Think critically facione 2016 pdf

Required Resources

Textbook: Chapter 10, 11
Minimum of 1 scholarly source (in addition to the textbook)
1 page
Initial Post Instructions
Consider one of the following current social issues – or one of your choice:

Opioid crisis
Legalization of recreational or medical marijuana
Vaping
Immigration
Elimination of the electoral college
Gun control
For the initial post, address the following:

State your position on one of these issues – are you for, against, or neutral? Explain why. Avoid vagueness or ambiguity in your response. Make your position very clear.
Examine how you have formed that opinion.
How well do you think you know the facts?
Do you know and understand statistical information that applies to the issue?
Do you think you have formed your opinion using only System-1 thinking, or have you applied System-2?
What part have heuristics, cognitive bias, and dominance structuring played in how you have formed your opinions?
The initial post is not about how "correct" your position is; it is about how you arrivedat your position on the issue. This discussion requires application of metacognition – thinking about how you think.

Carol Ann Gittens

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Facione, Peter A. Think critically / Peter Facione, Carol Ann Gittens. — Third edition. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-13-390966-1 — ISBN 0-13-390966-2 1. Critical thinking—Textbooks. I. Gittens, Carol Ann. II. Title. B809.2.F33 2014 160—dc23 2014040474

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Student Edition: ISBN 10: 0-13-390966-2 ISBN 13: 978-0-13-390966-1 Instructor’s Review Copy: ISBN 10: 0-13-391412-7 ISBN 13: 978-0-13-391412-2 A la Carte: ISBN 10: 0-13-391413-5 ISBN 13: 978-0-13-391413-9

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1 The Power of Critical Thinking 1

2 Critical Thinking Mindset and Skills 18

3 Solve Problems and Succeed in College 39

4 Clarify Ideas and Concepts 63

5 Analyze Arguments and Diagram Decisions 88

6 Evaluate the Credibility of Claims and Sources 113

7 Evaluate Arguments: Four Basic Tests 138

8 Valid Inferences 158

9 Warranted Inferences 174

10 Snap Judgments: Risks and Benefits of Heuristic Thinking 193

11 Reflective Decision Making 220

12 Comparative Reasoning 239

13 Ideological Reasoning 259

14 Empirical Reasoning 283

15 Write Sound and Effective Arguments 300

16 Ethical Decision Making 327

17 The Logic of Declarative Statements 349

Appendix: Extend Argument- Decision Mapping Strategies 377

Brief Contents

v

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vi

Acknowledgments x Preface xi About the Authors xiii

1 The Power of Critical Thinking 1 Risk and Uncertainty Abound 2

Critical Thinking and a Free Society 2 The One and the Many 5

What Do We Mean by “Critical Thinking”? 6 Expert Consensus Conceptualization 6 “Critical Thinking” Does Not Mean “Negative Thinking” 7 Improvement Takes Practice 8

Evaluating Critical Thinking 9 The Students’ Assignment—Kennedy Act 9

The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric 11 The Students’ Assignment—Haiti 11

2 Critical Thinking Mindset and Skills 18

Positive Critical Thinking Habits of Mind 19 The Spirit of a Strong Critical Thinker 20 Positive vs. Negative Habits of Mind 21 Preliminary Self-Assessment 21 Research on the Positive Critical Thinking Mindset 22

of Mind 23

Is a Good Critical Thinker Automatically a Good Person? 25 Cultivate a Positive Critical Thinking Mindset 26

Core Critical Thinking Skills 27 Interpreting and Analyzing the Consensus Statement 27 The Jury Is Deliberating 28 Critical Thinking Skills Fire in Many Combinations 28 Strengthening Our Core Critical Thinking Skills 29 The Art of the Good Question 30 Skills and Subskills Defined 32

Looking Ahead 32

3 Solve Problems and Succeed in College 39

Differences and Similarities 41 IDEAS: A 5-Step Critical Thinking General Problem-Solving Process 42

Educating the Whole Person 44 Social Relationships 45

46

Vocation 46 STEP 1: 2:

48

Academics 49 50

Health and Physical Well-being 52 52

Problems in College and Beyond 55 Emotional Well-Being 55 Spiritual Development 59

4 Clarify Ideas and Concepts 63 Interpretation, Context, and Purpose 64

Meaning Matters 64 But, Clear Enough for What? 65 Worth 1000 Words 67 Communication, Language, and Thought 68

When Vagueness or Ambiguity Cause Misunderstandings 70

Vagueness: “Does the Meaning Include This Case or Not?” 70 Problematic Vagueness 71 Ambiguity: “Which Meaning Are We Using?” 72 Problematic Ambiguity 72

Resolving Problematic Vagueness and Ambiguity 72 Contextualizing 72 Clarifying Original Intent 73 Negotiating the Meaning 75 Using Qualifications, Exceptions, or Exclusions 78 Stipulating the Meaning 78 Donkey Cart Words Signal Twisted Meanings 79

Language Communities 81 National and Global Language Communities 81 Language Communities Formed of People with Like Interests 82 Academic Disciplines as Language Communities 83 Critical Thinking and College Introductory Courses 84

5 Analyze Arguments and Diagram Decisions 88

Analyzing Reasons and Claims 89 Accuracy Depends on Context and Purpose 89 Over-Simplification Masks Reality 90 “Reason” and “Premise” 91

Contents

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vii

Mapping Claims and the Reasons for Them 93 Interpreting Unspoken Reasons and Claims in Context 95 Interpreting the Use of Irony, Humor, Sarcasm, and More 96

Analyzing Arguments in Context 96 The El Train Argument 96 The “Guns for Kids” Conversation 98

Analyzing and Mapping Decisions 103 “We Should Cancel the Spring Trip” #1 104 “We Should Cancel the Spring Trip” #2 105

6 Evaluate the Credibility of Claims and Sources 113

Assessing the Source: Whom Should I Trust? 114 Claims without Reasons 114 Cognitive Development and Healthy Skepticism 116 Authority and Expertise 116

Assessing the Substance—What Should I Believe? 125 Personal Muck and Gunk Monitor 125 Self-Contradictions and Tautologies 126 Marketing, Spin, Disinformation, and Propaganda 128 Slanted Language and Loaded Expressions 129

Independent Verification 130 Can the Claim Be Confirmed? 130 Can the Claim Be Disconfirmed? 131 More than a Healthy Sense of Skepticism Only 132 Independent Investigation and the Q-Ray Bracelet Case 133 Suspending Judgment 134

7 Evaluate Arguments: Four Basic Tests 138

Giving Reasons and Making Arguments 139 Truthfulness 140 Logical Strength 140 Relevance 141 Non-Circularity 142

The Four Tests for Evaluating Arguments 142 Test #1: Truthfulness of the Premises 143 Test #2: Logical Strength 143 Test #3: Relevance 144 Test #4: Non-Circularity 146 Argument Making Contexts 147

Common Reasoning Errors 148 Fallacies of Relevance 148

Ad Hominem

53

8 Valid Inferences 158 The Structure of the Reasoning 160

Inferences Offered as Certain 160 Reasoning with Declarative Statements 161

Affirming the Antecedent 162

Reasoning about Classes of Objects 163

Only 165

Reasoning about Relationships 165

Fallacies Masquerading as Valid Arguments 167 Fallacies When Reasoning with Declarative Statements 167

Denying the

Fallacies When Reasoning about Classes of Objects 167

and Division 169

Fallacies of False Reference 170 Personal Infallibility? We Don’t Think So 170

9 Warranted Inferences 174 The Evidence Currently at Hand 175

The “Weight of Evidence” 176 Evaluating Generalizations 178

Were the Data

Coincidences, Patterns, Correlations, and Causes 180 Patterns 180

Fallacies Masquerading as Warranted Arguments 185

10 Snap Judgments: Risks and Benefits of Heuristic Thinking 193

Our Two Human Decision-Making Systems 194 The “Two-Systems” Approach to Human Decision Making 194

The Value of Each System 196

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Heuristics: Their Benefits and Risks 197 Individual Cognitive Heuristics 198

Heuristics in Action 215

11 Reflective Decision Making 220 Dominance Structuring: A Fortress of Conviction 222

“I Would Definitely Go to the Doctor” 222 Explaining and Defending Ourselves 224

Moving from Decision to Action 225 Phase 1: Pre-Editing 226 Phase 2: Identifying One Promising

Benefits and Risks of Dominance Structuring 228 Self-Regulation Critical Thinking Skill Strategies 230

Precautions When Pre-Editing 231 Specify the

an Option Is In or Out 231

Precautions When Identifying the Promising Option 232

Precautions When Testing the Promising Option 232

Precautions When Fortifying the To-Be-Chosen Option 233

Critical Thinking Strategies for Better Decision Making 234

Decide When It’s Time to Decide 235

12 Comparative Reasoning 239 Recognizing Comparative Reasoning 240

Our Minds Crave Patterns 240 Comparative, Ideological, and Empirical Inferences 242 How This Chapter Connects to Others 242 Gardens of Comparatives 243 Powerful Comparisons Connect Intellect and Emotion 245

Evaluating Comparative Inferences 246 Do the Four Tests of Acceptability Apply? 247

Five Criteria for Evaluating Comparative Reasoning 248

Productivity 250

Models and Metaphors Shape Expectations 251 Creative Suggestions vs. Solid Proofs 251 The Center of the Universe for Two Thousand Years 252 The Many Uses of Comparative Inferences 253

13 Ideological Reasoning 259 Recognizing Ideological Reasoning 262

Examples of Ideological Reasoning 264 Three Features of Ideological Reasoning 266

The Argument

Evaluating Ideological Reasoning 269 Are the Ideological Premises True? 269 Logical Strength and Ideological Belief Systems 272 Relevancy, Non-Circularity, and Ideological Reasoning 274

Uses, Benefits, and Risks of Ideological Reasoning 275

14 Empirical Reasoning 283 Recognizing Empirical Reasoning 285

Characteristics of Empirical Reasoning 285

Independent Verification 286

Hypotheses, Conditions, and Measurable Manifestations 287

Conducting an Investigation Scientifically 289 Perhaps the First Recorded Empirical Investigation 289 Steps in the Process: An Extended Example 290 Evaluating Empirical Reasoning 293

Benefits and Risks Associated with Empirical Reasoning 295

15 Write Sound and Effective Arguments 300

What Critical Thinking Questions Do Effective Writers Ask? 301

The Rhetorical Situation 302 Think Author 302

4

Think Audience 304 Writing Same Author

Think Purpose and Circumstances 310

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Contents ix

Organize and Develop Your Presentation 312 Reach Out and Grab Someone 312 Crafting a Presentation 312 Good News: Writing Is Work 313

An Arguable Thesis Statement and Solid Research 313 Map Out the Arguments Pro and Con—Then Outline Your Case 314

“BART’S Decision—Draft” 315 Evaluating the Credibility of Sources 316 Prewriting, Writing, and Rewriting 318 Two Practical Tips 318

Evaluating Effectiveness 319 Features of Sound and Effective Written Argumentation 319 A Tool for Evaluating Critical Thinking and Writing 321 How to Apply the Rubric for Evaluating Written Argumentation 321

16 Ethical Decision Making 327 Ethical Imperatives 331

Think Consequences 331 Think Duties 334 Think Virtues 338

Decision Making and Ethical Decision Making 339 Reactive and Reflective Ethical Decision Making 339

Thinking Through Diverging Ethical Imperatives 342 Prioritize, Create, and Negotiate 342

Establish Priorities 342 Create Additional Options 342 Interests 343 Others 343

4

17 The Logic of Declarative Statements 349 Declarative Statements 352

Simple Statements 352 Negations 353 Statement Compounds: And, Or, If . . . Then, etc. 354

Conjunctions 354 Conditionals 357

Translating Between Symbolic Logic and a Natural Language 360

Grammatically Correct Expressions 360 Translation to English 360 Translating to Symbolic Logic 361

Example: Translating a Telephone Tree 362 What the Telephone Tree Example Teaches about Translation 362

Detecting the Logical Characteristics of Statements 363

Building Truth Tables 364 Tautologies, Inconsistent Statements, and Contingent Statements 367

Testing for Implication and Equivalence 368 Evaluating Arguments for Validity 370

Testing Symbolic Arguments for Validity 370 Testing Natural Language Arguments for Validity 373

Appendix: Extend Argument-Decision Mapping Strategies 377 Glossary 386 Endnotes 389 Credits 405 Index 409

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Just as teaching and learning critical thinking is a collaboration, so is putting together all the words, images, exercises, video clips, page layouts, and digital materials for THINK Critically. This project could not have happened were it not for the wonderful participa- tion, support, and guidance of a great many people.

The biggest thank you of all goes to my co-author, Carol Gittens, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University. Every chapter ben- efits from her hard work, her humane sensitivity, her in- sights, and her attention to the finer points of authoring for learning. Dr. Gittens authored the Instructor’s Manual, a wonderful resource that offers strategies on teaching for thinking.

This third edition benefited from Benjamin Hamby’s insightful, positive, and helpfully detailed review of the second edition and from many follow-up conversations during the drafting of this edition. You may download Dr. Hamby’s review of Think Critically from academia.edu.

It was again a pleasure be working with the people at Pearson Education. Carol and I are grateful to every- one, including the publisher, the marketing director, the permissions and images people, the designers, the copy- editors, and many more. Our project directors, Melissa Sacco, Richard DeLorenzo, and Veronica Grupico deserve special thanks. We thank our senior editor, Debbie Coni- glio, for her singular drive and vision, and for bringing a plethora of digital assets and resources to Think Critically.

Co-author Peter writes, “Good ideas come from thinking and discussing things with other people. Great ideas come when that other person happens to be brilliant and wise. The ideas in this book come from a lifetime of those kinds of experiences, but mostly from talking and thinking with the one brilliant and amazing person who has shared that lifetime with me. Through her words and ideas, she contributed inestimably to this book, to other books, to a myriad of projects both professional and do- mestic, and to every other part of my life. No ‘thank you’ can do justice to all that I owe to her. But let me say it any- way. Thank you, Noreen.”

Co-author Carol Gittens writes, “When Pete asked me to join him as a main author of the second and sub- sequent editions, I jumped at the opportunity to add my voice to a text that is designed to nurture students’ critical thinking skills and habits of minds, not only to promote success in the academic arena, but to promote success in life. I would like to express my gratitude to my long-time research colleague and professional mentor Peter Facione and by extension his wife and fellow colleague, Noreen, for extending our scholarly partnership to include this project. Even more importantly, I want to acknowledge and thank my wonderful husband William who sup- ported me unconditionally even when my efforts on this book required more of my attention than he or our chil- dren would have wished to share.”

Acknowledgments

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In “Forever Young” songwriter Bob Dylan expressed our hopes for all who learn with and teach with THINK Critically. What more could we wish for one another than we all should seek to know the truth, walk in the light of well-trained reason, be courageous, have the intellectual integrity to stand strong, and that, no matter what our chronological age, that we should stay mentally forever young?

This book aims to strengthen critical thinking skills and nurture the courageous desire to seek truth by fol- lowing reasons and evidence wherever they lead. We all may have different beliefs, values, perspectives, and experiences influencing our problem solving and deci- sion making. But we share the human capacity to be reflective, analytical, open-minded, and systematic about thinking through our problems and choices, so that we can make the best judgments possible about what to believe or what to do. That process of well- reasoned, reflective judgment is critical thinking. Exercising our critical thinking helps our minds become stronger, healthier, and more youthful.

Our approach, proven successful by us and by oth- ers, is simple, practical, and focused. To strengthen criti- cal thinking skills, we have to use them. To build positive critical thinking habits of mind, we have to see critical thinking as the optimal approach for solving real-world problems and making important decisions. Every chap- ter of this book builds critical thinking skills and engages critical thinking habits of mind in every way possible. Why? Because we believe with every fiber of our beings that critical thinking is all about real life, and so the very best way to build strong critical thinking is to use engag- ing material from the widest possible range of real-life situations.

“Knowing about” is not the same as “using.” It is more important that a person learn how to use critical thinking to make the best judgments possible than that the person memorize gobs of technical vocabulary and theory about critical thinking. Yes, learning about critical thinking certainly can expedite things. But engaging in critical thinking is the payoff. That is why there are hun- dreds of exercises of many different kinds woven into the written text and each chapter’s digital learning support assets. There is no substitute for learning by doing. So, here’s a plan:

Chapters 1 and 2 explain what critical thinking is, why it is so vitally important to all of us, and how critical thinking connects to our academic studies and

to our personal, professional, and civic lives. Chapter 3 builds immediately on the theme of the practical value of critical thinking by describing the IDEAS approach to problem solving and then applying that approach to the kinds of problems typically encountered by college stu- dents of all ages.

Chapters 4–9 are building block chapters, each addressing one or another of the core critical thinking skills in the context of real-world applications. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the skills of interpretation and analysis; when we can understand what people are saying, we can articulate the reasons being advanced on behalf of a particular claim or choice. Without these vital critical thinking skills we wander in a cloud of confusion, not really knowing what things might mean or why people, including ourselves, think what they think. Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 focus on the skill of evaluation as applied to the truthfulness of claims, the trustworthiness of so-called experts, and the quality of arguments.

Chapters 10 and 11 connect critical thinking to con- temporary understandings of human decision making. Illustrating the risks and the benefits of our heuristically driven snap judgments and releasing ourselves from the grip that our past decisions can have on our current thinking are the two purposes of Chapter 10. Chapter 11, by contrast, provides multiple strategies for approaching decision making reflectively. Together these two chap- ters emphasize the essential critical thinking skills of self- monitoring and self-correction, along with the habits foresight, open-mindedness, and truth seeking

The three most important chapters of this book are 12, 13, and 14. Why? Because comparative reasoning, ideo- logical reasoning, and empirical reasoning are the three most widely used methods human beings have for sup- plying reasons on behalf of their beliefs and ideas. With real-world examples, some that are disturbing in fact, these three chapters focus on the core critical thinking skills of inference and explanation, because drawing con- clusions and explaining one’s reasons, even to one’s self, in real life are products of our comparative, ideological, and empirical reasoning.

Chapters 15 through 19 are joyful explorations of the diverse applications of critical thinking—in writing, in ethical decision making, in logic, in the social sciences, and in the natural sciences. Thinking like professionals, instead of simply studying about them or trying to memo- rize what they may have said, is way more fun, and much more effective learning.

Preface

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xii Preface

We authors offer all who encounter THINK Critically this Dylanesque blessing: That you should have a strong foundation, even in the shifting winds of change, that joy should fill your heart and learning guide your life, and, of course, that by using your mind to reflect on what to believe and what to do, that you should make good deci- sions and stay forever young.

Instructor Resources Additional resources found in the Instructor Resource Center include the following:

What’s New to This Edition

simulations, data explorations, truth tables, and graphics—that are woven with the core narrative

critical thinking to substantive, real-world concerns

and on problem solving for student success

Declarative Logic

- ties, more emphasis on student diversity, and updated treatment of argument, deduction, and induction

natural and social sciences

REVEL™ Educational technology designed for the way today’s students read, think, and learn When students are engaged deeply, they learn more effec- tively and perform better in their courses. This simple fact inspired the creation of REVEL: an immersive learning experience designed for the way today’s students read, think, and learn. Built in collaboration with educators and students nationwide, REVEL is the newest, fully digital way to deliver respected Pearson content.

REVEL enlivens course content with media interac- tives and assessments—integrated directly within the authors’ narrative—that provide opportunities for stu- dents to read about and practice course material in tan- dem. This immersive educational technology boosts student engagement, which leads to better understanding of concepts and improved performance throughout the course.

Learn more about REVEL: www.pearsonhighered .com/REVEL

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Peter A. Facione, PhD, has dedicated himself to helping people build their critical thinking to become better problem solvers and decisions makers. He does this work not only to help individuals and groups achieve their own goals, but also for the sake of our freedom and democracy. Facione draws on experi- ence as a teacher, consul- tant, business entrepreneur, university dean, grandfather, husband, musician, and sports enthusiast. Now he is tak- ing his message about the importance of critical thinking directly to students through THINK Critically.

“I’ve paid very close attention to the way people make decisions since I was 13 years old,” says Facione. “Some people were good at solving problems and making deci- sions; others were not. I have always felt driven to figure out how to tell which were which.” He says that this led him as an undergraduate and later as a professor to study psychology, philosophy, logic, statistics, and information systems as he searched for how our beliefs, values, think- ing skills, and habits of mind connect with the decisions we make, particularly in contexts of risk and uncertainty.

A native Midwesterner, Facione earned his PhD in Philosophy from Michigan State University and his BA in

Philosophy from Sacred Heart College in Detroit. He says, “Critical thinking has helped me be a better parent, citizen, leader, consultant, teacher, writer, coach, husband, and friend. It even helps a little when playing point guard!” In academia, Facione served as provost of Loyola University– Chicago, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University, and dean of the School of Human Development and Community Service at California State University–Fullerton. “As a dean and provost, I could eas- ily see that critical thinking was alive and well in every pro- fessional field and academic discipline.”

Facione spearheaded the international study to define critical thinking, sponsored by the American Philosophical Association. His research formed the basis for numerous government policy studies about critical thinking in the workplace, including research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Published by Insight Assessment, his tools for assessing reasoning are used around the world in educational, business, legal, military, and health sciences. Today, Peter operates his own business, Measured Reasons. He is senior level consultant, speaker, writer, workshop presenter. His work focuses on strategic planning and leadership decision making, in addition to teaching and assessing critical thinking. With his wife, who is also his closest research colleague and co-author of many books and assessment tools, he now lives in sunny Los Angeles, which he says, “suits [him] just fine.” You can reach him at pfacione@ measuredreasons.com.

About the Authors

Carol Ann Gittens, PhD, is an Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences at Santa Clara University (SCU). She is an associate professor with tenure in the Liberal Studies Program and directs SCU’s under- graduate pre-teaching advising program and the interdisciplinary minor in urban education designed for students interested in pursuing careers in PreK-12 education.

Gittens was the founding Director of Santa Clara University’s Office of Assessment from 2007 to 2012. As assessment director, she performed key activities related to institutional re-accreditation, educated academic and

cocurricular programs in the assessment of student learn- ing, and designed and oversaw an innovative multiyear, rubric-based assessment plan for a new core curriculum. She is an educational assessment mentor and accredita- tion evaluator for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) as well as Board of Institutional Reviewers member of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), and a senior research associ- ate with Insight Assessment, LLC.

The central focus of Gittens’ research is on the interface of critical thinking, motivation, mathematical reasoning, and academic achievement of adolescents and young adults from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Dr. Gittens is an author or co-author of numerous articles and assess- ment tools focusing on critical thinking skills, numeracy, and dispositions in children and adults. As of this writ- ing, her forthcoming paper is “Assessing Numeracy in the Upper Elementary and Middle School Years.”

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Gittens’ consulting activities include working with col- lege faculty, staff and administrators, PreK-12 educators, as well as business executives, managers, and employees. Dr. Gittens’ areas of expertise include assessment of institu- tional effectiveness and student learning outcomes, institu- tional and professional accreditation planning, translating strategic vision into measureable objectives, designing sus- tainable assessment systems at all levels of the institution, critical thinking pedagogy and assessment, integrating critical thinking and information literacy across the curricu- lum and in cocurricular programs, as well as statistics and assessment design for individuals and institutions.

Gittens earned her PhD in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of California at Riverside. She received her BA in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of California at Davis. Prior to her appoint- ment at Santa Clara University she taught at California State University, San Bernardino and at Mills College in Oakland, California. Gittens and her husband live in California’s Silicon Valley with their teenaged daughter and son, and their 4-year-old daughter. She is an active parent volunteer in her children’s school, and is involved with K-12 schools in the local community, offering teacher training workshops on nurturing and assessing students’ critical thinking.

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Learning Outcomes

1.1 Explain why critical thinking is important in a world filled with risk and uncertainty by supplying reasons and examples that relate to you own life, to the well-being of your community, and to the preservation of a free and open society.

1.2 Explain why a strong critical thinker’s healthy sense of skepticism is not the same as negativity and cynicism. From your own

experience supply examples showing the unfortunate results of a failure of critical thinking as here defined.

1.3 Using the “Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric” as your tool for evaluation, evaluate the quality of the critical thinking evident in samples of written material and explain which elements in the written material led you evaluate it as you did.

Chapter 1

The Power of Critical Thinking

WHY is critical thinking important?

WHAT does “critical thinking” mean?

HOW can we evaluate our critical thinking?

When students study together, both teach and both learn.

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2 Chapter 1

Walking down 10th Street in Hermosa Beach the other day, I saw a helmetless young man skillfully slalom his skateboard downhill toward the beach. Ignoring the stop sign at Hermosa Boulevard, he flashed across all four lanes of traffic and coasted on down the hill. My imme- diate reaction was “Whew! Lucky that that guy wasn’t killed!” because I had often seen cars on Hermosa roll through that particular stop sign. Whatever was occupy- ing his attention, the skateboarder did not appear to have self-preservation on his mind that day!

Whether he reflected on it or not, the skater decided to run the stop sign. Similarly, we all make decisions all the time, with some of our choices made more thoughtfully than others. We’ve all underestimated obstacles, over- looked reasonable options, and failed to anticipate likely consequences. Life will continue to present us with our full share of problems, and when we err, we often think about the better decisions we could have made if we’d given it a little more thought.

Critical thinking is the process of reasoned judgment. That is, judgment that is both purposeful and reflective. Because this book is about that process, it is about how to go about deciding what to believe or what to do. This is not a book about what we should believe or do. The purpose of the book is to assist you in strengthening your own crit- ical thinking skills and habits of mind so you solve prob- lems and make decisions more thoughtfully for yourself.

1.1 Risk and Uncertainty Abound

We might not skateboard through an intersection, but none of us can escape life’s risks and uncertainties. Uncertainties apply to potentially good things, too. For example, each of us might be uncertain when choosing a major, taking a part-time job, making a new friend, or responding to a disaster stricken nation’s call for volun- teers. You never know what new friendships you will make, what new skills you will acquire, what new oppor- tunities might emerge for you, how your efforts will ben- efit other people, or how much satisfaction you may feel. Whatever the choice being contemplated or the problem being addressed, to maximize our chances for welcome outcomes and to minimize our chances for undesirable outcomes, we need to employ purposeful, reflective judg- ment. Sure, winning is great, but it’s just not a good idea to play poker unless we can afford to lose. We need to think ahead, to plan, and to problem solve. This means we need critical thinking.

Often, what seems like an exclusively personal decision ends up having consequences that go far beyond just our- selves. Everyone knows that driving while wasted can lead

“Dude! What are you thinking?”

to tragic results for passengers, other drivers and pedes- trians. That one is obvious. And DUI is illegal. But even choices that seem to be perfectly innocent can have unex- pected impacts on other people. Think, for example, about deciding to go back to college as an adult. You try to antici- pate what it will cost, how much time it will take, whether you can manage being a college student along with all the other responsibilities in your life. Suppose you consider the risks and the uncertainties, and the pros and cons as best you can anticipate them, and end up deciding to take on all those challenges. In due time you graduate. With your new qualifications you get offered a better job, one that requires moving to a new neighborhood or new city. That means liv- ing further from your old friends. But, it also means a new home, better pay, and new friends. You think, although I tried to anticipate all the consequences, I really could not have known all the ways my decision would affect all the people I will be leaving, and all the people I will meet.

Critical Thinking and a Free Society We are fortunate in a society that values self-reliance, eco- nomic competition, and individual initiative. The stronger our critical thinking skills and habits of mind, the greater our prospects for success, whatever the endeavor. Given the pace of innovation and the fierceness of the compe- tition, and the unpredictability of world events, today more than at any time in the past 70 years businesses are concerned to find workers who can solve problems, make good decisions, learn new things, and adapt to an uncertain future. To succeed in a global high-tech world, a corporation will have to hire workers with strong criti- cal thinking and cultivate a corporate culture that fosters

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strong critical thinking.1 In a 2013 survey of 318 employers 93% agreed that a job candidate’s “demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major.”2

But if information is power, then controlling the flow of information is wielding power. Any government, any agency, any group of whatever kind that can withhold information or distort it to fit official orthodoxy is in a much better position to suppress dissenters and maintain its position of control. As we have seen recently in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, China, the Central African Republic, North Korea, Lebanon, Iraq, Ukraine, Thailand, Kenya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, cutting off Internet access, expelling foreign journalists, disabling cell phone relays, and attempting in every way to block messages on social

JOURNAL How Would You Describe Your CT Skills? Employers consistently report that they prioritize skills in critical thinking and communication when evaluating job applicants. Employers want to hire people who can solve customers’ problems and make good business decisions. And the employers want people who represent the company well and communicate clearly, understand directions, and carry out assignments.

How would you describe to a prospective employer your critical thinking skills and communication skills? Use examples.

Positive Examples of Critical Thinking A person trying to interpret an angry friend’s needs, expressed through a rush of emotion and snide comments, to give that friend some help and support

A manager trying to be as objective as possible when set- tling a dispute by summarizing the alternatives, with fairness to all sides to a disagreement

A team of scientists working with great precision through a complex experiment in an effort to gather and analyze data

A creative writer organizing ideas for the plot of a story and attending to the complex motivations and personalities of the fictional characters

A person running a small business trying to anticipate the possible economic and human consequences of various ways to increase sales or reduce costs

A master sergeant and a captain working out the tactical plans for a dangerous military mission.

A soccer coach working during halftime on new tactics for attacking the weaknesses of the other team when the match resumes

A student confidently and correctly explaining exactly to his or her peers the methodology used to reach a particular con- clusion, or why and how a certain methodology or standard of proof was applied

An educator using clever questioning to guide a student to new insights

Police detectives, crime scene analysts, lawyers, judges, and juries systematically investigating, interrogating, examining, and evaluating the evidence as they seek justice

A policy analyst reviewing alternative drafts of product safety legislation while determining how to frame the law to benefit the most people at the least cost

An applicant preparing for a job interview thinking about how to explain his or her particular skills and experiences in a way that will be relevant and of value to the prospective employer

Parents anticipating the costs of sending their young child to college, analyzing the family’s projected income, and budgeting projected household expenses in an effort to put aside some money for that child’s future education

media have become standard tactics for suppressing protests and maintaining power. All done to curtail the free flow of accurate information.

We who live in the United States are also fortunate because of the high value we place on freedom—including the freedom to think for ourselves. In a free society education is about learning how to think for yourself, learning how to seek the information you need, learning how to correct mistaken assumptions, how to evaluate the claims people make, how to reason well, and how to detect and resist fallacious rea- soning. In a free society the power of government is used to protect the right to free and open inquiry, the right to share what we learn, and the right to collaborate with others to make better decisions and to learn more about the world. Watch “Why Critical Thinking.” Find this short video and more by searching “Peter Facione” on YouTube.

A closed society does not permit the freedom to think, it fears and it suppresses learning. A closed society, whether it is a government, a corporation, a religion or whatever, stifles independent critical thinkers, punishes those who do not adhere to the party line, denies access to full and accu- rate information, and buries scientific findings and policy recommendations that run counter to interests of those in power. The worst of these closed societies equate education with memorized orthodoxy, label dissenters as traitors, and, if need be, use ridicule, bullying, disinformation, deceit, character assassination, and in the worst cases physical assassination—whatever it takes, including creating mar- tyrs for the cause, faking enemy threats, lying to the media, destroying document and so on—to achieve its goals.3

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What would you have done if religious extremists attacked you or your daughter for seeking an education?

Films like The Insider, Promised Land, Cry Freedom, Syriana, Wag the Dog, Body of Lies, Seeds of Death, and The Panama Deception give us insights into how it is possible for corporate and government greed, orthodoxy, and lust for power to crush freedom, distort the truth, and destroy lives. Some films in this genre are well researched, fair, and accurate; others are fictional exaggerations or fabrications. Either way, they all illustrate the dire consequences of passivity, apathy, and indifference toward matters of public policy. Given the possibilities, strong critical thinking suggests vigilant readiness to ask tough questions about what is being done in our name.

“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”

Thurgood Marshall, Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice4

Why is American higher education internationally admired and yet feared? One reason is that our colleges have the potential to teach critical thinking. The upside is great progress in learning, wealth and culture, and hence huge benefits for society. Problem solvers using critical thinking have achieved massive breakthroughs in science, technol- ogy, engineering, commerce, and the arts. But, at the same time, leaders around the world know that when the people are given a good education and begin thinking for them- selves, things get harder for would-be tyrants. People who are thinking for themselves are more apt to disagree, policy issues become more complicated to resolve, public discourse more confusing, the “old ways” are questioned, and decision making takes more time.

Strong critical thinking demands a healthy skepticism wherever entrenched organizational power is concerned. Strong critical thinkers know that defending the freedom to think demands vigilance. Passivity and indifference toward thinking and learning weaken not only our bodies but our minds as well. None of us want to wake up one fine day groggy, cross-eyed, and hung over from Fantasy Football, nonstop Grand Theft Auto, double cheese and bacon bur- gers, vacuous Hollywood gossip, online hoarding sprees, and stale beer, only to discover that while we were otherwise occupied our rights and freedoms were quietly, yet system- atically, stripped away. We believe that one way to protect

our cherished and hard-won freedoms is by using our critical thinking to assure open scientific inquiry, access to complete and accurate information, and the right to ask challenging questions, and follow the reasons and the evidence wherever they may lead.

But we do not need to rely only on films and novels to illustrate our point. Recent history shows what happens when people are not vigilant defenders of open, objective, and independent inquiry. We saw the results to a greater or lesser extent in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao Tse Tung’s China, and, sadly, in the twenty-first century.

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See, for example, the autobiography And Then They Came for Me, by Maziar Bahari, 2011, and then Google the phrase “and then they came for me” for several even more recent examples of similar incidents around the world. Or consider how her co-religionists punished young Malala Yousafzai, a female, just for wanting the freedom to learn. In 2014 the systematic suppression of the freedom to learn, critical thinking, and science was the purpose of school curriculum changes imposed under threat of physical punishment by extremists in territo- ries controlled by the group known as the “Islamic State.”5 Where critical thinking, science, and open inquiry by men or by women are crimies, a society cannot call itself “free.”

The One and the Many Individual decisions can seem isolated and yet when they accumulate, they can have a far-reaching impact. For instance, in China the one-child policy has been in force for about 30 years. Culturally, there has always been a strong preference for male children; and if families could only have one child, most wanted a boy. In household after household, family after family made the choice to do whatever seemed necessary, including infanticide, to ensure a male heir. The collective impact of those millions of individual decisions now burdens that nation. In some villages, the ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women is 20 to 1. Today brides fetch payments as high as five years of family income.6 Those parents who decided to raise their first-born daughters sure look smart now.

Around seven billion members of our species, give or take, share a planet in which economic, cultural, politi- cal, and environmental forces are so interconnected that the decisions of a few can impact the lives of many. Short- sighted and self-interested decisions made by corporate executives, bankers, stock traders, borrowers, and govern- ment regulatory agencies plunged the world into a global economic depression, which has cost trillions of dollars, devastated honest and well-run companies, bankrupted pension plans, destroyed families, and put tens of millions of people out of work. What were the decision makers thinking? What blinded all of us to the foreseeable conse- quences of our choices? Did we think that there wouldn’t be adverse consequences if we all ran our credit card and mortgage debts to levels that were beyond our capacity to repay those debts? For some insights into the poor criti- cal thinking that contributed to this global economic melt- down watch the HBO film Too Big to Fail.

The historical evidence suggests that civilizations rise and fall, that economies flourish and flounder, that the arts are encouraged and suppressed, that advances

in learning are made and then forgotten. As a species we have very few advantages, other than our oversized brain and the critical thinking it can generate. We would be unwise not to use what little we have. Often catastrophic events, like the plagues that decimated Europe in the fifth and twelfth centuries, are beyond the ability of the science of the time to predict or to control. The same goes for the prolonged drought that triggered the dust bowl of the 1930s, the climate-changing drought suspected of driving the Anasazi out of North American Southwest.7 But what about droughts that we can predict? What about the water crisis we have made for ourselves today in the North American Southwest? We know that we foolishly over- use our water resources, waste water on silly things like trying to have green lawns in desert lands. We know that unless something changes, the Columbia River and the Sierra Nevada watershed cannot support the tens of mil- lions of people, and the homes, farms, businesses, fisher- ies, forests, wildlife, pets, resorts, fountains, golf courses, schools, hospitals, and fire departments. Strong criti- cal thinking tells us that we need to reform water policy and change our ways of using that essential resource. But change is so slow in coming. We cannot kick the empty water can any further down the dusty road. What are we thinking?

“Very few really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds—justification, explanations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

Anne Rice’s character, the vampire Marius in The Vampire Lestat.8

If he were alive today, American folk song legend, Pete Seeger, might sing, “Where have all the waters gone?”

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1.2 What Do We Mean by “Critical Thinking”?

At this point you might be saying, “OK, I get it. Critical thinking is important. But what is critical thinking, exactly?” To answer that question precisely, an interna- tional group of 46 recognized experts in critical thinking research collaborated. The men and women in this group were drawn from many different academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, economics, computer science, education, physics, and zoology.

Expert Consensus Conceptualization For more than a year and a half, from February 1988 through September 1989, the group engaged in a con- sensus-oriented research process developed by the Rand Corporation and known as the “Delphi” method.9 The challenge put to the experts was to come up with a work- ing consensus about the meaning of “critical thinking,” which could serve instructional and assessment purposes from K–12 through graduate school, and across the full range of academic disciplines and professional fields. They also asked themselves questions that relate to Chapter 2, namely,: “What are the core critical thinking skills and subskills? How can we strengthen those skills in students? Who are the best critical thinkers we know, and what habits of mind do they have that lead us to consider them the best?”

Long story short, the expert consensus defined “criti- cal thinking” as “the process of purposeful, self-regulatory judgment.”10 The purpose is straightforward: to form a well-reasoned and fair-minded judgment regarding what to believe or what to do. The “self-regulatory” part refers

to our capacity to reflect on our own thinking process. We can monitor our own thinking, spot mistakes, and make needed correc- tions to our own problem solving and decision making.11

Strong critical thinking— making well-reasoned judgments about what to believe and what to do—is essential to consistently successful decision making. For many years we authors have con- sulted with various branches of the U.S. military, including Special Ops, with senior business execu- tives and mid-level managers, and with educators, policy makers, health care professionals, scientists, jurists, and engineers. Time and again we learn that strong critical

thinking can contribute to achieving goals and that poor critical thinking contributes to mission failure. Strong criti- cal thinking is essential wherever the quality of one’s deci- sions and the accuracy of one’s beliefs make a difference.

Critical thinking is not the only vital element, don’t get us wrong. Knowledge, dedication, training, and ethi- cal courage also factor into the formula for success. We often learn more from our failures than from our successes; when we examine unsuccessful operations we often find that individuals or groups have failed, somewhere along the line, to make well-reasoned judgments. Failures of critical thinking can result in some truly unfortunate out- comes, as the examples in the figure indicate. Can you think of any such instances in your own experience?

Failures of critical thinking often contribute to some of the saddest and most unfortunate accidents. In 2009, for example, 288 people died in the crash of an Air France

Failures of critical thinking contribute to... patient deaths / lost revenue / ineffective law enforcement / job loss / gullible voters / garbled communications / imprisonment /combat casualties / upside down mortgages / vehicular homicide / bad decisions / unplanned pregnancies / financial mismanagement / heart disease / family violence / repeated suicide attempts / divorce / drug addiction / academic failure / ... / ... /

WHAT WERE WE

THINKING?

Why farms vs. cities if everyone knows Water = Jobs & Food & Survival?

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jetliner. Investigators who examined the crash and its causes indicated that the pilots might have had enough time to prevent the disaster had they realized that the plane was stalling, instead of climbing to a safe altitude. But they appear to have misinterpreted the warning sig- nals and wrongly analyzed their problem, which led them to make the wrong inferences about what they should do.12 Asiana Air Flight 214 crash-landed at SFO in 2013 because of the decision to permit an inexperienced pilot to practice landing a jetliner full of passengers.13

Occasionally we see in the news that some poor indi- vidual has had a tragic lapse in good judgment. Like the three young people who stepped passed the guard rails to take pictures at Yosemite Park’s Vernal Falls. Other park visitors called to them, urging them to get back to safety, but they did not. Then suddenly one fell, the other two tried to help, and all three were swept over the falls to their deaths.14 Sad as it was, we have to ask ourselves, what were they thinking? If they had thoughtfully consid- ered the risks and benefits, we doubt that they would have made the tragic decision to ignore the posted warnings.

Realizing that strong critical thinking often results in positive outcomes, but failures of critical thinking could lead to major problems, the experts who were asked to define critical thinking determined that it was best to focus on the process of judgment. What they wanted to capture was that strong critical thinking was reflective, well-reasoned, and focused on a specific purpose, such as what to do or what to believe. “Should we ignore the posted warnings?”

Given the expert consensus definition of critical think- ing as purposeful reflective judgment, one of the first things the experts realized was that critical thinking was a “pervasive human phenomenon.” Critical thinking is occurring whenever an individual or a group of people

makes a reasoned and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do. They also realized that strong critical thinking was thoughtful and informed, not impulsive nor knee-jerk reactive.

How important did the experts think critical think- ing was? They put their answer to that question this way: “Critical thinking is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, critical thinking is a liberating force in educa- tion and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, criti- cal thinking is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon.”

So long as people have problems to solve and deci- sions to make, so long as they have things to learn and issues to resolve, there will be ample opportunities to use our critical thinking skills and habits of mind.

“Critical Thinking” Does Not Mean “Negative Thinking” Critical thinking is not about bashing what people believe just to show how clever we are. Nor is critical thinking about using our skills to defend beliefs that we know are untrue or decisions we know are poor. Critical thinking is skeptical without being cynical. It is open-minded without being wishy-washy. It is analytical without being nitpicky. Critical thinking can be decisive without being stubborn, evaluative without being judgmental, and forceful without being opinionated.

Critical thinking skills enable us to seek truth (small “t”) with intellectual energy and with integrity. Respect for one another and civil discourse goes hand in hand with strong critical thinking. We can thoughtfully and fair-mindedly reject an idea without ridiculing or

embarrassing the person who proposed it. And we can accept an idea from any source so long as the idea is well-supported with good reasons and solid evidence. The results of applying the critical thinking process speak for themselves by virtue of the quality of the analyses, inferences, and explanations involved. So there is no reason, and very frequently no advantage either, in being aggressive, strident or hos- tile in how one presents those results.

Strong critical thinking can be inde- pendent, it can lead us to diverge from the norm, and it can impel us to challenge cherished beliefs. And, as a result, apply- ing critical thinking skills to a question or issue can be disquieting if not disturbing to ourselves and others. Critical thinking can also be insightful, collaborative, and constructive. And, as in the case of good

“I saw the man’s eyes when he went over the falls. That was devastating,” says witness.

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science, critical thinking brings deeper and richer under- standings. And too, as in the case of good leadership, criti- cal thinking results in more successful outcomes. The only real mistake is to go forward with beliefs or choices that we know, because of strong critical thinking, are false or foolish.

Improvement Takes Practice Think for a moment about learning to play a musical instrument or learning to play a sport. In both, improve- ment comes from practicing the requisite skills and strengthening our resolve to keep at it until we begin to see improvements. As we experience success at the skills part, enjoyment increases, and our disposition to keep apply- ing ourselves grows. And, having an ever more positive

attitude about striving to improve, we tend to enjoy more success as we seek to refine our skills. Each aspect feeds the other. To be a success the player must become not only able but willing, not just skillful but disposed to use those skills.

We learn to play a musical instrument so we can enjoy making music. We learn a sport to enjoy playing the game. We work on our skills and mental dispositions not for their own sake, but for the sake of making music or playing the game. This is true with critical thinking, too. The defining purpose of critical thinking is to make reflective judgments about what to believe or what to do. We will work on both the skill part and the dispositional part as we move through this book Our purpose as authors is to enable you to become more effective in using critical thinking when you are deciding what to do or what to believe.

THINKING CRITICALLY Risk and Respect

Why do so many vacationers and sightseers foolishly risk their lives each year that our government must post warnings against even the most obvious dangers?

1. According to the National Park Service, over 250 people need to be rescued each year after they have tried to hike down into the Grand Canyon to reach the Colorado River and back up to the rim all in one day. More interestingly, these people tend to be young, healthy males. Why might this be? Is there something the research literature can tell us about the decision making of young healthy males that leads them, more than any other demographic, to take the kinds of risks that result in their needing to be rescued?

2. Group Discussion: Not all risks are unreasonable. Parents worry all of the time about keeping their children safe, but what is the role of risk taking in childhood and

adolescence? Are their “healthy risks” parents should encourage timid children to take? Should children be encouraged to climb trees? Rather than taking one side or the other, as in a debate, try instead to identify and elaborate on the best reasons for both sides of that ques- tion. A web search will reveal some interesting posts relating to risk and parenting.

3. Group Discussion: Given our advice about being respectful rather than hostile when applying critical thinking, does that mean that some topics are off limits? Is it even possible to have a respectful reasoned, evidence-based, and fair-minded analysis and evaluation of the truth, our moral, religious, or political opinions? What if people take offense because something they were raised to believe is called into question by seriously applying critical thinking skills to that idea?

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There is convincing scientific evidence that students can improve their critical thinking.15 As with any skills based activity, the key is guided practice. To guide you we loaded this book with exercises, examples, explana- tions, and topics to really think about. Each represents an opportunity. And, yes, here and there we have included topics/and questions some may find unsettling, maybe even jarring. Why? Because thinking about difficult top- ics and troubling questions often makes us stronger criti- cal thinkers. Just like with sports or music, those who skip practice should not expect to perform at their best when it really matters. Those who are so closed-minded that they cannot entertain hypotheticals that diverge from their own opinions will find progress in critical thinking difficult. But the rest of us can expect many interesting and enjoyable opportunities to exercise each of our criti- cal thinking skills and to strengthen our critical thinking habits of mind.

1.3 Evaluating Critical Thinking

Even when we are first learning a musical instrument or a sport, we can tell that some of our peers are better at the instrument or the sport than others. We all make prog- ress, and soon we are all doing much better than when we first started. We do not have to be experts to begin to see qualitative differences and to make reasonable evalu- ations. This, too, is true of critical thinking. There are some readily available ways to begin to make reasonable judgments concerning stronger or weaker uses of critical thinking. The following example illustrates some of these methods.

Critical Thinking - Willing and Able

THE STUDENTS’ ASSIGNMENT—KENNEDY ACT

Imagine a professor has assigned a group of four students to comment on the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, signed into law on April 21, 2009. The group has access to the information about the bill at the website for the Corporation for National & Community Service. The bill:

Dramatically increases intensive service opportu- nities by setting AmeriCorps on a path from 75,000 positions annually to 250,000 by 2017, and focusing that service on education, health, clean energy, vet- erans, economic opportunity, and other national priorities.

Enables millions of working Americans to serve by establishing a nationwide Call to Service Campaign and observing September 11 as the National Day of Service and Remembrance.

Improves service options for experienced Americans by expanding age and income eligibility for Foster Grandparents and Senior Companions, authorizing a Silver Scholars program, under which individuals 55 and older who perform 350 hours of service receive a $1,000 education award, which they can transfer award to a child or grandchild.

Provides for a summer program for students from sixth through twelfth grade to earn a $500 education award for helping in their neighborhoods.

Authorizes a Civic Health Assessment comprised of indicators relating to volunteering, voting, charitable giving, and interest in public service to evaluate and compare the civic health of communities.

For more information search “americorps.gov” “nationalservice.gov” and “serve.gov”.

THE STUDENTS’ STATEMENTS—KENNEDY ACT

STUDENT #1: “My take on it is that this bill requires national service. It’s like a churchy service sorta thing. But, u know, like run by the government and all. We all have to sign up and do our bit before we can go to college. That’s great. Think about it, how could any- one b against this legislation? I mean, unless they r either lazy or selfish. What excuse could a person possibly have not to serve r country? The president is right, we need to bring back the draft so that r Army has enough soldiers, and we need to fix Wall Street and Social Security and immigration. I don’t want to pay into a system all my working life only to find out that there’s no money left when I get my chance to retire.”

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STUDENT #2: “Well I think this bill is a stupid idea. Who’s going to agree to work for a lousy $12,000 a year? That’s nuts. I can earn more working at Target or by enlisting in the Navy. This legislation is just more foolish liberal nonsense that takes our nation one step closer to socialism. Socialism is when the gov- ernment tries to control too many things. And now the president is trying to control volunteer service. Maybe you want to build houses for poor people or clean up after hurricanes, but I don’t see how any of that is going to help me pass physics or get me a bet- ter job after college.”

STUDENT #3: “I think there are problems with the legisla- tion, too. But you’re wrong about people not wanting to volunteer. The number of hits on the AmeriCorps Web site keeps going up and up each month. Retired people, students, and people who just want to make a difference go there and to Serve.gov to see what opportunities might exist near where they live. On the other hand, I do have issues with the govern- ment being the organizing force in this. Volunteerism was alive and well in America before Big Brother got involved. I don’t see why we need to spend billions of dollars getting people to do what they were already going to do anyway. We shouldn’t pay people to be volunteers.”

STUDENT #4: “That’s the point, some of them wanted to do volunteer service but they need a small incentive. Nobody is going to get rich on the stipends the gov- ernment is offering. But the new grant competitions for nonprofits, schools, and universities to create programs for at-risk youth in low-income communi- ties and academic and service program for all young

people is a way of directing government funds toward proven effective organizations that need money to keep doing good things for kids, teens, and families especially in these tough economic times. I think that people who want to keep government at arm’s length are going to have problems with this bill. They are right that it is another way that govern- ment is worming itself into every facet of our lives. But a lot of people feel that way about religion, too; that’s why they do not want to volunteer in programs sponsored by religious groups, because they don’t want to be seen as agreeing with all the beliefs of that group. The real question for me is the effect that this legislation might have on the future politics of our nation. All these volunteers could become, in effect, people the administration can call on in the next election. Organizing tens of thousands Americans who basically agree with the idea of public service at public expense is like lining up the Democratic vot- ers who will want to be sure these policies are not reversed by the Republicans. I’m not talking about a vague idea like “socialism,” I’m talking about clever politics, positioning the Democratic Party for success in the next election. I’m not sure what I think about that yet. But we need to understand that this legisla- tion will result in more than just a lot of wonderful work by a large number of generous Americans who are willing to give of their time to help others.”

Having reviewed the information about this legis- lation and read the statements by each of the four stu- dents, how would you evaluate those statements in terms of the critical thinking each displays? Remember, base your evaluation on what the statements reveal about the

At today’s event, the President honored President George H.W. Bush’s contributions to service and volunteerism, including his signing of the 1990 national service legislation and his creation of the Points of Light movement and its signature award. The Daily Point of Light Award has been presented 5,000 times to individuals and groups who find innovative ways to meet community needs.

“Volunteer service is and always has been a fundamental part of the American character,”said Wendy Spencer, CEO of CNCS, the agency that administers AmeriCorps and Senior Corps. For decades, presidents of both parties have embraced national service as a cost-effective way to tap the ingenuity and can-do spirit of the American people to get things done. Source: “President Obama Expands National Service Opportunities for Americans,” National Service news release, July 15, 2013.

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The Power of Critical Thinking 11

quality of the reasoning, not on whether you agree or disagree with their conclusion. We’ll offer our evaluative comments on these four statements in the paragraphs below. But before you read on, first make a preliminary assessment. Which of the four student statements would you rate right now as showing strong critical thinking and which do you regard at this point as showing weak critical thinking?

The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric Every day we all make decisions about what to believe or what to do. When we are being reflective and fair-minded about doing so, we are using our critical thinking skills. The idea behind a critical thinking course is to help us strengthen these skills and fortify our intentions to use them when the occasion arises.

If that is true, then there probably is room for improvement—just as with other things we do that we may not have formally studied. But we are not starting from zero. We have critical thinking skills, even if we have not yet refined them to their maximum potential. We know what it means to be open-minded and to take a system- atic and objective look at an issue. We are familiar with the ordinary English meanings of common words for talking about thinking such as interpret, analyze, infer, explain, rea- son, conclusion, fallacy, and argument. And, in a broad sense, a lot of the time we can tell the difference between strong reasoning and weak reasoning, even if we do not yet know all the details or terminology.

So, given that none of us are novices at critical think- ing, we should be able to make a reasonable first stab at an evaluation of the thinking portrayed by the four stu- dents in the example. Just using our experience and com- mon sense we can agree that #4 and #3 are stronger than #2 and #1.

A tool designed to help us with this process of evalu- ation relies on the ordinary meanings of common terms used to talk about thinking. Called “The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric” (HCTSR), this tool can aid us in evaluating real-life examples of critical thinking because it requires us only to consider the four evaluative descrip- tions: “strong,” “acceptable,” “unacceptable,” and “weak” and see which of the four fits best. At this point, before we have worked through any of the other chapters of the book, this simple tool/approach is sufficient to get us started evaluating critical thinking. Naturally, as we learn more about critical thinking, we will become better at applying the rubric and more facile at using the terminol- ogy it contains. Our evaluative judgments will improve, and our ability to explain our judgments will improve as well. In this way, the rubric actually helps us to improve

our critical thinking. Where we may disagree with one another at first about the evaluative levels that best fit, in time as we work with the rubric and with others on apply- ing it, we will begin to form clearer ideas of the differences not only between the extreme examples, but between examples that fall between the extremes.

To apply the HCTSR, take each student’s statement and see which level of the Rubric offers the best description of the reasoning evident in that statement. You will see that they line up rather well with the four levels of the HCTSR. Statement #4 is a good example of the top level, “strong”; student statement #3 is “acceptable”; student statement #2 is “unacceptable” because it displays the problems listed in the HCTSR in category 2; and statement #1 is so far off base that it qualifies as “weak.”

Now that you have the HCTSR available to evaluate examples of real-life critical thinking, let’s try it again with another set of four essays. As you read each essay response, compare what you are reading to the language on the HCTSR to determine which of the four descriptions, “strong,” “acceptable,” “unacceptable,” and “weak” fits the best.

THE STUDENTS’ ASSIGNMENT—HAITI

This time imagine a professor has asked her students to respond to the following essay question “Did the interna- tional community abandon Haiti or not?–give reasons and evidence to support your claim.” The group has access to the information about the earthquake in Haiti reproduced here and on the Internet.

On January 10, 2010, Haiti experienced its most deadly earthquake in the country’s history. The quake left the capital city of Port-au-Prince flattened and the country devastated.

The death toll is estimated to be upward of 250,000 individuals, with 300,000 others being injured.

The estimated cost of damage due to the earthquake is between 8 and 14 billion dollars.

As of January 2014, Time reported that billions of dol- lars in promised aid have not yet been dispersed.

Time also reported that 70% of Haitians lack access to electricity, 600,000 are food-insecure and 23% of chil- dren are out of primary schools. At least 172,000 peo- ple remain in 306 displacement camps.17

THE STUDENTS’ STATEMENTS—HAITI

STUDENT #1: “I wouldn’t say that the international com- munity has abandoned Haiti as much as I would say that the international community has done nothing but make matters worse! That impoverished country had an earthquake that killed nearly 250,000 people and injured 300,000 more. I saw on Facebook that

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the cholera epidemic was caused by a Red Cross volunteer. That means that someone from the out- side world caused a deadly disease to run rampant through the country. Everyone knows that developed countries only help out when there is something in it for them—like oil or bananas. Why else would the relief effort be run by a former U.S. president? What’s his political motivation? One could say that the Haitian government or lack thereof is the main reason why Bill Clinton’s commission has to run the recovery efforts and coordinate the funds for reconstruction, but I heard somewhere that Clinton’s commission

collected a ton of money for Haiti relief but hasn’t spent even half of it yet. I don’t get why not. You can be sure, however, that when the commission does spend the money it will only harm the Haitian econ- omy. Clinton will probably give it all away like some kind of welfare program. The international commu- nity should abandon efforts so that no further harm is done.”

STUDENT #2: “I don’t think the international community abandoned Haiti after the devastating earthquake. Even a year later you could still find news coverage

Strong 4. Consistently does all or almost all of the following:

Acceptable 3. Does most or many of the following:

Unacceptable 2. Does most or many of the following:

Weak 1. Consistently does all or almost all of the following:

The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric16 A Tool for Developing and Evaluating Critical Thinking

Peter A. Facione, Ph.D., and Noreen C. Facione, Ph.D.

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The Power of Critical Thinking 13

of Haiti pretty much every day on the Internet. That means that Haiti has not been forgotten. Though the number of people who are still homeless is high, there are organizations over there that are rebuilding camps and schools. 60 Minutes even showed a story about a guy who was rebuilding a soccer field. They say that thousands of people have been able to go home and kids are able to attend the schools that have been reopened. I know the United States is not the only country that is helping in Haiti because the United Nations has sent money and workers—this means it is an international effort. Given that Haiti is not the only country needing our help, like Japan who had the tsunami, not to mention the hurricanes and torna- dos right here in America, the fact is that everyone is doing all that they can to help Haiti. What more can we possibly expect? I mean, we all have our problems. The biggest challenge is the cholera epidemic, which is slowing down efforts to rebuild the country. Nobody knew what to do about that. But now that the presi- dent has been elected it should be possible to move forward with getting medicines to that country.”

STUDENT #3: “Haiti was abandoned by the international community. How else might we explain why numer- ous countries all over the world would have promised billions of dollars but then reneged on payment? Yes, lots of money and hundreds of emergency aid work- ers have been sent to that impoverished country, along with food, medicine, water, temporary shelters, and heavy machinery to clear the collapsed buildings that once were homes, schools, and businesses. But at the end of the day (or year in this case!) there is still so much left to be done. Several thousands of people are still living in camps, and those who are able to go home are afraid to live inside because they don’t trust that their houses won’t still collapse. At first there were no major issues related to diseases that typically follow a major natural disaster, and this was touted as a successful part of the relief effort, but now we see the country stricken with a cholera epidemic. The international community has made big promises to the people of Haiti but those promises have not yet been fulfilled. I support the people who are asking for

an explanation of what is being done with the money that has been collected from the international commu- nity. If there is a reason to hold back on distributing the funds then that should be stated so that every- one knows the short- and long-term plan to achieve recovery and so that the people of Haiti know that the world still cares about them. And if we find no good reasons for holding back the money, then we should be told why it was not used sooner.”

STUDENT #4: “This is a really difficult question, but I’d have to say that the international community has not abandoned Haiti. This is not to say that the relief effort has been smooth, or that the country has been totally rebuilt in the years since the deadly earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince. Nevertheless, an important distinction needs to be made between relief and recovery. Immediately following the earth- quake monies and aid workers including doctors were rushed to Haiti. These monies and humanitar- ian aid were contributed by almost 40 different coun- tries around the world, and involved organizations such as the United Nations, American Red Cross, and NGOs that are still hard at work in Haiti. These funds and workers were able to provide food, shel- ter, water and medicine to the survivors who were left homeless. Yes, many countries have pledged billions to help Haiti, and not all of the money has been spent. This has angered some— particularly the Haitian people and individuals directly involved in the organizations who are on the ground in Haiti try- ing to make the recovery effort move more quickly. It has got to be frustrating to know that monies have been pledged or collected but remain unspent, but the turmoil over the contested presidential elections has to be considered—an unstable government is a liability when it comes to a wise and efficient use of public funds, even in the best of times. Finally, though it was once thought that the prevention of looting and disease in the immediate aftermath of the quake was evidence of the relief effort working, we should consider the cholera epidemic as evidence that the international community has forsaken Haiti. The cholera was entirely predictable when thou- sands are living in unsanitary camps. On the other hand, some international humanitarian organizations have stepped up their efforts to curtail the spread of cholera by providing medicine, sanitation, and fresh water which has effectively lessened the number of people who are dying from the outbreak. For these reasons I feel that the world has not given up on helping Haiti.”

As with the first set of student essays, we can apply the HCTSR to determine which level of the Rubric offers

What Are Scoring Rubrics?

Rubrics articulate the criteria used for judging different levels of performance. If you were the instructor of this course how might you use a rubric like the HCTSR to help your students learn? As a student, how might you use this rubric to develop your peers’ critical thinking? How about your own?

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the best description of the reasoning evident in that state- ment. When reading these four student essays on Haiti in order we find that each displays stronger critical thinking than the one before. Statement #4 is a good example of the top level, “strong”; student statement, #3 is “acceptable”; student statement #2 is “unacceptable” because it displays the problems listed in category 2 on the HCTSR; and state- ment #1 has many errors in thinking thereby qualifying it as “weak.”

At this early stage in our discussion of critical think- ing you only need to begin to differentiate among the four essays in terms of the quality of the critical thinking they displayed. As we go through the chapters in this book the more technical explanations for their relative strengths and weaknesses will become much clearer. In the meantime, what is important is that you are able to recognize that the critical thinking generally improves as you go from the ini- tial essay in the series on through to the fourth essay. As in real life, none of these four is absolutely dreadful and none is superbly stellar. But they do differ in the quality of the critical thinking displayed. Their differences will come

into better focus as you get deeper into this book and prog- ress in developing your own critical thinking.

The HCTSR is a great tool to use to evaluate the quality of the critical thinking evident in lots of different situations: classroom discussions, papers, essays, panel presentations, commercials, blog posts, Yelp reviews, editorials, letters to editors, news conferences, infomercials, commentator’s remarks, speeches, jury deliberations, planning sessions, meetings, debates, or your own private thoughts. Keep the focus on the reasoning. The key thing is that people have to express some kind of a reason or basis for whatever it is that

A Healthy Sense of Skepticism

Critical thinking is skeptical without being cynical. It is open-minded without being wishy-washy. It is analytical without being nitpicky. Critical thinking can be decisive without being stubborn, evaluative without being judgmental, and forceful without being opinionated.

THINKING CRITICALLY Who’s Supposed to Help? If you lost your home in a natural disaster, how many months and years would you and your family be willing to live in a temporary tent city? What if your government was unwilling or unable to provide more suitable housing, food, water, and loans to rebuild your home and business? Perhaps it is not the government's responsibility to offer those kinds of assistance.

If not, is it any organization's responsibility? Perhaps a church, a university, or a charity? Or should the hurt and homeless after a natural disaster simply be left to fend for themselves? Whatever your view, articulate your reasons and then evaluate your reasoning using the HCTSR.

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The Power of Critical Thinking 15

they are saying. It is tough to apply the HCTSR to tweets, slogans, gestures, signs, billboards, and epithets because reasons are seldom given in those cases.

Do not let the fact that you may agree or disagree with the particular conclusions being advocated sway you. Do not worry if you feel unsure of yourself, having used the HCTSR only a couple of times so far. There will be plenty of additional opportunities for you to practice with it in the exercises in this chapter and in future chapters. Like a new pair of shoes, the use of the tool will feel more comfort- able with time. Think of it this way: The more you use the HCTSR, and the more adept you become at sorting out why something represents stronger or weaker critical thinking, the more you will improve your own critical thinking.

When people first begin using a rubric like the HCTSR, it is important they calibrate their scoring with one

Summing up this chapter, critical thinking is the process of purposeful, reflective judgment focused on deciding what to believe or what to do. Neither negative nor cynical, but thoughtful and fair- minded, critical thinking is essential for learning, is a liber- ating force in education, and a precondition for a free and democratic society. Strong critical thinking is a tremendous

asset in one’s personal, professional, and civic life. We all have some level of skill in critical thinking and we all have the capacity to improve those skills. In the next Chapter we will examine more deeply the specific skills and habits of mind that are central to critical thinking.

Key Concept Critical thinking is the process of purposeful, reflec- tive judgment. Critical thinking manifests itself in giv- ing reasoned and fair-minded consideration to evidence,

conceptualizations, methods, contexts, and standards to decide what to believe or what to do.

Applications Reflective Log What did you decide? Think back over today and yester- day. Describe a problem you faced or a decision which you considered. Who was involved, and what was the issue? Describe how you thought about that problem or deci- sion—not so much what you decided or what solution you picked, but the process you used. Were you open-minded about various options, systematic in your approach, cou- rageous enough to ask yourself tough questions, bold enough to follow the reasons and evidence wherever they

led, inquisitive and eager to learn more before making a judgment, nuanced enough to see shades of gray rather than only stark black and white? Did you check your inter- pretations and analyses? Did you draw your inferences carefully? Were you as objective and fair-minded as you might have been? Explain your decision in your log with enough detail that would permit you to go back a week or two from now and evaluate your decision for the quality of the critical thinking it demonstrates.

another. Some individuals might initially rate something higher and others rate it lower. However, through mutual discussion, it is possible to help one another come to a rea- sonable consensus on a score. Identify two editorials and two letters to the editor that appear in your campus news- paper. Here is a good way to begin. Working with two or three other classmates, individually rate those letters and editorials with the HCTSR. After each of you have rated them, compare the scores everyone in your group initially assigned. Where the scores differ, discuss the critical think- ing evident in the editorials or letters, and come to con- sensus on a score. With practice and with what you will learn as you go through this book you will strengthen your critical thinking skills, including you’re ability to analyze, interpret and evaluate the claims people make, and the arguments they present.

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Individual Exercises Explain the mistake. One sign that we understand con- cepts well is our ability to explain the mistake or mistakes when they are used incorrectly. Here are 23 mistaken state- ments related to critical thinking and its value. Briefly describe the mistake in each. Use examples from your own experience if those help clarify your explanation.

1. Critical thinking has no application in day-to-day life.

2. If critical thinking is purposeful judgment, then if I do not agree with your judgment, that means I’m not thinking critically.”

3. “Critical thinking” means being critical. That’s too much constant hostility. We should all just relax and agree.

4. Democracies get along just fine even if people do not think for themselves.

5. Decisions about how I want to live my life do not affect other people.

6. Reflective decision making requires little or no effort.

7. I’m always disagreeing with authority figures, so I must be a great critical thinker.

8. If we disagree on something, then one of us is not using critical thinking.

9. Every time I make a judgment, I am engaged in critical thinking.

10. Teaching young people to think critically will only result in their losing friends.

11. Reasons are irrelevant; having the right opinion is the only thing that matters.

12. Some people achieve popularity, wealth, and power without appearing to be strong critical thinkers, but you’re saying that this can’t happen to me.

13. We cannot be responsible for what we were taught to believe when we were children. We can try to apply critical thinking to those beliefs, but we can never change our minds about them.

14. I’m already very confident in my critical thinking ability, so there is no reason for me to go any further in this book.

15. If critical thinking is a mental process, then it will not help me learn the informational content of my other college courses.

16. You only are going to make trouble for yourself by rocking the boat with challenging questions and demands for reasons and evidence. Hey, you got to go along to get along.

17. I like many of the things that my city, county, state, and national governments do, so I must be a weak critical thinker.

18. It is fine to apply critical thinking in education, business, science, law enforcement, and international problems, but there is no place for critical thinking in religious matters.

19. Looking at the HCTSR, I find that my family and friends do not seem to be very good critical thinkers, so I don’t have much of a chance to become one either.

20. People should not be taught critical thinking because it will only undermine their faith in their leaders.

21. If you are a strong critical thinker you will automatically be an ethical person.

22. Every government wants its citizens to be strong critical thinkers.

23. Once you become adept at engaging problems and making decisions using strong critical thinking, it is easy to quit.

Don’t think! Critical thinking takes effort! Why work so hard? Imagine what it would be like to live in a com- munity where critical thinking was illegal. What might the risks and benefits of such a life be? How would the people living in that community redress grievances, solve problems, plan for the future, evaluate options, and pursue their individual and joint purposes? Now imagine what it would be like to live in a community where critical thinking was unnecessary. Can there be such a place, except perhaps as human specimens in some other species’ zoo?

SHARED RESPONSE Positive Critical Thinking From your own experience, share one recent positive example of critical thinking, like the 10 we described near the beginning of Chapter 1. Explain why your example shows strong critical thinking. Be sure to provide your reason(s), not just your opinion. And comment respectfully on the examples others offer.

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Group Exercises The words or the message? A master of irony, the late comedian George Carlin said critical thinking can be “Dangerous!” Just search “Carlin critical thinking” on the Internet. Carlin said some are so worried about the risks to their own power and position that they do not see the benefits to their organization’s core purposes if employees or members are strong critical thinkers. Unscrupulous mega-corporations and Machiavellian leaders might well ponder the question of how to dis- tract, divert, or derail other people’s critical thinking so that they can maintain their own power and con- trol. Carlin warned us not to swallow the mental junk food being served up by those whose only purpose is to maintain their own personal and corporate power and control. Carlin used a lot of vulgarity and potentially offensive language in his routines, which is unfortunate since people can be put off by the words and not hear the message. The questions for group discussion are: “Can strong critical thinkers identify the good ideas and claims a person may be making in spite of the person’s off-putting way of expressing himself?” And, “Does the use of vile, vulgar, or offensive language exempt others from the obligation to think about the good ideas that may be contained in what the person is saying?”

Be hard on your opinions: Comedian and philosopher Tim Minchin offers nine stunningly simple yet powerful pieces of advice to the graduating class of his alma mater, the University of Western Australia. A romantic at heart,

he urges each of us to embrace our chance existence and to fill our lives with learning, compassion, sharing, enthusiasm, exercise, love and more. Minchin notes the importance of critical thinking when he recommends that we should be hard on our own opinions. This bit, point five, comes 6:17 into his talk. Search for the video of his twelve minute address on the Internet. By search- ing “Minchin commencement address 2013” we found a video of Minchin’s September 2013 address posted on several websites including upworthy.com. List his nine points, and consider specifically point five. Is there a good reason to wait until you graduate before consider- ing whether there is value for you in what Minchin has to say? In other words, are any of his nine points relevant for college students, or only for graduates? Give reasons for your opinions about the relevance or non-relevance of each of the nine.

What are we thinking? If we learn best from our mis- takes, then what can the international community learn about how best to assist a nation in recovering from cat- astrophic events given the experiences like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan, or the sustained subzero tem- peratures, floods, and winter ice storms in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter of 2014? Discuss these catastrophes, respond to the question concerning what can be learned, and provide reasons and evidence in support of your group’s response to the question.

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Learning Outcomes

2.1 Contrast the positive vs. the negative critical thinking mindset. Describe four specific ways a person can continuously cultivate a positive critical thinking mindset.

2.2 Write a set of investigative questions about a current event or topic of broad interest such that the questions engage each of the six core critical thinking skills.

2.3 Take charge of your own learning: Analyze the organization of this book focusing on which skills or parts of the critical thinking process are emphasized in each chapter. Describe how you anticipate applying those skills, including the art of asking good questions, to the other courses you are taking now or expect to be taking soon.

Chapter 2

Critical Thinking Mindset and Skills

HOW can I cultivate positive critical thinking habits of mind?

WHAT questions can I ask to engage my critical thinking skills?

HOW will this book help me to develop my critical thinking?

In Apollo 13, Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon portray astronauts working together using critical thinking to identify the exact problem threatening their mission and their lives.

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Critical Thinking Mindset and Skills 19

After training for every conceivable contingency, the unexpected happened. Initially, the challenge was simply to figure out what the problem was. If it could be correctly identified, then there might be some slim chance of sur- vival. If not, the outcome could be tragic. Ron Howard’s award-winning documentary, Apollo 13, is a dramatic reen- actment of the breathtaking voyage that had the whole nation rooting for the three astronauts whose lives hung in the balance. The actors, music, camera angles, staging, props, and lighting all contribute to our overall experience. That said, this portrayal of individual and group prob- lem solving is so highly consistent with the research on human cognition and decision making that it just might be the best depiction of group critical thinking ever filmed.1 The problem is simple, yet vitally important. What could the problem be? If the crew and the ground control person- nel apply their reasoning skills to the best of their ability, perhaps they will identify the problem before the crew’s electricity and breathable air run out. The situation is dire. More than their thinking skills only, it is the mental habits of being analytical, focused, and systematic that empower the technicians, engineers, and astronauts to apply those skills well during the crisis. Locate Apollo 13 and watch the memorable scene described below.

2.1 Positive Critical Thinking Habits of Mind

The Apollo 13 sequence opens with the staff at Mission Control in Houston and the three-person crew of Apollo 13 well into the boredom of rou- tine housekeeping. Suddenly, the crew of Apollo 13 hears a loud banging noise and their small, fragile craft starts gyrating wildly. The startled look on Tom Hanks’s face in the video reenact- ment is priceless. A full 15 seconds elapses before he speaks. During that time his critical thinking is in overdrive. He is trying to interpret what has just happened. His mind has to make sense of the entirely unexpected and unfamiliar experience. He neither dismisses nor ignores the new infor- mation that presents itself. His attention moves between checking the craft’s instrument panel and attending to the sounds and motions of the spacecraft itself. He focuses his mind, forms a cautious but accurate interpretation, and with the disciplined self-control we expect of a well- trained professional, he informs Mission Control in Houston, Texas, that they most definitely have a problem!2

At first, the astronauts in the spacecraft and the technicians at Mission Control call out information

from their desk monitors and the spacecraft’s instrument displays. They crave information from all sources. They know they must share what they are learning with each other as quickly as they can in the hope that someone will be able to make sense out of things. They do not yet know which piece of information may be the clue to their life- or-death problem, but they have the discipline of mind to want to know everything that might be relevant. They have the confidence in their collective critical thinking skills to believe that this approach offers their best hope to identify the true problem.

One member of the ground crew calls out that O2 Tank Two is not showing any readings. That vital bit of informa- tion swooshes by unnoticed in the torrents of data. Soon a number of people begin proposing explanations: Perhaps the spacecraft had been struck by a meteor. Perhaps its radio antenna is broken. Perhaps the issue is instrumen- tation, rather than something more serious, like a loss of power.

The vital critical thinking skill of self-regulation is personified in the film by the character played by Ed Harris. His job is to monitor everything that is going on and to correct the process if he judges that it is get- ting off track. Harris’s character makes the claim that the problem cannot simply be instrumentation. The reason for that claim is clear and reasonable. The astronauts are reporting hearing loud bangs and feeling their spacecraft jolt and shimmy. The unspoken assumption, one every

After space capsule splashdown Navy Seals stabilize Apollo 13 with three astronauts aboard.

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pilot and technician understands in this context is that these physical manifestations—the noises and the shaking—would not be occurring if the problem were instrumentation. The conclusion Harris’s character expressed has the effect of directing everyone’s energy and attention toward one set of possibilities, those that would be considered real problems rather than toward the other set of possibilities. Had he categorized the problem as instrumentation, then everyone’s efforts would have been directed toward checking and verify- ing that the gauges and computers were functioning properly.

There is an important critical thinking lesson in what we see Ed Harris doing. Judging correctly what kind of problem we are facing is essential. If we are mistaken about what the problem is, we are likely to consume time, energy, and resources exploring the wrong kinds of solu- tions. By the time we figure out that we took the wrong road, the situation could have become much worse than when we started. The Apollo 13 situation is a perfect example. In real life, had the people at Mission Control in Houston classified the problem as instrumentation, they would have used up what little oxygen there was left aboard the spacecraft while the ground crew spent time validating their instrument readouts.

Back on the spacecraft, Tom Hanks, who personifies the critical thinking skills of interpretation and inference, is struggling to regain navigational control. He articulates the inference by saying that had they been hit by a meteor, they would all be dead already. A few moments later he glances out the spacecraft’s side window. Something in the rearview mirror catches his attention. Again, his inquisi- tive mind will not ignore what he’s seeing. A few seconds pass as he tries to interpret what it might be. He offers his first observation that the craft is venting something into space. The mental focus and stress of the entire Houston ground crew are etched on their faces. Their expressions reveal the question in their minds: What could he possibly be seeing? Seconds pass with agonizing slowness. Using his interpretive skills, Tom Hanks categorizes with caution and then, adding greater precision, he infers that the vent- ing must be some kind of a gas. He pauses to try to figure out what the gas might be and realizes that it must surely be the oxygen. Kevin Bacon looks immediately to the oxy- gen tank gauge on the instrument panel for information that might confirm or disconfirm whether it really is the oxygen. It is.

Being by habit inclined to anticipate consequences, everyone silently contemplates the potential tragedy implied by the loss of oxygen. As truth-seekers, they must accept the finding. They cannot fathom denying it or hid- ing from it. Their somber response comes in the form of Mission Control’s grim but objective acknowledgment that the spacecraft is venting.

OK, now we have the truth. What are we going to do about it? The characters depicted in this movie are driven by a powerful orientation toward using critical thinking to resolve whatever problems they encounter. The room erupts with noise as each person refocuses on their little piece of the problem. People are moving quickly, talking fast, pulling headset wires out of sockets in their haste. The chaos and cacophony in the room reveal that the group is not yet taking a systematic, organized approach. Monitoring this, Ed Harris’s character interjects another self-correction into the group’s critical thinking. He may not yet know how this problem of the oxygen supply is going to be solved or even whether this problem can be solved, but he is going to be sure that the ground crew addresses it with all the skill and all the mental power it can muster. He directs everyone to locate whomever they may need to assist them in their work, and to focus themselves and those others immediately on working the problem.

As depicted in this excerpt, the combined ground crew and spacecraft crew, as a group, would earn a top score on “Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric.” The emotions and stresses of the situation are unmistakable. The group’s powerfully strong critical thinking habits of mind enable the group to use that energy productively. It gives urgency to the efforts. Thus, the message about our thinking processes that emerges is that emotion need not be the antithesis to reason; emotion can be the impetus to reason.

“To repeat what others have said requires education, to challenge it requires brains.”

Mary Pettiborn Poole, Author3

The Spirit of a Strong Critical Thinker In the film skillful actors displayed the behaviors and responses of strong critical thinkers engaged in problem solving during a crisis. Authors of screenplays and nov- els often endow their protagonists with strongly positive critical thinking skills and dispositions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliantly analytical Sherlock Holmes, played in this century by Jonny Lee Miller in the CBS series Elementary, by Benedict Cumberbatch in the PBS series Sherlock, and in the movies by Robert Downey Jr., comes to mind. Matthew McConaughey’s dark, driven, and keenly observant character on HBO’s series True Detective is another rich example. A key difference, of course, is that fictional detectives solve the mysteries, while, as we all know, in the real world there is no guarantee. Critical thinking is about how we approach problems, decisions, questions, and issues even if ultimate success eludes us.

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Critical Thinking Mindset and Skills 21

Having the mindset that disposes us to engage our skills as best we can is the “eager” part of “skilled and eager.” First we will examine the “eager” part, beginning with taking a closer look at the overall critical thinking mindset. Later in this chapter we will examine the “skilled” part, the core critical thinking skills.

“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Author4

Positive vs. Negative Habits of Mind A person with a strong disposition toward critical think- ing has the consistent internal motivation to engage prob- lems and make decisions by using critical thinking.5 Operationally this means three things: The person con- sistently values critical thinking, believes that using criti- cal thinking skills offers the greatest promise for reaching good judgments, and intends to approach problems and decisions by applying critical thinking skills as best as he or she can. This combination of values, beliefs, and inten- tions forms the habits of mind that dispose the person toward critical thinking.6

Someone strongly disposed toward critical thinking would probably agree with the following statements:

“I hate talk shows where people shout their opinions but never give any reasons at all.”

“Figuring out what people really mean by what they say is important to me.”

“I always do better in jobs where I’m expected to think things out for myself.”

“I hold off making decisions until I have thought through my options.”

“Rather than relying on someone else’s notes, I prefer to read the material myself.”

“I try to see the merit in another’s opinion, even if I reject it later.”

“Even if a problem is tougher than I expected, I will keep working on it.”

“Making intelligent decisions is more important than winning arguments.”

Persons who display a strong positive disposition toward critical thinking are described in the literature as “having a critical spirit,” or as people who are “mind- ful,” “reflective,” and “meta-cognitive.” These expressions give a person credit for consistently applying their critical

thinking skills to whatever problem, question, or issue is at hand. People with a critical spirit tend to ask good ques- tions, probe deeply for the truth, inquire fully into mat- ters, and strive to anticipate the consequences of various options. In real life our skills may or may not be strong enough, our knowledge may or may not be adequate to the task at hand. The problem may or may not be too dif- ficult for us. Forces beyond our control might or might not determine the actual outcome. None of that cancels out the positive critical thinking habits of mind with which strong critical thinkers strive to approach the problems life sends their way.

A person with weak critical thinking dispositions might disagree with the previous statements and be more likely to agree with these:

“I prefer jobs where the supervisor says exactly what to do and exactly how to do it.”

“No matter how complex the problem, you can bet there will be a simple solution.”

“I don’t waste time looking things up.”

“I hate when teachers discuss problems instead of just giving the answers.”

“If my belief is truly sincere, evidence to the contrary is irrelevant.”

“Selling an idea is like selling cars; you say whatever works.”

“Why go to the library when you can use made-up quotes and phony references?”

“I take a lot on faith because questioning the funda- mentals frightens me.”

“There is no point in trying to understand what terror- ists are thinking.”

When it comes to approaching specific questions, issues, decisions or problems, people with a weak or nega- tive critical thinking disposition are apt to be impulsive, reactive, muddle-headed, disorganized, overly simplistic, spotty about getting relevant information, likely to apply unreasonable criteria, easily distracted, ready to give up at the least hint of difficulty, intent on a solution that is more detailed than is possible, or too readily satisfied with some uselessly vague response.

Preliminary Self-Assessment It is only natural to wonder about our own disposition. The “Critical Thinking Mindset Self-Rating Form” offers us a way of reflecting on our own values, beliefs, and intentions about the use of critical thinking. As noted on the form itself, “This tool offers only a rough approximation with regard to a brief moment in time.”

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We invite you to take a moment and complete the self- assessment. Keep in mind as you interpret the results that this measure does not assess critical thinking skills. Rather, this tool permits one to reflect on whether, over the past two days, the disposition manifested in behavior was positive, ambivalent, or averse toward engaging in thoughtful, reflective, and fair-minded judgments about what to believe or what to do.

Research on the Positive Critical Thinking Mindset The broad understanding of being disposed toward using critical thinking, or disposed away from using critical

thinking, has been the object of empirical research in the cognitive sciences since the early 1990s. This research has given greater precision to the analysis and measurement of the dispositional dimension of critical thinking.

SEVEN POSITIVE CRITICAL THINKING HABITS OF MIND One research approach to identifying the elements in a positive critical thinking mindset involved asking thousands of people to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a long list of statements, not un- like those in the two short lists presented above. Using statistical analysis, these researchers identified seven mea- surable aspects within the overall disposition toward criti- cal thinking. We can think of these as the seven positive

Critical Thinking Mindset Self-Rating Form Answer yes or no to each. Can I name any specific instances over the past two days when I:

1. was courageous enough to ask tough ques- tions about some of my longest held and most cherished beliefs?

2. backed away from questions that might undercut some of my longest held and most cherished beliefs?

3. showed tolerance toward the beliefs, ideas, or opinions of someone with whom I disagreed?

4. tried to find information to build up my side of an argument but not the other side?

5. tried to think ahead and anticipate the conse- quences of various options?

6. laughed at what other people said and made fun of their beliefs, values, opinion, or points of views?

7. made a serious effort to be analytical about the foreseeable outcomes of my decisions?

8. manipulated information to suit my own purposes?

9. encouraged peers not to dismiss out of hand the opinions and ideas other people offered?

10. acted with disregard for the possible adverse consequences of my choices?

11. organized for myself a thoughtfully systematic approach to a question or issue?

12. jumped in and tried to solve a problem without first thinking about how to approach it?

13. approached a challenging problem with confi- dence that I could think it through?

14. instead of working through a question for myself, took the easy way out and asked someone else for the answer?

15. read a report, newspaper, or book chapter or watched the world news or a documentary just to learn something new?

16. put zero effort into learning something new until I saw the immediate utility in doing so?

17. showed how strong I was by being willing to honestly reconsider a decision?

18. showed how strong I was by refusing to change my mind?

19. attended to variations in circumstances, con- texts, and situations in coming to a decision?

20. refused to reconsider my position on an issue in light of differences in context, situations, or circumstances?

If you have described yourself honestly, this self-rating form can offer a rough estimate of what you think your overall dis- position toward critical thinking has been in the past two days.

Give yourself 5 points for every “Yes” on odd numbered items and for every “No” on even numbered items. If your total is 70 or above, you are rating your disposition toward critical thinking over the past two days as generally positive. Scores of 50 or lower indicate a self-rating that is averse or hostile toward critical thinking over the past two days. Scores between 50 and 70 show that you would rate yourself as dis- playing an ambivalent or mixed overall disposition toward criti- cal thinking over the past two days.

Interpret results on this tool cautiously. At best this tool offers only a rough approximation with regard to a brief moment in time. Other tools are more refined, such as the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, which gives results for each of the seven critical thinking habits of mind.

© 2009 Measured Reasons LLC, Hermosa Beach, CA. Used with permission of the authors and Measured Reasons LLC.

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critical thinking habits of mind.7 Based on this research, we can describe someone who has all seven positive critical thinking habits of mind as a person who is:

Truth-seeking—meaning that the person has intel- lectual integrity and a courageous desire to actively strive for the best possible knowledge in any given sit- uation. A truth-seeker asks probing questions and fol- lows reasons and evidence wherever they lead, even if the results go against his or her cherished beliefs.

Open-minded—meaning that the person is tolerant of divergent views and sensitive to the possibility of his or her own possible biases. An open-minded person respects the right of others to have different opinions.

Analytical—meaning that the person is habitually alert to potential problems and vigilant in antici- pating consequences and trying to foresee short- term and long-term outcomes of events, decisions, and actions. Another word to describe this habit of mind might be “foresightful.”

Systematic—meaning that the person consistently endeavors to take an organized and thorough approach to identifying and resolving problems. The systematic person is orderly, focused, persis- tent, and diligent in his or her approach to prob- lem solving, learning, and inquiry.

Confident in reasoning—meaning that the per- son is trustful of his or her own reasoning skills to yield good judgments. A person’s or a group’s confidence in their own critical thinking may or may not be warranted, which is another matter.

Inquisitive—meaning that the person habitually strives to be well informed, wants to know how things work, and seeks to learn new things about a wide range of topics, even if the immediate util- ity of knowing those things is not directly evident. The inquisitive person has a strong sense of intel- lectual curiosity.

Judicious—meaning that the per- son approaches problems with a sense that some are ill structured and some can have more than one plausible solution. The judicious person has the cognitive matu- rity to realize that many ques- tions and issues are not black and white and that, at times, judg- ments must be made in contexts of uncertainty.

The Disposition toward Critical Thinking

NEGATIVE HABITS OF MIND After the measurement tools were refined and validated for use in data gather- ing, the results of repeated samplings showed that some people are strongly positive on one or more of the seven positive mindset attributes. Some people are ambivalent or negatively disposed on one or more of the seven.

We can associate a name to the negative end of the scale for each of the seven, just as we associated a name with the positive end of each scale. The “Critical Thinking Habits of Mind” chart lists the names, for both positive and negative attributes. A person’s individual disposi- tional portrait emerges from the seven, for a person may be positive, ambivalent, or negative on each.

Critical Thinking Habits of Mind

Negative

Intellectually Dishonest

Intolerant

Heedless of Consequences

Disorganized

Hostile toward Reason

Indifferent

Imprudent

Positive

Truth-seeking

Analytical

Systematic

Confident in Reasoning

Inquisitive

Judicious

Open-minded

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and what he believes (wrongly) about the ways it might be transmitted. His character uses his critical thinking skills, which turn out to be quite formidable as the film progresses. But his beliefs about AIDS are simply wrong. He makes a judgment at the time not to represent Hanks’s character. It is not the same judgment he will make later in the film, after he becomes better informed. Fortunately, he has the open-mindedness to entertain the possibility of representing Hanks’s character, that perhaps Hanks’s character does have a winnable case, and that perhaps the risks associated with AIDS are not as great as he had at first imagined. He has the inquisitiveness and the truth- seeking skills to gather more accurate information. And

In the award-winning film Philadelphia, Denzel Washington plays a personal liability litigator who is not above increasing the amount a client seeks for “pain and suffering” by hinting to the client that he may have more medical problems than the client had at first noticed. Locate the film and watch the scene where a new poten- tial client, played by Tom Hanks, visits Washington’s office seeking representation. The scene starts out with Denzel Washington talking to a different client—a man who wants to sue the city over a foolish accident that the man brought upon himself. The scene establishes that Washington is a hungry lawyer who will take almost any case. Tom Hanks comes into the office and says that he wants to sue his former employer, believing that he was wrongly fired from his job because he has AIDS. You would think that Washington would jump at this opportunity. There is a lot of money to be made if he can win the case. Truth-seeking demands that the real reason for the firing be brought to light. But at this point in the story, Washington declines to take the case.

Notice what the filmmakers do with the camera angles to show what Washington is thinking as he con- siders what to do. His eyes focus on the picture of his wife and child, on the skin lesion on Hanks’s head, and on the cigars and other things Hanks touches. The story takes place during the early years when the general pub- lic did not understand AIDS well at all. It was a time when prejudices, homophobia, and misinformation sur- rounded the disease. Washington’s character portrays the uncertainty and misplaced fears of the U.S. public at that time. Not understanding AIDS or being misin- formed, Washington’s character is frightened for himself and for his family. Notice how he stands in the very far corner of his office, as physically far away from Hanks’s character as pos- sible. He wipes his hand against his trousers after shaking hands. The nonverbal thinking cues are so well done by the filmmakers that we are not surprised when Washington, having thought things through, refuses to take the case.

There is no question that critical thinking is wonder- fully powerful. Yet, by itself i t i s incomplete . We need knowledge, values, and sen- sitivities to guide our think- ing. Washington’s character is sensitive to what he thinks are the dangers of the disease

Some Habits Are Desirable, Others Are Not

The expressions mental disciplines and mental virtues can be used to refer to habits of mind as well. The word disciplines in a military context and the word virtues in an ethical context both suggest something positive. We use habits of mind, or at times personal attributes, or mindset elements, because these expressions are neutral. Some habits of mind, personal attributes, or mindset elements are positive, others not. A habit of mind like truth-seeking is positive. Other habits of mind, like indifference or intellectual dishonesty, are negative.

In Philadelphia, the plaintiff, played by Tom Hanks, and his lawyer, played by Denzel Washington, wade through a crowd of reporters. How does Denzel Washington’s character use critical thinking throughout the course of the film?

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he has the judiciousness to reconsider and to change his mind.

“If we were compelled to make a choice between these personal attributes [of a thoughtful person] and knowledge about the principles of logical reasoning together with some degree of technical skill manipulating special logical processes, we should decide for the former.”

John Dewey, How We Think8

Is a Good Critical Thinker Automatically a Good Person? To get a clearer sense of the colossal problems that result from our collective failures to anticipate consequences, watch the documentary film The Unforeseen (2007, directed by Laura Dunn). It is the remarkable story of the loss of quality of life and environmental degradation associated with real estate development in Austin, Texas, over the past 50 years. What if the city planners or the developers, when undertaking their due diligence, actually became aware from the evidence that they were setting the stage for serious future environmental problems? And what if, knowing that, they decided to move ahead anyway with the project? Thinking about these hypothetical questions makes us wonder about the ethics of the decision makers involved. Similarly, thinking about Denzel Washington’s character in Philadelphia, raises the question: “Does having strong critical thinking skills make a person ethical?”

We have been using the expression “strong critical thinker” instead of “good critical thinker” because of the ambiguity of the word good. We want to praise the per- son’s critical thinking without necessarily making a judg- ment about the person’s ethics. For example, a person can be adept at developing cogent arguments and adroit at finding the flaws in other people’s reasoning, but that same person can use these skills unethically to mislead and exploit a gullible person, perpetrate a fraud, or delib- erately confuse, confound, and frustrate a project.

A person can be strong at critical thinking, meaning that the person can have the appropriate dispositions, and be adept using his or her critical thinking skill, but still not be an ethical critical thinker. Take, for example, the remarkably deceitful Congressman Francis Underwood played by Kevin Spacey and his equally manipulative wife Claire Underwood played by Robin Wright from the Netflix series House of Cards. Or, consider the Machiavellian pope, Alexander VI, AKA Rodrigo Borgia, played by Jeremy Irons from the Showtime series The Borgias. These film characters use strong critical thinking to exploit, mislead, manipulate, and coerce whomever it takes to achieve their interests. Compelling examples however are not limited to the big screen. There have been people with superior thinking skills who, unfor- tunately, have used their talents for ruthless, horrific, and unethical purposes. It would be great if critical thinking and ethical virtue were one and the same. But they are not.

At times people make a public confession of the shame- less efforts to figure out how to deceive others. Consider, for example, the revelations that Victor Crawford, a tobacco lobbyist, made in his 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl. For excerpts search the Internet for “Victor Crawford Leslie

Stahl.” Crawford admits that he deliberately mislead and manipu- lated legislators and the general public to advance the interests of the tobacco industry. He says, “Was I lying? Yes, yes. . . Yes, yes. . . Of course. My job was to win. . . . Even if you’re going out lying about a product that’s gonna hurt kids.”9 Ms. Stahl calls him out, saying that he was unethical and despicable to act that way. For years Crawford used his critical thinking skills to confuse and deceive consum- ers so that his corporate masters could sell a product known to be addictive and deadly. Now, all these years later, he regrets having done that. The interview is part of his effort to make amends for his lies and the harm they may have caused to others.

Francis and Claire remind us in every episode that some strong critical thinkers are criminally unethical.

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Critical thinking is very useful in ethical decision making, but like any tool or process, it can be applied to unworthy and shameful purposes as well.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want. . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

George Carlin, Comedian10

Cultivate a Positive Critical Thinking Mindset Critical thinking skills can be strengthened by exercising them, which is what the examples and the exercises in this book are intended to help you do. Critical thinking habits of mind can be nurtured by internalizing the values that they embody and by reaffirming the intention each day to live by those values.11 Here are four specific suggestions about how to go about this.

1. Value Critical Thinking. If we value critical thinking, we desire to be ever more truth-seeking, open-minded, mindful of consequences, systematic, inquisitive, con- fident in our critical thinking, and mature in our judg- ment. We will expect to manifest that desire in what we do and in what we say. We will seek to improve our critical thinking skills.

2. Take Stock. It is always good to know where we are in our journey. The “Critical Thinking Disposition Self- Rating Form,” presented earlier in this chapter (page 22), will give us a rough idea. If we have general positive critical thinking habits of mind, that should show up in the score we give ourselves using this self-rating form.

3. Be Alert for Opportunities. Each day we should be alert for opportunities to make decisions and solve problems reflectively. Rather than just reacting, take some time each day to be as reflective and thought- ful as possible in addressing at least one of the many problems or decisions of the day.

4. Forgive and Persist. Forgive yourself if you happen to backslide. Pick yourself up and get right back on the path. These are ideals we are striving to achieve. We each need discipline, determination, and persistence. There will be missteps along the way, but do not let them deter you. Working with a friend, mentor, or role model might make it easier to be successful, but it is really about what you want for your own thinking process.

THINKING CRITICALLY How Does TV Portray Critical Thinking? You can do this exercise by yourself or with a classmate. This exercise requires watching TV for two hours. Begin with a clean piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the mid- dle of the page. Mark one side + and the other –. With pen- cil and paper in hand, watch CBS, NBC, or ABC, or a major cable network that shows commercials along with its regu- lar programming. Pay close attention to the commercials, not the regular programming. Note each of the people who appear on screen. If you judge that a person is portrayed as a strong critical thinker, note it (e.g., Woman in car commer- cial +). If you think a person is portrayed as a weak critical thinker, note that (e.g., Three guys in beer commercial - - -). If you cannot tell (e.g., in the car commercial there were two kids riding in the back seat but they were not doing or saying anything), do not make any notation. After watching only the commercials during one hour of programming, total up the

plusses and the minuses. Now repeat the same activity for another hour, but this time pay attention only to the regular programming, not the commercials. Again note every char- acter who appears and indicate on the paper if the person is generally portrayed as a strong critical thinker (e.g., evil bad guy +, clever detective +) or a weak critical thinker (e.g., victim who foolishly walked into the dark alley alone –). Tally up the plusses and minuses. Based on your observations, is there a tendency or pattern that might be evident regard- ing the critical thinking strengths or weaknesses of children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged people, and senior citizens?

Alternative: Or do the exercise with old episodes of Breaking Bad, Dexter, Mad Men, and Law and Order SVU.

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2.2 Core Critical Thinking Skills

We have talked about the “eager” in the phrase “skilled and eager” to think critically. Now let’s explore the “skilled” part by examining those mental skills that are at the core of purposeful reflective judgment.

Interpreting and Analyzing the Consensus Statement When thinking about the meaning and importance of the term “critical thinking” in Chapter 1, we referred to an expert consensus. That consensus identified certain cognitive skills as being central to critical thinking. Their research findings are shown below.12 Let’s unpack their quote. The experts identify six skills:

Interpretation Evaluation Explanation Analysis Inference Self-Regulation

As the Delphi definition of the critical thinking pro- cess indicates,13 we apply these six skills to:

Evidence (facts, experiences, statements)

Conceptualizations (ideas, theories, ways of seeing the world)

Methods (strategies, techniques, approaches)

Criteria (standards, benchmarks, expectations)

Context (situations, conditions, circumstances)

We are expected to ask a lot of tough questions about all five areas. For example, How good is the evidence? Do these concepts apply? Were the methods appropri- ate? Are there better methods for investigating this ques- tion? What standard of proof should we be using? How rigorous should we be? What circumstantial factors might lead us to revise our opinions? Good critical think- ers are ever-vigilant, monitoring and correcting their own thinking.

Putting the Positive Critical Thinking Mindset into Practice Here are a few suggestions about ways to translate each of the seven positive attributes into action.

Truth-seeking – Ask courageous and probing questions. Think deeply about the reasons and evidence for and against a given decision you must make. Pick one or two of your own most cherished beliefs, and ask yourself what reasons and what evidence there are for and against those beliefs.

Open-mindedness – Listen patiently to someone who is offering opinions with which you do not agree. As you listen, show respect and tolerance toward the person offering the ideas. Show that you understand (not the same as “agree with”) the opinions being presented.

Analyticity – Identify an opportunity to consciously pause to ask yourself about all the foreseeable and likely consequences of a decision you are making. Ask yourself what that choice, whether it is large or small, will mean for your future life and behavior.

Systematicity – Focus on getting more organized. Make lists of your most urgent work, family and educational

responsibilities, and your assignments. Make lists of the most important priorities and obligations as well. Compare the urgent with the important. Budget your time to take a systematic and methodical approach to fulfilling obligations.

Critical Thinking Confidence – Commit to resolve a challenging problem by reasoning it through. Embrace a question, problem, or issue that calls for a reasoned decision, and begin working on it yourself or in collaboration with others.

Inquisitiveness – Learn something new. Go out and seek information about any topic of interest, but not one that you must learn about for school or work, and let the world surprise you with its variety and complexity.

Judiciousness – Revisit a decision you made recently and consider whether it is still the right decision. See if any relevant new information has come to light. Ask if the results that had been anticipated are being realized. If warranted, revise the decision to better suit your new understanding of the state of affairs.

Delphi Definition of Critical Thinking

“We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based.”

— The Delphi Report, American Philosophical Association

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The Jury Is Deliberating In 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose a jury deliberates the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murder.14 The jury room is hot, the hour is late, and tempers are short. Ten of the twelve jurors have voted to convict when we join the story. In the classic American film ver- sion of Rose’s play, one of the two jurors who are still uncertain is Henry Fonda’s character.15 That character first analyzes the testimony of a pair of witnesses, putting what each said side by side. Using all his critical think- ing skills, he tries to reconcile their conflicting testimony. He asks how the old man could possibly have heard the accused man threaten the victim with the El Train roar- ing by the open window. From the facts of the situation, Fonda’s character has inferred that the old man could not have been telling the truth. Fonda then explains that infer- ence to the other jurors with a flawless argument. But the other jurors still want to know why an old man with apparently nothing to gain would not tell the truth. One of the other jurors, an old man himself, interprets that wit- ness’s behavior for his colleagues. The conversation then turns to the question of how to interpret the expression “I’m going kill you!” that the accused is alleged to have shouted. One juror wants to take it literally as a statement of intent. Another argues that context matters, that words and phrases cannot always be taken literally. Someone asks why the defense attorney did not bring up these

same arguments during his cross-examination of the wit- ness. In their evaluation, the jury does seem to agree on the quality of the defense—namely, that it was poor. One juror draws the conclusion that this means the lawyer thought his own client was guilty. But is that so? Could there be some other explanation or interpretation for the half-hearted defense?

The jury has the authority to question the quality of the evidence, to dispute the competing theories of the case that are presented by the prosecution and the defense, to find fault with the investigatory methods of the police, to dispute whether the doubts some members may have meet the criterion of “reasonable doubt” or not, and to take into consideration all the contextual and circumstantial ele- ments that may be relevant. In other words, a good jury is the embodiment of good critical thinking that a group of people practice. The stronger their collective skills, the greater the justice that will be done. To more fully appre- ciate the mix of emotion and interpersonal strife within which a group of people must make a life altering deci- sion, locate and watch 12 Angry Men. There are many great scenes in the classic release, particularly the El Train Scene.

“Pretending to know everything closes the door to what’s really there.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Scientist16

Critical Thinking Skills Fire in Many Combinations One way to present critical thinking skills is in the form of a list. But lists typically suggest that we move from one item to another in a predetermined step-by-step progres- sion, similar to pilots methodically working down the mandatory list of preflight safety checks. Critical thinking is not rote or scripted in the way that a list of skills might suggest.

Critical thinking is not the set of skills the experts identified, but rather it is using those skills in the process of making a ref lective, purposeful judgment. Imagine for a moment what it is like looking for an address while driving on a busy and unfamiliar street. To do this, we must simultaneously be coordinating the use of many skills, but fundamentally our focus is on the driving and not on the individual skills. We are concentrating on street signs and address numbers while also inter- preting traffic signals such as stoplights, and controlling the car’s speed, direction, and location relative to other vehicles. Driving requires coordinating physical skills such as how hard to press the gas or tap the brakes and mental skills such as analyzing the movement of our The old man could not possibly have heard the threat.

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Critical Thinking Mindset and Skills 29

vehicle relative to those around ours to avoid accidents. In the end, however, we say that we drove the car to the destination. We do not list all the skills, and we certainly do not practice them one by one in a serial order. Rather, we use them all in concert. Critical thinking has cer- tain important features in common with looking for an address while driving on a busy and unfamiliar street. The key similarity to notice here is that critical thinking requires using all the skills in concert, not one at a time or sequentially.

The intricate interaction of critical thinking skills in real-life problem solving and decision making may begin with an analysis, an interpretation, an inference, or an eval- uation. Then, using self-regulation, we may go back and check ourselves for accuracy. On other occasions, we may first draw an inference based on an interpretation and then evaluate our own inference. We may be explaining our rea- soning to someone and realize, because we are monitoring our own thinking, that our reasoning is not adequate. And this may lead us to recheck our analyses or our inferences to see where we may need to refine our thinking. That was what the jury, considered as a whole, was doing in 12 Angry Men—going back and forth among interpretation, analysis, inference, and evaluation, with Henry Fonda’s character as the person who called for more careful self- monitoring and self-correction. The jury’s deliberation demanded reflection, and an orderly analysis and evalu- ation of the facts, but deliberation is not constrained by adherence to a predetermined list or sequencing of mental events. Nor is critical thinking.