FALLIBLE FOX

Standards for critical thinking

 

It should now be apparent that critical thinking is important across life domains and subject areas. It should also be clear that although thinking reflectively and deeply is necessary for critical thinking, it isn’t sufficient—reflecting on your beliefs or the actions of others can be done poorly. 

 

The eight standards for critical thinking below, drawn from Bassham et al. (2019), should be among the first tools you start carrying with you as you move through the MAPS Handbook for Critical Thinking and begin forming your new critical thinking toolbox. These intellectual standards each constitute discrete but related targets to strive for in your thinking and communication (and to look for in the thought and communication of others). Like the other tools we'll discover throughout MAPS, they’re applicable across contexts.

 

These critical thinking standards are fundamental to reflecting on your own thought and communication (e.g., submitting quality assignments or forming appropriately complex views about climate change). Some of these standards are certainly used intuitively by many students as they reflect on new concepts they've learned or a rough draft of a paper they've written. For instance, you'll see the standard of accuracy below. I hope it's quite intuitive for you to ask yourself, upon learning a new course concept, whether you accurately understand said concept. That's good, but having the full set of eight standards below can help you more actively distinguish ideas about accuracy from whether you are able to clearly articulate the concept in a paper, whether you understand the concept completely, and whether you're able to apply the concept consistently across diverse real world contexts. Being able to differentiate between the standards of accuracy, clarity, completeness, and consistency will help you target your thinking to find where the flaws in your writing might lie.

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Furthermore, these standards are also valuable for evaluating others’ ideas and communications (e.g., social media posts, news articles, & podcast interviews). You may, for example, have a vague idea that there's something amiss in what a podcast guest is saying, but you're not sure how to pin down what's wrong. The standards can help: having them in mind can, for example, help you to see that while the person articulates their ideas clearly, they're lacking in precision and logical correctness. Generally speaking, having the standards in mind can help us to articulate for ourselves and others the successes and failings of other people's arguments. 

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Each of the eight standards is discussed briefly below. Hold onto them—when you later get into sections of the MAPS Handbook for Critical Thinking, you'll discover various tools to help you achieve them. 

 

Clarity

 

In your communication, is what you’re trying to say coming across clearly to attentive members of the intended audience? Most of the time when we communicate, we want our ideas to be conveyed to others as clearly as possible. The starting place, of course, is that your thinking is clear in your mind. When you go to write that essay, for example, do you have a clear view of the concepts you're using? Do you understand the reasons underlying an opinion you'll be conveying in the piece, or is your reasoning a little fuzzy? If your thinking doesn't appear clear to you, it certainly won't to your professor or boss!

 

A consideration of clarity is also important when we're on digital media. If you don’t understand what a podcast interviewee is saying, don’t automatically assume that it’s your fault. Perhaps you’re not the intended audience—it might be clear to psychology professors or students of astrophysics, but not to you. By contrast, red flags should go up if the author seems to be having trouble clearly conveying a message intended for a general audience.

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More worrying still, maybe the author is purposefully obscuring things. It happens!​According to Richard Feynman, "When we speak without jargon, it frees us from hiding behind knowledge we don’t have. Big words and fluffy 'business speak' cripples us from getting to the point and passing knowledge to others.” So, don't use big words to seem smart or otherwise impress your audience. Use the words that will get your ideas across. Write and speak as clearly as possible, and expect the same high standard of those to whom you turn for information.

 

Precision

 

When you're reading an article or blog post, do you find the author is being precise about what they mean by a target concept or a description of events? Just as this is important in medicine—it’s clearly essential to get the exact morphine dosage right!—it’s important when we're trying to convey information. If we’re going to have meaningful conversations about racism, violence, and war, for example, we need to have a precise understanding of what we and our interlocutors mean by key concepts and ideas.

 

For example, a lot had been said in the US and Canada around the Summer of 2020 about defunding the police. However, it’s not always clear what speakers meant by this idea, and the meaning differed from person to person. Does the communicator want to reduce funding or eliminate funding? Do they mean for funds to be redirected to support other resources or services? If so, to which services and precisely why would it be better to redirect that funding there? It can be confusing when an author or speaker is not defining their terms and explaining their views precisely. When the topic is as important as this, we need to know exactly what people are talking about.

 

Sometimes, precision is purposefully kept out of communications. For example, slogans are kept pithy for effect—they'd loose their impact if weighed down by precise meaning. Think, for example, of Nike's famous slogan, "Just do it". We shouldn't expect Nike to be precise about what "it" refers to. "Just score a goal" and "Just do the laundry before the weekend is over so your kids have clothes for school" clearly don't have the same ring as "Just do it".

 

At other times, writers and speakers simply may not have thought things through. The communication is imprecise because the ideas are fuzzy in the author or speaker's mind. It's our job as critical thinkers to find out why things might seem like they're imprecise and to respond accordingly.

 

Accuracy

 

Getting things wrong (e.g., sharing false information; misinterpreting concepts) can be extremely damaging because it can mislead people trying to figure out what they ought to think and do. One faulty research article published in 1998, suggested a link between childhood vaccines and autism. That article was shown to be incorrect and based on bad science. It has since been retracted and the lead author, Andrew Wakefield, has been discredited for professional misconduct. However, the damage had been done—the extremely destructive anti-vaccination movement that has sprung up, in part, from these false claims has gained much traction, which has done immeasurable harm to children throughout the world.  

 

People may communicate falsehoods because of incompetence, genuine mistakes, malice or even because communicating falsehoods is incentivized (e.g., financial gain and the approval of peers). Critical thinkers seek accuracy wherever possible and try to surmount any incentives they might have to believe and spread falsehoods. 

 

Relevance

 

Have you ever found yourself feeling like you had finished an essay, but it ended up being a page too short? In such cases, it's not uncommon for students to pad their essays with unnecessary writing. As a professor I see a lot of extra sentences or full paragraphs filled with ideas and anecdotes that are mostly irrelevant to the goals of the assignment. Keep in mind the idea of communicating only what's relevant to your writing goals—you'll see that it's better to remove anything that’s extra. By omission, you're showing that you understand the purpose of your communication and you'll keep the reader's mind on track.

 

At other times, writers or speakers raise irrelevancies to distract the reader from a weak argument. It’s a good idea to keep an eye out for things that might only seem pertinent or profound but are actually irrelevant.

 

Consistency

 

If you make a clear and accurate point and then contradict it, or if your point contradicts itself, that often betrays a lack of critical thinking. Sometimes, for example, a bit of writing in one part an essay will contradict an excellent point made earlier on. Suddenly that initial point is no longer so excellent. Whatever the reason for the inconsistency, it’s generally not good!

 

However, there are exceptions. We always need to keep in mind the point of the speech or writing. Inconsistency can sometimes be used by a talented writer or speaker for comic effect, for example. As always, ask what the intentions of the communication are. Is the work supposed to be funny or is it important information that's meant to be taken seriously?

 

Logical correctness

 

Logic is about the connections between statements rather than the content of those statements. Two or more statements might be logically connected in an argument or explanation, for example. This is treated at length in the Argument and Truth Claims section of the MAPS Handbook, where you'll learn the basics of arguments and explanations (logic, by the way, is one of the most difficult things to grasp among students of critical thinking, so be patient with it!). In well-reasoned arguments, conclusions logically follow from the reasons we give for those conclusions. Here's an example of logically connected statements forming a simple argument:

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If we're in Toronto, then we are in Canada. 

We are in Toronto.

Therefore, we are in Canada.

 

Pretty sensible, right? This exemplifies what we mean by logically connected statement. That conclusion—the 3rd line at the end—logically flows from the two premises that come before. From those two premises (if true), we're forced to agree with that conclusion. Again, we'll handle the terminology of arguments in the Argument and Truth Claims section.

 

The following argument is, by contrast, obviously illogical:

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If we're in Toronto, then we are in Canada. 

We are in Toronto.

Therefore, we are in Saskatchewan.

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Although Saskatchewan is in Canada, Toronto is, of course, not. Further, the premises say nothing at all about whether or not we are in Saskatchewan, so that conclusion simply does not follow from the premises. No logical connection. 

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To illustrate how easily we can get confused about logic though, here’s a more difficult one. Can you see why this argument is logically incorrect?

 

All Doberman Pinschers are dogs.

Some dogs bite.

Therefore, some Doberman Pinschers bite.

 

This argument has a conclusion ("some Doberman Pinschers bite") that doesn't follow from the premises (the reasons offered in support of the conclusion). The subset of dogs that are Doberman Pinschers could be entirely separate from the subset of dogs that bite!

 

You might say, “but it’s true—some Dobermans do bite!” Sure, that may well be the case, but there's nothing internal to the argument's structure that should convince you of that. Instead, what you may have done is inject your own prior understanding of the world into the argument (e.g., "I saw a Doberman bite a guy; therefore, some Doberman Pinschers bite"—well, that's a better argument, but its a totally different one!). We shouldn’t assume it’s a logical argument just because of the content (i.e., that we agree with the content of the conclusion). It's a bad argument—in this case, an illogical one—because of the lack of relationship among the statements; the reasons or premises aren't logically connected to the conclusion. 

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Again, when an argument is logically correct, conclusions follow from the reasons for those conclusions, which is an altogether separate idea from whether the conclusion itself is true.

 

Consider using the following example belief as a conclusion: "social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic was important for reducing the spread of the disease." Imagine your friend Pat holds this belief. As you discuss this view with Pat, it becomes clear that her main reason for holding this view is that she thinks the majority of other people also hold this belief. This is an example of a logical mistake sometimes referred to as the bandwagon fallacy (i.e., coming to a conclusion simply because other people seem to agree that it's true). 

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In this case, we need to disentangle two things: (1) the conclusion that social distancing reduced the spread of the Covid-19—which, of course, is quite sensible—and (2) Pat's reason for arriving at this conclusion (i.e., her view that the majority of people believe social distancing is important). It's important to consider that it's possible and quite common to have a true belief without having good reasons backing it up. That's exactly what's happening in Pat's case: that lots of people believe something to be true doesn't make it true. 

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Pat has made a logical mistake, and therefore has violated a core standard of critical thinking: logical correctness. By contrast, we've now been able to point out Pat's logical mistake; therefore, at least in this instance of critique, we've met one of the standards!

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Completeness

 

An essay that looks at the reasons something may be true while neglecting legitimate reasons it could be false is incomplete and can be misleading. Hastily written works sometimes also consider only one or two reasons something may be true while neglecting additional, perhaps more important, reasons it may be true. At other times, the reasons offered may be obvious or relatively shallow, without considering deeper root causes.

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Another, perhaps more obvious, way writing may be incomplete is when an author doesn't fully define a concept or share sources with the reader, leaving the reader uncertain about whether the author's understanding and research was lacking, whether they've neglected to share pertinent information, or whether they're purposefully leaving things out.

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Of course, good critical thinking also entails knowing where to stop. Things can always be explained further, but a writer or speaker needs to know how much explanation is needed to achieve their goals and whether doing more would be going too far.

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We also often want to make sure our critical thinking itself is complete—are you evaluating an issue from all relevant angles? For example, when reading an article, we might need to evaluate things like:

 

• the work itself (e.g., are any logical fallacies committed in the author’s argument?)

• our own thinking as we read (e.g., what biases could be distorting my interpretation of the message?)

• the nature of the sources that the author has used (e.g., does the cited research really say what the author claims?)

• the time period and social context in which the piece is written (e.g., who wrote this, for whom, and why?), etc.

 

Doing only one would entail stopping short of a complete perspective. Of course, striving for completeness can be arduous and time consuming—no one's saying critical thinking is quick and easy...

 

Fairness

 

When we disagree with or dislike a writer or speaker, we may be prone to treating their claims or arguments unfairly. For example, if we dislike an author's conclusions we might spend relatively more time trying to poke holes in the argument than if we agree with them (and vice versa).

 

An extreme, but perhaps common instance of lacking fairness: a politician might perceive and articulate a political enemy's argument for funding a social program in the worst possible light so as to more easily knock it down as weak. They're not treating the opponent's argument with fairness—they're violating one of our critical thinking standards.

 

If we hope for others to take us seriously and have honest, meaningful, and civil conversations, we need to be fair and take other people’s claims and arguments for what they are, not let the kind of person we think they are or our contrasting beliefs distort what they say. That's hard to do, but it's necessary for good critical thinking.

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Summary

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Having read this critical thinking primer, you should now have a good working idea of what we're talking about when we refer to critical thinking. You should also have some general and specific ideas about why it's important to develop critical thinking skills. For instance, it give us foundations to achieve, with good reasons, accurate views of the world that can be updated as necessary to account for new information. 

 

Finally, you have a new critical thinking "multi-tool" to carry with you: a set of standards for critical thinking. Perhaps you can think of other standards that might be useful as well—that's great! Make a note of it. But the eight standards discussed above should suffice to get you started with a good framework as you continue to explore the MAPS Handbook. In MAPS, we'll discover lots of additional cognitive and digital tools that will help us achieve these critical thinking standards. Use the checklist below as a shortcut to remember the standards and use them when you need them (checklist found below in PDF format and image).

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