Critical Thinking What It Is and What It Is Not 1. Critical thinking is the same as disagreement. 2.

. Critical thinking aims to embarrass or humiliate, allowing you to dominate somebody else. 3. Critical thinking entails nitpicking. 4. Critical thinking requires no imagination or creativity. 5. Critical thinking can be applied only to the beliefs and positions of others. If you think any of these statements is true, you are misinformed about critical thinking. But dont feel bad. Theres widespread ignorance among many well- and not-so-well educated about the nature and function of critical thinking. And the number of people who dont, cant, or wont think critically is even greater. Just what is critical thinking? We can begin to answer this question by considering the five preceding statements. 1. Critical thinking is not the same as disagreement. There is a considerable difference between disagreement and critical thinking. A disagreement is a clash of views. When you assert an opinion and I deny it or state an opposing opinion, we are disagreeing but not thinking critically. For example: You: Handguns should be outlawed. I: There should be no handgun legislation. You: Theres far too much violence on television. Why, just the other night I: Compared with movies, there isnt much violence on television. You: Living together with a boyfriend/girlfriend before marriage increases the chances of a successful marriage. Why, look at my wife and me I: I dont see how living together could improve the marriages chances of succeeding. Obviously disputes like these are commonplace. When the parties to the dispute feel strongly about their positions, they are likely to reassert them, as if stating them again and again, perhaps in other words, will establish their soundness. While such disagreements call for critical thinking if the parties to them are to reach agreement or enlightenment, they are not themselves examples of critical thinking. Critical thinking involves determining and assessing the reasons for an opposing view. It aims to find out whether a position is worth holding, thereby serving as a basis for further discussion and inquiry that, ideally, will lead the disputants to a better understanding of an issue. You believe handguns should be outlawed; I dont. If were thinking critically, well closely inspect the reasons for and against each position. We dont merely keep reasserting our positions. I look at the reasons for your position; you look at the reasons for mine. Just as important, each of us is willing to have our positions subjected to this kind of scrutiny. 1

2. Critical thinking does not aim to embarrass or humiliate, and it does not allow you to dominate somebody else. Thinking critically does give one a kind of power. After all, if you can determine and assess the reasons for a belief, if you can make a discussion more enlightening, you stand a good chance of getting to the nub of an issue, of solving problems, of gaining greater control over your life, of attaining truth. In short, critical thinking does help you gain knowledge, and knowledge, as commonly observed, is a kind of power. But notice that the power critical thinking gives you is the power that comes from knowing, from attaining truth, and justified belief. It is not the tyranny of imposing ones will on another, of inflicting humiliation, or even of trying to persuade another to your viewpoint. The goal of critical thinking is the justification of belief. A belief is justified when better reasons count for it than against it. Critical thinking helps you take measure of your beliefs. When they are justified, you know you have a solid basis for believing what you do, that you can defend your beliefs if necessary, and that you have legitimate grounds for action. But I can never justify my beliefs by dominating or humiliating you, or even by persuading you to believe as I do. Those who think they can are tyrants, not critical thinkers.

3. Critical thinking does not entail nitpicking. A nitpicker is one who is unduly preoccupied with minutiae. The critical thinker, by contrast, is concerned with substance, not trivia. Yes, thinking critically requires analysis, which in turn calls for attention to detail. But the details the critical thinker attends to are both relevant to a position and significant in its support. They are not side or trivial issues. For example, suppose you claim: Many children enjoy watching Saturday morning television. So they arent being exploited. Upon hearing this assertion, I reply: Just what do you mean by enjoy watching? We then spend the next several minutes exercising ourselves over the meaning of enjoy watching. Language clarification certainly is an important part of thinking critically. If we dont have the same understanding of the meaning of words, we lack a common basis for thinking critically about a subject. But that doesnt mean that every term always needs to be defined before we can proceed to think critically. The use of some terms simply is not problematic. Such is the case here with enjoy watching. What I understand by enjoy watching surely is close enough to what you understand by it for us to get on with the issue. Even more important, your position doesnt hinge upon the meaning of enjoy watching. So when I ask you what you mean by enjoy watching, I am nitpicking. Worse, Im probably steering us down the path of some semantic dead end while illumination of the real issue lies in another direction. Incidentally, nitpickers like to introduce irrelevancies. For example, suppose I said to you: But I know a kid who doesnt enjoy watching Saturday morning television or Saturday morning television is full of commercials or Saturday morning television is 2

replacing outdoor recreation. Maybe so, but these observations are irrelevant to the issue at hand: whether or not kids who enjoy watching Saturday morning television are being exploited. So far I have offered nothing that shows I am thinking critically about what you asserted. What I have offered is a mix of hairsplitting and irrelevancy. In contrast, suppose I said to you: But is it necessarily true that when kids are enjoying themselves they are not being exploited? Now Id be getting at the heart of your position, of what youre assuming. It is this assumption that allows you to claim that because many kids enjoy watching Saturday morning television they are not being exploited. I have zeroed in on something both relevant and significant in your position, something you and I must toss around if were interested in thinking critically about this important matter. If at this point you accuse me of nitpicking, then you simply dont know the difference between thinking critically and nitpicking. And if you say that Im dragging in side issues, you simply cant distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant, the significant and the trivial. Of course focusing on what is both relevant and significant to a position isnt always an easy matter. In fact, in complex discourse it can be a formidable challenge. Most of us need training to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant, the significant from the trivial. In part the study of critical thinking is designed to provide this training.

4. Critical thinking does require information and creativity. Some view critical thinking as a dry-as-dust exercise in analysis. Although its true that critical thinking requires painstaking analysis, it also can call for creative thinking, for it sometimes requires the formulation of examples to discredit a position. Heres a very simple example. Suppose a couple spends $62 in twenty minutes while shopping at a supermarket. Upon leaving the store, the husband mumbles: Sixty two dollars in twenty minutes! Why, this inflation is out of control! His wife demurs. Not necessarily, she says. Just yesterday I was in there for over an hour and spent only $12. And the Warbucks next door just spent over $30,000 in ten minutes. Yes, but that was on a Mercedes. Thats my point, says the wife. Inflation isnt measured by how fast we spend our money but by how much our money can buy compared with some previous time. This woman is thinking critically; she is examining what her husband asserted. But notice how she does it. Through an imaginative use of examples, she makes the point that inflation isnt measured by how fast we spend our money, as her husband implied, but by what our money can buy relative to some past time. When critical thinking calls for such imaginative use of examples, it is creative. Critical thinkers are also being creative when they formulate possible solutions to a problem or explanations for a phenomenon. Think of a detective, and youll see what I mean. Yes, good detectives must test and evaluate solutions or explanations; that is, they must think critically. But they must first be able to devise possible solutions or

explanations, what in science are called hypotheses. Failing that they cant solve the crime. Coming up with hypotheses requires a fertile imagination, a creative mind. The relation between critical and creative thinking is perhaps best seen in the laboratory. Consider, for example, how medical researcher Ignaz Semmelweis discovered and demonstrated the importance of physician hygiene in patient care. Between 1844 and 1846, the death rate from a mysterious disease termed childhood fever in the First Maternity Division in the Vienna General Hospital averaged an alarming 10 percent. Curiously, the rate in the Second Division, where midwives rather than doctors attended the mothers, was only about 2 percent. How could the difference be explained? More important, did the explanation account for the disease itself? Despite the heroic efforts for two years to account for the higher rate of childhood fever in the doctor-supervised division, Semmelweis remained thwarted. Then one day a colleague accidentally cut himself on the finger with a students scalpel while performing au autopsy. Although the cut seemed harmless enough, the man died shortly thereafter, exhibiting symptoms identical to those of childhood fever. A thought struck Semmelweis. Perhaps doctors and medical students, who spent their mornings doing autopsies before making their division rounds, were unwittingly transmitting to the women something they picked up from the cadavers. By drawing on a vast repertoire of knowledge and experience but also on imagination and intuition, Semmelweis had devised a possible solution to the mystery of childhood fever. Now he had to criticize his explanation; that is, subject it to tests. If Semmelweis was right, then the disease could be checked by requiring doctors and students to clean their hands before examining patients. Semmelweis insisted that they do just that. Doctors and students were forbidden to examine patients without first washing their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime. Voila! In 1848 the death rate in the First Division fell to less than 2 percent. The point is that, while the critical and creative aspects of thinking can be distinguished, they cannot be easily separated. The effective critical thinker inevitably is creative. Sometimes, as in the example of the husband and wife, creativity yields imaginative examples that point up the weakness of a position. Other times, as with Semmelweis, it yields solutions to a problem or explanations for a phenomenon that then must be tested and evaluated; that is, criticized. Still other times it yields imaginative leaps from assertions to their implications, thereby raising a discussion to a more illuminating level. In such cases a solution, explanation, or proposal has already been made. Upon hearing it the listener makes an imaginative inferential jump that typically is a test of verification. Consider, for example, this exchange: Sue: People who attempt suicide are looking for sympathy. Sam: You mean suicide attempts can be explained as appeals for sympathy? Sue: Exactly.

Sam: If thats the case, then we could at least expect suicide attempts to be rare in a society thats indifferent or hostile to its individual members. Youll probably agree that Sams inference shows considerable resourcefulness. For one thing, Sue never quite said what Sam inferred. In fact she may not have even considered the implication of her position. Furthermore, since no society like the one Same envisions now exists, Sam probably has never lived in such a society. He may not even be aware of any. Nevertheless, hes able to imagine one. And his hypothetical society is most germane, for if the suicide rate in such a society were low, then Sues position would be supported. Thus, thinking critically about what Sue said, Sam has devised an imaginative test for it.

5. Critical thinking can be applied not only to the beliefs and positions of others but also to our own. Although its true that you can apply critical thinking scalpel-like to dissect the claims you encounter, its application is by no means confined to the views of others. How many times have you pondered a personal problem? Perhaps you once agonized about whether to go to college, or what to major in, or whether to marry. Furthermore, as an intelligent, responsible citizen you probably want to clarify your positions on important social issues: capital punishment, abortion, gun control, violence on television, nuclear arms control, and the like. The resolution of personal problems and the formulation of viewpoints on social issues call for critical thinking. Indeed, individuals who cannot think critically are like rudderless boats, destined to flounder through life at the mercy of every eddy and crosscurrent that touches them.

Source: Invitation to Critical Thinking by Vincent E. Barry. CBS College Publishing (Holt, Rinehart and Winston): New York, 1984, pp. 5 9.