{"id":59,"date":"2024-11-28T17:35:55","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T17:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/?p=59"},"modified":"2025-11-06T21:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T21:26:13","slug":"what-is-critical-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/2024\/11\/28\/what-is-critical-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Critical Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><em>\u201cI try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions\u2026Don\u2019t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can\u2019t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014Noam Chomsky<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Simply put, critical thinking is having good reasons for any belief that you hold. More formally, critical thinking is defined as the analysis of facts and arguments in order to form conclusions using rational, skeptical, and unbiased evaluation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-text-subtitle is-style-text-subtitle--1\"><strong>What makes a reason to believe something good or bad?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A good reason to believe something is one that makes the belief more likely to be true or more probable. A bad reason to believe something makes a belief more unlikely to be true or improbable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, suppose while flying in an airplane you notice that you can see more of the horizon than when you are on the ground. This is a good reason to believe the the Earth is round rather than flat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, suppose you find the idea of sentience in lower animals unpleasant because you enjoy killing them. Basing your belief on your own feelings and interests rather than on objective reason makes your belief more likely to be untrue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-text-subtitle is-style-text-subtitle--2\"><strong>Why is critical thinking important?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Some people believe that much of the world&#8217;s problems would be lessened greatly if more people could just think more critically. Take Nazi Germany. If the German people simply questioned the lies and actions of the Nazi regime, it is quite possible that the nightmare that followed could have been averted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-text-subtitle is-style-text-subtitle--3\"><strong>Exercise<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Identify a belief that you feel strongly about. List the reasons you hold this belief. Are they good or bad reasons?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Critical thinking is having good reasons for any belief that you hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[5,4,9,6],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reasoning","tag-beliefs","tag-critical-thinking","tag-reasoning","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalthought.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}