Critical Thinking

Rimsha sarfraz
What is critical thinking
The use of cognitive skills and strategies that increase
the probability of a desirable outcome.
What does the critical thinking mean to you?
Productive: Thinking that goes beyond observing and
recalling facts.
Critical: being able to ask question and gather
information
Weighing and solving: when you think critically you
weigh evidence, solve problems and make decisions.
Creating and applying: when you think critically you
create new ideas and turn information into a tool by
applying what you have learned in previous situations to
new situation.
Critical thinking means making reasoned judgments
that are logical and well-thought out. It is a way of
thinking in which you don't simply accept all
arguments and conclusions you are exposed to but
rather have an attitude involving questioning such
arguments and conclusions.
Critical thinking can be divided into the
following three core skills :
Curiosity is the desire to learn more information and
seek evidence as well as being open to new ideas.
Skepticism involves having a healthy questioning
attitude about new information that you are exposed
to and not blindly believing everything everyone tells
you.
Finally, humility is the ability to admit that your
opinions and ideas are wrong when faced with new
convincing evidence that states otherwise.
Why do we think?
In order to decide what to do
Not only scientist think carefully and logically. we all
do this whenever we care about our decisions.
Consider an important decision:
“I should buy a car”
In order to decide what to believe
Our ultimate decision about what to do very often
hinges upon our decision about what we believe.
Steps in critical thinking
 Itemize opinions from all relevant sides of an issue and collect arguments
supporting each.
 Break the arguments into their constituent statements and draw out
various additional implications from these statements.
 Examine these statements and implications for internal contradictions.
 Locate opposing claims between the various arguments and assign
relative weights to opposing claims.
 Increase the weighting when the claims have strong support especially
distinct chains of reasoning or different sources, decrease the weighting when
the claims have contradictions.
 Adjust weighting depending on relevance of information to central issue.
 Require sufficient support to justify any incredible claims; otherwise,
ignore these claims when forming a judgment.
 Assess the weight of the various claims.
Examples
 Academic Performance
 understand the arguments and beliefs of others
 Critically evaluating those arguments and beliefs
 Develop and defend one's own well-supported arguments and beliefs.

 Workplace
 Helps us to reflect and get a deeper understanding of our own and others’ decisions
 Encourage open-mindedness to change
 Aid us in being more analytical in solving problems

 Daily life
 Helps us to avoid making foolish personal decisions.
 Promotes an informed and concerned citizenry capable of making good decisions
on important social, political and economic issues.
 Aids in the development of autonomous thinkers capable of examining their
assumptions, and prejudices.
Ways to think more critically:
1. Ask Basic Questions
It’s tempting to imagine that good critical thinkers ask
erudite, convoluted questions when they’re trying to
solve a problem. However, the truth is actually the
opposite. The better you are at critical thinking, the
more fundamental and clear your questions become.
To enhance your questioning when problem-solving
(and thereby improve your critical thinking abilities),
make sure you break questions down.
.

Be aware of your mental process

People who assume they’re good critical thinkers often turn

their analytical abilities outwards, arrogantly critiquing other
people. However, being a genuinely skilled thinker involves a
lot more self-reflection.
In particular, you want to keep an eye on your own mental
process; where it started, what it looks like, and where it’s
going. Our brains are incredibly impressive and can sort
through information at an amazing rate, but this lightning-fast
work can encourage us to ignore important factors.