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The Elements of Critical Thinking

The Elements of Critical Thinking. Task 1: Establish a Shared Vocabulary. Why does identifying elements help you think mindfully?. Makes you really LOOK—fights habitual and enculturated patterns, autopilot thinking

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The Elements of Critical Thinking

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  1. The Elements of Critical Thinking Task 1: Establish a Shared Vocabulary

  2. Why does identifying elements help you think mindfully? • Makes you really LOOK—fights habitual and enculturated patterns, autopilot thinking • Allows you to identify barriers, filters, impediments, biases, predispositions—yours AND others’ • Gives you more tools to analyze an issue • Helps you demonstrate fair-mindedness

  3. A current example… • What happens when you don’t think mindfully? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPpzj4PjNjU • And what happens when you don’t think mindfully about what you just did?

  4. WA uses three key terms based on what you DO with your thinking • The “pitch”—the position you are trying to sell to your audience (often expressed in a THESIS) • The “moment”—the context, relation of you to audience, etc. • The “complaint”—what impels you to make your pitch

  5. Ch. 3 of WA gives you a toolkitto use to express your thinking process • Paraphrase x 3—makes you clarify and restate so you’re sure you’ve got it (p. 33) • Notice & Focus—lets you pick out, prioritize, and refine ideas (p. 35) • “The Method”—lets you play with binaries, oppositions, threads that emerge (p. 37) • Focused freewriting—lets you gather ideas on a slice quickly (p. 44)

  6. Nosich focuses not on the writing that comes out but on the thinking that leads to it • Purpose: p. 52 • Question at Issue (q at i): p. 53 • Assumptions: p. 54 • Implications, Consequences, Outcomes: p. 55 • Information: p. 57 • Concepts: p. 58 • Conclusions, Interpretations, Decisions: p. 60 • Point of View (p.o.v.): p. 61 • Alternatives: p. 64 • Context: p. 66

  7. Nosich’s Circle of Elements

  8. Two ways to see the elements (from Richard Paul, Nosich’s teacher)

  9. Or, from your point of view:

  10. Additional Terms You May Use • Reasons/Reasoning—describes the process of thinking • Claims (theses based on your assumptions that you try to prove) • Arguments (pitches made with theses and support) • Hypotheses (assumptions based on evidence & testing that you prove or disprove) Most of these terms are involved with what we call a deductive or thesis-driven way of thinking—one that attempts to eliminate possibilities. Initially, we’re going to avoid them.

  11. Thinking critically is messy, non-linear, and recursive Purpose Conclusions,Interpretations,Decisions POV Assumptions Information Alternatives Concepts Q at I Implications,Consequences,Outcomes Barriers, FiltersBiases,Pre-dispositions

  12. Going around the circle • Can start on any slice • Gets easier as you repeat it • Often shows you which areas will be most productive to work with (not always the ones where the answers come most easily!) • Generates lots of raw material to draft from—gives you luxury of selecting the best

  13. To master these concepts… • Practice, practice, practice till this starts to feel comfortable to you. • Try exercises 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 in your thinking • If there’s an element you have trouble with, do the corresponding exercise at chapter’s end in your thinking notebook. • Look at p. 80 as a self-test.

  14. What does ‘marriage’ mean to you?—prewriting for paper 1

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