改自Steven D. Schafersman
http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-thinking.html

Purpose and Rationale of Teaching Critical Thinking

"We should be teaching students how to think. Instead, we are teaching them what to think." Clement and Lochhead, 1980, Cognitive Process Instruction.

Perhaps you can now see the problem. All education consists of transmitting to students two different things: (1) the subject matter or discipline content of the course ("what to think"), and (2) the correct way to understand and evaluate this subject matter ("how to think"). We do an excellent job of transmitting the content of our respective academic disciplines, but we often fail to teach students how to think effectively about this subject matter, that is, how to properly understand and evaluate it. This second ability is termed critical thinking.

Definition of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking means correct thinking in the pursuit of relevant and reliable knowledge about the world.【這裡預設了「正確」思考，但是批判思考對於什麼是正確的也會提出質疑和反思】 Another way to describe it is reasonable, reflective, responsible, and skillful thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.

A person who thinks critically can ask appropriate questions, gather relevant information, efficiently and creatively sort through this information, reason logically from this information, and come to reliable and trustworthy conclusions about the world that enable one to live and act successfully in it.【做出的結論是否能讓人人產生功倒是很難說的，因為很多時候，批判思考是不從眾的，而不從眾就可能危及到成功與否】

Stopping for red lights or knowing that you have received the correct change at the supermarket is critical and useful thought, but only low-order thinking; most individuals master this. True critical thinking is higher-order thinking, enabling a person to, for example, responsibly judge between political candidates, serve on a murder trial jury, evaluate society's need for nuclear power plants, and assess the consequences of global warming.當然批判思考可能幫助你達到這些，但是思考上的見地是否會被採用為人生實踐，那還是另外一件事情。畢竟人們不是隻有批判思考，她們還往往受到另外很多因素的左右，如感情、人際關係、慾望等等】

Children are not born with the power to think critically, nor do they develop this ability naturally beyond survival-level thinking. Critical thinking is a learned ability that must be taught. Critical thinking can be described as the scientific method applied by ordinary people to the ordinary world. This is true because critical thinking mimics the well-known method of scientific investigation:

a question is identified, an hypothesis formulated, relevant data sought and gathered, the hypothesis is logically tested and evaluated, and reliable conclusions are drawn from the result.

All of the skills of scientific investigation are matched by critical thinking, which is therefore nothing more than scientific method used in everyday life rather than in specifically scientific disciplines or endeavors. Critical thinking is scientific thinking.【但是這並不表示研究科學的人就必然且自動會批判思考，經驗顯示，很多科學家只會照著成規做研究和實驗，對自己所做的工作以及這些工作所座落的社會文化環境是完全無知更何況具有批判思考了】

Critical thinking is the ability to think for one's self and reliably and responsibly make those decisions that affect one's life. Critical thinking is also critical inquiry, so such critical thinkers investigate problems, ask questions, pose new answers that challenge the status quo, discover new information that can be used for good or ill, question authorities and traditional beliefs, challenge received dogmas and doctrines, and often end up possessing power in society greater than their numbers. It may be that a workable society or culture can tolerate only a small number of critical thinkers, that learning, internalizing, and practicing scientific and critical thinking is discouraged. Most people are followers of authority: most do not question, are not curious, and do not challenge authority figures who claim special knowledge or insight. Most people, therefore, do not think for themselves, but rely on others to think for them. Most people indulge in wishful, hopeful, and emotional thinking, believing that what they believe is true because they wish it, hope it, or feel it to be true. Most people, therefore, do not think critically.【也不見得，有些人在日常生活的小事中非常具有批判思考的精神，只是在某些領域中不用而已】

Critical thinking skills are nothing more than problem solving skills that result in reliable knowledge. Humans constantly process information. Critical thinking is the practice of processing this information in the most skillful, accurate, and rigorous manner possible, in such a way that it leads to the most reliable, logical, and trustworthy conclusions, upon which one can make responsible decisions about one's life, behavior, and actions with full knowledge of assumptions and consequences of those decisions.

Raymond S. Nickerson (1987), an authority on critical thinking, characterizes a good critical thinker in terms of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and habitual ways of behaving. Here are some of the characteristics of such a thinker:

• uses evidence skillfully and impartially
• organizes thoughts and articulates them concisely and coherently
• distinguishers between logically valid and invalid inferences
• suspends judgment in the absence of sufficient evidence to support a decision
• understands the difference between reasoning and rationalizing
• attempts to anticipate the probable consequences of alternative actions
• understands the idea of degrees of belief
• sees similarities and analogies that are not superficially apparent
• can learn independently and has an abiding interest in doing so
• applies problem-solving techniques in domains other than those in which learned
• can structure informally represented problems in such a way that formal techniques, such as mathematics, can be used to solve them
• can strip a verbal argument of irrelevancies and phrase it in its essential terms
• habitually questions one's own views and attempts to understand both the assumptions that are critical to those views and the implications of the views
• is sensitive to the difference between the validity of a belief and the intensity with which it is held
• is aware of the fact that one's understanding is always limited, often much more so than would be apparent to one with a non-inquiring attitude
• recognizes the fallibility of one's own opinions, the probability of bias in those opinions, and the danger of weighting evidence according to personal preferences
  

This list is, of course, incomplete, but it serves to indicate the type of thinking and approach to life that critical thinking is supposed to be.

Critical thinking

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Critical Thinking consists of mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation. It includes possible processes of reflecting upon a tangible or intangible item in order to form a solid judgment that reconciles scientific evidence with common sense. In contemporary usage "critical" has a certain negative connotation that does not apply in the present case. Though the term "analytical thinking" may seem to convey the idea more accurately, critical thinking clearly involves synthesis, evaluation, and reconstruction of thinking, in addition to analysis.

Critical thinkers gather information from all senses, verbal and/or written expressions, reflection, observation, experience and reasoning. Critical thinking has its basis in intellectual criteria that go beyond subject-matter divisions and which include: clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance and fairness.

Critical thinking is a form of judgment, specifically purposeful and reflective judgment. Using critical thinking one makes a decision or solves the problem of judging what to believe or what to do, but does so in a reflective way. Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making that judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming that judgment, and the applicable theoretical and constructs for understanding the nature of the problem and the question at hand. These elements also happen to be the key defining characteristics of professional fields and academic disciplines. This is why critical thinking can occur within a given subject field (by reference to its specific set of permissible questions, evidence sources, criteria, etc.) and across subject fields in all those spaces where human beings need to interact and make decisions, solve problems, and figure out what to believe and what to do.

Within the framework of scientific skepticism, the process of critical thinking involves acquiring information and evaluating it to reach a well-justified conclusion or answer. Part of critical thinking comprises informal logic. However, a large part of critical thinking goes beyond informal logic and includes assessment of beliefs and identification of prejudice, bias, propaganda, self-deception, distortion, misinformation, etc. Given research in cognitive psychology, some educators believe that schools should focus more on teaching their students critical thinking skills, intellectual standards, and cultivating intellectual traits (such as intellectual humility, intellectual empathy, intellectual integrity, and fair-mindedness) than on memorizing facts by rote learning. As defined in A Greek-English Lexicon the verb krino- means to choose, decide or judge. Hence a krites is a discerner, judge or arbiter. Those who are kritikos have the ability to discern or decide by exercising sound judgment
The word krino- also means to separate (winnow) the wheat from the chaff or that which has worth from that which does not.

Critical thinking is important, because it enables one to analyze, evaluate, explain, and restructure our thinking, decreasing thereby the risk of acting on, or thinking with, a false premise.
However, even with the use of critical thinking skills, mistakes can happen due to a thinker's egocentrism or sociocentrism or failure to be in possession of the full facts. In addition, there is always the possibility of inadvertent human error.

Universal concepts and principles of critical thinking can be applied to any context or case but only by reflecting upon the nature of that application. Critical thinking forms, therefore, a system of related, and overlapping, modes of thought such as anthropological thinking, sociological thinking, historical thinking, political thinking, psychological thinking, philosophical thinking, mathematical thinking, chemical thinking, biological thinking, ecological thinking, legal thinking, ethical thinking, musical thinking, thinking like a painter, sculptor, engineer, business person, etc. In other words, though critical thinking principles are universal, their application to disciplines requires a process of reflective contextualization.

One can regard critical thinking as involving two aspects:

1. a set of cognitive skills, intellectual standards, and traits of mind
2. the disposition or intellectual commitment to use those structures to improve thinking and guide behavior.
   

Critical thinking, in the strong sense, does not include simply the acquisition and retention of information, or the possession of a skill-set which one does not use regularly; nor does critical thinking merely exercise skills without acceptance of the results.