Critical thinking: a primer

Ever failed to organize an argument or support your point of view? Ever wondered why some people are very persuasive even when they defend an incorrect point of view? Ever been unable to form a full picture about a situation because of the difficult decisions involved?! If so then you need to train yourself to think critically.

Critical thinking is not necessarily about “criticism” as the name might suggest. It is about the way in which one analyses situations, argues own opinion, assesses evidence, presents own thoughts and handles difficult decisions. Someone with good critical thinking skills will be able to take a leading role and handle stress with mastery. A critical thinker is objective in perspective, democratic in nature towards other opinions and has a clear long-term objective. Someone with fine critical thinking skills is positive, dynamic and is educated. A critical thinker makes use of knowledge gained in any discipline to handle a seemingly-irrelevant situation. Obviously, critical thinkers are highly sought after by employers, college admission boards and any project supervisor. Why? Because college and school education is received by anyone, but only someone with good thinking skills will know how to actually use that knowledge, along with his or her general background knowledge to handle any difficulties.

Critical thinking vs. IQ

Credit: Pixabay.

As a matter of fact, I never thought about the idea of self-regulation until last year when I and a few friends of mine decided to participate in a competition to measure energy consumption patterns in Abu Dhabi. We made the questionnaires and gathered the results, made a report and were about to submit it when our Maths teacher criticized our questionnaire harshly. We used questions such as 'What type of air conditioner do you use?' to estimate the average energy consumption. We missed one important fact, however; that more than one factor goes into this calculation. For example, not only the type of air conditioning used matters, but also how often it is used, at what temperature it is set, external temperature and the number of rooms in the house. We finally decided to take this crazy decision of criticizing our own work. We put lots of boxes along each section explaining exactly how accurate are the conclusions drawn and what other factors could have been taken into consideration, but were not, due to practical difficulties. Fearing that we might have caused our own failure, we waited with anxiety until the release of the result. To our surprise, this whole concept of self-criticism was what impressed the judges and was a main factor that got us the first prize!!!

So is it all about intelligence?  Well intelligence plays a role into it, but it is not the only factor involved. As we all know, IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is used to measure intelligence. It tests things like response time, imaginative skills and the ability to perform certain mental operations. IQ measures something that’s just in you (and rather imperfectly, I might add); you cannot change it nor does it guarantee success.

To acquire good critical thinking skills you have to improve the following skills:

• Interpretation: Recognizing problems; arranging priorities; clarifying meaning and being able to comprehend a situation objectively. 
• Analysis: Going deeper than what the eye can see, as they say. You examine ideas, detect inconsistencies, identify any unsaid -but intended- meaning and spot any unstated assumptions. 
• Evaluation: Assessing credibility of a statement by considering the qualification and experience of whoever said it. Evaluation includes checking if the argument is up-to-date and relevant to the current situation, spotting contradictions, making sure that evidence indeed supports the conclusion and forecasting the implications of an argument. 
• Inference: Is the actual decision-making process. It is about drawing conclusions, making hypothesis and predictions, and checking for uncertainties in the conclusions drawn.
• Explanation: To present one’s ideas in a cogent and a coherent way. It is about being able to present and justify one’s reasoning with reference to the procedures followed, criteria used, evidence exploited, and the context taken into consideration. Explanation should also be supported by appropriate presentation methods which make use of accurate analogies to bring the idea closer to the audience.
• Self-regulation:  This is the most interesting property of a critical thinking in the sense that it leads to continuous improvement: To use critical thinking to improve one’s thinking skills even further! As strange as it sounds, self-regulation implies examining one’s own performance, avoiding repeating the same mistakes in the future and most importantly, looking back and saying: “How well did I handle the situation? Did I miss anything? Have I taken too fast a decision? Did my decision pay-off well or should I have handled the problem in a different way?” Self regulation includes self-correction of the reasoning or the result.

The Physics behind Aliens!

Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Here is an interesting story about astronomy and extraterrestrial life. In 1967 two Physicists, JocelynLGM-1, abbreviated from Little Green Men, indicating extraterrestrial creatures! Later on it was found that the regularity of this pattern is due to rotating neutron stars (pulsars) losing energy as they rotate; an exclusively scientific reason. As you can see, jumping to immediate conclusions can mislead the investigator and impair the judgment. The possibility of extraterrestrial communication was thought of, even though it represents one of the extreme possibilities during any scientific investigation. It was taken into consideration and objectively analyzed, while other alternatives were being investigated in parallel.

Bell and Antony Hewish discovered cosmic radio signals which were detected at equal time intervals. The uniformity of this pattern led many people at the time to believe that it was an Alien civilization’s attempt to contact us. In fact, the source of the signal was named

Imagine for the sake of argument that someone comes to you and asks you to argue the existence of alien extraterrestrial life. Your answer can be one of the following four statements:

A- “Aliens do not exist because we have never received any outer space signal from them.”

B- “Aliens do not exist because no evidence has been found so far to prove their existence.”

C- “Aliens do exist because our theoretical model, which agrees with current observations, suggests it is highly likely that the conditions on our Earth are found elsewhere in the universe.”

D- “The existence of Aliens cannot be determined currently, since no evidence has proved or disproved it, neither our current technological capabilities enable us for intergalactic travel to check for ourselves.”

  

Even though it remains unknown whether extraterrestrial life does exist, one can use current evidence and theories to form a general opinion on that subject. The four statements above become increasing critical from A to D, not because the information provided is more “right”, but rather because of the reasoning given to support each argument. Each sentence can be taken separately and analyzed to assess the strength of its reasoning as follows:

Sentence A: A very vague reason and an unjustified conclusion. What if Aliens do communicate with us but we have never received their signals because we’re too far away or not advanced enough technologically to receive the messages? Or maybe Aliens are too primitive or are not intelligent enough to communicate with us. Or could it just be that they don’t want to contact us. Maybe they are unaware of our existence in the first place!

Sentence B: A slightly stronger argument than the first, but is still an unjustified one. Even though it avoids linking existence to communication like the first statement does, it ignores a set of important possibilities. What if we do discover evidence of their existence in the future?! What if we are just not capable technologically to discover alien life? What if certain physical barriers are what prevents us from such discovery?

Sentence C: A stronger argument than the previous two, because the reasoning it employs makes use of theoretical models that have proved to work in the past. A main weakness in this argument is that it takes predictions for granted. What if the current theoretical model contradicts future observations? Wouldn’t it be inaccurate, then, and put down the argument altogether? What if the theory is correct but the conditions, despite being similar to those on earth, do not lead to development of life? What if other conditions, unlike those on Earth, somehow lead to life development?!

Sentence D: The strongest argument of all. It takes into account all the above questions and leaves the door open for future findings and discoveries. It does not take too fast a decision and does not oversee the fact that we might just be unable to find the answer without enough proof.

As you see, the wider the range of possibilities considered the stronger the argument. A strong argument not only considers all possibilities, it is also future foreseeing, considerate of other arguments, general enough to cover most aspects of the subject and provides enough evidence in a simple, presentable way.

Critical thinking is one of the many areas in the field of cognitive science that have been extensively researched over years. While many of us are unaware of the existence of such thing as cognitive science in the first place, its implications are so vast that it ultimately governs a large portion of our lives.

If you're interested, you might wanna watch this video on the best strategies that can be used to debunk unsupported claims.

Cheers :)