Lessons from Critical Thinkers: The Critical Thinker, #2

By Albert Rutherford

Do you want to ask smart questions like Socrates, be an out-of-the-box thinker like John Stuart Mill, and rational like Descartes? 

These people have at least one thing in common; they were great critical thinkers of their time and their shared wisdom lived through the centuries. 

Lessons From Critical Thinkers provides intellectual power to engage with and participate in effective critical thoughts, arguments, debates, reading, and reflection drawn from methods in the history of philosophical cognitive development.

•Learn to think slowly and deliberately before making a decision
•Get ready to question opinions and even facts 
•Learn to gather information before jumping to conclusions
•Accept and expect the biased and flawed nature of human cognition 

Lessons From Critical Thinkers gives you a thorough presentation of the ideas and principles of critical thinking practiced by the greatest minds in history. Learn about the most important critical thinking methods to make better decisions in your personal life, career, and friendships.
 

Equip yourself with the essential methods for clear, analytical, logical thinking and critique in a range of ideas and everyday situations.

•Discover critical thinking by familiarizing with concepts from other disciplines, like philosophy, cognitive biases and errors, race and gender from sociology and political science, and symbols from rhetoric.
•Apply critical thinking and reasoning skills to your day to day problems
•Find the most rewarding options in any opportunity.

Lessons From Critical Thinkers is a helpful book for readers of any age and background who want to improve their critical thinking skills by learning from the greatest thinkers of all time. Learn to filter out irrelevant information efficiently and prioritize your resources to get the best results. Enhance your communication skills, reasoning, and logic. 

 

Improve your critical, logical, observational, and rational thinking skills with the timeless principles presented in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Rutherford
• Release date: Jun 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393489948

Book preview

Lessons From Critical Thinkers

Methods for Clear Thinking and Analysis in Everyday Situations

from the Greatest Thinkers in History

By Albert Rutherford

Copyright © 2018 Albert Rutherford. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author.

Limit of Liability/ Disclaimer of Warranty: The author makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaims all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice contained herein may not be suitable for everyone. This work is sold with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering medical, legal or other professional advice or services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. The author shall not be liable for damages arising therefrom.

The fact that an individual, organization of website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the author endorses the information the individual, organization to website may provide or recommendations they/it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work might have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

First Printing, 2018.

ISBN:

Printed in the United States of America

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Socrates and Aristotle

Chapter 2: Thomas Aquinas

Chapter 3: Sir Francis Bacon

Chapter 4: René Descartes

Chapter 5: Immanuel Kant

Chapter 6: John Stuart Mill

Chapter 7: William Graham Sumner

Chapter 8: Richard Paul and Linda Elder

Conclusions

Reference List

Endnotes

Chapter 1: Socrates and Aristotle

SOCRATES

Background

Socrates is one of the most well-known Greek philosophers, and the earliest. His work focused on morals and exists solely in accounts written by his students, Plato and Xenophon; none of his own writing is known to exist. He lived from roughly 470 BCE to 399 BCE, and was a member of an aristocratic family. He began his career as a soldier, but eventually abandoned his family to become an itinerant teacher. His teachings therefore, exist in the form of dialogue, rather than dense texts.[i]

The Socratic Method

A teacher may have once told you he or she was using the Socratic method for class discussion; this term refers to a method of intellectual inquiry developed by Socrates and recorded in the accounts of his debates. Socrates used this method to deconstruct his opponents' arguments to find the inevitable gaps in logic, contradictions, or lack of proof. Socrates would ask  his opponents a series of questions about their beliefs, eventually leading them to declare the flaws in their arguments.[ii]

You can think of this as the question everything mindset, which encourages people to question authority and preconceived beliefs or dogma. Socrates's goal was to reveal that people in power are not necessarily always right, that people should think for themselves and consider different arguments instead of blindly following their leaders. This process of thinking ideally involved finding hard evidence, determining if there were any flaws in logic, and predicting the implications of actions and words. The Socratic method is the most frequently-used and famous critical thinking strategy, because it provides a simple format for analyzing any argument.

Critical thinking in general has the same ends as the Socratic method: analyzing beliefs and explanations, determining what makes an argument reasonable or not, and separating emotions from the intellectual merit of an argument or belief. Socrates's student Plato, Plato's student Aristotle, and later Greek philosophers in the school of the skeptics, all developed this process of critical thinking to analyze the appearance of things versus their true nature. Truth could be reached much faster without taking first impressions for granted, and instead thinking critically.

Critical thinking ultimately allows its practitioner to develop a more advanced sense of personal reason, and let that highly-developed reason govern thoughts, actions, and emotional responses instead of instinct or emotion. Socratic discussion is a simple and easy way to develop critical thinking skills, because it allows the practitioner to quite literally question any flaws within an argument.

Socratic Questioning[iii]

There’s no limitation to the types of questions one can ask in the Socratic method, but some questions are more helpful to the critical thinking process than others. Questions should be focused, respectful, intellectual, and critical; tuned to analyze processes, ask for more data, brainstorm interpretations, and counter assumptions. A Socratic questioner should be comfortable asking questions that keep the conversation moving, moderate the discussion, summarizing occasionally to recap what has been said, and making sure everyone is included and able to speak.

The six types of Socratic questioning are:[iv]

Clarification questions. These ask for clarification to a statement, such as, What do you mean when you say that? or How is this connected to the argument?

Assumption questions. These question basic assumptions about an argument. They could be, Why do we think this? or What other option could we assume?

Perspective questions. These enquire about points of view and call them into question. You could ask for a counterargument, or raise a different view with which the group can examine an issue.

Reason/evidence questions. These ask for specific examples to prove an argument,