Thinking Critically about Critical-Thinking

That critical-thinking is a powerful tool both in reasoning and in decision-making is undeniable. It allows us to scrutinize information instead of accepting it at face value, and promotes the pursuit of a greater and deeper understanding in whatever domain we choose to use it in. Just like any other powerful tool, however, its power can become misused. What happens when critical-thinking is applied without basic understanding of human heuristics and biases?

When considering what characteristics all critical-thinkers share, some can be quite visibly illustrated. All seem to promote doubt for accepted assumptions, seek alternative explanations for whatever phenomena they are thinking-critically about, and all seem to argue for a greater transparency within a variety of aspects in social contexts.  In other words, the critically-turned are all of us, blog readers and writers (and sometimes influential movie-makers). We are those who, among other things, demand social change, freedom from implicit or explicit modallties of control, and ever greater access to information.

Indeed, critical-thinkers (with quite a bit of help from social media) have an increasingly loud and influential voice in today's world. But is there a direction to which this growing wave of critical-thinkers seems to lead? We are constantly bombarded with information that seems to contradict information that we have seen five minutes previously; for every well-articulated statement out there, there seems to be an equally well-articulated statement claiming the exact opposite. Disagreement is good, it challenges our ideas about the world, and asks us to constantly adapt as new information becomes available. But is that really the effect we are seeing? If we can find a well articulated, critically-constructed, justification for practically any belief or claim then doesn't that make any claim equally viable, and any belief equally reasonable? Does this, Internet-induced, critical-thinking then inherently making us better informed? Perhaps not, but it surely seems to make us more argumentative.

What is the difference then between critical-thinking and skepticism? Superficially, the two seem to be almost synonymous. This implicit synonymy, however, provides within it the ultimate reason for this post: The above-stated informational reality is the product of critical-thinking without the scientific mitigation that allows us skeptics to effectively separate true claims from false ones. Where scientists, and skeptics in general, attempt to challenge existing and emerging information by contrasting it with already supported evidence, many self-proclaimed critical-thinker do not apply these rules in their critical dissection, employing instead a spectrum of common heuristic biases that apply to human reasoning.

The product?  Global-warming denialism, promotion of para-natural medical approaches, and general conspiracy theorizing, are just a few examples that come to this skeptic's mind.

Such is the power of critical-thinking; it allows one to reasonably cast doubt on any statement. This, in turn, leads to one of the most prevailing fallacies in today's world, that all claims are equally plausible, that all theories are equally fallible, and that all assumptions should be scrutinized at the same level of doubt. This, as already stated, is inherently false. As any skeptic will gladly rant, in any given claim one must consult whether the congruence of  the (already supported) evidence supports or contradicts that claim, as well as contemplating at what level one's own biases might be affecting the articulation of said claim.

If critical-thinking, then, is the ultimate power in the universe (forgive the hyperbole) for human reasoning, then I would state that skepticism is the ultimate guide (forgive the implied plagiarism) in the universe for applying this power, a sort-of instruction manual for critical-thinking, if you will. We live in world where the volume of information that is available to us, and the ease of access to it, is increasing daily. Critical-thinking may provide us with the method of sorting through this increasingly complex world, but it is skepticism that best provides the direction in which we should apply this method (until someone can come up with something better, that is).