The main purpose of this guide is to make/help students or whoever reads it to understand how as an individual to critically think in any situation. A person must follow a process to critically think and analyse situations. When one reads this guide s/he understands how to examine a situation. This guide is a basic book to help layout the foundation to become a rich intellectual thinker. It helps break down various steps to simpler ones. There are certain terms which sound similar but hold a different meaning towards it. The key question that the author is addressing is “Why Critical Thinking?”. In a person’s life why is it important to think in depth and reason out every situation. An individual’s life can be remarkably simple and sober but when a person starts to analyse it helps him/her to have a clear picture and not be in any doubt. For this there are certain steps which are: there is a checklist, problem of egocentric thinking , universal intellectual standards, criteria for evaluating a reason, intellectual traits, template for problem solving, analysing and assesing research and the stages of critical thinking which depends on everyone. The most important piece of information in this guide is ESSENTIAL INTELLECTUAL TRAITS/VALUES. If one is clear with the various intellectual traits as explained in this guide, then the further process of figuring out what questions to put forth and how to analyse the data becomes easier. Under intellectual traits there are certain traits which seem very much similar due to which individuals might get a little confused. Also, in the guide one notices that critical thinkers routinely apply the intellectual standards to the elements of reasoning (the most important aspect of critical thinking) to develop intellectual traits. Once this happens the others fall into place. The main inference/conclusions in this guide are: all research has a fundamental PURPOSE/GOAL, addresses a fundamental QUESTION , problem/issue, indentifies data, information, evidence relevant to its fundamental question and purpose, contains INFERENCE/INTERPRETATION by which conclusions are drawn, conducted from some POINT OF VIEW or frame of reference, expressed through, and shaped by CONCEPTS and ideas , leads somewhere (have IMPLICATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES). The foundation of becoming/being a critical thinker lies in the above statement. Summing up the entire guide when one deeply begins to analyse, they produce questions which eventually comes up to the above conclusions.
The key concepts we need to understand in this article are questions using the elements of thoughts. They are purpose, questions, information, inference/conclusions, concepts, assumptions, implications/consequences and point of view. All these congregate to make a person a good critical thinker which is the main purpose of this guide. Using all the above elements a person learns to reason properly. By these concepts, the author means an individual will get to know the advantages and disadvantages of a statement/situation or whatever be the case and know what exactly is happening. The above elements are thought and when a person is thinking there can be assumptions which might be wrong/right.
The main assumptions underlying the author's thinking is the stages of critical thinking development. As we can see in each stage there is fault. For example, beginning thinker, wherein one tried to improve without regular practice. This can be dangerous since for any skill to become perfect one needs to sharpen up and for this to take place one should practice daily. And in the next stage (Practicing thinker ) we realise the need for regular practice. So, the question anyone would be having is why did not one practice in the previous stage. So, thus is the assumption underlying the author's thinking. If we take this line of reasoning seriously (Universal Intellectual Standards ), the implication are the person gets to know more about the topic , understands each minute detail, gains more knowledge, can connect to more related topics, and correlate as well as compare. The person might have another view on the topic. If we fail to take this line of reasoning seriously the implications are the person will fail to understand the topic, may arrive at wrong decisions, go in a completely opposite direction, may take a wrong stand and have various other opinions.
Comments
Post a Comment