Critical Thinking – What do you think of that?
In 1906, William Graham Sumner said, “The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life.”
What is meant by this?
You may want to have a dictionary on hand. . .
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Defining Critical Thinking
(A statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking Instruction)
Summary
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness
It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking – in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes – is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking.
Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior.
It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills (“as an exercise”) without acceptance of their results.
Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of one’s own, or one’s groups’, vested interest. As such it is typically intellectually flawed, however pragmatically successful it might be. When grounded in fairmindedness and intellectual integrity, it is typically of a higher order intellectually, though subject to the charge of “idealism” by those habituated to its selfish use.
Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on , among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.
Why Critical Thinking?
The Problem:
Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.
A Definition:
Critical thinking is that mode of thinking – about any subject, content, or
problem – in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking
by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and
imposing intellectual standards upon them.
The Result:
A well cultivated critical thinker:
· raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
· gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
· thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
· communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.
Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.
This information is taken from:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/
&
http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.shtml
it seems like everyone understood the main idea of the blog but me. it confused me alot.
i thought that this blog had lots of confusing words in it,but what could i expect this is critical thinking,you gotta think to find your answers to things.this blog has changed my perspective on critical thinking.plus i learned a new word called egocentrism it means thinking only of oneself,without regard for the feelings or desires of others;self centered.
This blog made me very confused. Words like coceptualizing which I just figured out means a form of a concept or rigorus which means harsh and pragmatically which means dealing or concern.I am so happy I got the rest. 🙂
I just found out that Anthropological means the scientific study of origin, the behavior, physical, social, and cultural development of humans. So now you what it means!
alritee then does anyone know what anthropological thinking means?
Mauricio – Lucky -__- I understnad it the main concepts but it hasn’t all come to me yet…
caylin,i dont think anyone but a scientist can comprehend this entirly 🙂
hey i agree with u alfred u have a point about the difference between our defintion of critical thinking and the actual definition of it because until this blog i just thought it ment think hard about a question until once again i read this and realzed that it means more than that.
well actuly i partuly understanded it
this blog was very confusing to me. i didnt understand anything that they were talking about even after reading the blog twice. i didnt know words like conceptualizing, synthesizing, transcend, entails, and emperial grounding and that was just the first paragraph. after looking it up, i found out that conceptualizing means using concepts but i didnt understand the definitions of the rest of the words. after reading the blog, i still dont understand what critical thinking is about.
I don’t think anyone understands this entirely lets not tell lies now….
From the start I knew this was going to be a weird/ fun class now I understand why we are critically thinking….does that make sense?
Does anyone comprehend this entirely?
WOW!! This thing was so confusing. I hardly understood anything. Ther were words like mere aquisition, anthropoligical thinking, acqusition, and much more words that I don’t even know how to spell. ON the plus side of this I learned that critical thinking isn’t the same as language arts or reading!
i personally was bored by this story..the words were HUGE!…but i guess that means i need to read more.well i learned some new words so that was a good thing.and i also learned wut critical thinking means..well adios mi amigos and amigas:)
i did not understand alot of the word like conceptualizing that means form of concept or ideas. another is philosophical that means the study of fundimental nature. alo manifested now that means clear or obvious to the eye or mind. this was really hard to understand. but ll in all i did not know that much about critical thinking. but now i know that it means thinking about any thing. now i will think diferantly about critical thinking.
but does someone know the other kinds of critical thinking
Wow!!That was really long!!There were a lot of big words and most of them i didnt understandbut here are some i didnt Conceptualizing-Form a concept or idea of, Acquisition- An asset orobject bought or obtained, typically by a library or musuem, Fairmindedness- impartial in judgement; Just, and Self-delusion- the action of deluding oneself;failure to recongize reality. 🙂
This blog seemed very long, and quite hard to understand. But when I read it slowly it was a little easier to comprehend.
I thought critical thinking was when you have to think to get an answer, and I was half right.
this blog is very hard to understand until you do some reasearch on the words like Anthropological which means the study of human kind, and pervades which means spread through and be perceived in every part. once you find out what those kind of words you will understand it all. (well most of them anyways)
This was so0o0o confusing. i didnt get one thing that this thingy ma bobber said. but it sounded really smart and complex so go computer!!! woo hoo it rocks. some of the words that i didnt understand was breadth and pragmatically and empirical so i looked them up and breadth means the distance and pragmatically means dealing with things sensibiliy and empirical means based on!!!!woo hoo i just got smarter!!!! go amber go amber haha well umm this was fun so ill talk to myself on the computer another time ok buh bye
LoVe ,
AmBeR
Conceptualizing- to form a concept or concepts of an especially to interpret in a conceptual ways.
Synthesizing- to combine so as to form a new complex product (2)
to form or produce by chemical synthesis
After reading this selection, I realized that critical thinking is much more than it seems. I used to think that critical thinking had to do with reading or solving a problem. However, now I realize it involves much more. Critical thinking consists of thinking outside of the box, and thinking in every possible way. There’s no limitations!
habituated…guess wut it means yall…????!?!?
it means:verb make or become accustomed or used to something : [ trans. ] she had habituated the chimps to humans.
Critical thinking is indeed all of those things, and i understood most of the words used to describe critical thinking. But what i dont understand is why it is repeated? Is it So important that it needs to be repeated more than twice? If it is then its a good thing im taking this class. The words i didnt understand were:
-Mores
-Implicit
-Sococentrism
……and some others. What i found odd was that since this is critical thinking, why didnt you write down what you thought in your own words? Yes the the words that you copied and pasted are interesting but i thought critical thinking was about saying what YOU think. I suppose that thats not what critical thinking really is, instead it is all of those big fancy words you used to describe critical thinking. I think that critical thinking is about thinking, and looking beyond what you see and read, its about deeply understanding… well atleast thats what i think it is now. 🙂
conceptualiziing-form of concept or idea (something)
I thought critical thinking was just reading now i see it is a lot more
I never know there were so many kinds of thinking ?)
I thought that the blog was kind of confusing, I didn’nt understand the words like breadth which I later found out means the distance or measurment from side to side of something. I also found out conceptualizing means to form a concept of ieda. I also found out rigorous means extremely thorough. I have a better understanding of critical thinking after reading this.
This blog was a very deep definition of Critical Thinking. It tells alot about the meaning of why we are taking this class and what the point of Critical Thinking is. There was a lot of words and information that I did not get, but for the overall view I got what this blog meant. Who ever wrote this is very smart and definately knows what Critical Thinking means. Hopefully later on I will be able to know exactly what this blog means and all the details about it. For now though I am glad I know how much I know about Critical Thinking. You know how to put together a good blog.
This blog was very hard to understand and they were lots of words that i really didn’t understand like conceptualizing, synthesizing,intervowen and a few more but i’m going to go and try to find the defenition of those words but i never thought critical thinking was so hard and complicated!!
This story had some very big words but I understood some of them.This story made me more openmindness. But some words lie pragmatically and manipulation,conceptulizing were pretty hard to read. Crittical thinking has a way different meaning than i thought. I thought it ment to just get a topic and think hard about it.This was a very good blog but very confusing also
hey i really liked this blog i realize now what exactly Critical thinking really is. I didn’t know exactly what i was supposed to do in this class but i know now that it is to realize the reasons to critically think about thing we dont normally do but i know now that this class is very valueble to me and my future life.
the words in this passage are words to take in just because you don’t understand something it does not make it stupid or dumb. Take this saying from the passage no one is a crtthinker but to one such and such degree” i’ll put money that none of you understand that we’ll nether do i but i find it fascnating if i don’t know something i try to figure it out thats all i have to say and that is my real email address.
I think i kind of understand it better but I think it’s kind of saying the same stuff over and over again.
I thought that the blog was very descriptive and a bit confusing (but not by much). what i mean is there were some words that I never saw before yet I got the gist of it by context clues. I cant think of anything more to type so im going to go bye!
Okey Dokey. This was very ummm ….interesting I guess you could say. I didn’t understand alot of the words that were used for example: conceptualizing,exemplar,anthropological thinking,acquisition,retention,pragmatically,and habituated. Or should I say I didn’t know all of those words, because I could understand sime things by context clues but overall this was a bundle of confusion. On the other hand I could really understand the meaning of this because umm I don’t know. It just had various defenitions for Critical Thinking, so there I am done. Wow this was a very long comment.
I thought that the blog was a little confusing but very informational. The words that confused me were exemplary, empirical, anthropological, pragmatically, and shoody. I hope I spelled the words right. Tonight I’m going to lookup them up and post them as soon as possible.
Im proud of myself beacuse i got it…..and most of the words just came to me 🙂
This paragraph I think must have been written when this person was deep in thought, as I call critical thinking. Interpreting I think, as it has been described, what many have thought as a “Gobal” thought or being described as “Open-Minded”. Each person has these thoughts, as said, at SOME point in their life. Although I do not completelty comprehend all of the words (I do know their meaning though) I had to read a second time to allow all the thoughts to sink in. I love how it was speaking about selfish motives. I love reading things like this, and I believe know that critical thinking can open my mind more to the world. I understood all of the words, though some I have not seen often, I think through context clues. I believe that thinking like this is the best way to aquire knowledge neccasary to answer some of life’s hardest questions, or debate that they may not even have a answer. Thankyou for sharing this.
This blog was really confusing. I didn’t understand words like pragmatical, anthropological and 5 other words. Try taking out some discription words.
hello my friends..i learned wut conceptualizing means:]
its means..verb [ trans. ] form a concept or idea of (something) : we can more easily conceptualize speed in miles per hour
complicated mauricio there was alot of things i didnt get
this thing was long but somehow i got it……?????
yes..critical thinking is very insparstional
i thought it was so long it took forever to read, and the long words. like anthropologica what does that mean
I never knew that critical thinking was such a complicated and a little insperational at some times. Does anyone else find it insparational or complicated?
I didnt really understand anything-a thing the blog said.I thought critical thinking was good and simple,not so………………………long and complex ………………..i am so confused about it.I’ve never heard half the words.
i thought this blog was very confusing. the words conceptualiziing,empirical,acqistion,and manipulation were some words i didnt know and i am going to look them up. critical thinking was a lot more complicated than i thought. the blog was very discriptive which made it more confusing
wow i did not get a lot of it! i didnt get like 11 words!for example: synthesizing, shoddy, exemplary, empirical grounding and lots more!! all the words are very long and hard to pronounce. but i learned that critical thinking doesnt come naturally but you have to learn it.
critical thinking is not thinking ordinary its about thinking like you never thought before.thinking far out of your mind is critical thinking.we dont know some of these words and that stretches our mind,that helps us think critically.