Critical thinking

What is critical thinking

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle

If we ask people what critical thinking is, we often observe they connect it with something negative, something pointing at errors. Like when our boss is criticising us. However, it is not the only meaning of the word critical. Actually, negative attitudes in critical thinking are more obstacle than precondition of good results as they can blind our impartial judgement. And critical thinking stands on impartial judgement.

Critical thinking or also a critical analysis is a sum of conscious actions and skills, which we can use while evaluating truth or manipulation contained in the information we are provided with or which we provide to the others. It can be whatever information - textual, sound or visual. It can be traced in the West to ancient Greece with its well-known Socratic method and in the East to ancient India with the Buddhist literature.

It is based on active, judgmatic consideration of information (e.g. opinions or attitudes, even own) and its active evaluation, asking questions, taking into consideration various perspectives, potential influence of own stereotypes, acquired assumptions and prejudices, as well as potential interests.

To do it properly, one has to monitor their own thoughts systematically, and should not take information as granted because of its look, but analyse it to find out whether it is accurate, clear, relevant or logical. Thus, whatever information is included in reasoning it has to be analysed, examined from various points of view, set into the concrete context.

Critical thinking, in fact, is not possible to be learnt overnight. It is not enough to know its rules; ability to think critically has to be consciously refined and used regularly. And not only that - at first, we need to get rid of old bad non-critical habits. Only after that we will be able to acquire the habits of critical thinker.

As Einstein says at the beginning of the module, we should not stop asking. What can we ask?

• What are the ends and objectives of the information? Why do I/they think so?
• What kind of words does he use?
• What is the source of the information? How was the information acquired? From what sources?
• What kind of arguments does it use? Does it include any manipulative technique?
• Are there any prejudices or stereotypes included?
• What could be the outcomes of the information? Who is the target group of the information?
• Are there any other points of view included in the information? What are the position of those related to the information?