Agreed. I have always taken “critical thinking” to mean thinking carefully, not just believing everything you hear, trying to avoid bias, etc., etc., etc., and so far as I can tell other people’s use of the phrase generally has a similar meaning.
The way I would use the word, critical thinking is a subset of skepticism: it is skepticism directed at ideas that you have already accepted, or are in danger of accepting; especially skepticism directed at your assumptions. Searching for flaws in ideas you already don’t like isn’t critical thinking.
This probably isn’t emphasized too much in a school setting whenever you’re encouraged to think critically, because the usual tendency is to believe everything the teacher tells you.
I sometimes hear teachers use it to describe reasoning involving any sort of deliberate thought at all, as opposed to the chomskybot-like “B.S.” (is that a colloquialism in the context of school assignments?) that many students turn in.
Agreed. I have always taken “critical thinking” to mean thinking carefully, not just believing everything you hear, trying to avoid bias, etc., etc., etc., and so far as I can tell other people’s use of the phrase generally has a similar meaning.
The way I would use the word, critical thinking is a subset of skepticism: it is skepticism directed at ideas that you have already accepted, or are in danger of accepting; especially skepticism directed at your assumptions. Searching for flaws in ideas you already don’t like isn’t critical thinking.
This probably isn’t emphasized too much in a school setting whenever you’re encouraged to think critically, because the usual tendency is to believe everything the teacher tells you.
I sometimes hear teachers use it to describe reasoning involving any sort of deliberate thought at all, as opposed to the chomskybot-like “B.S.” (is that a colloquialism in the context of school assignments?) that many students turn in.