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Welcome to our journey into the world of critical thinking! In this lesson, we'll dive deep into what it means to think critically. You'll discover the key attitudes that are crucial for informed and effective critical thinking. You'll also get the chance to practice them and by the end of this chapter, you'll be able to identify arguments with confidence. Let's get started!
Key Terms
Key Terms
Critical Thinking - is forming a judgement, by using information to justify your opinion.
Author - writer, artist or speaker who has produced it
Audience - receiver: reader, watcher or listener
Analysis - identifying the key parts of a text and reconstructing it in a way that fully and fairly captures its meaning
Argument - is a piece of reasoning, consisting of a persuasive conclusion supported by one or more reasons.
Evaluation - judging how successful a text is: for example, how well an argument supports its conclusion; or how strong some piece of evidence is for a claim it is supposed to support.
Description - states what is the case, but it does not explain why, and it does not try to persuade the reader to do anything or believe anything
Narrative - tells what happened
Opinion - content consists entirely on what the author believes, and gives no reasons to persuade the reader to agree
Explanation - does not seek to persuade. It gives reasons why a situation is as it is
In order to think critically, we require a set of attitudes: a way of thinking and responding. Critical thinking should be the following:
fair- and open-minded - set aside or discard an accepted or long-held believe
active and informed - investigate and enquire
skeptical - a willingness to question or to entertain doubt
independent - take initiative and ask your own questions
brave - reach your own conclusions
Any information such as arguments, statements, items of evidence, explanations, dialog, statistics, news stories, advertisements may require critical responses. Since some claims are untrue, they need to be assessed critically to avoid the audience being misled.
Arguments
Arguments
In everyday language, the word argument refers to a disagreement. In Critical Thinking this word has a different, specialised meaning, and you will be expected to understand and use the word in this sense.
an argument is a piece of reasoning, consisting of a persuasive conclusion supported by one or more reasons.
Describing the conclusion as 'persuasive' is not a value judgement. It means that the apparent intention of the reasoning is to persuade the reader to do something or to believe something. It may not necessarily succeed in achieving this intention, but that does appear to be the purpose of the reasoning.
Just because these words are there, doesn't mean it is an argument, but it is a good hint.
‘so’
‘therefore’,
‘ergo’,
‘thus’,
‘for this reason’,
‘because’,
'but'
Argument Indicator Words
Argument Indicator Words
Identifying Argument Practice
Identifying Argument Practice
Determine if each of the following is an argument, opinion, description, narrative, or explanation.
The government of Eastland consists of congress, which is elected by constituencies, a senate, which is appointed, and the president, who is directly elected. In order to become law, any proposal has to be accepted by all three branches of government.
It is not fair to expect Mr. Baker to look after his grandchildren. He has no experience of caring for children and he cannot hear very well.
Emily's grandmother loves her dearly. So she has given her money to help her go to university.
Smoking is expensive and causes many serious illnesses. So people who smoke should try to give up.
Sara really enjoyed the weekend. Her cousins came to visit, and on Saturday evening they watched a film and ate a takeaway.
Schools should not tell their students what they may and may not wear. School uniform should be abolished, and students should be free to wear whatever clothes they choose.
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