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Critical Thinking Page

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is not simply being critical.  Critical thinking is the willingness and ability to challenge arguments of your own making and those presented by others.    

Critical thinking requires open-mindedness, logic, intellectual honesty and a desire to follow the evidence where it leads.  

Critical thinkers learn to distinguish facts from inferences and opinions.  

Critical thinkers may or may not be scientists, but they learn to apply scientific thinking to problems and issue they encounter.  

Thinking Critically About an Argument

Challenging the Claim

The first step in thinking critically about an argument is to find the claim.  If the arguer has not stated a clear claim, you cannot go forward with your analysis until you have determined just what the arguer wants others to accept.

If the claim is clear you should be able to state it in a declarative statement.  If you cannot do so, it will be difficult to respond directly to the argument. 

If you are engaged in the argument and the claim is unclear, you should ask the arguer to make it clear.

Once the arguer's claim is clear, you must consider the criteria for determining whether or not the claim can be satisfied.

  • How will we know if the claim is true?

  • Is the claim relevant to the controversy?

  • Does the claim address a real problem?

  • If the claim is accepted will it provide a solution to the problem outlined by the controversy?

It should be noted here that a complex argument may well (usually does) contain more than one claim.  There will be one overall claim, but there may well be sub-claims which must be dealt with before the argument can be resolved.  

A critic examining an argument must identify all the claims the argument puts forward. 

Back to the Claim page

Challenging Evidence

Once the claims are identified, a critic must examine the evidence the arguer presents as support for the claims.  Evidence must be accepted as true by all parties to the argument.  If not, the argument cannot proceed until its truth is established.

If the truth of evidence is contested, that evidence becomes a sub- argument which must be dealt with before the argument can continue. 

Here are some questions a critic might ask about the evidence presented in an argument.

  • Are cited examples representative of a larger group of things?  If an example depicts something that rarely happens or describes a highly idiosyncratic behavior, it may have little value as evidence.

  • Are statistics taken from a large enough population?

  • Are data collected and analyzed by an unbiased and trustworthy research organization?

  • Does testimony come from an unbiased source?

  • Are the persons cited qualified to speak on the subject for which they have been quoted?

  • If conventional wisdom is presented, does it really reflect what is accepted by most members of the culture?  Back to the Evidence Page. 

Challenging the Warrant

Douglas Ehninger has identified three general types of warrants: (a) authoritative, (b) substantive, and (c) motivational.  Here are some of the questions you might ask in order to challenge the argument's warrant. 

  1. The authoritative warrant is based on the credibility of a message source.  Example #2 on the warrant page illustrates this type. The argument depends on the credibility assigned to Lucile.

    - Does the authority have the expertise to make the claim?

    - Can the authority be depended upon to deliver an objective view?

    - Are there other authorities who disagree?

     

  2. The substantive warrant depends on the trustworthiness of the factual evidence presented.  Example #1 on the warrant page illustrates this type.  The argument depends on how reliably John's experience with Fords represents the real world of Fords. 

    - Are the examples sufficient to represent an entire community? 

    - If the argument states a cause-effect relationship, does the cause given seem to account for the entire effect?

    - If the argument makes a comparison, are the things compared similar in all the important characteristics?

  3. The motivational warrant is based on values shared by the audience and the arguer.  This type of warrant works only when the value it expresses is accepted by the listeners.  Example #3 on the warrant page illustrates this type.  The value that affluent countries have a responsibility to save lives whenever they are able to do so connects the claim to the evidence.  

    Back to the Warrant Page