A Beginners Guide to Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is essential to our correct understanding of the world. It allows us to weigh ideas and claims against the reality around us. But it isn’t taught in schools. Schools are mostly designed to teach students what to think, not how to think. This has resulted in many students having heads full of facts, with no clue about how to evaluate real life claims and issues.

A certain amount of critical thinking is natural. It develops as we grow and learn. But too often, those skills are stunted by underuse or lack of understanding about how to use them properly. The human brain, and the thinking that results from it, are fundamentally flawed. And if you’re going to be a good critical thinker you need to be aware of these flaws and constantly upgrade your thinking skills to overcome them. This is a discipline that is lifelong, exacting and difficult. But if done correctly it can change the way you think and the way you live your life for the better.

Do you work on expanding your thinking skills, as well as your external life? Would you benefit from being able to better separate truth from lie?

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is a process of deliberate thinking. Through it you can evaluate claims based on their evidence and decide what to believe on the merits of each claim. This may seem like it would come naturally, but in reality it’s a difficult process. It’s too easy to go wrong, especially if you aren’t taught to do it properly.

Too often, when we believe that we’re thinking critically our opinions are actually heavily biased, partial or uninformed. This is a major problem because it often results in bad decisions, or life choices and opinions that are detrimental for us and for the people around us.

Critical thinking doesn’t mean that you will always come to the ‘right’ answer. Sometimes there is no right answer, and the people who think there is always a ‘right’ answer, and that they always have it, are often the most frightening people in the world. You don’t want to be that kind of person, which means that sometimes your new critical thinking skills will only lead you to ‘least wrong’ answer. And that’s actually a sign that you’re doing it properly.

Developing your critical thinking skills takes ongoing work. It’s not something that you can do once and forget about and it’s not something you will ever completely master. Critical thinking requires you to look at a situation or problem, gather information about it, and analyze and assess the information to come to an unbiased conclusion.

The Benefits of Critical Thinking Skills

All too often we believe things without really knowing why. If we dig down, we discover that we believe them because we were taught to believe them, or because the people around them believe them. These are not stable boundaries for beliefs that you may base your life on. If you want to be able to form your own opinions, and be your own person, you need to be able to think critically about your beliefs and ideas.

But critical thinking will not only make you a better and more individual thinker. It will also make you a better person. Too often we carry prejudices or biased beliefs around with us. These are often buried under layers of excuses and shoddy reasoning. Sometimes we inherit these flawed beliefs from our parents and sometimes we develop them as adults in reaction to experiences. But prejudices and biased beliefs don’t make rational sense, and critical thinking will force them out into the open where they can be dealt with and removed. And this is a feature of critical thinking that every person in the world could benefit from.

The Barriers to Good Critical Thinking

Most people think they’re good critical thinkers. After all, most of us make hundreds of decisions every day and we make them well, don’t we? But making an everyday decision isn’t the same as critical thinking.

There are numerous biases and unconscious beliefs that can get in the way of our thinking and influence our decisions. Emotions are particularly good for that. Studies show that our emotional state has a massive effect on our thinking, and can even cause us to make uncharacteristic decisions. That’s why separating emotion from fact is a big part of the critical thinking process.

Another mechanism that can affect our thinking is known as the confirmation bias. This is a universal human tendency and is mostly unconscious until we deliberately make ourselves aware of it. The confirmation bias controls how we research a problem and ensures that we seek out only the information that confirms the opinions we already hold. And if we happen to come across conflicting information, we give it less weight than the information that supports our opinion. This can cause people to think they’re gathering valid information when in reality they’re just gathering the information they want to see. And when you’re developing your critical thinking skills, this will be an ongoing problem.

Skills Involved in Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is not just one procedure, it’s a combination of skills and ways of thinking. To think critically you need to be able to perform the following tasks methodically and with as little bias as possible.

• Evaluate information sources for their relevance and veracity.
• Analyze beliefs, opinions, data and facts to determine their importance and place in the argument.
• Evaluate your own thinking for errors and biases.
• Connect very different ideas.
• Identify weak arguments, gaps in reasoning and inconsistencies.
• Draw conclusions based on lots of pieces of information.
• Reflect on the process to ensure that you were thinking correctly.

This can seem like a lot, and it is, but for the really important decisions and beliefs, it’s completely necessary if you’re going to think about them properly.

How to Train Your Critical Thinking Skills

Everyone has some basic critical thinking skills, but the key is to train them so they continue to develop throughout your life. To start on this path, think of a belief that you hold and perform the following analysis.

• Ask yourself why you hold this belief. Write down the reasons.
• Work out where your reasons come from. Do they come from personal experience? Something someone once told you? Something you were taught as a child?
• Evaluate your reasons. Are they valid? Or are they based on emotions or ideas you can’t support?
• Evaluate the sources of your information.
• Gather information on the issue to see if it agrees with your belief.
• Look at your belief again. Do you still think it’s true?

Chances are, when you start doing this with your beliefs, you’ll find that many of them are unsupportable. The key here is not to back away because you don’t like what you’re uncovering. If you want to be a true critical thinker, a key step is to accept that many of your beliefs are wrong and align them with rational reality.

The Number One Thing You Can Take Away From This

Critical thinking is a complex, but essential skill if we want to be independent people with opinions based on facts. It’s also a seldom used skill in our modern world, which is of great detriment to the world and everyone in it. This kind of thinking is never easy, and it’s ongoing, but it can radically improve your life and your beliefs. And the more people who can thinking critically, the better off our world will be. Use this article as a guide to start training your ability to think critically. You’ll quickly start to realize how few of your own beliefs you can honestly support, and how shoddy your thinking was before.