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Critical Thinking: A Student’s

Introduction

Chapter 1
Introduction to Critical
Thinking

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Critical Thinking, 1

“Critical” here does not mean “negative”

• Critical means involving or exercising skilled judgment or
observation

A good critical thinker has cognitive skills and

intellectual dispositions needed to:
• Effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments and
truth claims
• Discover and overcome personal preconceptions and
biases
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Critical Thinking, 2

• Formulate and present convincing reasons in support of

conclusions
• Make reasonable, intelligent decisions about what to
believe and what to do

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Critical Thinking Standards, 1

Clarity
• Critical thinkers strive for clarity of language and thought

Precision
• Critical thinkers understand that it is necessary to insist
on precise answers to precise questions by cutting
through the confusions and uncertainties
• Example: “Is abortion wrong?” is vague. “Should abortion
be legal?” and “Is having an abortion ever moral?” are
more specific questions.

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Critical Thinking Standards, 2

Accuracy
• Critical thinkers have a passion for accurate, timely
information
• One can’t reason correctly with false information

Relevance
• Irrelevance can distract people from the point but never
helps to truly prove the point
• See Lincoln’s example on page 4

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Critical Thinking Standards, 3

Consistency
• Critical thinking avoids:
• Practical inconsistency: Saying one thing and doing another
• Logical inconsistency: Believing two things that can’t be
simultaneously true

Logical correctness
• Sound reasoning or making valid inferences
• Deriving that, and only that, which can be justifiably
derived from statements or premises
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Critical Thinking Standards, 4

Completeness
• Thinking is better when it is deep rather than shallow,
thorough rather than superficial

Fairness
• Critical thinking demands that our thinking be open-
minded, impartial, and free of distorting biases and
preconceptions
• One must not dismiss something just because it’s new or
it’s contrary to something one already believes

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Benefits of Critical Thinking: In the

Classroom, 1

Focus in college is less on memorization and more

on active, intelligent evaluation of ideas and
information
Students learn to:
• Understand the arguments and beliefs of others
• Critically evaluate arguments and beliefs
• Develop and defend one’s own well-supported
arguments and beliefs

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Benefits of Critical Thinking: In the

Classroom, 2

In college, professors will have you evaluate

beliefs/arguments of others and develop your own
• Critical thinking is the skill you need to accomplish this
effectively

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Benefits of Critical Thinking: In the

Workplace

Critical thinking will allow people to better perform

in their jobs.
• Since most job skills can be—and will be—taught “on-
site,” employers are more concerned with hiring
someone who can:

• Solve problems
• Think creatively
• Gather and analyze information
• Draw appropriate conclusions from data
• Communicate his/her ideas clearly and effectively

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Benefits of Critical Thinking: In Life

Critical thinking can help us:

• Avoid making bad personal decisions

• Make informed political decisions
• Attain personal enrichment
• As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living
• Critical thinking, honestly and courageously pursued, can
help free us from the unexamined assumptions and biases
of our upbringing and our society
• Lead self-directed, “examined” lives

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Barriers to Critical Thinking:

Egocentrism, 1

The tendency to see reality as centered on oneself

Forms of egocentrism
• Self-interested thinking: Tendency to accept and defend
beliefs that harmonize with one’s self-interest
• Your wants and needs are not objectively more important
than anyone else's; they certainly don’t determine truth
• Critical thinking is objective

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Barriers to Critical Thinking:

Egocentrism, 2

• Superiority bias: The tendency to overrate oneself

• Most people think they are above average; most people
are thus wrong
• Critical thinking requires one to be honest about his/her
abilities

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Barriers to Critical Thinking:

Sociocentrism, 1

Group-centered thinking
Ways in which sociocentrism distorts critical thinking
• Group bias: The tendency to see one’s own group
(example, nation) as being inherently better than all
others
• Tribalism: Strong feelings of loyalty to, and identification
with, one’s tribe or social group

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Barriers to Critical Thinking:

Sociocentrism, 2

• Conformism: Allowing beliefs to be shaped by outside

forces such as:
• Groups (See Solomon Asch’s experiment)
• Authority (See Stanley Milgram’s experiment)

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Barriers to Critical Thinking: Unwarranted

Assumptions and Stereotypes, 1

Assumption: Something one takes for granted or

believes to be true without any proof or conclusive
evidence
Unwarranted assumption: Taking something for
granted without “good reason”
• Stereotype: Assuming that all people within a group (for
example, sex or race) share all the same qualities
• Assuming that a particular individual that belongs to a
group has certain qualities simply because he/she belongs
to that group
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Barriers to Critical Thinking: Unwarranted

Assumptions and Stereotypes, 2

• Stereotypes are arrived at through hasty generalization, in

which one draws a conclusion about a large class of things
from a small sample

Being aware of an unwarranted assumption does

not justify it; but it is the first step in eliminating it

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Relativistic Thinking, 1

Relativism is the view that there is no objective or

factual truth, but that truth varies from individual to
individual, or from culture to culture
Forms of relativism
• Subjectivism: The view that truth is a matter of individual
opinion; what one thinks is true is true for that person
• Moral subjectivism: The view that what is morally right and
good for an individual, A, is what A thinks is morally right
and good
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Relativistic Thinking, 2

• Cultural relativism: The view that what is true for person

A is what person A’s culture or society believes to be true
• Cultural moral relativism: The view that what is morally
right and good for an individual, A, is whatever A’s society
or culture believes is morally right and good

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Exercise 1.4 (Shows why Relativism Is

False), 1

Discuss the following cases assuming that you are a

cultural relativist:
• Case 1: You are a member of culture C studying cultures
A and B. B loves war, A is pacifistic. Culture B invades
Culture A.
• Notice that you can’t morally criticize B as a cultural
relativist

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Exercise 1.4 (Shows why Relativism Is

False), 2

• Case 2: You are a member of culture B, and B thinks that

pacifism is immoral and embraces enslaving other
cultures and enslaves A
• Notice that—since you belong to B—you can’t criticize B’s
moral values (their accepting it makes it right). Also, you
must think it immoral to be a pacifist and yet must also
think that the pacifism of those in A is moral (since they
approve of it). That is a contradiction.

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Exercise 1.4 (Shows why Relativism Is

False), 3

• Case 3: Culture B consists of two subcultures: the Alphas

and the Betas. The majority group, the Alphas, deems
child sacrifice as morally right; you belong to a minority
in B that disagrees. B invades A and forces them to
participate in their practices.
• Notice that you must both accept and reject infant
sacrifice (you belong to two groups/cultures that have
contradictory positions)

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Problems with Cultural Moral

Relativism

Makes it impossible for one to:

• Criticize other cultures’ moral beliefs and values, even
those that intuitively seem to be terribly wrong
• Criticize one’s own societies’ prevailing moral beliefs and
values

Rules out the idea of moral progress

Can lead to conflicting moral duties

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More on Cultural Moral Relativism

The main reasons people are attracted to cultural

moral relativism are not good reasons at all
• The fact that it is hard to discover what is true—even if it is
impossible to discover what is true—does not mean that
there is no truth or that truth is determined by
opinion/consensus
• We probably won’t be able to discover whether or not God
exists; but whether he does or not is not a matter of opinion
• Cultural moral relativism does not promote tolerance
• Suggests that if you live in an intolerant society, you are
morally obligated to be intolerant
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Wishful Thinking

Believing what you want to be true (without

evidence or despite evidence to the contrary)
For example, people fear the unknown and invent
comforting myths to render the universe less
hostile and more predictable
• Belief in tabloid headlines
• Healing crystals and quack cures
• Communication with the dead
• “It won’t happen to me” beliefs

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Qualities of a Critical Thinker, 1

• Strives for clarity, precision, accuracy, and other

intellectual standards that characterize careful,
disciplined thinking
• Sensitive to the ways in which critical thinking can
be skewed by egocentrism, wishful thinking, and
other psychological obstacles to rational belief
• Intellectually honest (admits ignorance and limits)
• Listens with an open mind

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Qualities of a Critical Thinker, 2

• Bases beliefs on facts and evidence

• Is aware of the biases and preconceptions that
shape the way he/she perceives the world
• Thinks independently
• Is able to get to the heart of an issue, without
being distracted by details
• Possesses intellectual courage to face and assess
fairly ideas that challenge his/her beliefs
• Pursues truth and has intellectual perseverance
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