Valuable Intellectual Traits
Published on Nov 18, 2015
A student-friendly presentation of ideas from CriticalThinking.org
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
What is "Critical Thinking"?
An answer from Linda Elder, of the Critical Thinking Institute
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"Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level...
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"...Critical thinkers embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living..."
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"...because critical thinkers realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world."
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The harder we work on thinking skills...
...the better we become at critical thinking.
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Intellectual Humility
- Know your own limits
- Be sensitive to your biases
- Acknowledge what you don't know
- Be intellectually unpretentious
Having a consciousness of the limits of one's knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in which one's native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively; sensitivity to bias, prejudice and limitations of one's viewpoint. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one's beliefs.
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Intellectual Courage
- Consider new ideas, beliefs & views
- Recognize "dangerous" ideas may just be "new"
- Don't just accept what you're taught
- Be true to your own thinking
Having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or viewpoints toward which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part) and that conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must not passively and uncritically "accept" what we have "learned." Intellectual courage comes into play here, because inevitably we will come to see some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held in our social group. We need courage to be true to our own thinking in such circumstances. The penalties for non-conformity can be severe.
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Intellectual Courage
- Consider new ideas, beliefs & views
- Recognize "dangerous" ideas may just be "new"
- Don't just accept what you're taught
- Be true to your own thinking
Having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or viewpoints toward which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part) and that conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must not passively and uncritically "accept" what we have "learned." Intellectual courage comes into play here, because inevitably we will come to see some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held in our social group. We need courage to be true to our own thinking in such circumstances. The penalties for non-conformity can be severe.
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Intellectual Empathy
- Realize that perception isn't truth
- Reasonably reconstruct others' ideas
- Remember when you've been wrong in the past
- Consider how or why you might be wrong now
Having a consciousness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them, which requires the consciousness of our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions of long-standing thought or belief. This trait correlates with the ability to reconstruct accurately the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than our own. This trait also correlates with the willingness to remember occasions when we were wrong in the past despite an intense conviction that we were right, and with the ability to imagine our being similarly deceived in a case-at-hand.
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Intellectual Autonomy
- Evaluate ideas using reason & evidence
- Question when it's rational to question
- Believe when it's rational to believe
- Conform when it's rational to conform
Having rational control of one's beliefs, values, and inferences, The ideal of critical thinking is to learn to think for oneself, to gain command over one's thought processes. It entails a commitment to analyzing and evaluating beliefs on the basis of reason and evidence, to question when it is rational to question, to believe when it is rational to believe, and to conform when it is rational to conform.
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Intellectual Integrity
- Be true to your own thinking
- Apply consistent intellectual standards
- Require evidence of others & yourself
- Admit inconsistencies in your own thinking
Recognition of the need to be true to one's own thinking; to be consistent in the intellectual standards one applies; to hold one's self to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one's antagonists; to practice what one advocates for others; and to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one's own thought and action.
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Intellectual Perseverance
- THINK despite difficulties
- Remain rational vs. irrational opposition
- Struggle through confusion & questions
Having a consciousness of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve deeper understanding or insight.
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Confidence in Reason
- Believe that reason benefits us all
- Have faith in everyone's ability to think
Confidence that, in the long run, one's own higher interests and those of humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason, by encouraging people to come to their own conclusions by developing their own rational faculties; faith that, with proper encouragement and cultivation, people can learn to think for themselves, to form rational viewpoints, draw reasonable conclusions, think coherently and logically, persuade each other by reason and become reasonable persons, despite the deep-seated obstacles in the native character of the human mind and in society as we know it.
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Fairmindedness
- Treat different viewpoints as alike
- Ignore interests of self, friends, communities
- Apply intellectual standards equally
- Ignore influence of privilege
Having a consciousness of the need to treat all viewpoints alike, without reference to one's own feelings or vested interests, or the feelings or vested interests of one's friends, community or nation; implies adherence to intellectual standards without reference to one's own advantage or the advantage of one's group.
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Do you like thinking about thinking?
Visit criticalthinking.org for more on the ideas presented here!
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