Comment by happytesd8889 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by happytesd8889 | Hacker News Reader

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People always use this term "critical thinking" on the internet and I am not sure anybody that uses it has a good definition of what it means or why it is something that can or must be taught in a college kind of environment.

At least personally, it's concerning to find out how many people think they are thinking critically all the time, but are not able to think critically about the definition of critical thinking.

It seems to me that there are several common ways people define the term:

1. To mean any innate interest or drive whatsoever for knowledge in any topic that is remotely academic or related to something academic. Typically in the context of something free-form and not guided by an instructor.

2. To mean the ability to re-evaluate beliefs shaped by the knowledge you have previously absorbed. This is the most common definition but also the most problematic since it rarely involves questioning your beliefs about critical thinking itself in the future. In essence you are replacing one source of truth with another source of truth making claims based on authority. This often leads to the typical "I learned about critical thinking, now I will reject anything my parents say as false and things my school says as true". I don't believe that is what is meant by this definition, but it is unfortunately very common for people to leave their "critical thinking class" with that kind of takeaway. They also might leave their critical thinking class with the tendency to come up with meta questions and meta narratives and then put them on the internet a bit like what I'm doing. I hate that as well since it's incredibly annoying.

3. To mean the ability to come up with solutions to a novel problem; to synthesize information from a variety of sources and come to a conclusion substantially different from each source individually.

As part of my history degree a required course was a guide to studying history (I don't remember what it was called - it was so long ago my degree could be considered history at this point). The whole course was about looking at the narrative in whatever work we were reading and then thinking about the author of that narrative. It was important to consider what the author was (and wasn't) saying in their work, to consider reasons why they were and weren't saying things.

For instance (and this wasn't an example from the course - that would be brutal to read the whole thing over a semester - I can barely remember the works we discussed directly) - Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He has a discussion around Christianity and the Catholic Church being one of the reason's for Rome's fall. It's interesting to place this idea in the context of HIS time - he was writing during the late 18th century and we see his contemporary modes of thoughts in events like the French Revolution, when there was a deliberate effort to remove the Catholic Church's power. The contemporary thought and his arguments mirrored each other. It was as much studying the work in its historical context as studying what the work was saying. This is what I think of when I think of critically thinking - considering all the layers of both the argument and why it's being made.

These are probably details around your point 2 in that they are meta questions, and while annoying, are vital to engage with a historical text outside of anything but as a collection of facts and an entertaining narrative.

Hmm. I mean an actual class in critical thinking. It consisted of several things, but mostly things like basic logic, fallacies and so on.

In other words, neither of three options listed.

Oh okay that makes a lot of sense. I had a required course in philosophy that was essentially just that as well.

I suppose that is why I'm confused when the term is used, since I don't think I would use the term critical thinking for avoiding logical fallacies. A better term might be "not wrong thinking". Of course this also should take into account that some things we call logical fallacies probably shouldn't be considered logical fallacies at all, like "slippery slope" arguments and so forth, which are considered to be a fallacy since there is no mathematical implication, despite the obviously correct nature of many slippery slope arguments.

The word critical implies some sort of criticism, I'm not sure if identifying a logical fallacy is really what we typically mean by criticism. At the end of the day I guess the word itself isn't important.

You're right. Academics and graduates are terrible for claiming universities teach critical thinking, yet never stating exactly what they mean or how they think they're doing that. Maybe an obscure philosophy class tries, but the vast majority of students don't take that and the claim is made about a college education in general, not philosophy classes specifically.

Seems to me like it's a self-defeating argument. If they were really teaching critical thinking as a skill, degree holders would immediately start arguing with them about this vague and poorly thought out claim, but in practice people just nod along.

The CIA has a school for intelligence analysts.[1]

"At the beginning of 2002, the courses were as following: during the first week, an introduction to intelligence topics included the history, mission and values of the CIA, as well as a unit on the history of intelligence an literature taught by the Center for The Study of Intelligence’s (CSI’s). Next, during the following five weeks, analysts are introduced to a variety of skills including analytic thinking, writing and self-editing, briefing, data analysis techniques and teamwork exercises, these representing the basic skills for a CIA analyst. After these five weeks in the classroom, the students go on a four-week interim assignment meant to help them understand how the DI relates to other CIA components, making them better understand their future role. Then, they return to the classroom for another four weeks of training in more advanced topics: writing and editing longer papers and topical modules addressing issues like denial, deceptions, indicators and warnings. These special kinds of analysis require advanced and sophisticated tradecraft skills. Afterwards, they go away again, for a second four-week interim assignment and when they return, after another four weeks in the classroom (when they deal with even more advanced topics), a task force exercise awaits them: a two days terrorist crisis simulation outside the classroom. This is an opportunity to show what they’ve learned and to see how they react in a situation that they might come across in real life."

That's a real "critical thinking" course. What they're trying to do is teach people how to extracts facts from contradictory, incomplete, and deliberately false information.

Some of the concepts are generally useful. Here's an overview of the subject, from the U.S. Army.[2] "The critical thinking material has been used with permission from The Foundation for Critical Thinking, www.criticalthinking.org, The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking, 2012 and The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools, 2009, by Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul." See especially section 2-13, "AVOIDING ANALYTICAL PITFALLS".

[1] https://www.performancemagazine.org/how-the-cia-analysts-are...

[2] https://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-IntelAnalysis.pdf

I would define critical thinking as a way of filtering information before absorbing it as truth. This involves actively questioning it- is it internally consistent, does it seem to have an agenda, are some obvious questions not being considered, are the arguments appealing more to emotion than logic, etc.

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