7. Critical thinking Flashcards
Critical thinking
active and systematic process of communication, evaluation, reflection and analysis, meant to foster knowledge, solve problems, support sound decision-making and guide action
Basic skills
- Knowledge facilitates the organization of incoming info
- Evaluation: analyze, judge, consider… influenced by; experience, comprehension, personal values…
- Metacognitive competence: know abilities and limits that allow to supervise if info used to base opinion is suitable
- Inference (deductive/inductive): establish connections between knowledge units
Critical thinkers should
- care about validity of your beliefs and about your decisions to be justified
- support a position to the extent that it is justified by available info
- be flexible and include new info in reasoning
- be well informed, consider other points of view
- search for alternative hypothesis, explanations or conclusions and be open to them
Components
- Cognitive component (active, system 2): can be learned, making us more critical thinkers
- Affective (emotional): flexible (different perspectives), skeptical (doubting) and verbal reasoning (persuasion)
Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills
Lower
- remember
- understand
- apply (info to new situations)
- analyze (draw connections among ideas)
- evaluate (justify a stand or decision)
- create a new or original work
Higher
What is not critical thinking
- Being critic (someone who is negative and cuts people down)
- Being boring (effort, heated debates and discussion)
- “Egocentric thinking”: self-serving perspectives, false sense of objectivity, flawed thinking.
Obstacles to critical thinking
- Confirmation bias: tendency to search for smth that confirms your theory, disregarding contradictory evidence
- Overconfidence bias: tendency of having too much confidence in your abilities, knowledge and ideas
- Counterfactual thinking: tendency to create possible alternatives for life events that have already occurred (causes regret, guilt, relief or satisfaction)
Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement
- Name-calling
- Ad Hominem: attack others characteristics, not topic
- Responding to tone: criticize tone, not topic
- Contradiction: state the opposite with little or no evidence
- Counterargument: contradict with supporting evidence
- Refutation: find mistakes and explain by using quotes
- Refutation of the central point
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Flaw in reasoning, tricks or illusions of thought that are often very sneakily used by many people to fool others
Includes core fallacies
and other fallacies
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Other fallacies (a part from the core):
Non sequitur
“it does not follow”
illogical statement, conclusion not supported by the premise
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Other fallacies (a part from the core):
False analogy or false logic
“As they don’t know how to use air conditioning, how will they run a county?”
Not related but used to compare
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Other fallacies (a part from the core):
False dichotomy
2 possibilities are presented as the only 2 options
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Other fallacies (a part from the core):
Hasty generalization
Conclusion based on little evidence because a generalization is made
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Other fallacies (a part from the core):
Reductio ad absurdum
persuasive technique, premise is presented in the most extreme or absurd form in order to discredit it
Logical fallacies in critical thinking
Other fallacies (a part from the core):
Red Herring
distracting away from the topic by introducing misleading info
