Critical thinking skills are valuable for everyone– they help guide us through a world of information. While we are consistently thinking throughout the day, our critical thinking skills may provide us with the greatest value. Critical thinking is all about ensuring people make the best choices based on the best information. It involves the consideration of reasoning, logic and reflective thinking to form sound arguments and decisions. Whether in your personal life, or in your professional career, it is important to be able to form rational arguments that support your beliefs.
Defining Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is more than just thinking. It involves a deeper level of thinking that goes beyond our everyday basic thoughts. To think critically means to question ideas and conclusions, by analyzing, assessing and reconstructing concepts. Critical thinking helps you to determine which actions are necessary to create the best solution to your problems. A critical thinker does not accept facts at face value; instead, they analyze these facts to gain a thorough understanding of the topic at hand. As a result, critical thinking can encourage individuals to be open-minded, and gain better control over their own learning.
Importance of a Critical Approach
Everyday decisions have a significant impact on our quality of life. In order to make good decisions, it is essential to have good critical thinking skills. Critical thinking can help to ensure that you will live your best, most successful life. It enables you to better express your beliefs and ideas, while also improving your communication skills with others. As a result of improved communication, there will be fewer misunderstandings and frustrations.
No matter your path or profession, critical thinking skills will always be relevant and favorable to your success. Our economy depends on information and innovation, in which strong thinking skills are required to build these strategies. Although we often fail to notice the importance of these skills in our everyday life, they are one of the most desirable skills for the workplace. Employers will often look for candidates who evaluate problems using logical thoughts, since they are more likely to offer the best solutions to these problems. A critical thinker is trusted to make independent decisions, as well as work with others to solve problems quickly and efficiently.
When to Think Critically
Although critical thinking is necessary in today’s world, it is not necessary to think critically all of the time. Opportunities arise in our daily lives in which we need to face problems and decisions using powerful critical thinking abilities. When the outcome of the situation or problem will make a significant difference to you, a critical approach should be applied to the situation. Think about whether it may be life altering or if it will matter to you in the future. If critical thinking is not applied to important situations, it can result in a loss of financial resources, opportunities, relationships, or various other aspects in life.
The Role of Logic
Logical skills are significant for rationalizing important decisions. There is a strong relationship between logic and critical thinking; Logic is applied to a critical thinking situation, in which logic helps to separate truth from falsehood. Logic is the branch of philosophy that gives the rules for deriving valid conclusions. A conclusion is valid if it results from statements that are accepted as facts. For example, a logical statement might be 1+1 = 2. If a statement does not follow the rules, it is said to be illogical.
Logic can be applied to critical thinking to distinguish between good or bad reasoning. Logical thinking is a process which involves steps. In general, logical thinking involves checking the components of the argument and making connections between them, which is what we call reasoning.
Applying Reason
An individual’s ability to reason well is considered a critical thinking skill. Many of the definitions of critical thinking tend to focus on a person’s ability to reason. Reasoning occurs when we use our knowledge of one thing, process, or statement, to determine if another thing, process, or statement is true. Reasoning will help to strengthen your ability to draw logical, sensible conclusions. When we apply reasoning, we use logic to determine “what follows what.” Human reasoning does not always follow logic and can often be based on emotional bias.
This post is from October’s topic on Critical Thinking, which is also a course on our Executive Mini-MBA program online from Harvard Square.