Critical Thinking Terms H - J Flashcards
Terms
Learning by thinking-through the logic of disciplines, by thinking-through the foundations, justification, implications, and value of facts, principles, skills, concepts, issues; learning so as to deeply understand.
HIGHER-ORDER LEARNING
The qualities common to all people. People have both a primary and a secondary nature.
HUMAN NATURE
Anything existing in the mind as an object of knowledge or thought;
IDEA (CONCEPT)
A claim or truth that follows from other claims or truths.
IMPLICATION
A step of the mind, an intellectual act by which one concludes that something is so, in light of something else’s being so or seeming to be so.
INFERENCE
Statements, statistics, data, facts, diagrams gathered in any way, as by reading, observation, or hearsay.
INFORMATION
The ability to see and understand clearly and deeply the inner nature of things.
INSIGHT
Having rational control of one’s beliefs, values, and inferences.
The ideal of critical thinking is to learn to think for oneself, to gain command over one’s thought processes.
INTELLECTUAL AUTONOMY
A commitment to take others seriously as thinkers, to treat them as intellectual equals, to grant respect and full attention to their views—a commitment to persuade rather than browbeat.
INTELLECTUAL CIVILITY
Willingness to face and fairly assess ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints to which we have not given a serious hearing, regardless of our strong negative reactions to them; arises from the recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified, in whole or in part, and that conclusions or beliefs that those around us espouse or inculcate in us are sometimes false or misleading.
INTELLECTUAL COURAGE
A strong desire to deeply understand, to figure out things, to propose and assess useful and plausible hypotheses and explanations, to learn, to find out.
INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY
The trait of thinking in accordance with intellectual standards, intellectual rigor, carefulness, order, conscious control.
INTELLECTUAL DISCIPLINE
Understanding the need to put oneself imaginatively in the place of others to genuinely understand them. We must recognize our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions or longstanding beliefs.
INTELLECTUAL EMPATHY
Awareness of the limits of one’s knowledge, including sensitivity to circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively; sensitivity to bias and prejudice in, and limitations of, one’s viewpoint.
INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY
Recognition of the need to be true to one’s own thinking, to be consistent in the intellectual standards one applies, to hold oneself to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one’s antagonists, to practice what one advocates for others, and to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one’s own thought and action.
INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY
Willingness and consciousness of the need to pursue intellectual insights and truths despite difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite irrational opposition from others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended time to achieve deeper understanding or insight.
INTELLECTUAL PERSEVERANCE
A sense of obligation to fulfill one’s duties in intellectual matters.
INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY
Willingness and consciousness of the need to entertain all viewpoints sympathetically and to assess them with the same intellectual standards, without reference to one’s own feelings or vested interests, or the feelings or vested interests of one’s friends, community, or nation; implies adherence to intellectual standards without reference to one’s own advantage or the advantage of one’s group.
INTELLECTUAL SENSE OF JUSTICE
Concepts and principles by which reasoning should be judged to determine its quality or value.
INTELLECTUAL STANDARDS
The traits of mind and intellectual character traits necessary for right action and thinking; the traits essential for fair-mindedness. They distinguish the narrow-minded, self-serving critical thinker from the open-minded, truth-seeking critical thinker.
INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
To give one’s own conception of, to place in the context of one’s own experience, perspective, point of view, or philosophy.
INTERPRET
The direct knowing or learning of something without the conscious use of reasoning. We sometimes seem to know or learn things without recognizing how we came to that knowledge.
INTUITION
(1) Lacking the power to reason;
(2) contrary to reason or logic;
(3) senseless, absurd.
IRRATIONAL/IRRATIONALITY
Learning that is not based on rational assent.
IRRATIONAL LEARNING
(1) The act of deciding;
(2) understanding and good sense.
JUDGMENT
To show a belief, opinion, action, or policy to be in accord with reason and evidence; ethical acceptability.
JUSTIFY/JUSTIFICATION