We all have a system to break down how we understand things, how the world looks to us, how we make sense of the world. The ways we think are called the Elements of Thought.
Unfortunately, most of the time we don’t think well. We tend to favor decisions and ideas that favor us, put our own group over other groups. We are…ego-centric and socio-centric. So, we need to force ourselves to look at things the way they truly are. So, to assess the quality of our thinking, we use the Intellectual Standards. 
Clarity forces the thinking to be explained well so that it is easy to understand. When thinking is easy to follow, it has Clarity. Accuracy makes sure that all information is correct and free from error. If the thinking is reliable, then it has Accuracy. Precision goes one step further than Accuracy. It demands that the words and data used are exact. If no more details could be added, then it has Precision. Relevance means that everything included is important, that each part makes a difference. If something is focused on what needs to be said, there is Relevance. Depth makes the argument thorough. It forces us to explore the complexities. If an argument includes all the nuances necessary to make the point, it has Depth. Breadth demands that additional viewpoints are taken into account. Are all perspectives considered? When all sides of an argument are discussed, then we find Breadth. Logical means that an argument is reasonable, the thinking is consistent and the conclusions follow from the evidence. When something makes sense step-by-step, then it is Logical. Significance compels us to include the most important ideas. We don’t want to leave out crucial facts that would help to make a point. When everything that is essential is included, then we find Significance. Fairness means that the argument is balanced and free from bias. It pushes us to be impartial and evenhanded toward other positions. When an argument is objective, there is Fairness.
The Quality of Our Students’ Thinking may be Facilitated by To Evaluate Thinking It Is Necessary to Understand and Apply Intellectual Standards Reasonable people judge reasoning by intellectual standards. When one internalizes these standards and explicitly uses them in one’s thinking, the thinking becomes more clear, more accurate, more precise, more relevant, deeper, broader, and more fair. 1. Clarity: understandable, the meaning can be grasped 2. Accuracy: free from errors or distortions, true 3. Precision: exact to the necessary level of detail 4. Relevance: relating to the matter at hand 5. Depth: containing complexities and multiple interrelationships 6. Breadth: encompassing multiple viewpoints 7. Logic: the parts make sense together, no contradictions 8. Significance: focusing on the important, not trivial 9. Fairness: justifiable, not self-serving or one-sided Sample questions: 1. Questioning Clarity: Could you give me an example or illustration of your point? I hear you saying “X.” Am I hearing you correctly, or have I misunderstood you? 2. Questioning Accuracy: How could we check to see of it is true? How could we verify these alleged facts? Can we trust the accuracy of these data given the source(s) they came from? 3. Questioning Precision: Could you be more specific? Could you give me more details about that? Could you specify your concerns more fully? 4. Questioning Relevance: Could you explain what you think the connection is between your question and the question we have focused on? How does that help us with the issue?
What makes this a complex question? Are conflicting points relevant? How are we dealing with the complexities inherent in the question? 6. Questioning Breadth: We have looked at the question from an [economic] viewpoint. Does it have an ethical dimension? 7. Questioning Logic: Does all this make sense together? Does your first paragraph fit in with your last? Does what you say follow from the evidence? 8. Questioning Significance: Is this the central idea to focus on? Which of these facts are most important? 9. Questioning Fairness: Do we (I) have any vested interest in this issue?
Lesson Overview Critical thinking is a disciplined thinking governed by clear intellectual standards. But, not every thinking is critical. To identify a critical thinking from the uncritical, we refer to some standards. There is a consensus among philosophers that for thinking to be critical, it has to meet certain standards. Standard of critical thinking refers a conditions or a level that critical thinking should meet to be considered as normal and acceptable. Among the most important of these intellectual standards are clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, consistency, logical correctness, completeness, and fairness. In this lesson, we will discuss these standards. Activity # 2: Dear learners, do you know any standard of critical thinking? How do you identify good critical thinking from bad critical thinking? What basic standards do you think critical thinking should meet? Dear learners, we have seen that the term ‗critical thinking‘ generally refers to a wide range of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions needed to effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments and truth claims. It is critical thinking is a disciplined thinking governed by clear intellectual standards that can be used to identify a critical thinking from the uncritical. Standard of critical thinking refers a conditions or a level that critical thinking should meet to be considered as normal and acceptable. Clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, consistency, logical correctness, completeness, and fairness are some of the most important intellectual standards of critical thinking. Let us discuss these standards in detail. 1) Clarity Clarity refers to clear understanding of concepts and clearly expressing them in a language that is free of obscurity and vagueness. When we construct argument, we should take into consideration or pay close attention to clarity. Before we can effectively evaluate a person‘s argument or claim, we need to understand clearly what the person is saying. Unfortunately, that can be difficult because people often fail to express themselves clearly. But clarity is a gateway standard. If a statement is unclear, we cannot determine whether it is accurate or relevant. In fact, we cannot tell anything about it because we do not yet know what it is saying. For example, the question “What can be done about the education system in Ethiopia?” is unclear. In order to address the question adequately, we would need to have a clearer understanding of what the person is asking. The question is considering the “problem‖ to be. A clearer question might be “What can educators do to ensure that students learn the skills and abilities which help them function successfully on the job and in their daily decision-making?” Sometimes lack of clarity is due to laziness, carelessness, or a lack of skill. At other times, it results from a misguided effort to appear clever, learned, or profound. As William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, in their classic, “The Elements of Style‟, remark that “Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter. . . .Only by paying careful attention to language can we avoid such needless miscommunications and disappointments. Critical thinkers, however, not only strive for clarity of language but also seek maximum clarity of thought. To achieve our personal goals in life, we need a clear conception of our goals and priorities, a realistic grasp of our abilities, and a clear understanding of the problems and opportunities we face. Such self-understanding can be achieved only if we value and pursue clarity of thought. 2) Precision Precision is a matter of being exact, accurate and careful. Most ideas are vague and obscures though we think we have precise understanding of them. When we try to meticulous these ideas, we will find that they are imprecise. To get precise understanding, we should pay close attention to details. Everyone recognizes the importance of precision in specialized fields such as medicine, mathematics, architecture, and engineering. Critical thinkers also understand the importance of precise thinking in different contexts. They understand that to cut through the confusions and uncertainties that surround many everyday problems and issues, it is often necessary to insist on precise answers to precise questions: What exactly is the problem we are facing? What exactly are the alternatives? What exactly are the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative? Only when we habitually seek such precision are we truly become critical thinkers. 3) Accuracy Accuracy is about correct information. Critical thinking should care a lot about genuine information. If the ideas and thoughts one processes are not real, then once decision based on wrong and false information will likely to result in distorting realities. John Rawls, in his book entitled as “A Theory of Justice‟ argued that truth is the first virtue of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue. Whether an idea is attractive or sophisticated should be abandoned if it is based on false information. Accuracy is about having and getting true information. There is a well-known saying about computers: “Garbage in, garbage out.‖Simply put, this means that if you put bad information into a computer, bad information is exactly what you will get out of it. Much the same is true of human thinking. No matter how brilliant you may be, you are almost guaranteed to make bad decisions if your decisions are based on false information. Critical thinkers do not merely value the truth; they also have a passion for accurate, timely information. As consumers, citizens, workers, and parents, they strive to make decisions and this decision should be based on true information. 4) Relevance The question of relevance is a question of connections. When there is a discussion or debate, it should focus on relevant ideas and information. That is, only those points that bear on the issue should be raised. A favorite debaters‘ trick is to try to distract an audience‘s attention by raising an irrelevant issue. Critical thinkers do not collect any information; they focus and carefully choose only the information that has logical relation with the ideas at hands. Issues raised should have logical connection with the question at hand. Two ideas are relevant when they have logical connection. A critical thinker should be relevant in his ideas and thoughts. 5) Consistency Consistency is about the quality of always behaving in the same way or of having the same opinions or standards. It is easy to see why consistency is essential to critical thinking. Logic tells us that if a person holds inconsistent beliefs, at least one of those beliefs must be false. Critical thinkers prize truth and so are constantly on the lookout for inconsistencies, both in their own thinking and in the arguments and assertions of others. There are two kinds of inconsistency that should be avoided. One is logical inconsistency, which involves saying or believing inconsistent things (i.e., things that cannot both or all be true) about a particular matter. The other is practical inconsistency, which involves saying one thing and doing another. Sometimes people are fully aware that their words conflict with their deeds; in short people sometime are hypocrites. From a critical thinking point of view, such personality is not especially interesting. As a rule, they involve failures of character to a greater degree than they do failures of critical reasoning. More interesting from a critical thinking standpoint are cases in which people are not fully aware that their words conflict with their deeds. Such cases highlight an important lesson of critical thinking: human beings often display a remarkable capacity for self-deception. Author Harold Kushner, in this respect, writes as: [a]sk the average person which is more important to him, making money or being devoted to his family, and virtually everyone will answer family without hesitation. But watch how the average person actually lives out his life. See where he really invests his time and energy, and he will give away the fact that he really does not live by what he says he believes. He has let himself be persuaded that if he leaves for work earlier in the morning and comes home more tired at night, he is proving how devoted he is to his family by expending himself to provide them with all the things they have seen advertised. Critical thinking helps us become aware of such unconscious practical inconsistencies, allowing us to deal with them on a conscious and rational basis. It is also common, of course, for people to hold unknowingly inconsistent beliefs about a particular subject. In fact, as Socrates pointed out long ago, such unconscious logical inconsistency is far more common than most people suspect. For example, many today claim that morality is relative, while holding a variety of views that imply that it is not relative. Critical thinking helps us to recognize such logical inconsistencies or, still better, avoid them altogether. A critical thinker should be consistent logically and practically. 6) Logical Correctness To think logically is to reason correctly; that is, to draw well-founded conclusions from the beliefs held. To think critically, we need accurate and well supported beliefs. But, just as important, we need to be able to reason from those beliefs to conclusions that logically follow from them. Unfortunately, illogical thinking is all too common in human affairs. When we think, we bring a variety of thoughts together into some order. When the combinations of thoughts are mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is logical. When the combination is not mutually supporting, is contradictory in some sense, or does not make sense the combination, is not logical. 7) Completeness In most contexts, we rightly prefer deep and complete thinking to shallow and superficial thinking. Of course, there are times when it is impossible or inappropriate to discuss an issue in depth; no one would expect, for example, a thorough and wide-ranging discussion of the ethics of the right to self- determination in a short newspaper editorial. However, thinking is better when it is deep rather than shallow, thorough rather than superficial. 8) Fairness Critical thinking demands that our thinking be fair – that is, open minded, impartial, and free of distorting biases and preconceptions. That can be very difficult to achieve. Even the most superficial acquaintance with history and the social sciences tells us that people are often strongly disposed to resist unfamiliar ideas, to prejudge issues, to stereotype outsiders, and to identify truth with their own self-interest or the interests of their nation or group. It is probably unrealistic to suppose that our thinking could ever be completely free of biases and preconceptions; to some extent, we all perceive reality in ways that are powerfully shaped by our individual life experiences and cultural backgrounds. But as difficult as it may be to achieve, basic fair-mindedness is clearly an essential attribute of a critical thinker. We naturally think from our own perspective, from a point of view, which tends to privilege our position. Fairness implies the treating of all relevant viewpoints alike without reference to one‘s own feelings or interests. Because we tend to be biased in favor of our own viewpoint, it is important to keep the standard of fairness at the forefront of our thinking. This is especially important when the situation may call on us to see things we do not want to see, or give something up that we want to hold onto. |
Examples of accuracy in critical thinking
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