C ritical Thinking is about pressing points, sniffing a bit more sceptically at issues and generally looking more closely at everything. Not only at factual claims but also, and most importantly, at the ways in which people arrive at their views and ideas.
Harrumph, you may think! Why bother? Good question! I’ve failed plenty of job interviews in my time by being a Critical Thinker. Equally, the world has no shortage of successful people who scrupulously avoid any appearance of not only thinking critically, but thinking full‐stop. My short answer is that being a Critical Thinker is still the best kind of thinker to be, even if it does sometimes mean that you’re the odd one out on many issues.
In this chapter I provide an overview of Critical Thinking and what you can find in the rest of this book. I’ll also cover the importance of ‘reading between the lines’ and also set the record straight on what Critical Thinking isn’t.
Opening the Doors to the Arguments Clinic
You may well have been brought up not to argue. At school you were probably encouraged to sit quietly and write down facts — I was. When I was five, one teacher even used sticky tape to shut children’s mouths up in class! (Yes, I was one of them.) Since then I’ve had some very enlightened teachers, who encouraged me to use my imagination, to solve some problems or do research. But still not to argue.
So welcome to a very different way of seeing the world — Critical Thinking. This is truly the ‘arguments clinic’ in which punters can pay for either 5‐minute or hour‐long arguments (as the famous Monty Python sketch has it). No, it isn’t. Yes it is. Still say that it isn’t? But, yes it is! (If you like, check out Chapter 17 now to discover ten of the world’s most influential arguments — don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you get back!)
Of course, as the sketch says, this isn’t proper argument at all, merely contradiction: nothing like a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. If an ability to contradict people is all you come away with after reading this book then you, like the man in the sketch, would be entitled to your money back. Don’t worry, here you will find so many new ways of looking at issues that you’ll soon be having the full, hour‐long arguments on everything under the sun. My aim by the end of this section is to give you the big picture of Critical Thinking.
Defining Critical Thinking
If you look up Critical Thinking in a dictionary, you see that it’s called the philosophical examination of arguments, and I’m a philosopher. But — at the risk of annoying the Ivory Tower experts straight away — I say that this kind of philoso phy isn’t the sort most of them do or have a clue about. Yes, as Chapter 12 shows, Critical Thinking does have one foot in the realm of logic, in tidily setting out arguments as premises followed by conclusions. But if that were all it was, you might as well give the job to a computer
No, Critical Thinking is really about a range of skills and understandings, including an ability to play with words, a sensitivity to context, feelings and emotions, and (the hardest skill to develop) the kind of open-mindedness that allows you to make creative leaps and gain insights.
I know that developing these skills sounds rather like a tall order for one book to achieve. But Critical Thinking is also team thinking, and I draw on the ideas of many other thinkers, including a lot of input from my editors at Wiley. As a result, you don’t get my opinion of Critical Thinking Skills, but a carefully researched and lively introduction to the subject.
Spotting how the brain likes to think
Professors may sniff, but I prefer to work on exercises that are fun or interesting, which is why I have tried hard to make the ones in this book like that. Here’s a rather trivial little exercise, which nonetheless illustrates something important about how the human mind operates
Should you say ‘The yolk of the egg is white’ or ‘The yolk of the egg are white’?
When I first saw this question, I thought for a minute — and then I gave up and looked for the answers. That’s my method with written exercises; it conserves my limited brain power for things like watching TV and eating crisps — at the same time! But I digress (not good in Critical Thinking). This ques tion may form the subject of a 5‐minute argument, but it shouldn’t stretch to an hour, because neither version is cor rect: egg yolks are yellow. Boom, boom! Caught you out?
This exercise reveals that people’s normal mode of thinking is bound within the parameters of certain rules and systems — due to thousands of years of evolution. In the jargon of psychol ogy, human thinking uses certain heuristics (mental shortcuts for solving problems and making judgements quickly)
The trouble is that automatic and well‐established ways of thinking can stop you from seeing new possibilities or avoid ing unexpected pitfalls. Plus, the great majority of people’s thinking goes on without them being aware of it. Although sometimes quick and efficient, in certain circumstances it can rush people to the wrong conclusions.
Critical Thinking is your insurance policy against these dodgy, but more or less universal, thinking habits
Challenging people’s rationality
Do you know people whose views don’t seem to be based on any sort of rational assessment of the world, but rather on dodgy information easily imbibed — or even on blatant preju dices? Me too. And what’s more, at least some of my views — and some of your views — also fall into this rather illogical category. The fact is, even though Aristotle called men (not women, he was emphatically prejudiced) ‘rational animals’, people rarely use their rational facility in practice. (I discuss this subject in more depth in Chapter 13.)
More subtly, people often present good reasons for their posi tions, but in reality arrive at their views for quite different ones. The good reasons are irrelevant, as you sometimes find out if you present some solid arguments that tend to disprove them. For example, suppose your neighbours buy a 4‐wheel drive, all‐terrain car, and insist that it is vital for when the family goes mountaineering and camping. Yet the fact is that they rarely go anywhere more remote than the nearest super market and hate getting their shiny car dirty. Could the real reason be that having a tank‐sized car bolsters their sense of self‐importance
Or maybe the government says that it has to charge students tuition fees — otherwise there won’t be enough money for everyone who wants to go to college in the future. Good reason! Odd then that the fees system actually costs more to operate than the previous universal grants system. Could the real reason for the change be something to do with disman tling the political edifice of the welfare state? Arguments may exist for doing that too, but that’s straying into politics. I’m not saying one way or the other, but I am recommending the habit of looking a little harder at the reasons and explanations people give
Dipping into the Critical Thinking skills toolbox
I think of Critical Thinking as a toolbox. Philosophers have a long tradition of seeing argument skills as tools (read the nearby sidebar ‘Totting up Aristotle’s tools’ for more).
Critical Thinking isn’t one tool, but lots. Plus, its skills can do a lot more than most of its experts seem to be aware of — because most of them come from too narrow a base
Logic is a central Critical Thinking tool. You can see the kind of logic that it uses as a mental screwdriver with two different purposes: it enables you to take arguments completely apart and mend and reassemble them.
Critical Thinking also has creative uses, such as prototyping and brainstorming (see Chapters 6 and 7, respectively). These ‘hammer‐and‐nails’ skills, with plenty of glue added in, are great for creating new solutions and visualising possibilities. Plus, don’t forget the social and emotional components of Critical Thinking (which I cover in Chapters 3 and 4, respec tively): I like to think of these as the measuring tools in the kit — maybe as the spirit level too.
Philosophical and mathematical logic is a solitary process: one person (or computer) can take on the world. After churn ing through a formal proof and finding a contradiction, the matter is closed! But Critical Thinking involves questioning — challenging arguments, methods, ideas and findings, demand ing the context and the background. Therefore, it’s a more sociable business, where people explore and create truths collectively.
Ordering your thinking: Reason, analyse and then argue
In that order please! Uncritical Thinkers may start by arguing, and then pause to analyse and finally search for reasons, but making the argument follow the reasoning (not the other way around) is much better.
Philosophers prefer to see Critical Thinking as a course in informal logic: the study of arguments expressed in natural language, where an argument being valid isn’t enough — the conclusion has to be useful too. The chapters in Part IV are all about that and where I take a good look at the key skills of informal logic (for example, the ‘fallacies’ that many Critical Thinking experts wax long on). But don’t be too excited at the prospect of using logic to conquer the world, because as I explain its powers are strictly limited.
The difference between a sound argument and a fallacy is often far from black and white. Which isn’t to imply that people don’t make lots of silly mistakes and lousy arguments. Check out some logical pitfalls in Chapter 16
On the other hand, don’t let any of these concerns put you off using logic skills in your thinking, writing (check out Chapter 10) and speaking (see Chapters 11 and 14), because a little method can go a long way to making your arguments more persuasive and demonstrating the weaknesses in other people’s too
Researchers have often found that when asked, people can’t really explain why they hold such and such a view, or what they think would count as suitable evidence for the view. Even more worrying for society, is that these same people are extremely reluctant to have their views challenged. Critical Thinking Skills are your antidote to this very common disease.
Discovering what kind of thinking you do
✓Sticklers: People who form their beliefs by tenaciously sticking to whichever view they liked most originally — whatever evidence is presented to them and even how ever circumstances change. If asked to justify their view, they can be very thorough in finding facts to support it, while also refusing to look into anything that appears likely to run against it. (I write about facts and opinions in Chapter 15.)
Followers: People who respect anyone or anything that presents itself as ‘authoritative’. They form their view in a group discussion on what they think, say, the professor is saying, or in the absence of an authority figure, on what they imagine is the consensuses view. When they look something up on the Internet, they head for the security of Wikipedia (as they imagine it!) and are reluc tant to consult websites run by individuals.
These kinds of thinkers, as Peirce says, are useful members of society, because they aid social harmony and cohesion. (Although they may also be found egging on tyrants and persecuting minorities.) But they aren’t useful as far as ideas go.
✓System builders: These are people who try to fit every thing into a pre‐existing framework. They’re a more sophisticated version of the sticklers. Science is obliged — in practice — to operate on a similar principle. System isers are willing to consider new information, but if it requires dismantling the pre‐existing structure for under standing the world, they’re likely to reject it. You can read more on how people process information to build knowledge in Chapter 8.
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