What is Critical Thinking
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You’ve asked one of the best questions possible, but there is no short answer. Read books on the philosophy of logic, critical thinking, and reasoning. You need to understand statistics as well, oh and you need to study the philosophies of science and ethics. You should know at least ten logical fallacies, what a premise is, what a conclusion is, and the what difference between a valid and a sound argument is. These are basics that you’ll need in order to know what critical thinking is.
If you make it that far, the next big leap is to become a critical thinker yourself. Knowing and applying are two different things, and one of the human challenges is the ego. It will not be easy to apply what you’ve learned (especially at first), because it means challenging everything you think you know & believe. It’s not an easy process.
Humans make mistakes and biases create rifts in ones ability to think critically & reasonably. You’ll never be a perfect critical thinker. You’ll be able to improve, and over time catch yourself making errors, but you won’t be perfect at it. This means you’ll need the ability to reflect and perform introspection. You’ll need to fundamentally change who you are as a person several times in order to grow incrementally each time.
Edit to add: you should also learn about reflective judgment. There is a 7 tier reflective reasoning/judgment model that you can look up online. Work towards becoming a “tier 7” reflective reasoner.
Edit 2: If you can’t write an entire book on the subject of critical thinking, then you haven’t mastered the skill. All the lessons mentioned above (e.g. reading an entire book on logic) need to be digested fully.
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