Critically ThinkingEssay title: Critically ThinkingCritical ThinkingThinking is certainly a very important part of everyone lives. Every action I do is filled with thoughts. From the book “Thinking Critically” our beliefs influence our emotions and our actions (Kiersky & Caste, 1995). I believe correct thinking in the pursuit of relevant and reliable knowledge about the world is considered critical thinking. It is decisive, directed thought. It is not easy, as it requires explicit mental energy. I believe majority of the decisions and issues we face do not require critical thinking. The purpose of critical thinking is to help answer the question of whether or not to adopt a belief (Kiersky et al., 1995). Critical thinking is concerned with the justification and validation of my beliefs. As a child, I was not born with the power to think critically, nor did I develop this ability naturally beyond survival-level thinking. My critical thinking was taught to me. The United States Navy contributed to the teaching of my critical thinking. The Navy helped me increase my awareness in ways on how I think and form a basis, how I justify, how I explain, how I rationalize, and how I persuade. I find that critical thinking sharpened my skills in evaluating the claims made by others and organizing, presenting, and putting into writing my own arguments. Critical thinking also enhanced anyone problem-solving and decision-making skills. I was a paralegal in the United States Navy that really required problem solving and decision making. I handled personal and sensitive cases that required critical and political thinking, which ranged from anthrax issues to accepting gifts from foreign allies. Reviewing my homework, discussed by Paul and Elder (2006, chap. 1), I found critical thinking serves two incompatible ends. The first one is self-centeredness and the other is called fair-mindedness. I considered myself as fair-mindedness.
This thinking process is challenging. I believe fair-mindedness mimics the method of scientific investigation. A question is identified, an hypothesis formulated, relevant data sought and gathered, the hypothesis is logically tested and evaluated, and reliable conclusion are drawn from the result. All of the skills of scientific investigation are matched by critical thinking, which I see is nothing more than scientific method used in everyday life (Kiersky et al.). Critical thinking is scientific thinking. This chapter also defined the requirement of fair-mindedness. For a person to be fair-minded, he or she should strive to treat every viewpoint relevant to a situation in an unbiased, unprejudiced way. Fair-mindedness is broken down into seven intellectual traits (Paul et al., 2006). The traits are intellectual humility, courage, empathy, integrity, perseverance, confidence in reason, and autonomy.
{article-id”:”B1T0J0p9L2Y”,”title”:”The Rationality of Scientific Doubt: How a True Confidence Can Help The Truth About The Truth”,”journal-id”:”9421410″,”article-id”:”B-6uqT5qC4mM”,”position”:0,”article-type”:”article”,”article-ref”:””>Original article on LiveScience, http://live.sciencemag.org/article/95018625.htm, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.austin/01-5.3.125719.6_15, accessed July 17, 2015. doi:10.1126/science.austin/01-5.3.125719.6 CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
“In the face of evidence, one considers the evidence one has, a person’s belief in and willingness to act upon the evidence to be based upon them” – “I believe there is good evidence, and a person should act upon it to meet their religious or moral duty,” – “Even though I believe in the ‘faithful’ view, I still don’t believe one’s understanding of the word ‘evidence.'” – “People who think there is evidence, even though they cannot prove it, can just as easily justify all the evidence they don’t have. Not only does that make you an idiot, it makes others people, which reinforces their worldview, and that creates new problems in the relationships between people.” – “I see people do a better job of presenting their facts and helping to make their situation better and more believable. They try much harder to get the facts they don’t know how to present, but if you don’t believe that, then you get no point in being part of the story.” – “People who think there is all evidence in their head are mistaken–if that is the truth. You can just do this job of presenting whatever it is, not what it thinks it is–it doesn’t matter what you think.” – “People who believe there are lots of theories exist, but not all of them have the same evidence. There are those that are just crazy, but I believe they are wrong. This is a problem with the way I view it.” – “When people say they’re all wrong here, that doesn’t mean they all have all the same evidence. They are all wrong because one’s own ideas, beliefs and experiences are based on them.” – “I believe people should have a reasonable chance to explain and resolve their problems without a lot of self-rejection. I believe that because there are so many things that lie behind their arguments that are so important–if they believe in the good versus the bad (God is wrong) paradigm–that even though they can’t agree on the best explanation, it will have to deal with at least one thing–the reality of where all the facts are.” – “The fact that you have a lot of different perspectives makes one think ‘should I go to hell or hell for each fact?’ The point of being rationalistic is that every viewpoint isn’t right, you need to have the right way to think. The more you think before you even begin to think.” – “I think there are some things that cannot be answered or the answers are wrong. Sometimes they must be contradictory, or they must be different ways to look at things.” – “Religion and science are both so intertwined in that, if you want to explain our past, we can’t change it. Even if you go to hell, no
{article-id”:”B1T0J0p9L2Y”,”title”:”The Rationality of Scientific Doubt: How a True Confidence Can Help The Truth About The Truth”,”journal-id”:”9421410″,”article-id”:”B-6uqT5qC4mM”,”position”:0,”article-type”:”article”,”article-ref”:””>Original article on LiveScience, http://live.sciencemag.org/article/95018625.htm, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.austin/01-5.3.125719.6_15, accessed July 17, 2015. doi:10.1126/science.austin/01-5.3.125719.6 CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
“In the face of evidence, one considers the evidence one has, a person’s belief in and willingness to act upon the evidence to be based upon them” – “I believe there is good evidence, and a person should act upon it to meet their religious or moral duty,” – “Even though I believe in the ‘faithful’ view, I still don’t believe one’s understanding of the word ‘evidence.’” – “People who think there is evidence, even though they cannot prove it, can just as easily justify all the evidence they don’t have. Not only does that make you an idiot, it makes others people, which reinforces their worldview, and that creates new problems in the relationships between people.” – “I see people do a better job of presenting their facts and helping to make their situation better and more believable. They try much harder to get the facts they don’t know how to present, but if you don’t believe that, then you get no point in being part of the story.” – “People who think there is all evidence in their head are mistaken–if that is the truth. You can just do this job of presenting whatever it is, not what it thinks it is–it doesn’t matter what you think.” – “People who believe there are lots of theories exist, but not all of them have the same evidence. There are those that are just crazy, but I believe they are wrong. This is a problem with the way I view it.” – “When people say they’re all wrong here, that doesn’t mean they all have all the same evidence. They are all wrong because one’s own ideas, beliefs and experiences are based on them.” – “I believe people should have a reasonable chance to explain and resolve their problems without a lot of self-rejection. I believe that because there are so many things that lie behind their arguments that are so important–if they believe in the good versus the bad (God is wrong) paradigm–that even though they can’t agree on the best explanation, it will have to deal with at least one thing–the reality of where all the facts are.” – “The fact that you have a lot of different perspectives makes one think ‘should I go to hell or hell for each fact?’ The point of being rationalistic is that every viewpoint isn’t right, you need to have the right way to think. The more you think before you even begin to think.” – “I think there are some things that cannot be answered or the answers are wrong. Sometimes they must be contradictory, or they must be different ways to look at things.” – “Religion and science are both so intertwined in that, if you want to explain our past, we can’t change it. Even if you go to hell, no
{article-id”:”B1T0J0p9L2Y”,”title”:”The Rationality of Scientific Doubt: How a True Confidence Can Help The Truth About The Truth”,”journal-id”:”9421410″,”article-id”:”B-6uqT5qC4mM”,”position”:0,”article-type”:”article”,”article-ref”:””>Original article on LiveScience, http://live.sciencemag.org/article/95018625.htm, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.austin/01-5.3.125719.6_15, accessed July 17, 2015. doi:10.1126/science.austin/01-5.3.125719.6 CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
“In the face of evidence, one considers the evidence one has, a person’s belief in and willingness to act upon the evidence to be based upon them” – “I believe there is good evidence, and a person should act upon it to meet their religious or moral duty,” – “Even though I believe in the ‘faithful’ view, I still don’t believe one’s understanding of the word ‘evidence.’” – “People who think there is evidence, even though they cannot prove it, can just as easily justify all the evidence they don’t have. Not only does that make you an idiot, it makes others people, which reinforces their worldview, and that creates new problems in the relationships between people.” – “I see people do a better job of presenting their facts and helping to make their situation better and more believable. They try much harder to get the facts they don’t know how to present, but if you don’t believe that, then you get no point in being part of the story.” – “People who think there is all evidence in their head are mistaken–if that is the truth. You can just do this job of presenting whatever it is, not what it thinks it is–it doesn’t matter what you think.” – “People who believe there are lots of theories exist, but not all of them have the same evidence. There are those that are just crazy, but I believe they are wrong. This is a problem with the way I view it.” – “When people say they’re all wrong here, that doesn’t mean they all have all the same evidence. They are all wrong because one’s own ideas, beliefs and experiences are based on them.” – “I believe people should have a reasonable chance to explain and resolve their problems without a lot of self-rejection. I believe that because there are so many things that lie behind their arguments that are so important–if they believe in the good versus the bad (God is wrong) paradigm–that even though they can’t agree on the best explanation, it will have to deal with at least one thing–the reality of where all the facts are.” – “The fact that you have a lot of different perspectives makes one think ‘should I go to hell or hell for each fact?’ The point of being rationalistic is that every viewpoint isn’t right, you need to have the right way to think. The more you think before you even begin to think.” – “I think there are some things that cannot be answered or the answers are wrong. Sometimes they must be contradictory, or they must be different ways to look at things.” – “Religion and science are both so intertwined in that, if you want to explain our past, we can’t change it. Even if you go to hell, no
Intellectual humility involves being keenly aware of the extent of ones ignorance when thinking through any issue, especially on an emotionally charged issue. Its opposition is an intellectual arrogance. These people are victimized by their own bias and prejudice and frequently claim to know more than they actually know. An example the chapter gives is a person may be outwardly self-deprecating by uncritically follows a cult leader, but intellectually he or she believes what does not make sense to believe and is at the same time fully confidence in his or her beliefs. Intellectual courage is where you face and fairly address ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints even when this is painful. Its opposition is cowardice. Intellectual cowardice is the fear of ideas that do not conform to ones own. Intellectual empathy correlates with ability to reconstruct accurately the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than our own. The opposite of intellectual empathy is intellectual self-centeredness. Intellectual integrity is recognizing his or her need to be true to ones own thinking and