What is Critical Thinking?

When I first began teaching critical thinking courses in university I used the standard textbooks at the time, and in the first chapters of those textbooks you typically find a discussion of “what is critical thinking?”. I didn’t find these attempts very helpful.  

Either they gave you short, unhelpful slogans (“critical thinking is the art of being right”) or they gave you long lists of skills and habits of thought and character traits that are supposed to define a “critical thinker”. 

The exercise always struck me as misguided. It would be like trying to define “good parenting”. There are lots of ways of being a good parent, but not all parents are good in the same way. And one could never write down a list of attributes that all and only good parents possess. 

I don’t find it helpful to construct definitions of critical thinking. What is helpful is identifying the goals and values of critical thinking, what it is that critical thinkers are aiming for. 

My thinking on this issue has become increasingly minimalist over time. I believe there are three core critical thinking values:

1. Pursue true beliefs, avoid false beliefs. 

2. Make good decisions, avoid bad decisions.

3. Think for yourself.

The subject matter of critical thinking is defined as follows: anything that promotes or interferes with the pursuit of these three goals is within the domain of critical thinking.

That’s it. I view everything that I talk or write about as falling within this characterization. The psychology of tribalism, for example, is relevant because our tribal affinities can both enhance and interfere with our ability to pursue our critical thinking goals. Not all of psychology has this feature, so not all of psychology is relevant to critical thinking.

To give another example, formal logic is relevant to critical thinking the extent that learning it helps us to pursue critical thinking goals. Not all of formal logic is relevant in this way (most of it is not), so I don’t teach formal logic beyond a certain level of basic logical literacy. 

Why is Critical Thinking Important?

I used to think it was obvious to everyone that critical thinking skills were valuable and important, and that a society with more people who have training in these skills is a better one than a society with fewer such people. 

I don’t take think this is obvious anymore. I still think it’s true, I just don’t think it’s obvious to people.  

What is true is that if you ask people directly, “do you care whether your beliefs are true or false?”; “do you care whether you make good or bad decisions?”; “do you care whether your beliefs are your own, that you can think for yourself?”, everyone says “yes”. When phrased the way, everyone cares about critical thinking.

What isn’t obvious to people is what it means to have or lack critical thinking skills, and what effect the having or lacking of such skills has on the quality of our lives and on the functioning of society.  

Thus, part of critical thinking education is making people aware of the many ways in which our own personal self-interest, the interests of those near and dear to us, and the welfare of society as a whole, is partly a function how well we can think and reason and make decisions, and how these skills are distributed through society.

The Videos in This Course

The videos in Part 1 were among the first I created when I was producing my first podcast, called The Critical Thinker Podcast, back in 2010-11. They address this question of the value of critical thinking. 

The videos in Part 2 were also created for the Critical Thinker Podcast. I introduce what I called the "Five Pillars of Critical Thinking": Logic, Argumentation, Rhetoric, Background Knowledge, and Character (Attitudes and Values).

The videos in Part 3 were created more recently (2014), as part of my project on Critical Thinking About Science. In these videos I give a more fleshed-out version of the view I described here in this introduction, that focuses on defining the aims and goals of critical thinking, and how critical thinking is always ABOUT something, some issue or subject matter. I also introduce the notion of a “critical thinking toolbox”, which is a very useful model.