Critical Thinking Terms A - C Flashcards
Terms
Free from errors, mistakes, or distortion. Implies a positive exercise to obtain conformity with fact or truth.
ACCURATE
Having two or more possible meanings. Is a problem more of sentences than of individual words.
AMBIGUOUS
To break up a whole into its parts; to examine in detail so as to determine the nature of; to look more deeply into an issue or a situation.
ANALYZE
(1) To engage in a quarrel; bicker;
(2) to persuade by giving reasons.
ARGUE
A reason or reasons offered for or against something; the offering of such reasons; a discussion in which there is disagreement, suggesting using logic and bringing forth facts to support or refute a point.
ARGUMENT
Take for granted or presuppose. Critical thinkers make their assumptions explicit, assess them, and correct them.
ASSUME
A statement accepted or supposed as true without proof or demonstration; an unstated premise or belief. Our thought must begin with something we take to be true in a given context.
ASSUMPTION
(1) The power or supposed right to give commands, enforce obedience, take action, or make final decisions; (2) a person with much knowledge and expertise in a field, and hence reliable.
AUTHORITY
(1) A mental leaning or inclination;
(2) partiality, prejudice.
BIAS
To make easier to understand, to free from confusion or ambiguity, to remove obscurities.
a fundamental perfection of thought, and a fundamental aim in critical thinking.
CLARIFY, Clarity
An idea or thought. especially a generalized idea of a thing or of a class of things.
CONCEPT
To decide by reasoning, to infer, to deduce; the last step in a reasoning process; a judgment, decision, or belief formed after investigation or reasoning.
CONCLUDE/CONCLUSION
Thinking, acting, or speaking that is in agreement with what has been thought, done, or expressed already; intellectual or moral integrity.
CONSISTENCY
To assert the opposite of; to be contrary to, go against; a statement in opposition to another; a condition in which things tend to be contrary to each other; inconsistency; discrepancy; a person or thing containing or composed of contradictory elements.
CONTRADICT/CONTRADICTION
A standard, rule, or test by which something can be judged or measured.
CRITERION (CRITERIA, PL)
A mode of monitoring how we are listening to maximize our accurate understanding of what another person is saying.
CRITICAL LISTENING
One who has mastered a range of intellectual skills and abilities.
CRITICAL PERSON
An active, intellectually engaged process in which the reader participates in an inner dialogue with the writer.
CRITICAL READING
A culture that rewards adherence to the values of critical thinking and hence does not use indoctrination and inculcation as basic modes of learning.
CRITICAL SOCIETY
(1) Disciplined, self-directed thinking that exemplifies the perfections of thinking appropriate to a specific mode or domain of thinking;
(2) thinking that displays mastery of intellectual skills and abilities;
(3) the art of thinking about one’s thinking while thinking, to make one’s thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible;
(4) thinking that is fully aware of, and continually guards against, the natural human tendency to self-deceive and rationalize to selfishly get what it wants.
CRITICAL THINKING
Expressing ourselves in written language by arranging our ideas in some relationship to each other.
CRITICAL WRITING
An objective judging, analysis, or evaluation of something.
CRITIQUE
A personal and cultural idea about relationships and linkages absorbed or formed uncritically.
CULTURAL ASSOCIATION
An unassessed, often implicit, belief adopted by virtue of upbringing in a society.
CULTURAL ASSUMPTION
