Critical Thinking Examples

The critical thinking It is the ability to clearly and rationally put our actions, beliefs and convictions, or those of other people, on trial. It consists of using intelligence and knowledge to deduce or build the most reasonable and justified position that can be taken on a defined topic.

The ability to doubt and to philosophize, that is, to think about the way we think about things, are the two key components of critical thinking. They are what allow us to question the given or established point of view of things, to elaborate our own. that allows us to understand more and better the matter, or at least understand more and better our own thought.

In that sense, critical thinking deals with:

When we speak of critical thinking we are not referring to intellectual inquiry, academic research, or human inventiveness or creativity. Critical thinking, rather than pursuing the accumulation of information, seeks to delve into the dynamics of thought. This ability enhances the acquisition of new knowledge and allows the development of perspectives broader, more complex and deeper insights into things, instead of staying on the surface of what evident.

In general, to put critical thinking into practice, it is necessary to assume an open and objective attitude. before the ideas and postures, trying to preserve certain healthy doubts so as not to incur presuppositions or prejudices, while preserving the Liberty thinking. This does not mean that critical thinking is not demanding, methodical and analytical in its approach to ideas and beliefs, but just the opposite: the critical thinker places his trust in reason and in the possibility of maintaining a certain humility intellectual.

critical thinking examples

The following are examples of critical thinking:

1. A person sees in social networks a News shocking, and before sharing it and scaring others, he first checks the context, does a google search and makes sure it's not fake news.
2. Despite what the Church claimed and what the whole society believed (based on the Bible and other classical Greek texts), Nicolaus Copernicus dared to doubt and think critically, proposing the heliocentric model of the solar system that today we accept
3. An academic studies the traditional ways of organizing the works of national museums, to try to understand how the work of art is traditionally thought of in his country.
4. There are people who claim that the Earth is flat because they have never been able to see the curvature with their own eyes. Thinking critically, we can conclude that there are things that are inaccessible to our eyes, and that in that case we should turn to specialized knowledge, and not only to our five senses.
5. An urban legend has it that in the mid-20th century, when racing to reach space, NASA engineers tried to invent a pen that could operate in zero-gravity. The Russians, thinking critically, solved this problem by equipping their cosmonauts with pencils.
6. A business team decides to self-evaluate and rethink their work methods to see how their tasks can be more efficient. To do this, they decide which indicators to use to really be able to evaluate themselves and obtain reliable conclusions.
7. Before choosing in the hands of which doctor to put himself, a migrant citizen decides to investigate about each nearby doctor, to be able to choose in the most informed way possible, instead of putting oneself in the hands of the random.

References:

• "Critical thinking" in Wikipedia.
• “Critical thinking: keys, routes and decoys” by Nancy Cardinaux and María Angélica Palombo in Legal Education Magazine.
• “Critical thinking” (video) in Educate Chile.
• “What is critical thinking?” on the University of Hong Kong.

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