Chapter 1
In This Chapter
Getting the big picture on thinking skills
Picking up cool tips for problem solving
Steering clear of common misconceptions
There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts.
—François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613–1680)
Critical Thinking is about pressing points, sniffing a bit more sceptically at issues and generally looking more closely at everything. Not only at factual claims but also, and most importantly, at the ways in which people arrive at their views and ideas.
Harrumph, you may think! Why bother? Good question! I've failed plenty of job interviews in my time by being a Critical Thinker. Equally, the world has no shortage of successful people who scrupulously avoid any appearance of not only thinking critically, but thinking full-stop. My short answer is that being a Critical Thinker is still the best kind of thinker to be, even if it does sometimes mean that you're the odd one out on many issues.
In this chapter I provide an overview of Critical Thinking and what you can find in the rest of this book. I'll also cover the importance of ‘reading between the lines’ and also set the record straight on what Critical Thinking isn't.
You may well have been brought up not to argue. At school you were probably encouraged to sit quietly and write down facts — I was. When I was five, one teacher even used sticky tape to shut children's mouths up in class! (Yes, I was one of them.) Since then I've had some very enlightened teachers, who encouraged me to use my imagination, to solve some problems or do research. But still not to argue.
So welcome to a very different way of seeing the world — Critical Thinking. This is truly the ‘arguments clinic’ in which punters can pay for either 5-minute or hour-long arguments (as the famous Monty Python sketch has it). No, it isn't. Yes it is. Still say that it isn't? But, yes it is! (If you like, check out Chapter 17 now to discover ten of the world's most influential arguments — don't worry, I'll still be here when you get back!)
Of course, as the sketch says, this isn't proper argument at all, merely contradiction: nothing like a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. If an ability to contradict people is all you come away with after reading this book then you, like the man in the sketch, would be entitled to your money back. Don't worry, here you will find so many new ways of looking at issues that you'll soon be having the full, hour-long arguments on everything under the sun.
My aim by the end of this section is to give you the big picture of Critical Thinking.
If you look up Critical Thinking in a dictionary, you see that it's called the philosophical examination of arguments, and I'm a philosopher. But — at the risk of annoying the Ivory Tower experts straight away — I say that this kind of philosophy isn't the sort most of them do or have a clue about. Yes, as Chapter 12 shows, Critical Thinking does have one foot in the realm of logic, in tidily setting out arguments as premises followed by conclusions. But if that were all it was, you might as well give the job to a computer.
I know that developing these skills sounds rather like a tall order for one book to achieve. But Critical Thinking is also team thinking, and I draw on the ideas of many other thinkers, including a lot of input from my editors at Wiley. As a result, you don't get my opinion of Critical Thinking Skills, but a carefully researched and lively introduction to the subject.
Professors may sniff, but I prefer to work on exercises that are fun or interesting, which is why I have tried hard to make the ones in this book like that. Here's a rather trivial little exercise, which nonetheless illustrates something important about how the human mind operates.
When I first saw this question, I thought for a minute — and then I gave up and looked for the answers. That's my method with written exercises; it conserves my limited brain power for things like watching TV and eating crisps — at the same time! But I digress (not good in Critical Thinking). This question may form the subject of a 5-minute argument, but it shouldn't stretch to an hour, because neither version is correct: egg yolks are yellow. Boom, boom! Caught you out?
This exercise reveals that people's normal mode of thinking is bound within the parameters of certain rules and systems — due to thousands of years of evolution. In the jargon of psychology, human thinking uses certain heuristics (mental shortcuts for solving problems and making judgements quickly).
Critical Thinking is your insurance policy against these dodgy, but more or less universal, thinking habits.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
—Bertrand Russell (‘The Triumph of Stupidity’ in Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931–1935)
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism.
—Thomas Huxley (On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge, 1866)
Critical Thinkers know that real debates take place ‘between the lines’, and, all too often, ‘under the mental radar’. The Critical Thinkers’ job is to pull the real issues into plain view and, if necessary, shoot them down!
I introduce you here to some of the core skills of Critical Thinking: ‘reading between the lines’, examining the evidence and quickly deconstructing texts. (The chapters in Part III provide loads more info on how to do just that.)
Do you know people whose views don't seem to be based on any sort of rational assessment of the world, but rather on dodgy information easily imbibed — or even on blatant prejudices? Me too. And what's more, at least some of my views — and some of your views — also fall into this rather illogical category. The fact is, even though Aristotle called men (not women, he was emphatically prejudiced) ‘rational animals’, people rarely use their rational facility in practice. (I discuss this subject in more depth in Chapter 13.)
More subtly, people often present good reasons for their positions, but in reality arrive at their views for quite different ones. The good reasons are irrelevant, as you sometimes find out if you present some solid arguments that tend to disprove them. For example, suppose your neighbours buy a 4-wheel drive, all-terrain car, and insist that it is vital for when the family goes mountaineering and camping. Yet the fact is that they rarely go anywhere more remote than the nearest supermarket and hate getting their shiny car dirty. Could the real reason be that having a tank-sized car bolsters their sense of self-importance?
Or maybe the government says that it has to charge students tuition fees — otherwise there won't be enough money for everyone who wants to go to college in the future. Good reason! Odd then that the fees system actually costs more to operate than the previous universal grants system. Could the real reason for the change be something to do with dismantling the political edifice of the welfare state?
Arguments may exist for doing that too, but that's straying into politics. I'm not saying one way or the other, but I am recommending the habit of looking a little harder at the reasons and explanations people give.
I think of Critical Thinking as a toolbox. Philosophers have a long tradition of seeing argument skills as tools (read the nearby sidebar ‘Totting up Aristotle's tools’ for more).
Critical Thinking also has creative uses, such as prototyping and brainstorming (see Chapters 6 and 7, respectively). These ‘hammer-and-nails’ skills, with plenty of glue added in, are great for creating new solutions and visualising possibilities. Plus, don't forget the social and emotional components of Critical Thinking (which I cover in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively): I like to think of these as the measuring tools in the kit — maybe as the spirit level too.
Philosophers prefer to see Critical Thinking as a course in informal logic: the study of arguments expressed in natural language, where an argument being valid isn't enough — the conclusion has to be useful too. The chapters in Part IV are all about that and where I take a good look at the key skills of informal logic (for example, the ‘fallacies’ that many Critical Thinking experts wax long on). But don't be too excited at the prospect of using logic to conquer the world, because as I explain its powers are strictly limited.
On the other hand, don't let any of these concerns put you off using logic skills in your thinking, writing (check out Chapter 10) and speaking (see Chapters 11 and 14), because a little method can go a long way to making your arguments more persuasive and demonstrating the weaknesses in other people's too.
Researchers have often found that when asked, people can't really explain why they hold such and such a view, or what they think would count as suitable evidence for the view. Even more worrying for society, is that these same people are extremely reluctant to have their views challenged. Critical Thinking Skills are your antidote to this very common disease.
The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalisation. Feeling tends to spread; connections between feelings awaken feelings; neighboring feelings become assimilated; ideas are apt to reproduce themselves. These are so many formulations of the one law of the growth of mind. When a disturbance of feeling takes place, we have a consciousness of gain, the gain of experience. . . .
—CS Peirce (The Architecture of Theories, 1891)
The quote above is about how building on what you already think is vital for future growth. But it brings problems.
Followers: People who respect anyone or anything that presents itself as ‘authoritative’. They form their view in a group discussion on what they think, say, the professor is saying, or in the absence of an authority figure, on what they imagine is the consensuses view. When they look something up on the Internet, they head for the security of Wikipedia (as they imagine it!) and are reluctant to consult websites run by individuals.
These kinds of thinkers, as Peirce says, are useful members of society, because they aid social harmony and cohesion. (Although they may also be found egging on tyrants and persecuting minorities.) But they aren't useful as far as ideas go.
Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit.
—Erasmus
Bertrand Russell ascribes this quote to Erasmus, and I can see why he liked it. Russell was a philosopher prepared to argue unpopular views (such as that war is a bad thing) and was put in prison — twice.
US philosopher William James made a similar point when he complained that many people think that they're thinking when they're merely rearranging their prejudices. For Critical Thinkers, discerning thought and prejudice is a vital distinction to make and the first step is becoming more aware of your biases. (I examine this issue in Chapter 2.)
James also recommends that in many areas, people should decide their position on the basis of feelings, even if they have no good or relevant arguments to support it. How logical is that? Well, not at all, but it's not a stupid position either. In Chapter 4 I look at some distinctly non-logical ways of approaching problems.
Professors tend to tell people to ‘think’, and complain when they don't — but they fail to offer advice on exactly how to do it. For that, students have to rely largely on their own efforts, or maybe turn to specialist experts such as Edward de Bono. He stresses that thinking is a skill that has to be learned. Critical Thinking definitely owes ‘pioneers’ of thinking skills like him a polite nod, even if the approach here has to be little more, well, scientific.
Speaking of which, here's a scientist to explain about how scientists think:
The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
—Albert Einstein (A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, 1938, p.92)
Well, he has to come in sooner or later. Einstein's point about creativity is absolutely spot-on. Check out the nearby sidebar ‘Thinking outside the box’ for an example.
The preceding sections discuss what Critical Thinking is, but I now detail what it isn't.
Quantum physicist Richard Feynman said that science is grounded in the conviction that its own experts are often ignorant of what they profess to be experts about. That statement applies, with knobs on, to Critical Thinking too!
Critical Thinking isn't about learning an endless series of ‘facts’. Instead, it encourages people to develop their in-built thinking skills by making them active. That's why this book features lots of tricky puzzles (see Chapter 5 for more on puzzles and analogies) rather than platitudes. I want you to start thinking critically and actively from page one. Or from the start of Chapter 2 anyway!
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