The Critical Thinker by Steven Schuster

 

Chapter 1: What is Critical Thinking?

This is a good beginner level book about critical thinking. It is easy enough for anyone to understand, even without any prior studies of critical thinking or logic. Actually, this book doesn’t cover logic at all, but it does discuss some of the basic principles that can help people think better.

One of the important tips from this chapter is SLOW DOWN! Critical thinking is not hasty.

But why do we have to slow our thinking down? What are we slowing down FOR? The answer is, we have to slow down so we can ask ourselves key questions about our beliefs. Questions like: “WHY do you believe that?” or “HOW do you know that?”

This chapter reminds us that the very heart and soul of good thinking involves taking the time to figure out WHY we believe the things we believe. If we don’t do that, we’re not really thinking at all, are we? When we start doing that, we will be taking the first steps on the path to becoming really good critical thinkers.

Chapter 2: “What are the Main Guidelines of Critical Thinking?”

One of the important tips from this chapter is to avoid OVER-GENERALIZATIONS! The whole point of critical thinking is to distinguish what is true, or likely to be true, from what is false, or likely to be false. The problem with over-generalizations is that they are almost always false, so people who use over-generalizations are extremely unlikely to be good critical thinkers.

If you make claims about EVERY member of huge and varied groups like “all Americans” or “all Russians” or “all Democrats” or “all Republicans” or “all Men” or “all Women” or, worst of all “EVERYONE” then you are almost certainly making a false statement, or, at the very least, an unprovable statement. If you use false statements as premises for logical arguments then your argument is automatically going to fail because a sound argument cannot be based on a false premise. If you use an unprovable statement as a premise for an argument than your argument is not going to be very persuasive.

Suppose someone says “anyone who enters the US illegally should be in jail.” If you ask them why they think that, they might reply with an over-generalization like “EVERYONE who breaks the law should be in jail.”

The problem with this over-generalization is that it is almost certainly not true and the person who makes it almost certainly doesn’t even believe it. If we ask them “In 19th century America a person who broke the law requiring them to return a runaway slave should have gone to jail?” Or “In Nazi Germany a person who refused to turn in a Jew so he or she could be sent to a concentration camp should have been sent to jail?” they will probably say “No. I only mean people who break GOOD laws should be in jail.”

Notice that the over-generalization was a sloppy and careless effort to AVOID critical thinking. Once we get to a statement that only people who break GOOD laws should be in jail then we can start some hard critical thinking about what is the definition of a good law and how can we distinguish good laws from bad laws.

We might further ask “Should people who roll through a stop sign be in jail because they broke the law?” Or “Should a hungry old person with no money who steals a piece of bread go to jail?” Most people would probably say “no” to both of these questions which might lead us to modify their initial over-generalization again to something like “Everyone who breaks a GOOD law that is about a SERIOUS issue should go to jail BUT we can also make exceptions for people who break a relatively minor law because they are in desperate need.”

Now again we can do some real critical thinking about what are the serious issues that we should jail people for and what are minor issues that we should not jail people for and what could count as desperate need that would allow us to show mercy to someone who broke the law.

In this example the initial over-generalization was an attempt to avoid thinking about all these important questions. In fact, over-generalizations are often attempts to avoid thinking at all, and people who try to avoid thinking, are NOT good critical thinkers.

So, if we want to be good critical thinkers, we have to be very specific and avoid the kind of sloppy over-generalizations that are intended to prevent thinking instead of aiding it.

[Note: The Critical Thinker by Steven Schuster. I hope you will buy and enjoy this simple introductory book about critical thinking. If you click on this link and then buy this, or almost anything else at Amazon, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support!]

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