and, therefore, expresses a different proposition for each new speaker who utters it. Similarly, “right now” is a temporal indexical; it indexes the time the sentence is uttered. The proposition it is used to express changes each new time the sentence is uttered and, therefore, may have a different truth value at different times (as, say, the speaker grows taller: “I am now five feet tall” may be true today, but false a year from now). Other indexical terms that can affect the meaning of the sentence include other pronouns (he, she, it) and definite articles (that, the).

Further still, different sentences in different natural languages may express the same proposition . For example, all of the following express the proposition “Snow is white”:

Snow is white. (English)

Der Schnee ist weiss. (German)

La neige est blanche. (French)

La neve é bianca. (Italian)

Finally, statements in natural languages are often vague or ambiguous , either of which can obscure the propositions actually intended by their authors. And even in cases where they are not vague or ambiguous, statements’ truth values sometimes vary from context to context. Consider the following example.

The English statement, “It is heavy,” includes the pronoun “it,” which (when used without contextual clues) is ambiguous because it can index any impersonal subject. If, in this case, “it” refers to the computer on which you are reading this right now, its author intends to express the proposition, “The computer on which you are reading this right now is heavy.” Further, the term “heavy” reflects an unspecified standard of heaviness (again, if contextual clues are absent). Assuming we are talking about the computer, it may be heavy relative to other computer models but not to automobiles. Further still, even if we identify or invoke a standard of heaviness by which to evaluate the appropriateness of its use in this context, there may be no weight at which an object is rightly regarded as heavy according to that standard. (For instance, is an object heavy because it weighs 5.3 pounds but not if it weighs 5.2 pounds? Or is it heavy when it is heavier than a mouse but lighter than an anvil?) This means “heavy” is a vague term. In order to construct a precise statement, vague terms (heavy, cold, tall) must often be replaced with terms expressing an objective standard (pounds, temperature, feet).

Part of the challenge of critical thinking is to clearly identify the propositions (meanings) intended by those making statements so we can effectively reason about them. The rules of language help us identify when a term or statement is ambiguous or vague, but they cannot, by themselves, help us resolve ambiguity or vagueness. In many cases, this requires assessing the context in which the statement is made or asking the author what she intends by the terms. If we cannot discern the meaning from the context and we cannot ask the author, we may stipulate a meaning, but this requires charity, to stipulate a plausible meaning, and humility, to admit when we discover that our stipulation is likely mistaken.

2. Argument and Evaluation

Once we are satisfied that a statement is clear, we can begin evaluating it. A statement can be evaluated according to a variety of standards. Commonly, statements are evaluated for truth, usefulness, or rationality. The most common of these goals is truth, so that is the focus of this article.

The truth of a statement is most commonly evaluated in terms of its relation to other statements and direct experiences. If a statement follows from or can be inferred from other statements that we already have good reasons to believe, then we have a reason to believe that statement. For instance, the statement “The ball is blue” can be derived from “The ball is blue and round.” Similarly, if a statement seems true in light of, or is implied by, an experience, then we have a reason to believe that statement. For instance, the experience of seeing a red car is a reason to believe, “The car is red.” (Whether these reasons are good enough for us to believe is a further question about justification , which is beyond the scope of this article, but see “ Epistemic Justification .”) Any statement we derive in these ways is called a conclusion . Though we regularly form conclusions from other statements and experiences—often without thinking about it—there is still a question of whether these conclusions are true: Did we draw those conclusions well? A common way to evaluate the truth of a statement is to identify those statements and experiences that support our conclusions and organize them into structures called arguments . (See also, “ Argument .”)

An argument is one or more statements (called premises ) intended to support the truth of another statement (the conclusion ). Premises comprise the evidence offered in favor of the truth of a conclusion. It is important to entertain any premises that are intended to support a conclusion, even if the attempt is unsuccessful. Unsuccessful attempts at supporting a proposition constitute bad arguments, but they are still arguments. The support intended for the conclusion may be formal or informal. In a formal, or deductive, argument, an arguer intends to construct an argument such that, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. This strong relationship between premises and conclusion is called validity . This relationship between the premises and conclusion is called “formal” because it is determined by the form (that is, the structure) of the argument (see §3). In an informal, or inductive , argument, the conclusion may be false even if the premises are true. In other words, whether an inductive argument is good depends on something more than the form of the argument. Therefore, all inductive arguments are invalid, but this does not mean they are bad arguments. Even if an argument is invalid, its premises can increase the probability that its conclusion is true. So, the form of inductive arguments is evaluated in terms of the strength the premises confer on the conclusion, and stronger inductive arguments are preferred to weaker ones (see §4). (See also, “ Deductive and Inductive Arguments .”)

Psychological states, such as sensations, memories, introspections, and intuitions often constitute evidence for statements. Although these states are not themselves statements, they can be expressed as statements. And when they are, they can be used in and evaluated by arguments. For instance, my seeing a red wall is evidence for me that, “There is a red wall,” but the physiological process of seeing is not a statement. Nevertheless, the experience of seeing a red wall can be expressed as the proposition, “I see a red wall” and can be included in an argument such as the following:

• I see a red wall in front of me.
• Therefore, there is a red wall in front of me.

This is an inductive argument, though not a strong one. We do not yet know whether seeing something (under these circumstances) is reliable evidence for the existence of what I am seeing. Perhaps I am “seeing” in a dream, in which case my seeing is not good evidence that there is a wall. For similar reasons, there is also reason to doubt whether I am actually seeing. To be cautious, we might say we seem to see a red wall.

To be good , an argument must meet two conditions: the conclusion must follow from the premises—either validly or with a high degree of likelihood—and the premises must be true. If the premises are true and the conclusion follows validly, the argument is sound . If the premises are true and the premises make the conclusion probable (either objectively or relative to alternative conclusions), the argument is cogent .

Here are two examples:

• Earth is larger than its moon.
• Our sun is larger than Earth.
• Therefore, our sun is larger than Earth’s moon.

In example 1, the premises are true. And since “larger than” is a transitive relation, the structure of the argument guarantees that, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. This means the argument is also valid. Since it is both valid and has true premises, this deductive argument is sound.

  Example 2:

• It is sunny in Montana about 205 days per year.
• I will be in Montana in February.
• Hence, it will probably be sunny when I am in Montana.

In example 2, premise 1 is true, and let us assume premise 2 is true. The phrase “almost always” indicates that a majority of days in Montana are sunny, so that, for any day you choose, it will probably be a sunny day. Premise 2 says I am choosing days in February to visit. Together, these premises strongly support (though they do not guarantee) the conclusion that it will be sunny when I am there, and so this inductive argument is cogent.

In some cases, arguments will be missing some important piece, whether a premise or a conclusion. For instance, imagine someone says, “Well, she asked you to go, so you have to go.” The idea that you have to go does not follow logically from the fact that she asked you to go without more information. What is it about her asking you to go that implies you have to go? Arguments missing important information are called enthymemes . A crucial part of critical thinking is identifying missing or assumed information in order to effectively evaluate an argument. In this example, the missing premise might be that, “She is your boss, and you have to do what she asks you to do.” Or it might be that, “She is the woman you are interested in dating, and if you want a real chance at dating her, you must do what she asks.” Before we can evaluate whether her asking implies that you have to go, we need to know this missing bit of information. And without that missing bit of information, we can simply reply, “That conclusion doesn’t follow from that premise.”

The two categories of reasoning associated with soundness and cogency—formal and informal, respectively—are considered, by some, to be the only two types of argument. Others add a third category, called abductive reasoning, according to which one reasons according to the rules of explanation rather than the rules of inference . Those who do not regard abductive reasoning as a third, distinct category typically regard it as a species of informal reasoning. Although abductive reasoning has unique features, here it is treated, for reasons explained in §4d, as a species of informal reasoning, but little hangs on this characterization for the purposes of this article.

3. Formal Reasoning

Although critical thinking is widely regarded as a type of informal reasoning, it nevertheless makes substantial use of formal reasoning strategies. Formal reasoning is deductive , which means an arguer intends to infer or derive a proposition from one or more propositions on the basis of the form or structure exhibited by the premises. Valid argument forms guarantee that particular propositions can be derived from them. Some forms look like they make such guarantees but fail to do so (we identify these as formal fallacies in §5a). If an arguer intends or supposes that a premise or set of premises guarantee a particular conclusion, we may evaluate that argument form as deductive even if the form fails to guarantee the conclusion, and is thus discovered to be invalid.

Before continuing in this section, it is important to note that, while formal reasoning provides a set of strict rules for drawing valid inferences, it cannot help us determine the truth of many of our original premises or our starting assumptions. And in fact, very little critical thinking that occurs in our daily lives (unless you are a philosopher, engineer, computer programmer, or statistician) involves formal reasoning. When we make decisions about whether to board an airplane, whether to move in with our significant others, whether to vote for a particular candidate, whether it is worth it to drive ten miles faster the speed limit even if I am fairly sure I will not get a ticket, whether it is worth it to cheat on a diet, or whether we should take a job overseas, we are reasoning informally. We are reasoning with imperfect information (I do not know much about my flight crew or the airplane’s history), with incomplete information (no one knows what the future is like), and with a number of built-in biases, some conscious (I really like my significant other right now), others unconscious (I have never gotten a ticket before, so I probably will not get one this time). Readers who are more interested in these informal contexts may want to skip to §4.

An argument form is a template that includes variables that can be replaced with sentences. Consider the following form (found within the formal system known as sentential logic ):

• If p, then q.
• Therefore, q.

This form was named modus ponens (Latin, “method of putting”) by medieval philosophers. p and q are variables that can be replaced with any proposition, however simple or complex. And as long as the variables are replaced consistently (that is, each instance of p is replaced with the same sentence and the same for q ), the conclusion (line 3), q , follows from these premises. To be more precise, the inference from the premises to the conclusion is valid . “Validity” describes a particular relationship between the premises and the conclusion, namely: in all cases , the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, or, to use more technical language, the premises logically guarantee an instance of the conclusion.

Notice we have said nothing yet about truth . As critical thinkers, we are interested, primarily, in evaluating the truth of sentences that express propositions, but all we have discussed so far is a type of relationship between premises and conclusion (validity). This formal relationship is analogous to grammar in natural languages and is known in both fields as syntax . A sentence is grammatically correct if its syntax is appropriate for that language (in English, for example, a grammatically correct simple sentence has a subject and a predicate—“He runs.” “Laura is Chairperson.”—and it is grammatically correct regardless of what subject or predicate is used—“Jupiter sings.”—and regardless of whether the terms are meaningful—“Geflorble rowdies.”). Whether a sentence is meaningful, and therefore, whether it can be true or false, depends on its semantics , which refers to the meaning of individual terms (subjects and predicates) and the meaning that emerges from particular orderings of terms. Some terms are meaningless—geflorble; rowdies—and some orderings are meaningless even though their terms are meaningful—“Quadruplicity drinks procrastination,” and “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”.

Despite the ways that syntax and semantics come apart, if sentences are meaningful, then syntactic relationships between premises and conclusions allow reasoners to infer truth values for conclusions. Because of this, a more common definition of validity is this: it is not possible for all the premises to be true and the conclusion false . Formal logical systems in which syntax allows us to infer semantic values are called truth-functional or truth-preserving —proper syntax preserves truth throughout inferences.

The point of this is to note that formal reasoning only tells us what is true if we already know our premises are true. It cannot tell us whether our experiences are reliable or whether scientific experiments tell us what they seem to tell us. Logic can be used to help us determine whether a statement is true, but only if we already know some true things. This is why a broad conception of critical thinking is so important: we need many different tools to evaluate whether our beliefs are any good.

Consider, again, the form modus ponens , and replace p with “It is a cat” and q with “It is a mammal”:

• If it is a cat, then it is a mammal.
• It is a cat.
• Therefore, it is a mammal.

In this case, we seem to “see” (in a metaphorical sense of see ) that the premises guarantee the truth of the conclusion. On reflection, it is also clear that the premises might not be true; for instance, if “it” picks out a rock instead of a cat, premise 1 is still true, but premise 2 is false. It is also possible for the conclusion to be true when the premises are false. For instance, if the “it” picks out a dog instead of a cat, the conclusion “It is a mammal” is true. But in that case, the premises do not guarantee that conclusion; they do not constitute a reason to believe the conclusion is true.

Summing up, an argument is valid if its premises logically guarantee an instance of its conclusion (syntactically), or if it is not possible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false (semantically). Logic is truth-preserving but not truth-detecting; we still need evidence that our premises are true to use logic effectively.

            A Brief Technical Point

Some readers might find it worth noting that the semantic definition of validity has two counterintuitive consequences. First, it implies that any argument with a necessarily true conclusion is valid. Notice that the condition is phrased hypothetically: if the premises are true, then the conclusion cannot be false. This condition is met if the conclusion cannot be false:

• Two added to two equals four.

This is because the hypothetical (or “conditional”) statement would still be true even if the premises were false:

• If it is blue, then it flies.
• It is an airplane.

It is true of this argument that if the premises were true, the conclusion would be since the conclusion is true no matter what.

Second, the semantic formulation also implies that any argument with necessarily false premises is valid. The semantic condition for validity is met if the premises cannot be true:

• Some bachelors are married.
• Earth’s moon is heavier than Jupiter.

In this case, if the premise were true, the conclusion could not be false (this is because anything follows syntactically from a contradiction), and therefore, the argument is valid. There is nothing particularly problematic about these two consequences. But they highlight unexpected implications of our standard formulations of validity, and they show why there is more to good arguments than validity.

Despite these counterintuitive implications, valid reasoning is essential to thinking critically because it is a truth-preserving strategy: if deductive reasoning is applied to true premises, true conclusions will result.

There are a number of types of formal reasoning, but here we review only some of the most common: categorical logic, propositional logic, modal logic, and predicate logic.

a. Categorical Logic

Categorical logic is formal reasoning about categories or collections of subjects, where subjects refers to anything that can be regarded as a member of a class, whether objects, properties, or events or even a single object, property, or event. Categorical logic employs the quantifiers “all,” “some,” and “none” to refer to the members of categories, and categorical propositions are formulated in four ways:

A claims: All As are Bs (where the capitals “A” and “B” represent categories of subjects).

E claims: No As are Bs.

I claims: Some As are Bs.

O claims: Some As are not Bs.

Categorical syllogisms are syllogisms (two-premised formal arguments) that employ categorical propositions. Here are two examples:

• All cats are mammals. (A claim) 1. No bachelors are married. (E claim)
• Some cats are furry. (I claim) 2. All the people in this building are bachelors. (A claim)
• Therefore, some mammals are furry. (I claim) 3. Thus, no people in this building are married. (E claim)

There are interesting limitations on what categorical logic can do. For instance, if one premise says that, “Some As are not Bs,” may we infer that some As are Bs, in what is known as an “existential assumption”? Aristotle seemed to think so ( De Interpretatione ), but this cannot be decided within the rules of the system. Further, and counterintuitively, it would mean that a proposition such as, “Some bachelors are not married,” is false since it implies that some bachelors are married.

Another limitation on categorical logic is that arguments with more than three categories cannot be easily evaluated for validity. The standard method for evaluating the validity of categorical syllogisms is the Venn diagram (named after John Venn, who introduced it in 1881), which expresses categorical propositions in terms of two overlapping circles and categorical arguments in terms of three overlapping circles, each circle representing a category of subjects.

Venn diagram for claim and Venn diagram for argument

A, B, and C represent categories of objects, properties, or events. The symbol “ ∩ ” comes from mathematical set theory to indicate “intersects with.” “A∩B” means all those As that are also Bs and vice versa. 

Though there are ways of constructing Venn diagrams with more than three categories, determining the validity of these arguments using Venn diagrams is very difficult (and often requires computers). These limitations led to the development of more powerful systems of formal reasoning.

b. Propositional Logic

Propositional, or sentential , logic has advantages and disadvantages relative to categorical logic. It is more powerful than categorical logic in that it is not restricted in the number of terms it can evaluate, and therefore, it is not restricted to the syllogistic form. But it is weaker than categorical logic in that it has no operators for quantifying over subjects, such as “all” or “some.” For those, we must appeal to predicate logic (see §3c below).

Basic propositional logic involves formal reasoning about propositions (as opposed to categories), and its most basic unit of evaluation is the atomic proposition . “Atom” means the smallest indivisible unit of something, and simple English statements (subject + predicate) are atomic wholes because if either part is missing, the word or words cease to be a statement, and therefore ceases to be capable of expressing a proposition. Atomic propositions are simple subject-predicate combinations, for instance, “It is a cat” and “I am a mammal.” Variable letters such as p and q in argument forms are replaced with semantically rich constants, indicated by capital letters, such as A and B . Consider modus ponens again (noting that the atomic propositions are underlined in the English argument):

As you can see from premise 1 of the Semantic Replacement, atomic propositions can be combined into more complex propositions using symbols that represent their logical relationships (such as “If…, then…”). These symbols are called “operators” or “connectives.” The five standard operators in basic propositional logic are:

These operations allow us to identify valid relations among propositions: that is, they allow us to formulate a set of rules by which we can validly infer propositions from and validly replace them with others. These rules of inference (such as modus ponens ; modus tollens ; disjunctive syllogism) and rules of replacement (such as double negation; contraposition; DeMorgan’s Law) comprise the syntax of propositional logic, guaranteeing the validity of the arguments employing them.

Two Rules of Inference:

Two Rules of Replacement:

For more, see “ Propositional Logic .”

c. Modal Logic

Standard propositional logic does not capture every type of proposition we wish to express (recall that it does not allow us to evaluate categorical quantifiers such as “all” or “some”). It also does not allow us to evaluate propositions expressed as possibly true or necessarily true, modifications that are called modal operators or modal quantifiers .

Modal logic refers to a family of formal propositional systems, the most prominent of which includes operators for necessity (□) and possibility (◊) (see §3d below for examples of other modal systems). If a proposition, p , is possibly true, ◊ p , it may or may not be true. If p is necessarily true, □ p , it must be true; it cannot be false. If p is necessarily false, either ~◊ p or □~ p , it must be false; it cannot be true.

There is a variety of modal systems, the weakest of which is called K (after Saul Kripke, who exerted important influence on the development of modal logic), and it involves only two additional rules:

Necessitation Rule:   If  A  is a theorem of  K , then so is □ A .

Distribution Axiom:  □( A ⊃ B ) ⊃ (□ A ⊃□ B ).  [If it is necessarily the case that if A, then B , then if it is necessarily the case that A, it is necessarily the case that B .]

Other systems maintain these rules and add others for increasing strength. For instance, the (S4) modal system includes axiom (4):

(4)  □ A ⊃ □□ A   [If it is necessarily the case that A, then it is necessarily necessary that A.]

An influential and intuitive way of thinking about modal concepts is the idea of “possible worlds” (see Plantinga, 1974; Lewis 1986). A world is just the set of all true propositions. The actual world is the set of all actually true propositions—everything that was true, is true, and (depending on what you believe about the future) will be true. A possible world is a way the actual world might have been. Imagine you wore green underwear today. The actual world might have been different in that way: you might have worn blue underwear. In this interpretation of modal quantifiers, there is a possible world in which you wore blue underwear instead of green underwear. And for every possibility like this, and every combination of those possibilities, there is a distinct possible world.

If a proposition is not possible, then there is no possible world in which that proposition is true. The statement, “That object is red all over and blue all over at the same time” is not true in any possible worlds. Therefore, it is not possible (~◊P), or, in other words, necessarily false (□~P). If a proposition is true in all possible worlds, it is necessarily true. For instance, the proposition, “Two plus two equal four,” is true in all possible worlds, so it is necessarily true (□P) or not possibly false (~◊~P).

All modal systems have a number of controversial implications, and there is not space to review them here. Here we need only note that modal logic is a type of formal reasoning that increases the power of propositional logic to capture more of what we attempt to express in natural languages. (For more, see “ Modal Logic: A Contemporary View .”)

d. Predicate Logic

Predicate logic, in particular, first-order predicate logic, is even more powerful than propositional logic. Whereas propositional logic treats propositions as atomic wholes, predicate logic allows reasoners to identify and refer to subjects of propositions, independently of their predicates. For instance, whereas the proposition, “Susan is witty,” would be replaced with a single upper-case letter, say “S,” in propositional logic, predicate logic would assign the subject “Susan” a lower-case letter, s, and the predicate “is witty” an upper-case letter, W, and the translation (or formula ) would be: Ws.

In addition to distinguishing subjects and predicates, first-order predicate logic allows reasoners to quantify over subjects. The quantifiers in predicate logic are “All…,” which is comparable to “All” quantifier in categorical logic and is sometimes symbolized with an upside-down A: ∀ (though it may not be symbolized at all), and “There is at least one…,” which is comparable to “Some” quantifier in categorical logic and is symbolized with a backward E: ∃. E and O claims are formed by employing the negation operator from propositional logic. In this formal system, the proposition, “Someone is witty,” for example, has the form: There is an x , such that x has the property of being witty, which is symbolized: (∃ x)(Wx). Similarly, the proposition, “Everyone is witty,” has the form: For all x, x has the property of being witty, which is symbolized (∀ x )( Wx ) or, without the ∀: ( x )( Wx ).

Predicate derivations are conducted according to the same rules of inference and replacement as propositional logic with the exception of four rules to accommodate adding and eliminating quantifiers.

Second-order predicate logic extends first-order predicate logic to allow critical thinkers to quantify over and draw inferences about subjects and predicates, including relations among subjects and predicates. In both first- and second-order logic, predicates typically take the form of properties (one-place predicates) or relations (two-place predicates), though there is no upper limit on place numbers. Second-order logic allows us to treat both as falling under quantifiers, such as e verything that is (specifically, that has the property of being) a tea cup and everything that is a bachelor is unmarried .

e. Other Formal Systems

It is worth noting here that the formal reasoning systems we have seen thus far (categorical, propositional, and predicate) all presuppose that truth is bivalent , that is, two-valued. The two values critical thinkers are most often concerned with are true and false , but any bivalent system is subject to the rules of inference and replacement of propositional logic. The most common alternative to truth values is the binary code of 1s and 0s used in computer programming. All logics that presuppose bivalence are called classical logics . In the next section, we see that not all formal systems are bivalent; there are non-classical logics . The existence of non-classical systems raises interesting philosophical questions about the nature of truth and the legitimacy of our basic rules of reasoning, but these questions are too far afield for this context. Many philosophers regard bivalent systems as legitimate for all but the most abstract and purely formal contexts. Included below is a brief description of three of the most common non-classical logics.

Tense logic , or temporal logic, is a formal modal system developed by Arthur Prior (1957, 1967, 1968) to accommodate propositional language about time. For example, in addition to standard propositional operators, tense logic includes four operators for indexing times: P “It has at some time been the case that…”; F “It will at some time be the case that…”; H “It has always been the case that…”; and G “It will always be the case that….”

Many-valued logic , or n -valued logic, is a family of formal logical systems that attempts to accommodate intuitions that suggest some propositions have values in addition to true and false. These are often motivated by intuitions that some propositions have neither of the classic truth values; their truth value is indeterminate (not just undeterminable, but neither true nor false), for example, propositions about the future such as, “There will be a sea battle tomorrow.” If the future does not yet exist, there is no fact about the future, and therefore, nothing for a proposition to express.

Fuzzy logic is a type of many-valued logic developed out of Lotfi Zadeh’s (1965) work on mathematical sets. Fuzzy logic attempts to accommodate intuitions that suggest some propositions have truth value in degrees, that is, some degree of truth between true and false. It is motivated by concerns about vagueness in reality, for example whether a certain color is red or some degree of red, or whether some temperature is hot or some degree of hotness.

Formal reasoning plays an important role in critical thinking, but not very often. There are significant limits to how we might use formal tools in our daily lives. If that is true, how do critical thinkers reason well when formal reasoning cannot help? That brings us to informal reasoning.

4. Informal Reasoning

Informal reasoning is inductive , which means that a proposition is inferred (but not derived) from one or more propositions on the basis of the strength provided by the premises (where “strength” means some degree of likelihood less than certainty or some degree of probability less than 1 but greater than 0; a proposition with 0% probability is necessarily false).

Particular premises grant strength to premises to the degree that they reflect certain relationships or structures in the world . For instance, if a particular type of event, p , is known to cause or indicate another type of event, q , then upon encountering an event of type p , we may infer that an event of type q is likely to occur. We may express this relationship among events propositionally as follows:

• Events of type p typically cause or indicate events of type q .
• An event of type p occurred.
• Therefore, an event of type q probably occurred.

If the structure of the world (for instance, natural laws) makes premise 1 true, then, if premise 2 is true, we can reasonably (though not certainly) infer the conclusion.

Unlike formal reasoning, the adequacy of informal reasoning depends on how well the premises reflect relationships or structures in the world. And since we have not experienced every relationship among objects or events or every structure, we cannot infer with certainty that a particular conclusion follows from a true set of premises about these relationships or structures. We can only infer them to some degree of likelihood by determining to the best of our ability either their objective probability or their probability relative to alternative conclusions.

The objective probability of a conclusion refers to how likely, given the way the world is regardless of whether we know it , that conclusion is to be true. The epistemic probability of a conclusion refers to how likely that conclusion is to be true given what we know about the world , or more precisely, given our evidence for its objective likelihood.

Objective probabilities are determined by facts about the world and they are not truths of logic, so we often need evidence for objective probabilities. For instance, imagine you are about to draw a card from a standard playing deck of 52 cards. Given particular assumptions about the world (that this deck contains 52 cards and that one of them is the Ace of Spades), the objective likelihood that you will draw an Ace of Spades is 1/52. These assumptions allow us to calculate the objective probability of drawing an Ace of Spades regardless of whether we have ever drawn a card before. But these are assumptions about the world that are not guaranteed by logic: we have to actually count the cards, to be sure we count accurately and are not dreaming or hallucinating, and that our memory (once we have finished counting) reliably maintains our conclusions. None of these processes logically guarantees true beliefs. So, if our assumptions are correct, we know the objective probability of actually drawing an Ace of Spades in the real world. But since there is no logical guarantee that our assumptions are right, we are left only with the epistemic probability (the probability based on our evidence) of drawing that card. If our assumptions are right, then the objective probability is the same as our epistemic probability: 1/52. But even if we are right, objective and epistemic probabilities can come apart under some circumstances.

Imagine you draw a card without looking at it and lay it face down. What is the objective probability that that card is an Ace of Spades? The structure of the world has now settled the question, though you do not know the outcome. If it is an Ace of Spades, the objective probability is 1 (100%); it is the Ace of Spades. If it is not the Ace of Spades, the objective probability is 0 (0%); it is not the Ace of Spades. But what is the epistemic probability? Since you do not know any more about the world than you did before you drew the card, the epistemic probability is the same as before you drew it: 1/52.

Since much of the way the world is is hidden from us (like the card laid face down), and since it is not obvious that we perceive reality as it actually is (we do not know whether the actual coins we flip are evenly weighted or whether the actual dice we roll are unbiased), our conclusions about probabilities in the actual world are inevitably epistemic probabilities. We can certainly calculate objective probabilities about abstract objects (for instance, hypothetically fair coins and dice—and these calculations can be evaluated formally using probability theory and statistics), but as soon as we apply these calculations to the real world, we must accommodate the fact that our evidence is incomplete.

There are four well-established categories of informal reasoning: generalization, analogy, causal reasoning, and abduction.

a. Generalization

Generalization is a way of reasoning informally from instances of a type to a conclusion about the type. This commonly takes two forms: reasoning from a sample of a population to the whole population , and reasoning from past instances of an object or event to future instances of that object or event . The latter is sometimes called “enumerative induction” because it involves enumerating past instances of a type in order to draw an inference about a future instance. But this distinction is weak; both forms of generalization use past or current data to infer statements about future instances and whole current populations.

A popular instance of inductive generalization is the opinion poll: a sample of a population of people is polled with respect to some statement or belief. For instance, if we poll 57 sophomores enrolled at a particular college about their experiences of living in dorms, these 57 comprise our sample of the population of sophomores at that particular college. We want to be careful how we define our population given who is part of our sample. Not all college students are like sophomores, so it is not prudent to draw inferences about all college students from these sophomores. Similarly, sophomores at other colleges are not necessarily like sophomores at this college (it could be the difference between a liberal arts college and a research university), so it is prudent not to draw inferences about all sophomores from this sample at a particular college.

Let us say that 90% of the 57 sophomores we polled hate the showers in their dorms. From this information, we might generalize in the following way:

• We polled 57 sophomores at Plato’s Academy. (the sample)
• 90% of our sample hates the showers in their dorms. (the polling data)
• Therefore, probably 90% of all sophomores at Plato’s Academy hate the showers in their dorms. (a generalization from our sample to the whole population of sophomores at Plato’s Academy)

Is this good evidence that 90% of all sophomores at that college hate the showers in their dorms?

A generalization is typically regarded as a good argument if its sample is representative of its population. A sample is representative if it is similar in the relevant respects to its population. A perfectly representative sample would include the whole population: the sample would be identical with the population, and thus, perfectly representative. In that case, no generalization is necessary. But we rarely have the time or resources to evaluate whole populations. And so, a sample is generally regarded as representative if it is large relative to its population and unbiased .

In our example, whether our inference is good depends, in part, on how many sophomores there are. Are there 100, 2,000? If there are only 100, then our sample size seems adequate—we have polled over half the population. Is our sample unbiased? That depends on the composition of the sample. Is it comprised only of women or only of men? If this college is not co-ed, that is not a problem. But if the college is co-ed and we have sampled only women, our sample is biased against men. We have information only about female freshmen dorm experiences, and therefore, we cannot generalize about male freshmen dorm experiences.

How large is large enough? This is a difficult question to answer. A poll of 1% of your high school does not seem large enough to be representative. You should probably gather more data. Yet a poll of 1% of your whole country is practically impossible (you are not likely to ever have enough grant money to conduct that poll). But could a poll of less than 1% be acceptable? This question is not easily answered, even by experts in the field. The simple answer is: the more, the better. The more complicated answer is: it depends on how many other factors you can control for, such as bias and hidden variables (see §4c for more on experimental controls).

Similarly, we might ask what counts as an unbiased sample. An overly simple answer is: the sample is taken randomly, that is, by using a procedure that prevents consciously or unconsciously favoring one segment of the population over another (flipping a coin, drawing lottery balls). But reality is not simple. In political polls, it is important not to use a selection procedure that results in a sample with a larger number of members of one political party than another relative to their distribution in the population, even if the resulting sample is random. For example, the two most prominent parties in the U.S. are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. If 47% of the U.S. is Republican and 53% is Democrat, an unbiased sample would have approximately 47% Republicans and 53% Democrats. But notice that simply choosing at random may not guarantee that result; it could easily occur, just by choosing randomly, that our sample has 70% Democrats and 30% Republicans (suppose our computer chose, albeit randomly, from a highly Democratic neighborhood). Therefore, we want to control for representativeness in some criteria, such as gender, age, and education. And we explicitly want to avoid controlling for the results we are interested in; if we controlled for particular answers to the questions on our poll, we would not learn anything—we would get all and only the answers we controlled for.

Difficulties determining representativeness suggest that reliable generalizations are not easy to construct. If we generalize on the basis of samples that are too small or if we cannot control for bias, we commit the informal fallacy of hasty generalization (see §5b). In order to generalize well, it seems we need a bit of machinery to guarantee representativeness. In fact, it seems we need an experiment, one of the primary tools in causal reasoning (see §4c below).

Argument from Analogy , also called analogical reasoning , is a way of reasoning informally about events or objects based on their similarities. A classic instance of reasoning by analogy occurs in archaeology, when researchers attempt to determine whether a stone object is an artifact (a human-made item) or simply a rock. By comparing the features of an unknown stone with well-known artifacts, archaeologists can infer whether a particular stone is an artifact. Other examples include identifying animals’ tracks by their similarities with pictures in a guidebook and consumer reports on the reliability of products.

To see how arguments from analogy work in detail, imagine two people who, independently of one another, want to buy a new pickup truck. Each chooses a make and model he or she likes, and let us say they decide on the same truck. They then visit a number of consumer reporting websites to read reports on trucks matching the features of the make and model they chose, for instance, the year it was built, the size of the engine (6 cyl. or 8 cyl.), the type of transmission (2WD or 4WD), the fuel mileage, and the cab size (standard, extended, crew). Now, let us say one of our prospective buyers is interested in safety —he or she wants a tough, safe vehicle that will protect against injuries in case of a crash. The other potential buyer is interested in mechanical reliability —he or she does not want to spend a lot of time and money fixing mechanical problems.

With this in mind, here is how our two buyers might reason analogically about whether to purchase the truck (with some fake report data included):

• The truck I have in mind was built in 2012, has a 6-cylinder engine, a 2WD transmission, and a king cab.
• 62 people who bought trucks like this one posted consumer reports and have driven it for more than a year.
• 88% of those 62 people report that the truck feels very safe.
• Therefore, the truck I am looking at will likely be very safe.
• 88% of those 62 people report that the truck has had no mechanical problems.
• Therefore, the truck I am looking at will likely have no mechanical problems.

Are the features of these analogous vehicles (the ones reported on) sufficiently numerous and relevant for helping our prospective truck buyers decide whether to purchase the truck in question (the one on the lot)? Since we have some idea that the type of engine and transmission in a vehicle contribute to its mechanical reliability, Buyer 2 may have some relevant features on which to draw a reliable analogy. Fuel mileage and cab size are not obviously relevant, but engine specifications seem to be. Are these specifications numerous enough? That depends on whether anything else that we are not aware of contributes to overall reliability. Of course, if the trucks having the features we know also have all other relevant features we do not know (if there are any), then Buyer 2 may still be able to draw a reliable inference from analogy. Of course, we do not currently know this.

Alternatively, Buyer 1 seems to have very few relevant features on which to draw a reliable analogy. The features listed are not obviously related to safety. Are there safety options a buyer may choose but that are not included in the list? For example, can a buyer choose side-curtain airbags, or do such airbags come standard in this model? Does cab size contribute to overall safety? Although there are a number of similarities between the trucks, it is not obvious that we have identified features relevant to safety or whether there are enough of them. Further, reports of “feeling safe” are not equivalent to a truck actually being safe. Better evidence would be crash test data or data from actual accidents involving this truck. This information is not likely to be on a consumer reports website.

A further difficulty is that, in many cases, it is difficult to know whether many similarities are necessary if the similarities are relevant. For instance, if having lots of room for passengers is your primary concern, then any other features are relevant only insofar as they affect cab size. The features that affect cab size may be relatively small.

This example shows that arguments from analogy are difficult to formulate well. Arguments from analogy can be good arguments when critical thinkers identify a sufficient number of features of known objects that are also relevant to the feature inferred to be shared by the object in question. If a rock is shaped like a cutting tool, has marks consistent with shaping and sharpening, and has wear marks consistent with being held in a human hand, it is likely that rock is an artifact. But not all cases are as clear.

It is often difficult to determine whether the features we have identified are sufficiently numerous or relevant to our interests. To determine whether an argument from analogy is good, a person may need to identify a causal relationship between those features and the one in which she is interested (as in the case with a vehicle’s mechanical reliability). This usually takes the form of an experiment, which we explore below (§4c).

Difficulties with constructing reliable generalizations and analogies have led critical thinkers to develop sophisticated methods for controlling for the ways these arguments can go wrong. The most common way to avoid the pitfalls of these arguments is to identify the causal structures in the world that account for or underwrite successful generalizations and analogies. Causal arguments are the primary method of controlling for extraneous causal influences and identifying relevant causes. Their development and complexity warrant regarding them as a distinct form of informal reasoning.

c. Causal Reasoning

Causal arguments attempt to draw causal conclusions (that is, statements that express propositions about causes: x causes y ) from premises about relationships among events or objects. Though it is not always possible to construct a causal argument, when available, they have an advantage over other types of inductive arguments in that they can employ mechanisms (experiments) that reduce the risks involved in generalizations and analogies.

The interest in identifying causal relationships often begins with the desire to explain correlations among events (as pollen levels increase, so do allergy symptoms) or with the desire to replicate an event (building muscle, starting a fire) or to eliminate an event (polio, head trauma in football).

Correlations among events may be positive (where each event increases at roughly the same rate) or negative (where one event decreases in proportion to another’s increase). Correlations suggest a causal relationship among the events correlated.

But we must be careful; correlations are merely suggestive—other forces may be at work. Let us say the y-axis in the charts above represents the number of millionaires in the U.S. and the x-axis represents the amount of money U.S. citizens pay for healthcare each year. Without further analysis, a positive correlation between these two may lead someone to conclude that increasing wealth causes people to be more health conscious and to seek medical treatment more often. A negative correlation may lead someone to conclude that wealth makes people healthier and, therefore, that they need to seek medical care less frequently.

Unfortunately, correlations can occur without any causal structures (mere coincidence) or because of a third, as-yet-unidentified event (a cause common to both events, or “common cause”), or the causal relationship may flow in an unexpected direction (what seems like the cause is really the effect). In order to determine precisely which event (if any) is responsible for the correlation, reasoners must eliminate possible influences on the correlation by “controlling” for possible influences on the relationship (variables).

Critical thinking about causes begins by constructing hypotheses about the origins of particular events. A hypothesis is an explanation or event that would account for the event in question. For example, if the question is how to account for increased acne during adolescence, and we are not aware of the existence of hormones, we might formulate a number of hypotheses about why this happens: during adolescence, people’s diets change (parents no longer dictate their meals), so perhaps some types of food cause acne; during adolescence, people become increasingly anxious about how they appear to others, so perhaps anxiety or stress causes acne; and so on.

After we have formulated a hypothesis, we identify a test implication that will help us determine whether our hypothesis is correct. For instance, if some types of food cause acne, we might choose a particular food, say, chocolate, and say: if chocolate causes acne (hypothesis), then decreasing chocolate will decrease acne (test implication). We then conduct an experiment to see whether our test implication occurs.

Reasoning about our experiment would then look like one of the following arguments:

There are a couple of important things to note about these arguments. First, despite appearances, both are inductive arguments. The one on the left commits the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent, so, at best, the premises confer only some degree of probability on the conclusion. The argument on the right looks to be deductive (on the face of it, it has the valid form modus tollens ), but it would be inappropriate to regard it deductively. This is because we are not evaluating a logical connection between H and TI, we are evaluating a causal connection—TI might be true or false regardless of H (we might have chosen an inappropriate test implication or simply gotten lucky), and therefore, we cannot conclude with certainty that H does not causally influence TI. Therefore, “If…, then…” statements in experiments must be read as causal conditionals and not material conditionals (the term for how we used conditionals above).

Second, experiments can go wrong in many ways, so no single experiment will grant a high degree of probability to its causal conclusion. Experiments may be biased by hidden variables (causes we did not consider or detect, such as age, diet, medical history, or lifestyle), auxiliary assumptions (the theoretical assumptions by which evaluating the results may be faulty), or underdetermination (there may be a number of hypotheses consistent with those results; for example, if it is actually sugar that causes acne, then chocolate bars, ice cream, candy, and sodas would yield the same test results). Because of this, experiments either confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis; that is, they give us some reason (but not a particularly strong reason) to believe our hypothesized causes are or are not the causes of our test implications, and therefore, of our observations (see Quine and Ullian, 1978). Because of this, experiments must be conducted many times, and only after we have a number of confirming or disconfirming results can we draw a strong inductive conclusion. (For more, see “ Confirmation and Induction .”)

Experiments may be formal or informal . In formal experiments, critical thinkers exert explicit control over experimental conditions: experimenters choose participants, include or exclude certain variables, and identify or introduce hypothesized events. Test subjects are selected according to control criteria (criteria that may affect the results and, therefore, that we want to mitigate, such as age, diet, and lifestyle) and divided into control groups (groups where the hypothesized cause is absent) and experimental groups (groups where the hypothesized cause is present, either because it is introduced or selected for).

Subjects are then placed in experimental conditions. For instance, in a randomized study, the control group receives a placebo (an inert medium) whereas the experimental group receives the hypothesized cause—the putative cause is introduced, the groups are observed, and the results are recorded and compared. When a hypothesized cause is dangerous (such as smoking) or its effects potentially irreversible (for instance, post-traumatic stress disorder), the experimental design must be restricted to selecting for the hypothesized cause already present in subjects, for example, in retrospective (backward-looking) and prospective (forward-looking) studies. In all types of formal experiments, subjects are observed under exposure to the test or placebo conditions for a specified time, and results are recorded and compared.

In informal experiments, critical thinkers do not have access to sophisticated equipment or facilities and, therefore, cannot exert explicit control over experimental conditions. They are left to make considered judgments about variables. The most common informal experiments are John Stuart Mill’s five methods of inductive reasoning, called Mill’s Methods, which he first formulated in A System of Logic (1843). Here is a very brief summary of Mill’s five methods:

(1) The Method of Agreement

If all conditions containing the event y also contain x , x is probably the cause of y .

For example:

“I’ve eaten from the same box of cereal every day this week, but all the times I got sick after eating cereal were times when I added strawberries. Therefore, the strawberries must be bad.”

(2) The Method of Difference

If all conditions lacking y also lack x , x is probably the cause of y .

“The organization turned all its tax forms in on time for years, that is, until our comptroller, George, left; after that, we were always late. Only after George left were we late. Therefore, George was probably responsible for getting our tax forms in on time.”

(3) The Joint Method of Agreement and Difference

If all conditions containing event y also contain event x , and all events lacking y also lack x , x is probably the cause of y .

“The conditions at the animal shelter have been pretty regular, except we had a string of about four months last year when the dogs barked all night, every night. But at the beginning of those four months we sheltered a redbone coonhound, and the barking stopped right after a family adopted her. All the times the redbone hound wasn’t present, there was no barking. Only the time she was present was there barking. Therefore, she probably incited all the other dogs to bark.”

(4) The Method of Concomitant Variation

If the frequency of event y increases and decreases as event x increases and decreases, respectively, x is probably the cause of y .

“We can predict the amount of alcohol sales by the rate of unemployment. As unemployment rises, so do alcohol sales. As unemployment drops, so do alcohol sales. Last quarter marked the highest unemployment in three years, and our sales last quarter are the highest they had been in those three years. Therefore, unemployment probably causes people to buy alcohol.”

(5) The Method of Residues

If a number of factors x , y , and z , may be responsible for a set of events A , B , and C , and if we discover reasons for thinking that x is the cause of A and y is the cause of B , then we have reason to believe z is the cause of C .

“The people who come through this medical facility are usually starving and have malaria, and a few have polio. We are particularly interested in treating the polio. Take this patient here: she is emaciated, which is caused by starvation; and she has a fever, which is caused by malaria. But notice that her muscles are deteriorating, and her bones are sore. This suggests she also has polio.”

d. Abduction

Not all inductive reasoning is inferential. In some cases, an explanation is needed before we can even begin drawing inferences. Consider Darwin’s idea of natural selection. Natural selection is not an object, like a blood vessel or a cellular wall, and it is not, strictly speaking, a single event. It cannot be detected in individual organisms or observed in a generation of offspring. Natural selection is an explanation of biodiversity that combines the process of heritable variation and environmental pressures to account for biomorphic change over long periods of time. With this explanation in hand, we can begin to draw some inferences. For instance, we can separate members of a single species of fruit flies, allow them to reproduce for several generations, and then observe whether the offspring of the two groups can reproduce. If we discover they cannot reproduce, this is likely due to certain mutations in their body types that prevent them from procreating. And since this is something we would expect if natural selection were true, we have one piece of confirming evidence for natural selection. But how do we know the explanations we come up with are worth our time?

Coined by C. S. Peirce (1839-1914), abduction , also called retroduction, or inference to the best explanation , refers to a way of reasoning informally that provides guidelines for evaluating explanations. Rather than appealing to types of arguments (generalization, analogy, causation), the value of an explanation depends on the theoretical virtues it exemplifies. A theoretical virtue is a quality that renders an explanation more or less fitting as an account of some event. What constitutes fittingness (or “loveliness,” as Peter Lipton (2004) calls it) is controversial, but many of the virtues are intuitively compelling, and abduction is a widely accepted tool of critical thinking.

The most widely recognized theoretical virtue is probably simplicity , historically associated with William of Ockham (1288-1347) and known as Ockham’s Razor . A legend has it that Ockham was asked whether his arguments for God’s existence prove that only one God exists or whether they allow for the possibility that many gods exist. He supposedly responded, “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” Though this claim is not found in his writings, Ockham is now famous for advocating that we restrict our beliefs about what is true to only what is absolutely necessary for explaining what we observe.

In contemporary theoretical use, the virtue of simplicity is invoked to encourage caution in how many mechanisms we introduce to explain an event. For example, if natural selection can explain the origin of biological diversity by itself, there is no need to hypothesize both natural selection and a divine designer. But if natural selection cannot explain the origin of, say, the duck-billed platypus, then some other mechanism must be introduced. Of course, not just any mechanism will do. It would not suffice to say the duck-billed platypus is explained by natural selection plus gremlins. Just why this is the case depends on other theoretical virtues; ideally, the virtues work together to help critical thinkers decide among competing hypotheses to test. Here is a brief sketch of some other theoretical virtues or ideals:

Conservatism – a good explanation does not contradict well-established views in a field.

Independent Testability – a good explanation is successful on different occasions under similar circumstances.

Fecundity – a good explanation leads to results that make even more research possible.

Explanatory Depth – a good explanation provides details of how an event occurs.

Explanatory Breadth – a good explanation also explains other, similar events.

Though abduction is structurally distinct from other inductive arguments, it functions similarly in practice: a good explanation provides a probabilistic reason to believe a proposition. This is why it is included here as a species of inductive reasoning. It might be thought that explanations only function to help critical thinkers formulate hypotheses, and do not, strictly speaking, support propositions. But there are intuitive examples of explanations that support propositions independently of however else they may be used. For example, a critical thinker may argue that material objects exist outside our minds is a better explanation of why we perceive what we do (and therefore, a reason to believe it) than that an evil demon is deceiving me , even if there is no inductive or deductive argument sufficient for believing that the latter is false. (For more, see “ Charles Sanders Peirce: Logic .”)

5. Detecting Poor Reasoning

Our attempts at thinking critically often go wrong, whether we are formulating our own arguments or evaluating the arguments of others. Sometimes it is in our interests for our reasoning to go wrong, such as when we would prefer someone to agree with us than to discover the truth value of a proposition. Other times it is not in our interests; we are genuinely interested in the truth, but we have unwittingly made a mistake in inferring one proposition from others. Whether our errors in reasoning are intentional or unintentional, such errors are called fallacies (from the Latin, fallax, which means “deceptive”). Recognizing and avoiding fallacies helps prevent critical thinkers from forming or maintaining defective beliefs.

Fallacies occur in a number of ways. An argument’s form may seem to us valid when it is not, resulting in a formal fallacy . Alternatively, an argument’s premises may seem to support its conclusion strongly but, due to some subtlety of meaning, do not, resulting in an informal fallacy . Additionally, some of our errors may be due to unconscious reasoning processes that may have been helpful in our evolutionary history, but do not function reliably in higher order reasoning. These unconscious reasoning processes are now widely known as heuristics and biases . Each type is briefly explained below.

a. Formal Fallacies

Formal fallacies occur when the form of an argument is presumed or seems to be valid (whether intentionally or unintentionally) when it is not. Formal fallacies are usually invalid variations of valid argument forms. Consider, for example, the valid argument form modus ponens (this is one of the rules of inference mentioned in §3b):

modus ponens (valid argument form)

In modus ponens , we assume or “affirm” both the conditional and the left half of the conditional (called the antecedent ): (p à q) and p. From these, we can infer that q, the second half or consequent , is true. This a valid argument form: if the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false.

Sometimes, however, we invert the conclusion and the second premise, affirming that the conditional, (p à q), and the right half of the conditional, q (the consequent), are true, and then inferring that the left half, p (the antecedent), is true. Note in the example below how the conclusion and second premise are switched. Switching them in this way creates a problem.

To get an intuitive sense of why “affirming the consequent” is a problem, consider this simple example:

affirming the consequent

• It is a mammal.
• Therefore, it is a cat.(?)

From the fact that something is a mammal, we cannot conclude that it is a cat. It may be a dog or a mouse or a whale. The premises can be true and yet the conclusion can still be false. Therefore, this is not a valid argument form. But since it is an easy mistake to make, it is included in the set of common formal fallacies.

Here is a second example with the rule of inference called modus tollens . Modus tollens involves affirming a conditional, (p à q), and denying that conditional’s consequent: ~q. From these two premises, we can validly infer the denial of the antecedent: ~p. But if we switch the conclusion and the second premise, we get another fallacy, called denying the antecedent .

Technically, all informal reasoning is formally fallacious—all informal arguments are invalid. Nevertheless, since those who offer inductive arguments rarely presume they are valid, we do not regard them as reasoning fallaciously.

b. Informal Fallacies

Informal fallacies occur when the meaning of the terms used in the premises of an argument suggest a conclusion that does not actually follow from them (the conclusion either follows weakly or with no strength at all). Consider an example of the informal fallacy of equivocation , in which a word with two distinct meanings is used in both of its meanings:

• Any law can be repealed by Congress.
• Gravity is a law.
• Therefore, gravity can be repealed by Congress.

In this case, the argument’s premises are true when the word “law” is rightly interpreted, but the conclusion does not follow because the word law has a different referent in premise 1 (political laws) than in premise 2 (a law of nature). This argument equivocates on the meaning of law and is, therefore, fallacious.

Consider, also, the informal fallacy of ad hominem , abusive, when an arguer appeals to a person’s character as a reason to reject her proposition:

“Elizabeth argues that humans do not have souls; they are simply material beings. But Elizabeth is a terrible person and often talks down to children and the elderly. Therefore, she could not be right that humans do not have souls.”

The argument might look like this:

• Elizabeth is a terrible person and often talks down to children and the elderly.
• Therefore, Elizabeth is not right that humans do not have souls.

The conclusion does not follow because whether Elizabeth is a terrible person is irrelevant to the truth of the proposition that humans do not have souls. Elizabeth’s argument for this statement is relevant, but her character is not.

Another way to evaluate this fallacy is to note that, as the argument stands, it is an enthymeme (see §2); it is missing a crucial premise, namely: If anyone is a terrible person, that person makes false statements. But this premise is clearly false. There are many ways in which one can be a terrible person, and not all of them imply that someone makes false statements. (In fact, someone could be terrible precisely because they are viciously honest.) Once we fill in the missing premise, we see the argument is not cogent because at least one premise is false.

Importantly, we face a number of informal fallacies on a daily basis, and without the ability to recognize them, their regularity can make them seem legitimate. Here are three others that only scratch the surface:

Appeal to the People: We are often encouraged to believe or do something just because everyone else does. We are encouraged to believe what our political party believes, what the people in our churches or synagogues or mosques believe, what people in our family believe, and so on. We are encouraged to buy things because they are “bestsellers” (lots of people buy them). But the fact that lots of people believe or do something is not, on its own, a reason to believe or do what they do.

Tu Quoque (You, too!): We are often discouraged from pursuing a conclusion or action if our own beliefs or actions are inconsistent with them. For instance, if someone attempts to argue that everyone should stop smoking, but that person smokes, their argument is often given less weight: “Well, you smoke! Why should everyone else quit?” But the fact that someone believes or does something inconsistent with what they advocate does not, by itself, discredit the argument. Hypocrites may have very strong arguments despite their personal inconsistencies.

Base Rate Neglect: It is easy to look at what happens after we do something or enact a policy and conclude that the act or policy caused those effects. Consider a law reducing speed limits from 75 mph to 55 mph in order to reduce highway accidents. And, in fact, in the three years after the reduction, highway accidents dropped 30%! This seems like a direct effect of the reduction. However, this is not the whole story. Imagine you looked back at the three years prior to the law and discovered that accidents had dropped 30% over that time, too. If that happened, it might not actually be the law that caused the reduction in accidents. The law did not change the trend in accident reduction. If we only look at the evidence after the law, we are neglecting the rate at which the event occurred without the law. The base rate of an event is the rate that the event occurs without the potential cause under consideration. To take another example, imagine you start taking cold medicine, and your cold goes away in a week. Did the cold medicine cause your cold to go away? That depends on how long colds normally last and when you took the medicine. In order to determine whether a potential cause had the effect you suspect, do not neglect to compare its putative effects with the effects observed without that cause.

For more on formal and informal fallacies and over 200 different types with examples, see “ Fallacies .”

c. Heuristics and Biases

In the 1960s, psychologists began to suspect there is more to human reasoning than conscious inference. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky confirmed these suspicions with their discoveries that many of the standard assumptions about how humans reason in practice are unjustified. In fact, humans regularly violate these standard assumptions, the most significant for philosophers and economists being that humans are fairly good at calculating the costs and benefits of their behavior; that is, they naturally reason according to the dictates of Expected Utility Theory. Kahneman and Tversky showed that, in practice, reasoning is affected by many non-rational influences, such as the wording used to frame scenarios (framing bias) and information most vividly available to them (the availability heuristic).

Consider the difference in your belief about the likelihood of getting robbed before and after seeing a news report about a recent robbery, or the difference in your belief about whether you will be bitten by a shark the week before and after Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.” For most of us, we are likely to regard their likelihood as higher after we have seen these things on television than before. Objectively, they are no more or less likely to happen regardless of our seeing them on television, but we perceive they are more likely because their possibility is more vivid to us. These are examples of the availability heuristic.

Since the 1960s, experimental psychologists and economists have conducted extensive research revealing dozens of these unconscious reasoning processes, including ordering bias , the representativeness heuristic , confirmation bias , attentional bias , and the anchoring effect . The field of behavioral economics, made popular by Dan Ariely (2008; 2010; 2012) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2009), emerged from and contributes to heuristics and biases research and applies its insights to social and economic behaviors.

Ideally, recognizing and understanding these unconscious, non-rational reasoning processes will help us mitigate their undermining influence on our reasoning abilities (Gigerenzer, 2003). However, it is unclear whether we can simply choose to overcome them or whether we have to construct mechanisms that mitigate their influence (for instance, using double-blind experiments to prevent confirmation bias).

6. The Scope and Virtues of Good Reasoning

Whether the process of critical thinking is productive for reasoners—that is, whether it actually answers the questions they are interested in answering—often depends on a number of linguistic, psychological, and social factors. We encountered some of the linguistic factors in §1. In closing, let us consider some of the psychological and social factors that affect the success of applying the tools of critical thinking.

Not all psychological and social contexts are conducive for effective critical thinking. When reasoners are depressed or sad or otherwise emotionally overwhelmed, critical thinking can often be unproductive or counterproductive. For instance, if someone’s child has just died, it would be unproductive (not to mention cruel) to press the philosophical question of why a good God would permit innocents to suffer or whether the child might possibly have a soul that could persist beyond death. Other instances need not be so extreme to make the same point: your company’s holiday party (where most people would rather remain cordial and superficial) is probably not the most productive context in which to debate the president’s domestic policy or the morality of abortion.

The process of critical thinking is primarily about detecting truth, and truth may not always be of paramount value. In some cases, comfort or usefulness may take precedence over truth. The case of the loss of a child is a case where comfort seems to take precedence over truth. Similarly, consider the case of determining what the speed limit should be on interstate highways. Imagine we are trying to decide whether it is better to allow drivers to travel at 75 mph or to restrict them to 65. To be sure, there may be no fact of the matter as to which is morally better, and there may not be any difference in the rate of interstate deaths between states that set the limit at 65 and those that set it at 75. But given the nature of the law, a decision about which speed limit to set must be made. If there is no relevant difference between setting the limit at 65 and setting it at 75, critical thinking can only tell us that , not which speed limit to set. This shows that, in some cases, concern with truth gives way to practical or preferential concerns (for example, Should I make this decision on the basis of what will make citizens happy? Should I base it on whether I will receive more campaign contributions from the business community?). All of this suggests that critical thinking is most productive in contexts where participants are already interested in truth.

b. The Principle of Charity/Humility

Critical thinking is also most productive when people in the conversation regard themselves as fallible, subject to error, misinformation, and deception. The desire to be “right” has a powerful influence on our reasoning behavior. It is so strong that our minds bias us in favor of the beliefs we already hold even in the face of disconfirming evidence (a phenomenon known as “confirmation bias”). In his famous article, “The Ethics of Belief” (1878), W. K. Clifford notes that, “We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. … It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowing that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting” (2010: 354).

Nevertheless, when we are open to the possibility that we are wrong, that is, if we are humble about our conclusions and we interpret others charitably, we have a better chance at having rational beliefs in two senses. First, if we are genuinely willing to consider evidence that we are wrong—and we demonstrate that humility—then we are more likely to listen to others when they raise arguments against our beliefs. If we are certain we are right, there would be little reason to consider contrary evidence. But if we are willing to hear it, we may discover that we really are wrong and give up faulty beliefs for more reasonable ones.

Second, if we are willing to be charitable to arguments against our beliefs, then if our beliefs are unreasonable, we have an opportunity to see the ways in which they are unreasonable. On the other hand, if our beliefs are reasonable, then we can explain more effectively just how well they stand against the criticism. This is weakly analogous to competition in certain types of sporting events, such as basketball. If you only play teams that are far inferior to your own, you do not know how good your team really is. But if you can beat a well-respected team on fair terms, any confidence you have is justified.

c. The Principle of Caution

In our excitement over good arguments, it is easy to overextend our conclusions, that is, to infer statements that are not really warranted by our evidence. From an argument for a first, uncaused cause of the universe, it is tempting to infer the existence of a sophisticated deity such as that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. From an argument for the compatibilism of the free will necessary for moral responsibility and determinism, it is tempting to infer that we are actually morally responsible for our behaviors. From an argument for negative natural rights, it is tempting to infer that no violation of a natural right is justifiable. Therefore, it is prudent to continually check our conclusions to be sure they do not include more content than our premises allow us to infer.

Of course, the principle of caution must itself be used with caution. If applied too strictly, it may lead reasoners to suspend all belief, and refrain from interacting with one another and their world. This is not, strictly speaking, problematic; ancient skeptics, such as the Pyrrhonians, advocated suspending all judgments except those about appearances in hopes of experiencing tranquility. However, at least some judgments about the long-term benefits and harms seem indispensable even for tranquility, for instance, whether we should retaliate in self-defense against an attacker or whether we should try to help a loved one who is addicted to drugs or alcohol.

d. The Expansiveness of Critical Thinking

The importance of critical thinking cannot be overstated because its relevance extends into every area of life, from politics, to science, to religion, to ethics. Not only does critical thinking help us draw inferences for ourselves, it helps us identify and evaluate the assumptions behind statements, the moral implications of statements, and the ideologies to which some statements commit us. This can be a disquieting and difficult process because it forces us to wrestle with preconceptions that might not be accurate. Nevertheless, if the process is conducted well, it can open new opportunities for dialogue, sometimes called “critical spaces,” that allow people who might otherwise disagree to find beliefs in common from which to engage in a more productive conversation.

It is this possibility of creating critical spaces that allows philosophical approaches like Critical Theory to effectively challenge the way social, political, and philosophical debates are framed. For example, if a discussion about race or gender or sexuality or gender is framed in terms that, because of the origins those terms or the way they have functioned socially, alienate or disproportionately exclude certain members of the population, then critical space is necessary for being able to evaluate that framing so that a more productive dialogue can occur (see Foresman, Fosl, and Watson, 2010, ch. 10 for more on how critical thinking and Critical Theory can be mutually supportive).

e. Productivity and the Limits of Rationality

Despite the fact that critical thinking extends into every area of life, not every important aspect of our lives is easily or productively subjected to the tools of language and logic. Thinkers who are tempted to subject everything to the cold light of reason may discover they miss some of what is deeply enjoyable about living. The psychologist Abraham Maslow writes, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail” (1966: 16). But it is helpful to remember that language and logic are tools, not the projects themselves. Even formal reasoning systems depend on axioms that are not provable within their own systems (consider Euclidean geometry or Peano arithmetic). We must make some decisions about what beliefs to accept and how to live our lives on the basis of considerations outside of critical thinking.

Borrowing an example from William James (1896), consider the statement, “Religion X is true.” James says that, while some people find this statement interesting, and therefore, worth thinking critically about, others may not be able to consider the truth of the statement. For any particular religious tradition, we might not know enough about it to form a belief one way or the other, and even suspending judgment may be difficult, since it is not obvious what we are suspending judgment about.

If I say to you: ‘Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan,’ it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: ‘Be an agnostic or be a Christian,’ it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief (2010: 357).

Ignoring the circularity in his definition of “dead option,” James’s point seems to be that if you know nothing about a view or what statements it entails, no amount of logic or evidence could help you form a reasonable belief about that position.

We might criticize James at this point because his conclusion seems to imply that we have no duty to investigate dead options, that is, to discover if there is anything worth considering in them. If we are concerned with truth, the simple fact that we are not familiar with a proposition does not mean it is not true or potentially significant for us. But James’s argument is subtler than this criticism suggests. Even if you came to learn about a particularly foreign religious tradition, its tenets may be so contrary to your understanding of the world that you could not entertain them as possible beliefs of yours . For instance, you know perfectly well that, if some events had been different, Hitler would not have existed: his parents might have had no children, or his parents’ parents might have had no children. You know roughly what it would mean for Hitler not to have existed and the sort of events that could have made it true that he did not exist. But how much evidence would it take to convince you that, in fact, Hitler did not exist, that is, that your belief that Hitler did exist is false ? Could there be an argument strong enough? Not obviously. Since all the information we have about Hitler unequivocally points to his existence, any arguments against that belief would have to affect a very broad range of statements; they would have to be strong enough to make us skeptical of large parts of reality.

7. Approaches to Improving Reasoning through Critical Thinking

Recall that the goal of critical thinking is not just to study what makes reasons and statements good, but to help us improve our ability to reason, that is, to improve our ability to form, hold, and discard beliefs according to whether they meet the standards of good thinking. Some ways of approaching this latter goal are more effective than others. While the classical approach focuses on technical reasoning skills, the Paul/Elder model encourages us to think in terms of critical concepts, and irrationality approaches use empirical research on instances of poor reasoning to help us improve reasoning where it is least obvious we need it and where we need it most. Which approach or combination of approaches is most effective depends, as noted above, on the context and limits of critical thinking, but also on scientific evidence of their effectiveness. Those who teach critical thinking, of all people, should be engaged with the evidence relevant to determining which approaches are most effective.

a. Classical Approaches

The classic approach to critical thinking follows roughly the structure of this article: critical thinkers attempt to interpret statements or arguments clearly and charitably, and then they apply the tools of formal and informal logic and science, while carefully attempting to avoid fallacious inferences (see Weston, 2008; Walton, 2008; Watson and Arp, 2015). This approach requires spending extensive time learning and practicing technical reasoning strategies. It presupposes that reasoning is primarily a conscious activity, and that enhancing our skills in these areas will improve our ability to reason well in ordinary situations.

There are at least two concerns about this approach. First, it is highly time intensive relative to its payoff. Learning the terminology of systems like propositional and categorical logic and the names of the fallacies, and practicing applying these tools to hypothetical cases requires significant time and energy. And it is not obvious, given the problems with heuristics and biases, whether this practice alone makes us better reasoners in ordinary contexts. Second, many of the ways we reason poorly are not consciously accessible (recall the heuristics and biases discussion in §5c). Our biases, combined with the heuristics we rely on in ordinary situations, can only be detected in experimental settings, and addressing them requires restructuring the ways in which we engage with evidence (see Thaler and Sunstein, 2009).

b. The Paul/Elder Model

Richard Paul and Linda Elder (Paul and Elder, 2006; Paul, 2012) developed an alternative to the classical approach on the assumption that critical thinking is not something that is limited to academic study or to the discipline of philosophy. On their account, critical thinking is a broad set of conceptual skills and habits aimed at a set of standards that are widely regarded as virtues of thinking: clarity, accuracy, depth, fairness, and others. They define it simply as “the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it” (2006: 4). Their approach, then, is to focus on the elements of thought and intellectual virtues that help us form beliefs that meet these standards.

The Paul/Elder model is made up of three sets of concepts: elements of thought, intellectual standards, and intellectual traits. In this model, we begin by identifying the features present in every act of thought. They use “thought” to mean critical thought aimed at forming beliefs, not just any act of thinking, musing, wishing, hoping, remembering. According to the model, every act of thought involves:

These comprise the subject matter of critical thinking; that is, they are what we are evaluating when we are thinking critically. We then engage with this subject matter by subjecting them to what Paul and Elder call universal intellectual standards. These are evaluative goals we should be aiming at with our thinking:

While in classical approaches, logic is the predominant means of thinking critically, in the Paul/Elder model, it is put on equal footing with eight other standards. Finally, Paul and Elder argue that it is helpful to approach the critical thinking process with a set of intellectual traits or virtues that dispose us to using elements and standards well.

To remind us that these are virtues of thought relevant to critical thinking, they use “intellectual” to distinguish these traits from their moral counterparts (moral integrity, moral courage, and so on).

The aim is that, as we become familiar with these three sets of concepts and apply them in everyday contexts, we become better at analyzing and evaluating statements and arguments in ordinary situations.

Like the classical approach, this approach presupposes that reasoning is primarily a conscious activity, and that enhancing our skills will improve our reasoning. This means that it still lacks the ability to address the empirical evidence that many of our reasoning errors cannot be consciously detected or corrected. It differs from the classical approach in that it gives the technical tools of logic a much less prominent role and places emphasis on a broader, and perhaps more intuitive, set of conceptual tools. Learning and learning to apply these concepts still requires a great deal of time and energy, though perhaps less than learning formal and informal logic. And these concepts are easy to translate into disciplines outside philosophy. Students of history, psychology, and economics can more easily recognize the relevance of asking questions about an author’s point of view and assumptions than perhaps determining whether the author is making a deductive or inductive argument. The question, then, is whether this approach improves our ability to think better than the classical approach.

c. Other Approaches

A third approach that is becoming popular is to focus on the ways we commonly reason poorly and then attempt to correct them. This can be called the Rationality Approach , and it takes seriously the empirical evidence (§5c) that many of our errors in reasoning are not due to a lack of conscious competence with technical skills or misusing those skills, but are due to subconscious dispositions to ignore or dismiss relevant information or to rely on irrelevant information.

One way to pursue this approach is to focus on beliefs that are statistically rare or “weird.” These include beliefs of fringe groups, such as conspiracy theorists, religious extremists, paranormal psychologists, and proponents of New Age metaphysics (see Gilovich, 1992; Vaughn and Schick, 2010; Coady, 2012). If we recognize the sorts of tendencies that lead to these controversial beliefs, we might be able to recognize and avoid similar tendencies in our own reasoning about less extreme beliefs, such as beliefs about financial investing, how statistics are used to justify business decisions, and beliefs about which public policies to vote for.

Another way to pursue this approach is to focus directly on the research on error, those ordinary beliefs that psychologists and behavioral economists have discovered we reason poorly, and to explore ways of changing how we frame decisions about what to believe (see Nisbett and Ross, 1980; Gilovich, 1992; Ariely, 2008; Kahneman, 2011). For example, in one study, psychologists found that judges issue more convictions just before lunch and the end of the day than in the morning or just after lunch (Danzinger, et al., 2010). Given that dockets do not typically organize cases from less significant crimes to more significant crimes, this evidence suggests that something as irrelevant as hunger can bias judicial decisions. Even though hunger has nothing to do with the truth of a belief, knowing that it can affect how we evaluate a belief can help us avoid that effect. This study might suggest something as simple as that we should avoid being hungry when making important decisions. The more we learn ways in which our brains use irrelevant information, the better we can organize our reasoning to avoid these mistakes. For more on how decisions can be improved by restructuring our decisions, see Thaler and Sunstein, 2009.

A fourth approach is to take more seriously the role that language plays in our reasoning. Arguments involve complex patterns of expression, and we have already seen how vagueness and ambiguity can undermine good reasoning (§1). The pragma-dialectics approach (or pragma-dialectical theory) is the view that the quality of an argument is not solely or even primarily a matter of its logical structure, but is more fundamentally a matter of whether it is a form of reasonable discourse (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992). The proponents of this view contend that, “The study of argumentation should … be construed as a special branch of linguistic pragmatics in which descriptive and normative perspectives on argumentative discourse are methodically integrated” (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1995: 130).

The pragma-dialectics approach is a highly technical approach that uses insights from speech act theory, H. P. Grice’s philosophy of language, and the study of discourse analysis. Its use, therefore, requires a great deal of background in philosophy and linguistics. It has an advantage over other approaches in that it highlights social and practical dimensions of arguments that other approaches largely ignore. For example, argument is often public ( external ), in that it creates an opportunity for opposition, which influences people’s motives and psychological attitudes toward their arguments. Argument is also social in that it is part of a discourse in which two or more people try to arrive at an agreement. Argument is also functional ; it aims at a resolution that can only be accommodated by addressing all the aspects of disagreement or anticipated disagreement, which can include public and social elements. Argument also has a rhetorical role ( dialectical ) in that it is aimed at actually convincing others, which may have different requirements than simply identifying the conditions under which they should be convinced.

These four approaches are not mutually exclusive. All of them presuppose, for example, the importance of inductive reasoning and scientific evidence. Their distinctions turn largely on which aspects of statements and arguments should take precedence in the critical thinking process and on what information will help us have better beliefs.

8. References and Further Reading

• Ariely, Dan. 2008. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. New York: Harper Perennial.
• Ariely, Dan. 2010. The Upside of Irrationality. New York: Harper Perennial.
• Ariely, Dan. 2012. The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty. New York: Harper Perennial.
• Aristotle. 2002. Categories and De Interpretatione, J. L. Akrill, editor. Oxford: University of Oxford Press.
• Clifford, W. K. 2010. “The Ethics of Belief.” In Nils Ch. Rauhut and Robert Bass, eds., Readings on the Ultimate Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy, 3rd ed. Boston: Prentice Hall, 351-356.
• Chomsky, Noam. 1957/2002. Syntactic Structures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Coady, David. What To Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• Danzinger, Shai, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso. 2011. “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Vol. 108, No. 17, 6889-6892. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1018033108.
• Foresman, Galen, Peter Fosl, and Jamie Carlin Watson. 2017. The Critical Thinking Toolkit. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Fogelin, Robert J. and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. 2009. Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
• Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2003. Calculated Risks: How To Know When Numbers Deceive You. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Gigerenzer, Gerd, Peter Todd, and the ABC Research Group. 2000. Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart. Oxford University Press.
• Gilovich, Thomas. 1992. How We Know What Isn’t So. New York: Free Press.
• James, William. “The Will to Believe”, in Nils Ch. Rauhut and Robert Bass, eds., Readings on the Ultimate Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy, 3rd ed. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010, 356-364.
• Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
• Lewis, David. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford Blackwell.
• Lipton, Peter. 2004. Inference to the Best Explanation, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
• Maslow, Abraham. 1966. The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance. New York: Harper & Row.
• Mill, John Stuart. 2011. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Nisbett, Richard and Lee Ross. 1980. Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Paul, Richard. 2012. Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World. Tomales, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking.
• Paul, Richard and Linda Elder. 2006. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, 4th ed. Tomales, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking.
• Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford Clarendon.
• Prior, Arthur. 1957. Time and Modality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Prior, Arthur. 1967. Past, Present and Future. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Prior, Arthur. 1968. Papers on Time and Tense. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Quine, W. V. O. and J. S. Ullian. 1978. The Web of Belief, 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill.
• Russell, Bertrand. 1940/1996. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
• Thaler, Richard and Cass Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New York: Penguin Books.
• van Eemeren, Frans H. and Rob Grootendorst. 1992. Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. London: Routledge.
• van Eemeren, Frans H. and Rob Grootendorst. 1995. “The Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Fallacies.” In Hans V. Hansen and Robert C. Pinto, eds. Fallacies: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Penn State University Press, 130-144.
• Vaughn, Lewis and Theodore Schick. 2010. How To Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, 6th ed. McGraw-Hill.
• Walton, Douglas. 2008. Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Watson, Jamie Carlin and Robert Arp. 2015. Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Reasoning Well, 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Weston, Anthony. 2008. A Rulebook for Arguments, 4th ed. Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Zadeh, Lofti. 1965. “Fuzzy Sets and Systems.” In J. Fox, ed., System Theory. Brooklyn, NY: Polytechnic Press, 29-39.

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Jamie Carlin Watson Email: [email protected] University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences U. S. A.

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To appreciate the benefits of Critical thinking, its worthwhile to ask the psychologists about 'how we think', and then see where Critical thinking actually fits in. 

  two systems of thinking.

Over the decades there has been plenty of research into how we think and make decisions. Daniel Kahneman is a noble prize winning researcher who did a lot of research on the cognitive processes of the brain and how it makes judgments under various conditions. 

Kahneman in his book ‘Thinking fast and Slow’ states that we need to look at our thinking processes as consisting of two distinct and different types of processes. He calls them ‘System 1 thinking’ and System 2 thinking’. 

System 1 and system 2 are not associated with the left or right brains or with creativity or any physical parts of the brain in the human body. But these are names given to two different types of thinking. 

Kahneman gives some examples to illustrate the two types of thinking:  

The Angry woman 

When you look at the picture above, and are asked what is the woman thinking or emotion that she is experiencing, you are most likely to find that your brain has deciphered the emotion to be one of anger - and this understanding that the woman is angry is almost instantaneous. You did not have to concentrate, analyze or mentally compare with past interpretations of the look to arrive at your conclusion that she is angry. 

 Numerical example 

Or lets take a look at another example that Kahneman gives. Take a look at the problem below, and decide whether each of the answers below is correct 

17x24 = ? 

• 120068 ? 

In the first three answers you would have found that you did not need any time to decide that the answers are wrong. But when you came to 568, its quite likely that your brain paused for a moment and considered the answer. Could this be correct? 

And as I have seen in several workshops, most people declare that it is the right answer. The number of digits look right, the number ends in a ‘8’ which the right answer should end in.  

Critical thinking benefits- at a glance

There is a qualitative difference in the way our thinking operates while negating the first three numbers, and while considering and evaluating whether 568 is the right answer. In the first three instances, we did not need to pause to think - we knew the answers were wrong. But in the last instance - we paused, evaluated for short or long, and then delivered a verdict - of right or wrong.  

The brain focused on the problem, put in some concentration and effort in the evaluation. Kahneman calls this deliberate, attention giving type of thinking as System 2 thinking. 

• System 2 thinking requires attention and effort, and the activity suffers if attention is disrupted. System 2 thinking is also associated with the feeling of agency. When we think of ourselves as a person, it is system 2 thinking. 
• System 1 operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control 
• system 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it including complex computations 
• The operations of system two are often associated with the subjective experience of agency choice and concentration 

When we think of others we identify with system 2 

• let's take a look at some of the system one activities 
• detect that one object is more distant than another 
• Orient to the source of a certain sound 
• Complete the phrase bread an 
• detect hostility in a voice 
• answer to 2 + 2 is equal to 
• Read words on large billboards 
• Drive a car on an empty Rd 
• Find a strong move in chess especially if you're a chess master. those who might not be experts in chess uh they would not necessarily have an operation of system one thinking  they but they would need system 2 thinking 

The highly diverse operations of System 2 have one feature in common: they require attention and are disrupted when attention is drawn away. Here are some examples:    

•  Check the validity of a complex logical argument. 
•  Budgeting for building a house 
•  Developing a marketing strategy 
•  Fill out a Tax return 
•  Brace for the starter gun in a race.  
• Focus on the voice of a particular person in a crowded and noisy room. 

Critical thinking is a system 2 activity.  It is a consciously directed activity and needs attention and effort.  If attention is taken away from the activity on hand the activity gets disrupted.

....And now for the benefits of Critical thinking skills

Enhanced problem-solving: Critical thinking helps individuals break down complex problems into manageable parts, identify underlying issues, and generate effective solutions. It promotes a systematic approach to problem-solving, reducing reliance on assumptions or biases.

Improved decision-making: Critical thinking involves evaluating evidence, considering multiple perspectives, and weighing the pros and cons of different options. This leads to more informed and rational decision-making, minimizing the influence of emotions or personal biases.

Increased creativity: Critical thinking encourages individuals to think outside the box, challenge established norms, and explore alternative viewpoints. It fosters creativity and innovation by promoting open-mindedness and the ability to generate unique ideas.

Effective communication: Critical thinking helps individuals express their thoughts and ideas clearly, logically, and persuasively. It enables them to analyze and construct arguments, recognize fallacies, and communicate their viewpoints with evidence-based reasoning.

Stronger analytical skills: Critical thinking enhances analytical skills by training individuals to gather relevant information, evaluate its credibility and validity, and draw logical conclusions. It enables them to identify patterns, make connections, and think critically about the implications of data.

Increased self-awareness: Critical thinking involves self-reflection and the examination of one's own beliefs, biases, and assumptions. It allows individuals to become more aware of their cognitive processes, biases, and areas for improvement, fostering personal growth and intellectual humility.

Effective problem prevention: Critical thinking is not only about solving existing problems but also about preventing them. By critically evaluating situations and potential outcomes, individuals can anticipate problems, identify potential risks, and take proactive measures to avoid or mitigate them.

Better academic and professional performance: Critical thinking is highly valued in academic and professional settings. It equips individuals with the skills necessary for research, analysis, and argumentation, leading to improved academic performance, better job prospects, and career advancement.

Enhanced empathy and understanding: Critical thinking involves considering diverse perspectives and evaluating evidence objectively. This fosters empathy, tolerance, and a willingness to understand viewpoints different from one's own. It promotes respectful dialogue and effective collaboration with others.

Lifelong learning: Critical thinking is essential for continuous learning and intellectual growth. It encourages individuals to question assumptions, seek out reliable information, and remain open to new ideas and knowledge. It empowers individuals to become lifelong learners, adapting to new challenges and opportunities.

Critical thinking training in Sales

Sales leaders trained in critical thinking would appreciate Aristotle's triangle of persuasion, and easily apply the relevant modes of convincing required for different sales situations. They would also realize that every sales proposal is an inductive argument which answers the questions' why this solution' and 'why my company'. Structuring logically strong proposals is a breeze once you understand inductive reasoning.  Read about how critical thinking applies in B2B sales.

Critical thinking training for HR

HR professionals who are aware of fallacies and tactics such as 'Poisoning the well', 'hasty generalization' and selection bias will find it easier to understand and deal with employees and get better at evaluating people and situations. An understanding of various fallacies and cognitive biases would mitigate the risks of bad decisions due to faulty reasoning. They would also understand that 'Resume's are an exercise in Inductive arguments to prove why a candidate is the best fit for the job, and this would help in better shortlisting, interviewing and selection of candidates.

Critical thinking training for Analysts and Consultants

Business analysts, Consultants would find an understanding of Causal reasoning extremely useful, and an appreciation of common errors would result in better diagnosis of root causes of problems, and also provide a good framework for understanding whether the recommended solution would indeed address the problem identified. Regular application of the Critical thinking framework to problem solving and decision making ensures that the issue is examined from all relevant angles and perspectives before a solution is accepted.                                 

Critical thinking training for Managers

Managers are called to make decisions and solve problems and devise strategies on an ongoing basis. While domain knowledge and experience have a great role to play in being successful, knowledge of fallacies and cognitive biases will ensure that they do not make errors in reasoning, and also whet their solutions for eliminating any cognitive biases they may have. The Critical thinking framework will assist in systematic analysis and problem solving for addressing complex issues

Why Critical thinking is important for students

A 2013 Survey of Employers by “The Association Of American Colleges And Universities” revealed that : Nearly all employers surveyed (93 percent) say that “a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than [a candidate’s] undergraduate major.”  More than 75 percent of those surveyed say they want more emphasis (In teaching) on five key areas including: critical thinking, complex problem solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge in real world settings.

Critical thinking in academics

A knowledge of inductive reasoning and causal reasoning helps students break down any theory or subject into logical segments, and they are also able to build connections between what they learn and their existing knowledge. This makes them better students who develop a deeper understanding of the subject, and by virtue of reasoning while learning, they tend to retain their learning for longer periods of time.  All writing tasks are an exercise in persuasion - presenting arguments and supporting them (excepting story writing and pure narrative writing). Developing, evaluating and presenting arguments are the skills developed while doing a course in Critical thinking. Combined with the knowledge of writing argumentative essays, and applying critical thinking frameworks, students are well equipped to deal with a variety of analyses and writing tasks.  Knowledge of Causal reasoning helps research students develop sharp hypotheses and set up experiments or surveys to test their hypothesis. Causal reasoning is at the root of all research.  Critical thinking skills also makes students better at discussions and debates. Having learnt to apply logic, and veer clear of fallacies and cognitive biases, students with leadership qualities find themselves equipped to productively lead and manage teams in various projects.

Critical thinking and Resume's

Aristotle had said there are three ways of persuading human beings: With logic, credibility or emotions. A candidate's Resume is a written document that attempts to persuade a potential employer of 'Why he is the best candidate for the job'. The tools of persuasion employed in a Resume are logic and credibility. As a matter of fact, it consists of a chain of inductive arguments reinforcing each other, and credibility established with certifications, awards and recommendations. A student of Critical thinking would find it very easy to structure and write a Resume to persuasively present their credentials and suitability for the job.

Critical thinking in Group discussions and Personal interviews

In group discussions,  participants are presenting arguments for or against a topic or just evaluating a situation. At the heart of any discussion is the ability to reason logically and conduct a 360 degree examination of any issue to ensure that all the dimensions of the issue are explored and analyzed. Those who do not understand logical reasoning do not have the benefit of approaching or arguing any topic in a logical and progressive manner. Critical thinking teaches students how to define and analyze problems, while avoiding fallacies and cognitive biases. They develop the ability to make very strong and persuasive arguments based on logic and evidence. They are also good at finding holes and gaps and unwarranted assumptions in others arguments.  In personal interviews , you will find trained students answering pretty much to the question, and clarifying questions where required. Their answers are logical and their training guides them in strengthening their arguments with evidence or examples..

All applicants to foreign universities are required to submit a SOP (Statement of Purpose) along with their applications and GRE/GMAT scores. Many students have difficulty with writing a SOP for two reasons: (1) they are not clear what needs to go into the SOP and (2) how to actually structure and write the SOP. For a student who has studies logical reasoning and inductive arguments in particular, writing a persuasive essay is an easy task. Further, those who learn how to structure and write an argumentative essay will never have a problem with any writing task.

Critical thinking in GRE & GMAT  

Critical reasoning questions in gre and gmat.

GRE and GMAT have complete sections in their tests dedicated to test the logical reasoning capabilities of applicants. They are called 'Critical reasoning' tests and are designed to test the ability of test takers to analyze arguments logically. The questions revolve around : Strengthening or weakening arguments, revealing unstated assumptions or assumptions which if proved wrong or right could make a significant difference to the strength of the argument. Some questions relate to an understanding of the arguments presented. Most test takers answer these questions using intuition, experience from past tests or guess-work. Very few if any actually have learnt the fundamentals of logical reasoning, and as a result, answers generally are a 'hit or miss'. On the contrary, if test takers have studied and understood logical reasoning and fallacies, they would be able to take a knowledgable and structured approach to these questions which minimizes the chances of making any errors. The current approach is akin to asking someone to read a balance sheet without understanding accounting.  Training in Critical thinking helps students answer the Critical reasoning questions with the confidence that comes with knowledge on how to scientifically evaluate and answer these questions.

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How to develop critical thinking skills

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What are critical thinking skills?

How to develop critical thinking skills: 12 tips, how to practice critical thinking skills at work, become your own best critic.

A client requests a tight deadline on an intense project. Your childcare provider calls in sick on a day full of meetings. Payment from a contract gig is a month behind. 

Your day-to-day will always have challenges, big and small. And no matter the size and urgency, they all ask you to use critical thinking to analyze the situation and arrive at the right solution. 

Critical thinking includes a wide set of soft skills that encourage continuous learning, resilience , and self-reflection. The more you add to your professional toolbelt, the more equipped you’ll be to tackle whatever challenge presents itself. Here’s how to develop critical thinking, with examples explaining how to use it.

Critical thinking skills are the skills you use to analyze information, imagine scenarios holistically, and create rational solutions. It’s a type of emotional intelligence that stimulates effective problem-solving and decision-making . 

When you fine-tune your critical thinking skills, you seek beyond face-value observations and knee-jerk reactions. Instead, you harvest deeper insights and string together ideas and concepts in logical, sometimes out-of-the-box , ways. 

Imagine a team working on a marketing strategy for a new set of services. That team might use critical thinking to balance goals and key performance indicators , like new customer acquisition costs, average monthly sales, and net profit margins. They understand the connections between overlapping factors to build a strategy that stays within budget and attracts new sales. 

Looking for ways to improve critical thinking skills? Start by brushing up on the following soft skills that fall under this umbrella: 

• Analytical thinking: Approaching problems with an analytical eye includes breaking down complex issues into small chunks and examining their significance. An example could be organizing customer feedback to identify trends and improve your product offerings. 
• Open-mindedness: Push past cognitive biases and be receptive to different points of view and constructive feedback . Managers and team members who keep an open mind position themselves to hear new ideas that foster innovation . 
• Creative thinking: With creative thinking , you can develop several ideas to address a single problem, like brainstorming more efficient workflow best practices to boost productivity and employee morale . 
• Self-reflection: Self-reflection lets you examine your thinking and assumptions to stimulate healthier collaboration and thought processes. Maybe a bad first impression created a negative anchoring bias with a new coworker. Reflecting on your own behavior stirs up empathy and improves the relationship. 
• Evaluation: With evaluation skills, you tackle the pros and cons of a situation based on logic rather than emotion. When prioritizing tasks , you might be tempted to do the fun or easy ones first, but evaluating their urgency and importance can help you make better decisions. 

There’s no magic method to change your thinking processes. Improvement happens with small, intentional changes to your everyday habits until a more critical approach to thinking is automatic. 

Here are 12 tips for building stronger self-awareness and learning how to improve critical thinking: 

1. Be cautious

There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of skepticism. One of the core principles of critical thinking is asking questions and dissecting the available information. You might surprise yourself at what you find when you stop to think before taking action. 

Before making a decision, use evidence, logic, and deductive reasoning to support your own opinions or challenge ideas. It helps you and your team avoid falling prey to bad information or resistance to change .

2. Ask open-ended questions

“Yes” or “no” questions invite agreement rather than reflection. Instead, ask open-ended questions that force you to engage in analysis and rumination. Digging deeper can help you identify potential biases, uncover assumptions, and arrive at new hypotheses and possible solutions. 

3. Do your research

No matter your proficiency, you can always learn more. Turning to different points of view and information is a great way to develop a comprehensive understanding of a topic and make informed decisions. You’ll prioritize reliable information rather than fall into emotional or automatic decision-making. 

4. Consider several opinions

You might spend so much time on your work that it’s easy to get stuck in your own perspective, especially if you work independently on a remote team . Make an effort to reach out to colleagues to hear different ideas and thought patterns. Their input might surprise you.

If or when you disagree, remember that you and your team share a common goal. Divergent opinions are constructive, so shift the focus to finding solutions rather than defending disagreements. 

5. Learn to be quiet

Active listening is the intentional practice of concentrating on a conversation partner instead of your own thoughts. It’s about paying attention to detail and letting people know you value their opinions, which can open your mind to new perspectives and thought processes.

If you’re brainstorming with your team or having a 1:1 with a coworker , listen, ask clarifying questions, and work to understand other peoples’ viewpoints. Listening to your team will help you find fallacies in arguments to improve possible solutions.

6. Schedule reflection

Whether waking up at 5 am or using a procrastination hack, scheduling time to think puts you in a growth mindset . Your mind has natural cognitive biases to help you simplify decision-making, but squashing them is key to thinking critically and finding new solutions besides the ones you might gravitate toward. Creating time and calm space in your day gives you the chance to step back and visualize the biases that impact your decision-making. 

7. Cultivate curiosity

With so many demands and job responsibilities, it’s easy to seek solace in routine. But getting out of your comfort zone helps spark critical thinking and find more solutions than you usually might.

If curiosity doesn’t come naturally to you, cultivate a thirst for knowledge by reskilling and upskilling . Not only will you add a new skill to your resume , but expanding the limits of your professional knowledge might motivate you to ask more questions. 

You don’t have to develop critical thinking skills exclusively in the office. Whether on your break or finding a hobby to do after work, playing strategic games or filling out crosswords can prime your brain for problem-solving. 

9. Write it down

Recording your thoughts with pen and paper can lead to stronger brain activity than typing them out on a keyboard. If you’re stuck and want to think more critically about a problem, writing your ideas can help you process information more deeply.

The act of recording ideas on paper can also improve your memory . Ideas are more likely to linger in the background of your mind, leading to deeper thinking that informs your decision-making process. 

10. Speak up

Take opportunities to share your opinion, even if it intimidates you. Whether at a networking event with new people or a meeting with close colleagues, try to engage with people who challenge or help you develop your ideas. Having conversations that force you to support your position encourages you to refine your argument and think critically. 

11. Stay humble

Ideas and concepts aren’t the same as real-life actions. There may be such a thing as negative outcomes, but there’s no such thing as a bad idea. At the brainstorming stage , don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Sometimes the best solutions come from off-the-wall, unorthodox decisions. Sit in your creativity , let ideas flow, and don’t be afraid to share them with your colleagues. Putting yourself in a creative mindset helps you see situations from new perspectives and arrive at innovative conclusions. 

12. Embrace discomfort

Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable . It isn’t easy when others challenge your ideas, but sometimes, it’s the only way to see new perspectives and think critically.

By willingly stepping into unfamiliar territory, you foster the resilience and flexibility you need to become a better thinker. You’ll learn how to pick yourself up from failure and approach problems from fresh angles. 

Thinking critically is easier said than done. To help you understand its impact (and how to use it), here are two scenarios that require critical thinking skills and provide teachable moments. 

Scenario #1: Unexpected delays and budget

Imagine your team is working on producing an event. Unexpectedly, a vendor explains they’ll be a week behind on delivering materials. Then another vendor sends a quote that’s more than you can afford. Unless you develop a creative solution, the team will have to push back deadlines and go over budget, potentially costing the client’s trust. 

Here’s how you could approach the situation with creative thinking:

• Analyze the situation holistically: Determine how the delayed materials and over-budget quote will impact the rest of your timeline and financial resources . That way, you can identify whether you need to build an entirely new plan with new vendors, or if it’s worth it to readjust time and resources. 
• Identify your alternative options: With careful assessment, your team decides that another vendor can’t provide the same materials in a quicker time frame. You’ll need to rearrange assignment schedules to complete everything on time. 
• Collaborate and adapt: Your team has an emergency meeting to rearrange your project schedule. You write down each deliverable and determine which ones you can and can’t complete by the deadline. To compensate for lost time, you rearrange your task schedule to complete everything that doesn’t need the delayed materials first, then advance as far as you can on the tasks that do. 
• Check different resources: In the meantime, you scour through your contact sheet to find alternative vendors that fit your budget. Accounting helps by providing old invoices to determine which vendors have quoted less for previous jobs. After pulling all your sources, you find a vendor that fits your budget. 
• Maintain open communication: You create a special Slack channel to keep everyone up to date on changes, challenges, and additional delays. Keeping an open line encourages transparency on the team’s progress and boosts everyone’s confidence. 

Scenario #2: Differing opinions 

A conflict arises between two team members on the best approach for a new strategy for a gaming app. One believes that small tweaks to the current content are necessary to maintain user engagement and stay within budget. The other believes a bold revamp is needed to encourage new followers and stronger sales revenue. 

Here’s how critical thinking could help this conflict:

• Listen actively: Give both team members the opportunity to present their ideas free of interruption. Encourage the entire team to ask open-ended questions to more fully understand and develop each argument. 
• Flex your analytical skills: After learning more about both ideas, everyone should objectively assess the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. Analyze each idea's risk, merits, and feasibility based on available data and the app’s goals and objectives. 
• Identify common ground: The team discusses similarities between each approach and brainstorms ways to integrate both idea s, like making small but eye-catching modifications to existing content or using the same visual design in new media formats. 
• Test new strategy: To test out the potential of a bolder strategy, the team decides to A/B test both approaches. You create a set of criteria to evenly distribute users by different demographics to analyze engagement, revenue, and customer turnover. 
• Monitor and adapt: After implementing the A/B test, the team closely monitors the results of each strategy. You regroup and optimize the changes that provide stronger results after the testing. That way, all team members understand why you’re making the changes you decide to make.

You can’t think your problems away. But you can equip yourself with skills that help you move through your biggest challenges and find innovative solutions. Learning how to develop critical thinking is the start of honing an adaptable growth mindset. 

Now that you have resources to increase critical thinking skills in your professional development, you can identify whether you embrace change or routine, are open or resistant to feedback, or turn to research or emotion will build self-awareness. From there, tweak and incorporate techniques to be a critical thinker when life presents you with a problem.

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Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Matters

Defining critical thinking dispositions and why they’re crucial..

Posted September 23, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

• Another way to think about and measure critical thinking is to include aspects of motivational dispositions.
• Dispositions include open-mindedness and a willingness to be reflective when evaluating information.
• People scoring low in critical thinking dispositions tend to “keep it simple” when something is complex.
• Critical thinking dispositions help individuals avoid oversimplification and can facilitate awareness of bias.

Critical thinking springs from the notion of reflective thought proposed by Dewey (1933), who borrowed from the work of philosophers such as William James and Charles Peirce. Reflective thought was defined as the process of suspending judgment, remaining open-minded, maintaining a healthy skepticism, and taking responsibility for one’s own development (Gerber et al., 2005; Stoyanov & Kirshner, 2007).

Kurland (1995) suggested, “Critical thinking is concerned with reason, intellectual honesty, and open-mindedness, as opposed to emotionalism, intellectual laziness, and closed-mindedness. Thus, critical thinking involves… considering all possibilities… being precise; considering a variety of possible viewpoints and explanations; weighing the effects of motives and biases; being concerned more with finding the truth than with being right…being aware of one’s own prejudices and biases” (p. 3). Thus, being able to perspective-take and becoming conscious of one’s own biases are potential benefits of critical thinking capacities.

Reviews of the critical thinking literature (e.g., Bensley, 2023) suggest that the assessment of this construct ought to include aspects of motivational dispositions. Numerous frameworks of critical thinking dispositions have been proposed (e.g., Bensley, 2018; Butler & Halpern, 2019; Dwyer, 2017); some commonly identified dispositions are open-mindedness, intellectual engagement, and a proclivity to take a reflective stance or approach to evaluating information and the views and beliefs of both oneself and others. Demir (2022) posited that critical thinking dispositions reflect persons’ attitudes toward and routine ways of responding to new information and diverging ideas, willingness to engage in nuanced and complex rather than either/or reductionistic thinking, and perseverance in attempts to understand and resolve complex problems.

Other examples of dispositions are inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, tolerance for ambiguity, thinking about thinking, honesty in assessing or evaluating biases, and willingness to reconsider one’s own views and ways of doing things (Facione et al., 2001). Individual personality attributes associated with these proclivities include a need for cognition (a desire for intellectual stimulation), which is positively associated with critical thinking, and the need for closure (a motivated cognitive style in which individuals prefer predictability, firm answers, and rapid decision making ) and anti-intellectualism (a resentment of “the life of the mind” and those who represent it), both negatively associated with critical thinking.

Further, an ideological component that can impede critical thinking is dogmatism . In addition, rigid, dichotomous thinking impedes critical thinking in that it oversimplifies the complexity of social life in a pluralistic society (Bensley, 2023; Cheung et al., 2002; Halpern & Dunn, 2021) and tries to reduce complicated phenomena and resolve complex problems via “either/or” formulations and simplistic solutions.

In other words, folks with low critical thinking dispositions would tend to “keep it simple” when something is really quite complicated, and think it absolute terms and categories rather than seeing “the gray” in between the black and white extremes.

In sum, critical thinking dispositions are vitally important because they may help individuals avoid oversimplifying reality; they also permit perspective-taking and can facilitate their awareness of diversity and systematic biases, such as racial or gender bias . Some research has indicated that critical thinking dispositions uniquely contribute to academic performance beyond general cognition (Ren et al., 2020), and may help to reduce unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy beliefs (Bensley, 2023; Lantian et al., 2021).

But before we can study the potential impact of critical thinking dispositions, it is necessary to have a reliable, valid, and hopefully brief measure for this construct. I will discuss the development and validation of a measure of critical thinking dispositions in another post.

Bensley, D.A. ( 2023.) Critical thinking, intelligence, and unsubstantiated beliefs: An integrative review. Journal of Intelligence, 1 , 207. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11110207

Bensley, D.A. (2018). Critical thinking in psychology and everyday life: A guide to effective thinking . New York: Worth Publishers.

Butler, H.A., & Halpern, D.F. (2019). Is critical thinking a better model of intelligence? In Robert J. Sternberg (Ed.) The Nature of Intelligence (pp. 183–96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cheung, C.-K, Rudowicz. E., Kwan, A., & Yue, X.. (2002). Assessing university students’ general and specific criticalthinking. College Student Journal, 36 , 504 – 25.

Demir, E. (2022). An examination of high school students’ critical thinking dispositions and analytical thinking skills. Journal of Pedagogical Research, 6 , 190–200. https://doi.org/10.33902/JPR.202217357

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process . Lexington: Heath and Company.

Dwyer, C. P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines . Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Facione, P., Facione, N,C,, & Giancarlo, C.A.F. (2001(. California Critical Disposition Inventory . Millbrae: California Academic Press.

Gerber, S., Scott, L., Clements, D.H., & Sarama, J. (2005). Instructor influence on reasoned argument in discussion boards. Educational Technology, Research & Development, 53 , 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02504864

Halpern, D. F., & Dunn, D.S. (2021). Critical thinking: A model of intelligence for solving real-world problems. Journal of Intelligence, 9 , 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9020022

Kurland, D. (1995). I know what it says… What does it mean? Critical skills for critical reading . Belmont: Wadsworth.

Lantian, A., Bagneux, V., Delouvee, S., & Gauvrit, N. (2021). Maybe a free thinker but not a critical one: High conspiracybelief is associated with low critical thinking ability. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35 , 674 – 84. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3790

Ren, X., Tong, Y., Peng, P. & Wang, T. (2020). Critical thinking predicts academic performance beyond general cognitiveability: Evidence from adults and children. Intelligence, 82 , 101487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2020.101487

Stoyanov, S., & Kirschner, P. ( 2007). Effect of problem solving support and cognitive styles on idea generation:Implications for technology-enhanced learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40 , 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2007.10782496

Kyle D. Killian, Ph.D., LMFT is the author of Interracial Couples, Intimacy and Therapy: Crossing Racial Borders.

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PHIL102: Introduction to Critical Thinking and Logic

Course introduction.

• Time: 40 hours
• College Credit Recommended ($25 Proctor Fee) -->
• Free Certificate

The course touches upon a wide range of reasoning skills, from verbal argument analysis to formal logic, visual and statistical reasoning, scientific methodology, and creative thinking. Mastering these skills will help you become a more perceptive reader and listener, a more persuasive writer and presenter, and a more effective researcher and scientist.

The first unit introduces the terrain of critical thinking and covers the basics of meaning analysis, while the second unit provides a primer for analyzing arguments. All of the material in these first units will be built upon in subsequent units, which cover informal and formal logic, Venn diagrams, scientific reasoning, and strategic and creative thinking.

Course Syllabus

First, read the course syllabus. Then, enroll in the course by clicking "Enroll me". Click Unit 1 to read its introduction and learning outcomes. You will then see the learning materials and instructions on how to use them.

Unit 1: Introduction and Meaning Analysis

Critical thinking is a broad classification for a diverse array of reasoning techniques. In general, critical thinking works by breaking arguments and claims down to their basic underlying structure so we can see them clearly and determine whether they are rational. The idea is to help us do a better job of understanding and evaluating what we read, what we hear, and what we write and say.

In this unit, we will define the broad contours of critical thinking and learn why it is a valuable and useful object of study. We will also introduce the fundamentals of meaning analysis: the difference between literal meaning and implication, the principles of definition, how to identify when a disagreement is merely verbal, the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, and problems with the imprecision of ordinary language.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 5 hours.

Unit 2: Argument Analysis

Arguments are the fundamental components of all rational discourse: nearly everything we read and write, like scientific reports, newspaper columns, and personal letters, as well as most of our verbal conversations, contain arguments. Picking the arguments out from the rest of our often convoluted discourse can be difficult. Once we have identified an argument, we still need to determine whether or not it is sound. Luckily, arguments obey a set of formal rules that we can use to determine whether they are good or bad.

In this unit, you will learn how to identify arguments, what makes an argument sound as opposed to unsound or merely valid, the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, and how to map arguments to reveal their structure.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 7 hours.

Unit 3: Basic Sentential Logic

This unit introduces a topic that many students find intimidating: formal logic. Although it sounds difficult and complicated, formal (or symbolic) logic is actually a fairly straightforward way of revealing the structure of reasoning. By translating arguments into symbols, you can more readily see what is right and wrong with them and learn how to formulate better arguments. Advanced courses in formal logic focus on using rules of inference to construct elaborate proofs. Using these techniques, you can solve many complicated problems simply by manipulating symbols on the page. In this course, however, you will only be looking at the most basic properties of a system of logic. In this unit, you will learn how to turn phrases in ordinary language into well-formed formulas, draw truth tables for formulas, and evaluate arguments using those truth tables.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 13 hours.

Unit 4: Venn Diagrams

In addition to using predicate logic, the limitations of sentential logic can also be overcome by using Venn diagrams to illustrate statements and arguments. Statements that include general words like "some" or "few" as well as absolute words like "every" and "all" – so-called categorical statements – lend themselves to being represented on paper as circles that may or may not overlap.

Venn diagrams are especially helpful when dealing with logical arguments called syllogisms. Syllogisms are a special type of three-step argument with two premises and a conclusion, which involve quantifying terms. In this unit, you will learn the basic principles of Venn diagrams, how to use them to represent statements, and how to use them to evaluate arguments.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 6 hours.

Unit 5: Fallacies

Now that you have studied the necessary structure of a good argument and can represent its structure visually, you might think it would be simple to pick out bad arguments. However, identifying bad arguments can be very tricky in practice. Very often, what at first appears to be ironclad reasoning turns out to contain one or more subtle errors.

Fortunately, there are many easily identifiable fallacies (mistakes of reasoning) that you can learn to recognize by their structure or content. In this unit, you will learn about the nature of fallacies, look at a couple of different ways of classifying them, and spend some time dealing with the most common fallacies in detail.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 3 hours.

Unit 6: Scientific Reasoning

Unlike the syllogistic arguments you explored in the last unit, which are a form of deductive argument, scientific reasoning is empirical. This means that it depends on observation and evidence, not logical principles. Although some principles of deductive reasoning do apply in science, such as the principle of contradiction, scientific arguments are often inductive. For this reason, science often deals with confirmation and disconfirmation.

Nonetheless, there are general guidelines about what constitutes good scientific reasoning, and scientists are trained to be critical of their inferences and those of others in the scientific community. In this unit, you will investigate some standard methods of scientific reasoning, some principles of confirmation and disconfirmation, and some techniques for identifying and reasoning about causation.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.

Unit 7: Strategic Reasoning and Creativity

While most of this course has focused on the types of reasoning necessary to critique and evaluate existing knowledge or to extend our knowledge following correct procedures and rules, an enormous branch of our reasoning practice runs in the opposite direction. Strategic reasoning, problem-solving, and creative thinking all rely on an ineffable component of novelty supplied by the thinker.

Despite their seemingly mystical nature, problem-solving and creative thinking are best approached by following tried and tested procedures that prompt our cognitive faculties to produce new ideas and solutions by extending our existing knowledge. In this unit, you will investigate problem-solving techniques, representing complex problems visually, making decisions in risky and uncertain scenarios, and creative thinking in general.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 2 hours.

Study Guide

This study guide will help you get ready for the final exam. It discusses the key topics in each unit, walks through the learning outcomes, and lists important vocabulary terms. It is not meant to replace the course materials!

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If you come across any urgent problems, email [email protected].

Certificate Final Exam

Take this exam if you want to earn a free Course Completion Certificate.

To receive a free Course Completion Certificate, you will need to earn a grade of 70% or higher on this final exam. Your grade for the exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam on your first try, you can take it again as many times as you want, with a 7-day waiting period between each attempt.

Once you pass this final exam, you will be awarded a free Course Completion Certificate .

Saylor Direct Credit

Take this exam if you want to earn college credit for this course . This course is eligible for college credit through Saylor Academy's Saylor Direct Credit Program .

The Saylor Direct Credit Final Exam requires a proctoring fee of $5 . To pass this course and earn a Credly Badge and official transcript , you will need to earn a grade of 70% or higher on the Saylor Direct Credit Final Exam. Your grade for this exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam on your first try, you can take it again a maximum of 3 times , with a 14-day waiting period between each attempt.

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Once you pass this final exam, you will be awarded a Credly Badge  and can request an official transcript .

Saylor Direct Credit Exam

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Vrije Universiteit Brussel establishes Caroline Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking

Will you join us in giving the public insight into the ever-increasing challenges emerging in society and the world.

Philosopher and writer Alicja Gescinska is curator of PACT.

During our Academic Opening, Rector Jan Danckaert announced the creation of PACT, the Caroline Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking.

During her rector's mandate (2016-2022), Caroline Pauwels has worked immensely to take dialogue, interaction and connection with society to the next level. This is why the new VUB academy bears her name: the Caroline Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking or PACT for short.

PACT was the last major project Caroline Pauwels had in mind before she passed away on August 5 of this year. Her big idea behind this academy - originally to be called the Poincaré Academy of Critical Thinking - is the implementation of the principles of the Enlightenment: critical thinking, free inquiry and radical humanism.

What does PACT want? With PACT, the VUB wants to make it clear to the widest possible audience that doubt, uncertainty and advancing insight are not weaknesses, but precisely the engine of real scientific and social progress. Only in this way can we provide an answer to the ever-increasing challenges looming in society and in the world.

Among other things, PACT will organize lectures for people who "want to understand," who want to listen to others because they might be right, and who want to become free thinkers through dialogue, self-reflection and self-examination. The PACT lectures aim to offer a better understanding of the main problems in society and the world, and above all to offer ideas on how to address those problems. The PACT lectures are thus explicitly an alternative to fatalistic doom scenarios and gloomy perspectives on the future.

Do you participate? PACT aims to present the broadest possible range of voices, with scholars and thinkers from all continents, with a international perspective, with a focus on decolonization. But in addition to an interesting lecture program, PACT will also organize a variety of other activities that endorse its intentions. Anyone who feels addressed by Caroline Pauwels' Manifesto - the basis for PACT - can participate.

Contact : [email protected]

Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

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2024 Fall Academy on Critical Thinking

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Hotel Room Blocks Available!

There are many travelers coming to Bentonville the weekend of the academy. Don't be left without a room!

In this academy for both new and returning participants , Drs. Linda Elder and Gerald Nosich illuminate how we design instruction and training to foster intensive intellectual engagement by every learner, in every class or program, every day. If you are an educator, you will leverage your new understandings in critical thinking to rethink your model of instruction. If you are a business or government leader or trainer, you will utilize critical thinking tools to transform how you view, organize, and execute your training and other work.

This academy is concerned to foster deep internalization of critical thinking in the long run and is designed for:

• educators and administrators at all levels of instruction,
• business and government leaders, and
• anyone desiring to advance their personal critical thinking skills, abilities and traits.

Throughout the academy, participants will work toward:

• contextualizing these principles within academic subjects and disciplines, or within business/governmental practices;
• developing instructional strategies that foster deep learning by helping students, employees, colleagues, and/or clients reason through your content using the concepts and principles of critical thinking,
• understanding how to embody the character traits of the fairminded critical thinker;
• conceptualizing critical thinking as transformative, and as essential to self-actualization and contributing significantly to the common good.

Returning participants at the Academy will go deeper into the Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking and learn to better apply its foundations in the classroom, in business and/or government, and throughout their lives. At times, they will work as an advanced group under the guidance of either Dr. Linda Elder or Dr. Gerald Nosich. At other times, they will work with new participants in a mentorship capacity during group exercises. This process will enhance knowledge of critical thinking foundations for both new and returning participants.

At this academy, you will:

• discuss essential ideas in critical thinking;
• develop and articulate your understandings of key concepts within your academic discipline or profession;

• reason through complex questions within your field, gaining insight into how you can help students, employees, colleagues, and/or clients do the same;
• see our Senior Fellows demonstrate ways of teaching and training that progressively build upon each other;
• engage in close reading and substantive writing while learning instructional-design strategies for both;
• receive feedback using intellectual standards to develop your understandings while you engage as “students” who are thinking through content; and
• (if relevant to your work) learn to better apply critical thinking in leadership and/or training in business, government, or education.

This academy offers a unique opportunity to work closely under the tutelage of Drs. Nosich and Elder in a small, intimate learning situation, much like disciplined Socratic schools one might envision. We will create a seminar-style Socratic learning experience together in a disciplined intellectual community, one of the sort that we would hope to create in our institutions and workplaces, and one which would be prevalent in fairminded critical societies.

By working alongside one another in this academy, participants across professions and with varying purposes, issues, and concerns can learn from one another as we all work to better internalize a powerful, robust conception of critical thinking and how to foster it in others.

Due to ongoing concerns about COVID and other transmissible illnesses, we require that registrants not attend the Academy while experiencing or exhibiting symptoms of contagious illness. If you are registered for the Academy and must cancel your attendance at any time prior to the event due to such illness or symptoms, please notify us in writing , and we will refund your registration in full.

The Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking together have hosted critical thinking academies and conferences for 44 years. During this time, we have worked with hundreds of thousands of educators as well as businesses, governments, and educational leaders from across the professions in designing instruction and training that place critical thinking at the core of learning and decision-making.

Our instructional design strategies and approaches emerge from first principles in critical thinking. These include:

• That the only way to learn content of any kind is to incorporate it actively into your thinking.

• That humans are fundamentally reasoning creatures; we work our way through life using our reasoning to figure things out. Because the quality of one’s life depends directly on the quality of one’s reasoning, and because we cannot depend on our reasoning to be naturally of high quality, people need intervention strategies for thought. These strategies should be at the heart of teaching and learning in any area.
• That it is not enough to leave the development of criticality at the implicit level if we are to take command of knowledge and become skilled learners and professionals. Instead, the lingua franca of critical thinking – in other words, the critical-analytic vocabulary embodied in all natural languages and describing concepts such as assumptions, implications, interpretations, accuracy, relevance clarity, etc. – should be made explicit in instruction and training, used on a daily basis in teaching and learning, and employed throughout the professions and everyday life.

Teaching and training for genuine understanding and robust critical thinking entails:

• Teaching and living through a Socratic spirit, emphasizing the importance of the learner taking ownership of his or her own ideas, questions, and content by actively thinking it through. In this mode of teaching and thinking, the inquiry process is more important than the answers.

• Teaching that encourages learners to identify key structural components in thinking, such as purposes, questions at issue, information and data, inferences and interpretations, concepts and theories, assumptions and presuppositions, implications and consequences, and points of view and frames of reference.
• Teaching that requires learners to read, write, listen, and speak critically.
• Teaching that is dialogical, wherein learners come to thoughtfully question the reasoning of others and expect their own reasoning to be so questioned.
• Teaching that encourages students to think for themselves while exercising intellectual humility and intellectual empathy.
• Teaching that locates ultimate intellectual authority in evidence and reasoning, rather than in authority figures or “authoritative” beliefs or texts.

About Our Presenters

Dr. Gerald Nosich

Dr. Gerald Nosich is a noted authority on critical thinking and has given more than 250 workshops to instructors and governmental agencies on all aspects of teaching it. He is the author of Reasons and Arguments , Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum , and Critical Writing: Using the Concepts and Processes of Critical Thinking to Write a Paper . Dr. Nosich has given workshops for instructors at all levels of education in the United States, Canada, Thailand, Lithuania, Austria, Germany, Singapore and England. He has worked with the U.S. Department of Education on a project for a National Assessment of Higher Order Thinking Skills; given teleconferences sponsored by PBS and Starlink on teaching for critical thinking; served as a consultant for ACT in Critical Thinking and Language Arts assessment; and been featured as a Noted Scholar at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Nosich has been Assistant Director at the Center for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University, and is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York Buffalo State and at the University of New Orleans.

Dr. Linda Elder

Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and international authority on critical thinking. President and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Critical Thinking, she has taught psychology and critical thinking at the college level, and she has given presentations to more than 50,000 educators and leaders in business, government, and the military. 

Dr. Elder is author of Liberating the Mind: Overcoming Sociocentric Thought and Egocentric Tendencies . She has also coauthored four books, including 30 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living through Critical Thinking and Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life , as well as 24 Thinker's Guides on critical thinking. Concerned with understanding and illuminating the relationship between thinking and affect, and with the barriers to critical thinking, Dr. Elder has placed these issues at the center of her thinking and work.

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

• ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics

by Mária Janušová · Published 02/03/2023

Although fewer than two decades have passed since its opening, the Kumu Art Museum, located in Estonia’s capital city Tallinn, is widely acknowledged for its critical exhibitions that often highlight the nation’s traumatic past. Earlier this year, the museum showed Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics, curated by Anu Allas (professor at the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture of the Estonian Academy of Arts), Liisa Kaljula (curator at the Kumu Art Museum), and Jane A. Sharp (curator at the Zimmerli Art Museum and professor in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA). The exhibition focused on the dialogue between conceptual art from Moscow and the Baltic countries in the 1970s and 1980s—when Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were still part of the Soviet Union—and on how this dialogue might affect the way we think about the phenomenon known as “Moscow Conceptualism,” a now globally recognized tendency whose best-known representatives include Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov, Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid, Erik Bulatov, and Andrei Monastyrski.( The Kumu exhibition was a development of an earlier show curated by Jane A. Sharp, entitled Thinking Pictures: Moscow Conceptual Art from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection that was shown in 2016 at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers State University. See: https://zimmerli.emuseum.com/exhibitions/32/thinking-pictures-moscow-conceptual-art-from-the-norton-and )

The opening of Thinking Pictures was scheduled for early March 2022, just a few days after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These horrifying political events put the show’s curators in a difficult position: should they open the exhibition as planned, or cancel it in solidarity with Ukraine? They finally decided to open the show, but without any artwork visible. The works were then gradually installed over the following few weeks until all of the works were visible in the exhibition space. To see the (almost) empty exhibition was an intense and ultimately rewarding experience, and the curators’ decision was an impressive act of critical curatorship that is cognizant of the way in which art is impacted by events beyond its control.

Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics, exhibition view. Photo by Paco Ulman, courtesy of Kumu Art Museum.

The curatorial concept is explained in more detail in the exhibition catalog.( Thinking Pictures. Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics . Eds. Anu Allas, Liisa Kaljula, Jane A. Sharp. Tallinn: Kumu Art Museum, 2022. ) As stated in the introduction, the project ambitiously aimed to “broaden the understanding of conceptual art created in the late Soviet environment, to break through the narrow confines of national art history narratives, and to disrupt the hierarchy between the center and the periphery (…).”( Allas, “Introduction,” Ibid, 8. ) The curators used the exhibition as a tool for writing a history of conceptual art of the Baltic region. Relying on Piotr Piotrowski’s concept of horizontal art history, they considered the phenomenon of Moscow Conceptualism as hegemonic and hierarchical within the discourse of East European conceptual art—due to the global acknowledgment of the term, as well as its inherent unifying art historical narrative, written from the center of the former Eastern Bloc, Moscow. Therefore, they decided to use diverse narratives, told from their position located in the Baltics, on the edge of the former Soviet Union.

The exhibition was well-grounded in Piotrowski’s ideas on how to write East European art history, adopting his approach that included transnationality, critical revision, hybridization, pluralization, heterogeneity, discursivity, and deconstruction of the center.( Anu Allas was a co-editor of the publication Globalizing East European Art Histories , which emerged from a conference in Lublin, Poland, convened by Piotr Piotrowski in 2014. See Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present. eds. Beata Hock, Anu Allas. New York/London: Routledge, 2018. ) Based on the artistic material from Soviet Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the exhibition manifested the writing of art history which is “polyphonic, multi-dimensional, devoid of geographic hierarchies.”( Piotr Piotrowski, “1989: The Spatial Turn,” in Piotr Piotrwowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe . (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 39. ) This diversified nature was emphasized by the selection of various artists from different environments or contexts, using variable artistic media and approaches.

Thinking Pictures consisted of twelve thematic groups designed to express the heterogenous, plural, or fluid character of conceptual art in late-Soviet Moscow and the Baltics. Each of the groups comprised works by conceptual artists from Moscow, as well as Soviet Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with all the works being displayed with equal status, and none held in any way superior to the others. Each topic was labeled and briefly explained by the wall texts. Considering the limitations of the exhibition space, there were perhaps too many topics covered by the show, which could result in the viewer’s confusion. However, this also confirmed the discursive body of the exhibition with a multi-layered, fluid think tank. Several topics intertwine with one another, and, as stated in the catalog, the show is divided into three main blocks.( Allas, “Introduction,” 11. )

The first section comprised themes including The Soviet Universe, Sots Art, City Interventions, and Travelling into the Green, all focusing on various aspects of everyday Soviet life. For instance, one can witness the motif of social isolation in two paintings from Viktor Pivovarov’s series Project for a Lonely Man (1975). These flat paintings, each combining an image with a word, recall posters in the field of graphic arts. The depiction of a small Soviet flat’s floor plan or a simple room with ordinary things that have bizarre labels attached to them is reminiscent of Soviet instruction manuals. Meanwhile, the painting My Passport (1979) by Latvian artist Bruno Vasiļevskis captured the Soviet passport in precise, photorealistic detail. This display of such a travel document given the travel restrictions for citizens of the USSR evokes the harshness of Soviet reality. Another photorealistic work, Victory’s Interior (1984-1985) by Lithuanian Romanas Vilkauskas, shows a wall covered with old, yellowed newspapers. At the center of the wall, there is a photograph of a smiling Stalin, highlighting the contradiction between the shiny, optimistic state propaganda and the actual poverty of the Soviet people.

The ironic representation of Soviet propaganda and visual culture more generally dominates the works by the Russian artistic duo Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. Both are key figures in the conceptual tendency of Sots Art. Their work Our Goal is Communism! (1972) uses a well-known Soviet propaganda slogan that the artists signed. By appropriating officialdom’s visual language, Komar & Melamid attempt to disrupt the seriousness of Soviet iconography. Iconic Soviet symbols were also creatively used by Estonian artist Leonhard Lapin. His four silkscreens Stalinism and Abstractionism, Stalinism and Satanism, Suprematism and Socialism, and Surrealism and Socialism (1990) show how Lapin transformed these emblems into pure geometric forms in an effort to undermine the authority of the state.

The Kumu exhibition also pointed to the city and to nature as important sources of inspiration for Soviet conceptualist artists. The series of photomontages Vilnius Notebook I. (1988) by Lithuanian Mindaugas Navakas, for instance, depicts typical Soviet apartment blocks altered with various monumental designs that disrupt the monotony of the banal Soviet reality. Similarly, the Latvian artist group The Emissionists (Pollucionisti), in their photomontage series Bizarred Riga (1978), comments ironically and critically on the problems and the failures of the Soviet urban environment. Taking a different approach, other artists chose to abandon the urban environment altogether. Thus, the performance Action 33: The Russian World (1985)—a phrase that rings very differently to us today than it did back then—by Collective Actions shows group members in a wintery landscape locked in observation. Rather than offering a strong narrative, Collective Actions is interested in the process of observation itself, and in the relationship between the audience and the performers. This is also reflected in the happening Conceptual Games (1978) by Lithuanian artists Kaze Zimblytė, Gediminas Karalius, Petras Mazuras, and Vladas Vildžiunas, who created improvised site-specific installations on the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

The show’s second part united the themes of Text and Image; Fundamental Lexicons: Circle, Square, Triangle; and Objective Art, and expressed the Soviet conceptual artists’ affinity for working with words, texts, books, poetry, geometric forms, and the ideas of the Russian avant-garde. The exhibition included examples of visual poetry, such as Raul Meel’s subtle series of drawings created on a typewriter, or Dmitri Prigov’s spiral text collages. Some works used various elements of the Soviet world as a universal visual language, reflecting the influence of French structuralism and its use of language as a model for understanding reality.

Leonhard Lapin’s Self-Portrait (1979) shows the artist’s head in profile and in red, reminding the viewer of familiar portraits of Lenin. Meanwhile, Russian artist Alexander Kosolapov, in the photographic series Gesticulations. Language of the Masses (1978-1979) imitates the strict gestures and expressions of members of the Soviet armed forces, and Russian artist Leonid Sokov’s Project to Construct Glasses for Every Soviet Citizen (1975) is a pair of carved brown wooden spectacles with lenses in the shape of a red communist star, which satirically offers a way to see a bright, happy Soviet reality.

Soviet conceptual artists often worked with geometric shapes reminiscent of the Russian avant-garde, and with Kazimir Malevich’s idea of art as a spiritual substance. The exhibition included several examples of this trend, such as Latvian Sirje Runge’s series Geometry (1976-1977) in which she uses basic geometric structures and colors to create dynamic compositions and illusory spaces. Likewise, Estonian artist Silver Vahtre, in the series Blue Skies (1983), transforms banal landscapes into energetic spiritual images through the use of elementary geometric forms. “Thinking Pictures” also included Komar and Melamid’s ironic deconstruction of avant-garde symbols in the project Circle, Square, Triangle (1975) where the artist duo presented Suprematist geometric designs as commodified home decorations.

The last section of the exhibition focused on the themes of Picture as Critique, Body and Space, Fading Images, and Existential Questions. Compared with previous sections, this one dealt with more theoretical, philosophical, or even existential problems, including the artist’s identity. In his Self-Portrait in a Vermeer Painting (1985), for example, Latvian artist Miervaldis Polis tried to join the history of Western art by painting himself into a reproduction of a famous work by Vermeer. Two black and white photographs from the series Signatures (1976) by Leonid Sokov capture a typographical sign with the artist’s surname. While the first photo depicts the artist’s signature being thrown out in the yard like a piece of trash, the second one shows that the typographical object is already being taken away by an excavator. The artist’s name is also the subject of Composition (1960s-1970s) by Lithuanian Kaze Zimblytė, who collaged newspaper scraps to spell her own name.

Unofficial neo-avant-garde artists in Eastern Europe regularly faced harassment by the state; they were frequently interrogated by secret agents, their exhibitions were closed, and their art often remained invisible to a larger audience. These circumstances were reflected in several artworks in the show, including a series of photographic nudes by Lithuanian artist Violeta Bubelytė (1982-1985) that captures a naked female body in a fluid space between reality and abstraction. Moscow conceptualist Irina Nakhova, for her part, explores the fragile relations between the body and its environment. Her photograph Room no. 3 (1986) shows a figure sitting in an interior where all other objects are wrapped up. A work by second-generation Moscow conceptualist Vadim Zakharov, V. A. Zakharov Conducts an Information Exchange with the Sun (1978), shows the photographic documentation of the artist’s performance in the middle of an ensemble of gray Socialist housing blocks. Using a small pocket mirror, Zakharov creates a reflection of the sun, and thereby he seems to be holding a bright beam of light in his hand. One can see this gesture as a symbolic attempt to disrupt the grayness of Soviet everyday life or the artist’s exit from the closed world of the Iron Curtain.

Basic existential questions are also raised in Viktor Pivovarov’s series Face (1975), which shows the portrait of a woman whose face we cannot fully see because it is covered by the representation of her thoughts. As the series progresses, the portrait gradually falls apart until it finally disappears completely. The blue background may be suggestive of the artist’s “blue” mood. Similarly, Lithuanian artist Kaze Zimblytė, in the paintings Moods (1985), expresses her dark feelings. The black rectangles surrounded by monochromatic areas of color recall Mark Rothko’s method of expressing emotions through color in painting. Finally, Latvian painter Bruno Vasiļevskis signals his immediate surroundings in his photorealist paintings Books (1984) and White Wall (1984) whose titles are a precise reflection of the works’ content.

Just like the exhibition, the catalog is also heterogeneous and discursive in its nature. The Estonian-English publication brings various, pluralistic perspectives on the topic of the late-Soviet conceptual art, with four articles focused on issues relating to the exhibition. The first one, “Inside the Picture: Moscow Conceptualism Revisited,” by Jane A. Sharp, provides the author’s analyses of Moscow Conceptualism and some of its key works; Liisa Kaljula’s article “Baltic Sots Art: Appropriation Art from the Western Periphery,” acquaints us with the tendency of Sots Art in the Baltic countries; Janis Taurens interprets two Latvian artistic groups: the Workshop for the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings (NSRD) and the Emissionists, as well as Latvian conceptual art through the lens of postcolonial theory; and Skaidra Trilupaitytė outlines the situation of the late Soviet era and contemporary art institutions in Lithuanian art in her text, “Lithuanian Semi-non-conformism, ‘Classical’ Rebel Art and Contemporary Art Institutional Quandaries.”

One can recognize three main aspects which make the exhibition Thinking Pictures a significant contribution to contemporary art theory and practice, and especially to the field of East European art history. Firstly, it showed the possible ways of creating art historical narratives and writing regional art history. The second point was a notion of the exhibition as a fluid, flexible and heterogeneous structure, which offers multiple voices and perspectives on the subject matter, and asks more questions than it gives straight answers. Thinking Pictures included numerous artworks and artists; however, one notable absence was the important Estonian artist Ülo Sooster, a close associate of Ilya Kabakov’s whose work provides a key link between the Russian and the Estonian unofficial art scene.

The last distinguished feature was the implementation of critical institutional and curatorial practices. Since the exhibition opened during the first weeks of the Russian war in Ukraine, the curators decided to open an empty exhibition, gradually filling it up with artworks as a sign of their disagreement with the war. All of this resonates with the notions of “critical curating,” a form of curatorial activism, with curators expanding their usual role;( Marie Fraser and Alice Jim Wai Ming, “Introduction. What is Critical Curating?,” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 43/2 (2018) 5-10. ) and “post-representational curating,” which is what art historian Nora Sternfeld describes as “the conscious involvement in public debates in solidarity with existing social struggles.”( Nora Sternfeld, “Involvements – A short introduction to curating between entanglement and solidarity,” Mustekala , 14. 10. 2013. https://mustekala.info/teemanumerot/kuratointi-3-13/involvements-a-short-introduction-to-curating-between-entanglement-and-solidarity/ (accessed January 29, 2023) ) Similarly, one can recognize in the Kumu exhibition Piotr Piotrowski’s theory of the “critical museum,” which he considered the ideal form of a museum for contemporary society. It is such a museum that reacts to the ongoing changes or challenges of the present world, is aware of its social responsibility, and uses its cultural authority and space to take an active role towards the public, helping to protect human rights and democratic processes.( Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius and Piotr Piotrowski, “Introduction,” in From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum . eds. Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius and Piotr Piotrowski. (Vermont: Ashgate, 2015), 1. ) And this is precisely what Thinking Pictures has accomplished.

Mária Janušová

Tags: Baltics conceptual art Estonia exhibition review Lativa Lithuania Moscow Thinking Pictures

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Summer Piano Academy

Events Summer Piano Academy

July 6th - 12th, 2024 Location: Bethel University,  St Paul, MN

Faculty Members:

Prof. Alexander Braginsky (Guest Artist), Dr. Herbert Johnson, Dr. Sara Langmead, Dr. Ji Young Lee, Dr. Anton Melnichenko, Dr. Horacio Nuguid (Co-Artistic Director), and Dr. Tina Park (Co-Artistic Director)

Application Requirements

1. Completed application form 2. $50 Application fee 3. Link to sample video performance

Required Repertoire:

Each student should prepare a minimum of two pieces.  At least one of the pieces must be performance-ready upon arrival at camp.

Private Lessons - Each student will receive two 45-minute long individual lessons with the assigned studio teacher.  

Performance Class - Daily piano studio classes offer a wonderful opportunity for students to perform and discuss a variety of musical topics with their peers as conducted by their assigned teacher.

Master Class - Intermediate level - conducted by Dr. Herbert Johnson. Advanced level - conducted by Professor Alexander Barginsky. Participating students in these master classes are chosen from a live audition to be held on the first day of camp.

Theory - Divided into basic and advanced levels, Dr. Sara Langmead will work with students in understanding, and applying to their pieces, important concepts in music theory.

Faculty Recital - A varied program of solo and ensemble works as played by the faculty members.

Student Recitals - Student performers will participate in two separate recitals throughout the week.

Community Outreach Concert - Selected students will perform.

Activities - Soccer, tennis, outdoor games, ping-pong, foosball, board games, movie night on campus and more!

Special Event  - Minnesota Public Radio Tour.   We will have a guided tour of the facility as well as their state-of-the-art recording studio.

Camp Faculty

Dr. Tina Park

Co-artistic director.

Born in a musician family Tina Juan Park, previous named as Juan Li started learning piano at the age of 5. At the age of 7 she won the First Young Artist Competition in her home state, Hubei which took her to a long journey of 13 years of study at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. In 1998 she immigrated to the United States on a full scholarship from the University of Notre Dame and continued to pursue her masterʼs degree in piano performance.  Learn more...

Dr. Horacio Nuguid

Horacio Nuguid is a pianist with an extensive repertoire whose 'beautiful tone' and 'elegance' has captivated audiences.  In addition to several standard piano concerti, Nuguid also has performed lesser-known works such as Edward MacDowell's Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Clara Schumann's Konzertsatz, Mario Pilati's Suite and Ferdinand Ries' Grand Variations on Rule Britannia with different orchestras in the Philippines, Mexico and the United States.   Learn more...

Dr. Herbert Johnson

Herbert Johnson  is Professor of Piano and Director of Keyboard Activities at Bethel University since September 2008. Prior to this position, Herb taught at King’s College in Briarcliff Manor, New York, Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri, and North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Herb received his doctorate in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.   Learn more...

Dr. Anton Melnichenko

R ussian-born pianist  Anton Melnichenko  has been performing on several continents since his first solo recital at the age of twelve. His performances have always garnered him both public and critical acclaim. In addition to top prizes Melnichenko has received various special audience awards in numerous international competitions. A graduate of the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Anton has also received an Artist Diploma at Hamline University, as well as his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Piano Performance from the University of Minnesota, where he studied with Professor Alexander Braginsky.   Learn more...

Dr. Ji Young Lee

Ji Young Lee D.M.A. began piano studies at the age of four. Born in Korea, she graduated from Seoul Arts High School and received the Bachelor’s degree from Ewha Womans University. She went on to study in the U.S., earning her Master’s degree at Eastman School of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Lee won first Prizes at the Yokohama International Music Competition, United States Open Music Competition.   Learn more...

Dr. Sara Langmead

A Minnesota native, Dr. Sara Langmead made her orchestral debut at age 16 with the 3M Symphony Orchestra. She won first prizes in the MN Schubert Club and UW-Madison Concerto competitions at the collegiate level, studied with György Sebők for two summers at the Banff Centre, and in 1997 won first prize at the international SAI Competition. Dr. Langmead earned her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University where she studied piano for seven years with Yoheved Kaplinsky (current chair of the Juilliard Piano Department).  Learn more...

Guest Artist Professor Alexander Braginsky

Alexander Braginsky was born and educated in Moscow. He received his first piano lessons from his mother, a well-known concert pianist. At the age of six he began study with Alexander Goldenweiser, a close friend of Leo Tolstoy and a classmate of Rachmaninov and Scriabin. It was through Goldenweiser, with whom he spent 11 years as his youngest student, that Braginsky came into contact with the great 19th-century romantic tradition. After Goldenweiser death, he continued to study with Theodore Gutman, another illustrious representative of the "Golden Age" of Russian piano school.   While still a student at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory Braginsky started touring the Soviet Union as a soloist and a chamber musician. He was also writing articles and reviews for “Soviet Music”, the leading USSR music magazine. Upon graduation, he started teaching piano performance at the Moscow Pedagogy Institute.  Learn More...

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