Critical Thinking For Beginners

Critical Thinking For Beginners is aimed at those with little or no understanding of the term, who seek to see it used in practice in order to understand the implications and ramifications.

Opening Statement - This Statement Applies To People Who Work In General.

Every day, we wake up in the morning, dress ourselves and eat breakfast. These are things we do almost every morning without fail and we do because we often have things that must be done in the course of the day, such as work.

Some days we may not wake up until lunch time, we may not eat breakfast and we may spend the the day at home in our underwear because we don't have work and feel like breaking our routine.

Two very basic statements, the first speaks of what usually happens and the second tells of what may happen on occasion if we choose.

Applying critical thinking to these to statements we could say that on some days we do have breakfast and on some days we don't - That is a fair and rational statement - Even if we don't break routine very often, it is logical and fair to say that some of us, some times DO.


Implications And Restrictions

The previous statement was a small summation of working peoples habits, little information was provided and not many implications were made.

The statement made no restrictions about how you must view it. The information put forward was set up as a fact.

Because the implication was clear and no restrictions were placed we can not conclude the following:

1. On all days that we (the working public) don't work, we wake up until lunch.

2. We never have breakfast on non-working days

3. We don't like our routine.

These three statements can not be applied as a valid conclusion to our opening statement because:

1. There is no implication to prove that on all days that we don't work, we wake up at lunch time. Some days implies that it happens some of the time, but we do not have information that proves it to be all of the time.

2. We may not eat breakfast implies that we can choose not to eat breakfast. May is a word regarding choice, so if we may not eat breakfast then we also "may" eat breakfast of our own volition. There were not restrictions stating "We do not" eat breakfast, thus we may very well opt to eat breakfast, so long as we wake up within the time frame that would place us at breakfast time and not lunch time, at which point eating breakfast is a chronological impossibility.

3. We may very well like our routine and the fact that sometimes we break our routine does not in any way offer a conclusion other than that of - We feel like breaking our routine, however we are not given a reason as to why the routine is broken, so we can not make any accurate evaluations on why we break our routine.

Using critical thinking we have to work with the information we are given, we can not add the resulting extrapolations that would occur if our assumptions were part of the whole picture - Because our assumptions are not part of the original information.


Emotions And Bias

Our emotions can trick us into bringing unnecessary bias into the evaluation equation, when the fact is our bias and emotions should play no part in whether a statement has any validity or not. Feelings don't count, in fact they obscure the course of summation.

We must learn what our biases are in relation to a given piece of information so that we might counter our bias and reach the logical conclusion unhindered.

Whether you laugh, cry, scream, vent or boil, your emotions have absolutely no bearing on validity whatsoever.

Logic is the key to critical thinking, not emotions.

The Second Statement

In our next statement you are told of a fact, some of the wider details are left out, which will be revealed later.

Here it is:
" The man named Mr X stands in a court room in front of the jury, the judge and a group of crying women staring straight at him, they all cry when they see him and they comfort each other. Protesters stand outside chanting with vigor and anger, his name can be heard among their protestations. The man named Mr X, admits to causing the deaths of 6 women and 2 young children. The jury are shocked by the further details."

Now what emotions and bias, has this statement stirred up for you?

What can we say for sure from this snippet?

1. The Man has admitted to causing death - Yes he has it is written there.

2. People are upset - Yes, women are crying and protesters are angry.

Can we now deduce that the man is a murderer? - No, he may be (for whatever reason) lying and may not actually have killed anyone. We do not know if he is telling the truth because the statement has not told us this yet.

So now some more information:
The man is telling the truth, but the women are that are crying are his family and believe he has done nothing wrong

So, how does this now affect our ability to look at the statement?

We, now know that he indeed did cause the deaths of at least eight people (we do not know if there was more) and we also know that the women crying believe he has done nothing wrong - Huh?

Maybe it was an accident and he didn't mean to cause any harm.

Here is some more information:
The Man Purposefully Killed The Women And Children With A Machine Gun

Do you now think that he must be guilty and that his actions were evil? At each stage I have left out information to show you that the lack of information can be as important as the statement itself, which is why we can not afford to make snap judgments based on assumptions, bias and emotions. Without critical thinking, you may have gone off the path completely.

Now, for the last piece of the puzzle to clear it up for once and for all.

"The man Mr X was a soldier in the war, he had found a village of prisoners, including 58 young children and 14 women who had been beaten and tortured. He tried to help them escape, but was shot at by two young 10 year old boys who were part of the prison camps guardianship, the two boys had now shot Mr X and killed three young girls aged 4, 7 and 9. Mr X used his machine gun to hold back the fire from the guards, while 6 more women guards threw grenades at the prisoners, he managed to shot those guards and the two young soldier boys and escape with the remaining 69 living survivors. The man Mr X was given the highest medal of recommendation and is a hero to the prison camp survivors"

Aha! - So with the remaining information we learn that the man was a hero and was not a vicious, evil cold blooded killer, that the lack of information may at some point lead you to believe. If you don't use critical thinking, the whole story can get obscured.

What you don't know can often be more important than what you do know, so it is important to only make critical thinking evaluations within the parameters of the information you receive, but never than that or you may possibly make a misjudgment.

Critical Thinking For Beginners By "AJ James"



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