Critical thinking

We use our experience and knowledge to understand what is unknown or inaccessible to us. We are attracted to patterns and judge the world in terms of what is already familiar to us. However, out of a desire to understand some things more quickly, we often draw conclusions without sufficient evidence. Thus we fall into the trap of the sophism called hasty generalization.

Arguments must be convincing and, in order to convince, they must be valid—the minimum requirement of persuasion.

From television stories to personal experiences, we live in a world where honesty seems to be an increasingly rare commodity and suspicion and scepticism become protective shields.

The moment we distort a person’s intention, statement, gesture or action for our own personal gain we are using, consciously or unconsciously, the straw man argument − a frequent fallacy.

When what someone says can be interpreted in multiple ways, we are in danger of coming to an understanding which is different to their intended message.

We live surrounded by words—spoken with confidence, written with authority, and shared at astonishing speed. Yet behind many of them lie confusion, prejudice, and unexamined assumptions. From everyday conversations to public decisions, gaps in reasoning and expression reveal something deeper than mere slips of the tongue: they expose deficiencies in education. In such a climate, critical thinking is no luxury; it is a...

A circular argument is an argument forming part of a thesis which has not been established, but still needs to be argued for.

As Christians we are interested in a perpetual spiritual, moral, general human perfecting. But can we really succeed without perfecting our way of thinking, our capacity to understand, and thus without increasing our intellectual capital?

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.

Critical thinking is not a cure-all, but it proves very useful in dealing with, clarifying, and solving some decision-making problems, as well as the thought and belief disputes which occupy our minds.

“Yeah, I understand what you’re saying about Christianity. I’ve been there, a long time ago, but now that I’ve moved on, I have a different relationship with the universe and things are going much better for me on all levels.”

Even if we have not been to Eden, the longing for innocence draws us back to a time when we had not yet tasted the forbidden fruit.

The ability to imagine alternatives to events that have already occurred distinguishes humans from other creatures and machines—artificial intelligence has not yet succeeded in creating a device that can devise counterfactual scenarios. The fact that we can travel in an imaginary time and rewrite our actions and their outcomes can prove to be an advantage or can lead to dysfunctional emotional and cognitive...

When one wants to justify the harm one has done by saying that others have done the same or that this evil was only a reaction to the harm done by someone else, they commit the logical error of appealing to hypocrisy.

The fact that we are able to anticipate most of the consequences of our actions is undoubtedly a blessing. However, we can also allow fear or over-cautiousness to make us anticipate events that are not likely to follow. This edges us toward a common error of judgement: the slippery slope.