Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Main Points to Critical Thinking


What does it mean to think critically? Thinking critically simply means to separate fact from fiction, come up with the best course of action, act on the decision, and then figure whether those actions will give desired results. Critical Thinking is a useful skill to pick up. It won't allow you to be swayed as easily as others, you'll learn a lot more from situations, you'll have greater chance of getting hired, and it'll help add some more control to your thought process and decision making, which will help organize your life.

 

Phases to Critical Thinking

 

 

· The Production phase and the Judgment phase.

· The Production Phase is exactly what it sounds like, the phase in the production of new ideas and concepts.

· The Judgment phase is where the mind judges the ideas and decides whether to make revisions.

Free will and Determinism

Do you think we’re free to live life how we want it or do you think that life is lived based off of some planner known as destiny? I think that life is lived with a little bit of both. I most definitely don’t believe completely in one or the other. There are too many factors that are out of our control for us to have complete free will, but there are still things that we’re able to control to an extent. We’re able to control whatever environment we wish to stay in, but not the weather and the amount of inhabitants that come in or out. One’s environment can have major influences on them, especially their thought process. Most decisions we make are just responses to our environmental influences.

Bad Thinking Habits

·         The Mine-Is-Better Habit

·         Face Saving

·         Resistance To Change

·         Conformity

·         Stereotyping

·         Self-Deception

The Mine Is Better Habit is habit normally seen children, where they think there particular item/idea is better, without even considering the opposite.

Face Saving is when someone tries to hide their embarrassment by keeping a straight face, or even blaming someone else for their mistake. Typically extremely prideful people exhibit this habit.

Resistance to Change is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s normally shown by older people when it comes to new technology.

Conformity means to conform to another’s belief without even challenging it to see if it makes sense critically.

Stereotyping is making generalizations out of certain groups, like races for example (there are a lot of these) black people love fried chicken and grape koolaid, Asian people love to do math, etc.

Self-deception is to literally deceive yourself by believing in something false, or against your morals.  

Problem Solving

Being good at problem solving is another skill that comes with being an effective critical thinker.

There are barriers to Problem solving:

·         Failure to recognize the problem

·         Not conceiving the problem enough.

·         Making hasty/risky decisions.

·         Failure to consider all consequences.

·         Failure to consider the feasibility of the solution.

Steps to Problem solving:

·         What’s the problem?

·         Determine the alternatives?

·         Determine advantages and disadvantages for each alterantive.

·         What’s the answer?

·         How well does it work?

The Six Thinking Hats:

·         White: Objective

·         Yellow: Positive

·         Green: Creative

·         Red: Feelings

·         Black: Negative

·         Blue: Process

Arguments

Have you ever been in a losing argument before? Frustrating isn’t it? As a critical thinker arguments will not only be easier, but maybe even fun. An argument is a form of thinking in which statements are used to back up statements. Almost like brain fighting. The statements that back up the main statement (conclusion) are called premises. If there is no claim defended with reasons, than the statement is not an argument. Deductive arguments are arguments in which the conclusion indefinitely follows from the premises. Inductive argument conclusion might follow from the premises.

  

 

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