What is Critical Thinking?
The term “critical thinking” is in danger of becoming a cliche. In the March 2006 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, Howard Gabennesch worked to put some edges on what type of thinking actually qualifies as “critical thinking.” I will cite extensively from this article.
For starters, “a critical thinker is disinclined to take things at face value, suspicious of certainties, not easily swayed by conventional (or unconventional) wisdom, and distrustful of the facades and ideologies that serve as the ubiquitous cosmetics of social life. In other words, critical thinkers are necessarily skeptics.” Referring to Skeptic Magazine, Gabennesch described skeptics as follows:
- Skeptics do not believe easily. They have outgrown childlike credulity to a greater extent than most adults ever do.
- When skeptics take a position, they do so provisionally. They understand that their knowledge on any subject is fallible, incomplete, and subject to change.
- Skeptics defer to no sacred cows. They regard orthodoxies as the mortal enemy of critical thought-all orthodoxies, including those that lie close to home.
True skeptics leave open the possibility that their foundational assumptions will be disturbed. “Toes will be stepped on, tempers could flare, mortified members of the audience may stagger from the room.” Gabennesch cites the following examples of the sorts of claims about which true skeptics consciously work to keep an open mind, despite heavy social pressure to do otherwise:
- From the beginning, AIDS has been exaggerated as a significant threat to heterosexuals in the U.S.
- It is far from clear