Philosophy assignment

Rumi Singh
B.A. Programme
19/BAP/193
Semester VI
Ques – What is critical thinking? What are the components of
critical thinking? Discuss the role of beliefs and claims in the
domain of thinking critically.

INTRODUCTION

CRITICAL THINKING

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and

rationally about what to do or what to believe.
Critical thinking is not simply a matter of accumulating
information. A person with a good memory and who knows a lot
of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. Critical
thinkers can deduce consequences from what they know, make
use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources
of information to inform themselves. Critical thinking should not
be confused with being argumentative or being critical of other
people. Although critical thinking skills can be used in exposing
fallacies and bad reasoning, critical thinking can also play a key
role in cooperative reasoning and constructive tasks. Critical
thinking can help us acquire knowledge, improve our theories,
and strengthen arguments. We can also use critical thinking to
enhance work processes and improve social institutions.

Some people believe that critical thinking hinders creativity

because critical thinking requires following the rules of logic and
rationality, whereas creativity might require breaking those rules.
This is a misconception. Critical thinking is quite compatible with
thinking “out-of-the-box,” challenging consensus views, and
pursuing less popular approaches. If anything, critical thinking is
an essential part of creativity because we need critical thinking to
evaluate and improve our creative ideas.

The Importance of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a domain-general thinking skill. The ability to think

clearly and rationally is important whatever we choose to do. If you work
in education, research, finance, management, or the legal profession, then
critical thinking is obviously important. But critical thinking skills are not
restricted to a particular subject area. Being able to think well and solve
problems systematically is an asset for any career.

Critical thinking is especially important in the new knowledge economy.

The global knowledge economy is driven by information and technology.
One must be able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. The new
economy places increasing demands on flexible intellectual skills, and the
ability to analyze information and integrate diverse sources of knowledge
in solving problems. Good critical thinking promotes such thinking skills,
and is important in the fast-changing workplace.

Critical thinking promotes creativity. To produce a creative solution to a

problem involves not just having innovative ideas. It must also be the case
that the latest ideas being generated are useful and relevant to the task at
hand. Critical thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating the latest ideas,
selecting the best ones, and modifying them if necessary.

Critical thinking is crucial for self-reflection. To live a meaningful life and

to structure our lives accordingly, we need to justify and reflect on our
values and decisions. Critical thinking provides the tools for this process
of self–evaluation.

COMPONENETS OF CRITICAL THINKING

Perception
Perception is considered to be the manner in which individuals receive,
interpret and translate experiences. How individuals perceive things works
to define how they think. Perception tends to provide individuals with a
significant filtering system.
Assumptions
Assumptions are central to critical thinking. They tend to be implied, where
individuals are not always conscious of them. Assumptions are not always
bad and often rest on the notion that some ideas are obvious. They tend to
make individuals comfortable with their present beliefs, shutting out any
alternatives.
Emotion
Trying to leave emotion out of almost anything is impossible as it is part of
everything people do and think. Emotions are the number one cause of
creating and putting into place thinking and operating barriers, which are
continually used as a defense mechanism. Critical thinkers do not ignore or
deny emotions but learn to accept and manage them.
Language
Thinking can’t be separated from language since both tend to have three
primary purposes: to inform, persuade and explain. Language denotes
(designates meanings) and connotes (implies or suggests something), and
relies heavily on the use of metaphors. Metaphors are powerful language
tools, which are able to influence how individuals think and solve problems.
These figures of speech give great color and depth to one’s language.
Metaphors can be short phrases, stories, or even poetic renditions and is a
verbal message that listeners can easily interpret and visualize.
Argument
An argument is a claim, which is used to persuade that something is (or is
not) true, or should (or should not) be done. An argument contains three
basic elements: an issue, one or more reasons or premises, and one or more
conclusions. An argument can be either valid or invalid based on its
structure and only premises & conclusions are reached, which are either
true or false.
The goal of critical thinking is to implement a sound argument, which has
both a valid or proper structure and contains true premises. This is where
using logic makes all the difference.

Fallacy
Reasoning that doesn’t meet the criteria for being a sound argument is
considered erroneous, or fallacious. A fallacy comes from incorrect
patterns of reasoning. However, it does not always mean that the
conclusion is false, but it does underscore the fact that the reasoning used
to support it is not: valid, based on true premises, or complete and does not
include all necessary relevant information.
Logic
Logic incorporates two methods or types of reasoning: deductive and
inductive. Deductive reasoning relies on facts, certainty, syllogisms,
validity, truth of premises sound arguments and supported conclusions.
Inductive reasoning relies on diverse facts, probability, generalizations,
hypotheses, analogies and inductive strength.

Role of beliefs and claims in the domain of

thinking critically.

It depends on the situation. If the goal is to determine a rational course of

action where the opinion of no-one else is concerned, then beliefs and
claims are considered when there is no other option: one’s ignorance in
the medical field may oblige us to trust a doctor (that we can only believe
to be competent if it’s our first visit and we haven’t asked around).
When we decide on a course of action that involves other people, their
belief in untested claims may enter play… a politician passing new
legislation, for example.
The entire point of critical thought is to test neurons (experiences,
memories, knowledge) against each other, but if the contents of one
(group) of those neurons have never been tested, it’s kind of hard to do
that.
Ques 2. Discuss in detail the psychological factors that impede our
rational thinking as highlighted by Moore and Parker.

Ans. Rationalization occurs when a person has performed an action and

then concocts the beliefs and desires that would have made it rational.
Then, people often adjust their own beliefs and desires to match the
concocted ones. While many studies demonstrate rationalization, and a
few theories describe its underlying cognitive mechanisms, we have little
understanding of its function. Why is the mind designed to construct post
hoc rationalizations of its behavior, and then to adopt them? This may
accomplish an important task: transferring information between the
distinct kinds of processes and representations that influence our
behavior. Human decision making does not rely on a single process; it is
influenced by reason, habit, instinct, norms, and so on. Several of these
influences are not organized according to rational choice (i.e., computing
and maximizing expected value). Rationalization extracts implicit
information – true beliefs and useful desires – from the influence of these
non-rational systems on behavior. This is a useful fiction – fiction because
it imputes reason to non-rational psychological processes; useful, because
it can improve subsequent reasoning. More generally, rationalization
belongs to the broader class of representational exchange mechanisms,
which transfer information between many kinds of psychological
representations that guide our behavior. Representational exchange
enables us to represent any information in the manner best suited to the
tasks that require it, balancing accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility in
thought. The theory of representational exchange reveals connections
between rationalization and theory of mind, inverse reinforcement
learning, thought experiments, and reflective equilibrium.
Yet another possible source of psychological distortion is the
overconfidence effect, one of several self-deception biases that may be
found in a variety of contexts. If a person estimates the percentage of his
or her correct answers on a subject, the estimates will likely err on the
high side- at least if the questions are difficult or the subject matter is
unfamiliar. Closely related to the overconfidence effect is the better-than-
average illusion. The illusion crops up when most of a group are relative to
some desirable characteristic, such as resourcefulness or driving
ability.The classic illustration is the 1976 survey of SAT takers, in which
well over 50 percent of the respondents rated themselves as better than
50 percent of other SAT takers with respect to such qualities s leadership
ability. The same effect has been observed when people estimate how
their intelligence, memory, and job performance stacks up with the
intelligence, memory, and job performance stacks up with the intelligence,
memory, and job performances of other members of their profession or
workplace.