English:
Critical thinking is a term that is directly linked to whether a person’s thought is clear of rather unclear. It refers to the process involving intellectual discipline of skilfully as well as actively putting into concept information, analyzing it, applying it, synthesizing the information and evaluating the information that has been gathered from experience, communication, reasoning, or observation as route to a particular action or actions and belief systems. Critical thinking involves exhibiting intellectual values that are very important during reasoning. These values include fairness, clarity, relevance, consistency and accuracy among others (Moore, Noel, and Parker 124). With these values, one can examine structures of thought for the purpose and importance of sound reasoning. Critical thinking is much used and important for education purposes and is multidisciplinary in nature, incorporated within many modes of thinking. This essay is important as it explains clearly the qualities of good critical thinking and reasoning, with various values as well as intellectual standards that are important to proper reasoning. It will also explain how these elements are important in developing good arguments that are strong, fair and readily accepted even by antagonists as well as critics and sceptics.
Critical thinking usually involves two main ideas which are, firstly acquiring information and developing skills and a belief system from the information gathered and secondly is using the skills acquired as a way to guiding a person to behave in a certain way. These are the characteristics of good critical thinking. However, they differ from bad critical thinking whereby individuals only acquire information and retain it. They then get skills from information but only handle them as part of their possession rather than forming habits out them and using them and also, they use the skills acquired as habit but one thing is that they do not accept the results the skills bring and for these reasons, they possess poor critical thinking (Moore, Noel, and Parker 263).
In President George Bush’s speech to congress, aspects of critical thinking appear throughout. The government use values such as fairness, relevance and clarity to make decisions on how to handle terrorism by first of all gathering as much evidence and information as possible, warning the ones behind the threats first before taking any form of action such troop deployment in Iraq, Afghanistan, sanctions such in North Korea. With top intelligent agencies and support from government, they have been able to get the necessary information before the terrorists act. They have been able to trace the causes of such terror threats and attacks and gathered the necessary information through investigation hence; prevent instances of post hoc fallacies that would greatly affect their decisions and cost countless innocent lives.
Good reasoning is a very important aspect as it helps enhance argumentation and reduce instances of biasness and hasty generalizing that are mostly incorrect. For reasoning to be good and accepted it first of all should be backed and represented by relevant, correct and clear facts. Facts are important because they provide substantial evidence to support one’s argument. They may also be complemented with statistics that also help strengthen the evidence and consequently the argument at hand. However, the facts and statistics should be correct since a critic or sceptic may trace the source of the fact and statistic and use it against the argument (Moore, Noel, and Parker 122).Ways that assist in the representation of facts and statistics are through the use of visual aids such as photographs, graphs, charts and diagrams. These help one to further support the argument and give more evidence that is vivid, clear and detailed and also attract the readers or recipients’ attention. However, it is very necessary for one to explain the visual aids well enough. The arguments should incorporate aspects of criteria specific assessment as well as evaluation whereby the problem is broken down into components that are easier to handle, more specific and less ambiguous.
For reasoning purpose, mostly in the sense improving it, a substantial amount of evidence is mandatory and with this, one is capable of giving more examples that support the argument. One is can explain the argument clearly and easily for the readers to enjoy and easily understand it. In contrast, poor reasoning is attributed to mostly hasty generalizations as well as use of false analogies that lead to the formation of what is called fallacious arguments. These arguments are mostly incorrect and misguided, and they lead to the development of stereotypes (Moore, Noel, and Parker156). One big example is the one from President George Bush’s speech to congress where he addresses the issue of HIV and AIDS in Africa. His statistics are generalizations of the whole situation with no solid evidence, and this may very much alter and negatively affect the perception people have about the African people.
Good values, traits and virtues as far as intellect is concerned refer to those elements of thought that positively influence reasoning and make one have good critical thinking. They include courage, whereby one is able to fairly face notions, belief systems as well as ideas for which a person is uncomfortable with or rather negative about and is an important virtue because it overrules those ideologies considered wrong and irrational and enables one to find justifications in them which could lead to opposite conclusions that are rational and correct. One way of increase one’s courage is by having enough evidence support one’s arguments (Moore, Noel, and Parker 121). Use of facts and figures is one way to promote courage. Intellectual humility is another value that is important for one to exhibit during reasoning and critical thinking. It enables one to recognize the limits that are there to particular knowledge and enables one not to claim more knowledge than one has. It is important as it increases one’s sensitivity to certain knowledge preventing instances of biasness and giving wrong information as result of generalization. (Baehr and Jason 198)
Integrity is another virtue that involves a person being true to his or her thinking, and this helps to uphold fairness even when handling critics, sceptics and other antagonists. Empathy is a value that enables one to be frank when trying to understand others as it requires one to put oneself in other people’s shoes and is seen where one considers the view points of those in opposition or antagonists in one’s argument. It is very important because it reduces instances of objections and also increases fairness. Another virtue is perseverance where one should be able to uphold truth despite various frustrations or difficult times. Having faith when reasoning is another trait and involves being confident that in the long run the best of interest will be met. These are the main virtues or values which are important for critical thinking and reasoning.
For the purpose of evaluating one’s own reasoning, there are certain intellectual standards are necessary as a way to evaluate thinking. These standards include firstly the problem at hand that needs solving. This is simply the area of concern that needs assessment, for example in the United States president bush clearly states the problem at hand being terrorism and delves into the issue throughout the speech. Secondly is the goal or objective to be met. (Paul, Richard, and Elder 167) Goals are wider and general while objectives a more specific and most of the time short lived. This standard enables one to have it clear on what one desires to achieve. As for the speech president bush clearly explains that his goal is to stop tyranny and wipe out terrorism. Thirdly is the frame of reference or rather ones point of view while reasoning or thinking. President Bush’s point of view is global peace and freedom which is vital for economic growth. Fourthly is assumptions and reasoning begins with making assumptions that will guide one while assessing a particular situation. Fifth are consequences. One should be clear about the implications as well as the consequences. The sixth standard includes reasoning that leads to a conclusion; the seventh is considering the objections or criticism coming from alternative points of view. (Paul, Richard, and Elder 67)
Works Cited
Baehr, Jason S.. The inquiring mind: on intellectual virtues and virtue epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Moore, Brooke Noel, and Richard Parker. Critical thinking. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007. Print.
Paul, Richard, and Linda Elder. A guide for educators to critical thinking competency standards: standards, principles, performance indicators, and outcomes with a critical thinking master rubric. Dillon, Calif.: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2005. Print.
