101 Principles of Critical Thinking
by
Bill Cottringer
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ~Aristotle.
Short term success and happiness can sometimes be achieved by good fortunate alone. But to sustain long term success and happiness, critical thinking is the most reliable path. Below are 21 sound principles that can help develop critical thinking and increase and sustain long-term success and happiness.
1. A comprehensive definition of critical thinking views it as a disciplined intellectual process of active conceptualizing, analyzing, applying, synthesizing, and evaluating the best truth of something gathered by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, intuition, or communication and using the three main ways of knowing, using deduction, induction, or abduction.
2. Essential features of critical thinking include thinking that is curious, open-minded, systematic, analytical, persistent, confident, and mature.
3. Critical thinking is the mental process whereby we climb the hierarchy from information (facts about something) to knowledge (how things work), to wisdom (principles of truth that apply across time and situations).
4. The seven sure paths to critical thinking include humility, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, creativity, good communication, time management, and conflict resolution.
5. Humility is the realization that all we think we know for sure isn’t so, so we can learn more. Much of what we think you know involves unquestioned assumptions, which are the termites to critical thinking.
6. Mindfulness involves transitioning from mind wondering about past memories and future expectations to be more aware and attentive to what is currently going on now.
7. Emotional intelligence includes the five skills of self-control, self-awareness, intrinsic motivation, empathy, interpersonal relations.
8. Creativity is listening to intuition, managing change, and reconciling opposites as different sides to the same coin. And sometimes it is just a matter of adding something different to the formula to make something old and familiar into something new and unusual.
9. Good communication is practicing the 7 C’s: Being clear, concise, complete, concrete, correct, coherent and courteous, with a supportive tone, which conveys the important qualities of freedom, acceptance, equality, empathy, tentativeness, and spontaneity. Unfortunately poor communication, involving all the opposite things, is more common than not.
10. Good time management starts with questioning the very concept of time itself, making a transition from the traditional mechanical sequential nature to a fluid, every expanding eternal now moment. This new view of time can help us double our information, knowledge, and wisdom in half the time.
11. Successful conflict resolution starts with approaching the conflict assertively, as an opportunity to learn, grow and improve, rather than trying to avoid the emotional pain and discomfort that often comes from confrontation. Most conflicts involve opposing values and the solution usually requires compromise, where both sides gain something important without losing anything of value. One important aspect of conflict resolution is to understand who has the most invested in arriving at a certain outcome. And sometimes, doing nothing is the best answer.
12. At the end of the day, there will always be a leap of faith in trusting the validity of the source of our beliefs and certainty of our conclusions, before we act on them.
13. Smart questions always reap more benefits than clever answers, as the quality of the answer is usually tied to the quality of the question. And the biggest gains in creativity are a result of the best questions.
14. When personal owning of information and knowledge are no longer needed as a security blanket to protect your insecurity and vulnerability, then wisdom emerges.
15. Things are rarely as they first appear. Digging a little deeper with a wait-and-see attitude, often reveals a different perception and conclusion.
16. A progressive series of good why questions most often reveal the real core problem below the noisy surface symptoms.
17. One important door to critical thinking is stopping to notice what we have been failing to notice all along, especially when we are thinking uncritically.
18. We can’t attract anything positive we want, including success and happiness, until we see how our subtle negative thinking is getting in the way.
19. Approaching conflicts assertively is the best way to learn, grow and improve, which may very well be the common primary purpose we all strive to find.
20. We should always be willing to question our beliefs and assumptions but also be prepared to die for our convictions.
21. We can’t solve a problem using the same language that created it. This is why we learn to translate arithmetic word problems into mathematical formulas.
22. Probably the most important application of critical thinking is in making moral decisions. Moral development follows the same hierarchy of information, knowledge, and wisdom.
23. In anything, timing is everything. The best applications of this principle are: (a) discerning moments of danger from opportunity (b) knowing when the point of no return is at hand before it has already come and gone, and (c) taking advantage of perturbation points, in knowing when and where to apply well-timed and well-placed smaller interventions to get the biggest results, like compelling book titles and pulling news headlines.
24. Understanding the nature of beliefs is a valuable process in critical thinking. Beliefs are developed from the trust we afford the source and from the affirming experiences that follow. But these beliefs can hold us hostage when they become impervious to changing, despite compelling evidence that disproves them. Some of our sacred beliefs are wrapped very tightly in emotions because they represent who we are.
25. What we see as true is mostly dependent upon from where in time and place that we are looking at something. The good news is that if we don’t like what we see, all we have to do is move the viewpoint in time and place.
26. One of the main obstacles to using critical thinking to find the truth, is the many cognitive biases we have to struggle to acknowledge and separate from, so they don’t contaminate what we think we know for sure.
27. Suspending judgment and listening carefully to other’s perspectives, is a fruitful way to expand our own limited perspective and increase our knowledge and wisdom at the same time.
28. We usually get what we expect, so it is important to not expect the wrong thing and do what we can to avoid that from happening.
29. An important event in our thinking evolution is when we start translating all the unconscious thinking that motivates behavior, to our conscious awareness, in order to become the driver of our own bus instead of a passive passenger, in gradually being more proactive that reactive.
30. Free will is not as quite free as we suppose, at least until we learn the main thing that is under our immediate control, that being our reaction to a situation we are placed in.
31. The purpose of our free will may be to help us arrive at the crossroads between it and our destiny, often misnamed as fate. We tend to see these two things as opposing forces, until we get to these crossroads.
32. Good judgment is based on experience and experience is often the result of bad judgement. So goes the normal process of learning.
33. Failure is not something to avoid but rather for studying more closely. That is because failures hide the important clues for being successful during the next opportunity that comes our way.
34. Important insights often come from solving perplexing paradoxes, like how to have our cake and eat it too. It is often the words themselves that serve to hold us hostage, trapped inside the paradox with no apparent way out, at least until we see that reality. Afterall, how can we possibly ignore a sign telling us to ignore it?
35. The safest way to view most truth is seeing it as being tentative, relative, and evolving, rather than absolute and permanent, which is usually reserved for the incomprehensible.
36. Whole-brained intelligence—physical, mental, social, emotional, vocational, and spiritual intelligence—is the composite process of using critical thinking.
37. Leaning towards an optimistic perspective of life and people usually results in valuable things like success, happiness, health, wealth, longevity, and better relationships. But being realistic, with a plan B and C in our back pocket is generally a good idea, in case Murphy’s law turns out to be truer than not.
38. How we define something has a lot to do with how much or how little of the thing we have. If we want to have more of something, we need to look for ways to expand or enlarge our definition.
39. We normally don’t realize where it is we are going until we are three quarters the way there. If we want to know our destination, then we can look at where our past footprints are leading.
40. One formidable obstacle to critical thinking is the illusion of our separation from everything else, including what we are trying to know or do. Merging into a union of “oneness”, is the epitome of critical thinking and the best way to avoid contaminating biases created by the illusion of separation.
41. Changing unwanted realities is often merely a matter of changing our incorrect or incomplete perceptions of them. Most often it is not the things in life that cause discomfort and pain, but rather our opinions about these things.
42. Inequity in life is a perplexing problem that can only be partially resolved by using critical thinking. The real key to managing more equality in unfair situations is to provide a step ladder as realistic assistance, not the ideal cure of a free escalator or helicopter ride, which will never be fully appreciated and will always be open to abuse.
43. Getting along with others is essential to our well-being and peace of mind. The best launching place is to focus on our commonalities rather than be derailed by our noisy differences.
44. Being perceived as likeable is essential in getting along with others. This perception is made up of the personal qualities of honesty, positivism, politeness, acceptance, agreeability, empathy, good listening, and sense of humor.
45. There is a good reason behind us having one mouth and two ears. Talking once and listening twice, follows the sound carpenter’s rule of measuring twice and sawing once, and gets the best results.
46. Comparing our progress in life, work and relationships with others can only keep us stuck and immobile, whereas comparing us to ourself is a better way to make real progress, with much less hubris and envy.
47. There are three main conflicts in life that challenge us most. These are: (a) us vs. life (b) us vs. them, and (c) us vs. ourselves. Resolution with critical thinking is the only way to work our way through these challenges.
48. We are what we think, and what we think is made up of two main things: (a) what we read, and (b) who we hang out with. Improving critical thinking skills is best facilitated by reading the right things and hanging out with the right people.
49. There are two primary parts to our lives. The first half involves taking things apart to understand the parts better. The second half involves putting things back together again to understand how things can work together to get better results as a whole rather than each of the parts can alone. This is the earlier Gestalt Psychology principle that successful sports and work teams take advantage of.
50. There is a simple, but profound way to understand emotions and the purpose they serve. There are positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions tell us we are probably on the right path in what we are thinking, saying or doing, whereas negative emotions are nature’s way of gently reminding us we may need to re-arrange the wrong approach we have chosen with these activities.
51. Relationships are a very important part of life to understand and get right. There are three main types of relationships that occur. The first is a short one that is often painful, where the two people try to warn each other of a fault that is getting in the way of the relationship. The second one is even more painful when both people become more aware of the fault. The third one is the reward you get for changing the fault.
52. The one quality that seems to be assigned to humans alone is self-consciousness. This carries an awesome duty to think, say and do the right things at the right time and place for the right reasons, and serve as good stewards to all the rest of what goes on.
53. Ego, pride, and hubris serve us to a point, but these emotional thoughts must be managed, just like our moods, to keep them from getting in the way of seeing what is and what isn’t.
54. Seeing past what we are looking at is a valuable skill in developing spiritual intelligence. After all, 95% of our universe is invisible.
55. Truth and beauty can be finally seen as they are in purity once you eliminate the need to add or subtract anything else from them in your field of vision.
56. Finding the general purpose which we all share in common and the unique one each of us have as individuals, is one of the noblest pursuits we can follow.
57. One priority we often mix up is trying to change and improve a situation that annoys us from the outside-in, before we learn how to fit in first, to see what actually may need changing or improving, from the inside-out.
58. Life is often a perpetual series of problems and solving problems is best accomplished by using critical thinking. Effective problem-solving involves several things, including knowing what the problem is apart from its noisy symptoms; varying our approach until you find one that works; working backwards, upside-down, and inside-out; realizing some problems are unsolvable and only manageable; changing languages of the problem; and sometimes just reapplying older solutions in newer and more unusual ways.
59. One point of no return to become sensitive to is when to continue fishing and when to cut bait. On many things, success is just around the next corner we are inclined to want to give up on, yet in a few situations, there is no more corners to find.
60. It is very helpful to learn how to distinguish between your noisy psychological conscience in your head and the whispering moral compass in your soul. One is usually murky grey with a lot of maybes, and the other in black and white with a simple, undeniable yes or no.
61. One pervasive challenge in life that never seems to go away is trying to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be. There are only two ways to get to the finish line quicker in closing these gaps. That is to run faster and the other is to move the finish line closer. Doing both at the same time seems to work best. But don’t dismiss the possibility that sometimes the gap we are trying to close is more imaginary than real.
62. There are no results in critical thinking without diligent and consistent follow-up and follow-through. It is often the last rock we look under that hides the results we are seeking. We need to keep going until we find what we are looking for and then be prepared to keep looking, with pauses now and then, to enjoy what we find.
63. We can never gather the perfect amount of information to make a sure decision. The trick is to know when we have enough, given our resources and time constraints, without wasting time looking for irrelevant, unnecessary, or useless facts.
64. It is virtually impossible to argue religion or politics successfully, unless both sides are willing to amicably agree to disagree, so to speak. The reason for this impossibility is because we haven’t yet invented a language that can effectively do so. All basic truth is not speak-able because there is always too much space in between the words we use to represent the truths we think we know, in the same abstract words that tell us so. Funny thing though, we are all trying to say the same thing without knowing it with our egos.
65. The best thinking perspective on anything is the balanced golden mean between extremes. This viewpoint offers the advantage of 360-degree vision, in seeing left and right, ahead, and behind, before and after, up and down, and inside and outside.
66. In applying critical thinking to parenting, the challenge is to accurately anticipate the particular values our children will need to think this way and be successful, by courageously and consistently living these values for them to see and learn from. Of course, congruence between parents and children on this helps the process.
67. Very few of us are in sync with another person in time and place with our personal development in the learning, growing, and improving efforts we are employing. The bigger the gap between two people, the worse the conflicts are and the less developed the resolution skills are. Therefore, it makes more sense choosing people to spend the most time with, where the gap isn’t quite so wide. Choosing to be friends with people who are a little better than us is the smartest use of growing our own critical thinking.
68. One worthy goal of critical thinking is to keep going until you get to the genuine land of simple which is just on the other side of complexity, rather than the tempting, disgenuine low hanging fruit before it.
69. One important insight that critical thinking can help us recognize and appreciate is the fierce interaction going on below the surface between our thinking, feeling, and behaving. Although it is extremely difficult to know which is causing which or when one stops and the other starts, just knowing this interaction is half the solution to solving the problem.
70. There are two levels of living to apply critical thinking. The first is learning to survive by reacting and the second is learning to thrive by being proactive. Reacting is difficult and involves surviving bruises, bleeding, and broken bones, but proactively flying to thrive is even more difficult, requiring the whole-brained thinking discussed in # 36 above. Incidentally, the start of thriving comes when we become proactive and doing things that prevent the need for reactions.
71. Choosing to intervene in most problems in life rarely corrects them and just delays their inevitable Karma consequences but choosing to not intervene in the few things that bring tears to God’s eyes will always make those problems worse. There are always some choices we don’t want to not make as it is not the things in life that happen which bother us, but rather our opinions about those things. Although opinions often prompt some choices, they can also dissuade certain other ones.
72. Common sense is a by-product of critical thinking, in being the simple knack of seeing thigs the way they are and doing things the way they should be done. Anything else is not common sense.
73. Our most important priority in our thinking must pertain to the values we hold dearest. Then our most important priority is to live our lives around those same values, consistently and persistently.
74. Upon self-introspection, if we find ourselves not totally engaged in passionately losing ourselves into what we are doing, there is a good chance we are not doing what we need or should be doing.
75. Objective evaluation of a creative product is a good way to apply critical thinking. There are four criteria that we can judge the quality of any creative product against. These are questions we can ask: (a) How unique and different is it from all the other things already out there? (b) How difficult was it to make, shape and produce into a product? (c) Is it technically sound within the format it is being presented? (d) Does it clearly and effectively communicate a common problem in life with a usable solution?
76. The most effective approach to solving conflicts with others is by assertively exercising your rights and freedoms responsibly, without offending or hurting others in the process. Unresolved conflicts, because of a passive or aggressive approach, always return, seemingly with increased vengeance and amplitude.
77. We all have a preferred way of processing information—visually, by reading and seeing, auditorily, by listening and hearing, and kinesthetically, by feeling or experience. The best way to find out this, is to ask how Christmas toys for children are put together on Christmas Eve—reading the instructions or following the pictures, listening to someone read the instructions to you, or fiddling with the parts until they fit together and look like the completed toy on the box. In giving instructions it is a good idea to know which way your audience processes information. If you are a teacher or trainer, it is useful to have all three methods in your toolbox.
78. People will generally lie when they are forced into a corner, are made to feel defensive, or when they perceive that is the only way to save face over their beliefs, knowledge, or perspective. The best way to limit lying is to be completely honest yourself and not do things that force people to lie.
79. Trying to manage others is a futile and frustrating matter, at least until you learn to manage yourself, especially with your approach to and manner of dealing with other people.
80. One of the most challenging aspects of interpersonal relations is trying to change faulty perceptions others have of you. That is why you usually don’t get a second chance at making a good first impression. Changing people’s wrong perception of you can only be done when they repeatedly experience you in a different light than the one that created a bad impression. And sometimes this means spending much of the rest of your life becoming the person you have just been pretending to be all along.
81. The purpose of adversity is to build stronger character. Character-building requires two main aspects of critical thinking and these are tenacity and resilience. Both take lots of practice.
82. If you don’t have what you want, then a critical thinking trick to getting more is in appreciating what you have, more. Appreciation buys 50 dollars’ worth with a mere 50 cent purchase price. And things not appreciated soon lose their luster and escalate in cost.
83. The world seems to be shifting from a competitive, win-lose mentality to a cooperative, win-win one. Of course, this might be a temporary transition on the way to the middle somewhere between these two fundamental world views that just about influnece anything we do.
84. You can’t change anything in reality which you think needs changing until you see it as it really is. Be careful of temping illusions that make things seem different from how they really are.
85. Ambiguity, change, conflict, pain, and problems are an inevitable part of life that constantly challenge our peace of mind. Pervasive turmoil prevails in its absence until we realize that learning to deal with these adversities successfully with good character has the biggest and most genuine payoff. Only critical thinking can expose this valuable insight.
86. Words can create a reality all their own, where meaning, intent and impact all become irrelevant and even unrecognizable. It is smart to choose your words very carefully and never assume other people’s ears hear what your mouth is saying.
87. A good way to stay more present in the now moment and avoid drifting back to the past or off into the future, which wastes valuable time, is to stop and ask yourself what the main purpose is for what you are doing or saying. And staying on point gets better results.
88. It is difficult to explain your own intuitive decision-making to others who rely on rationality and reasoning alone, but the truth be known, correct intuition is based on past experience and solid evidence in similar situations. In this sense you can’t outthink your brain that is doing this quicker than you can understand or explain, because it is an unconscious process you can only validate after-the-fact.
89. One important principle to pursue is the interconnectedness of things, often below the surface or out of sight. The previous example of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behavior is a good example. And so is the Gestalt pattern of parts of something working together to accomplish something none of the single individual parts can do alone. This is important to understand, as it is the way most things work.
90. One of the most influential biases or contaminations in any pursuit of the truth is our mere presence in any situation. Physics research has proven that even non-human “mechanical observers” can influence the outcome of a scientific experiment. We simply cannot not influence an ongoing situation we are already a part of, in some way or another, no matter how hard we try not to.
91. A good practice in critical thinking is to start trying to disprove something instead of proving it. If you are searching for something, try to disprove the presence of it instead of finding it. This change in perspective is a very useful principle to increase critical thinking. Usually, when you are able to open up to an entirely different paradigm, or point of view in looking at something, you will double your learning. That is the kind of gain that is well worth looking into.
92. The ability to synthesize complex information is an essential skill of critical thinking. Work harder on simplifying complicated ideas and problems without leaving out critical aspects so that you gradually learn how to communicate this critical thinking to others easily, clearly, and effectively.
93. The most useful knowledge has both literal and metaphorical meaning. Large gains in what we can know occurs when we start recognizing the value of relative and concrete literal meanings and more abstract and universal metaphorical meanings of things we observe and experience. Learning the benefit of reconciling relative and universal principles for both local and global applications open the door to creativity and success, which are both self-energizing. To solve problems today, we have to see the bigger picture by understanding both global and local implications together, much like reversibility thinking in children where stair steps are seen to go up and down at the same time, rather than just one or the other.
94. Two-eared listening is a good way to improve understanding and communication of knowledge and ideas. This is multiple hearing of what is being said and not said, and what is being said and how and why it is being said.
95. A useful tool in psychotherapy is engaging in meta-communication or communicating about communication. When we start thinking about our own thinking, we can spot the flaws and improve it. And when we can go to the third level with this process, i.e., thinking about our thinking about our thinking, then major progress is made. This is how things like digital communication was invented.
96. When we practice joining several different types of mental activities involved in critical thinking—like analyzing, reasoning, comparing, and contrasting, digging below the surface, asking smart questions, separating yourself from your biases, being creative, searching for alternatives, etc.—we begin to experience the power of the whole that can do things together, far beyond our imagination.
97. Speaking of imagination, most highly successful people see this as the most important mental activity there is to make real progress moving forward into the unfamiliar new virtual world that we became part of without much advance preparation.
98. The most astute scientists have told us that 95% of the universe is invisible and not knowable, even though highly focused observation or physical enhancements. Critical thinking seems to be the best path intol the unknown by shedding assumptions, unfounded beliefs, false information, pre-judgments, half-truths, and the many cognitive biases that plague us.
99. People who are engaging in critical thinking have some common characteristics worth emulating as a foundation:
· Desiring to be well-informed by reading, watching, learning, talking, and listening.
· Judging the credibility of sources of information.
· Identifying reasons, assumptions, and conclusions.
· Formulating plausible hypotheses.
· Being open-minded, tolerant, and mindful of alternatives.
· Identifying root causes of problems from surface symptoms.
· Asking clarifying questions.
· Using unique problem-solving strategies.
· Living reasonably, rationally, and empathetically.
· Collaborating with others.
· Demonstrating intellectual virtues of integrity, humility, civility, empathy, and justice.
100. There are many benefits to critical thinking which make it a noble pursuit. Here is a dozen of these to help motivate us in the right direction:
· Helps gather high quality information and alternatives to make better informed decisions.
· Improves the decision-making process in choosing the best alternative, which increases the potential for more successful outcomes in solving complex problems.
· Provides a common language for work team members that can foster good teamwork and get much better results than individuals can get alone in achieving beneficial results for the organization; at the same time, it increases individual achievement.
· Decreases bad decision-making adversely affecting other parts of our lives.
· Encourages clearer and more effective communication of solutions to complex problems, helping more people to be better informed and become better decision-makers.
· Promotes numerous viable options and spinoffs for more generalized and global applications.
· Identifies the most critical questions which need to be asked and answered.
· Fosters continuous quality thinking improvement by self-correcting through meta-thinking.
· Synthesizes and simplifies complex information into important governing principles that lead to a better understanding of how things work best to get the needed results.
· Eliminates many contaminating factors that distort a clear perception of reality and helps separate the truth from fiction, which in turn improves results.
· Decreases the obsolete win-lose scarcity mentality while increasing a win-win abundance one, which helps increase success for everyone and we all benefit.
· Increases autonomous self-directed learning and teamwork productivity both, fosters higher achievement in general, increases empathy (very important in criminal justice work), and allows for important emotional appeal considerations without discounting and disregarding them totally.
101. We all tend to linger and pause too long in comfortable and familiar spots where we are not challenged to continue growing, learning, and improving in expanding our comfort zones. Be leery of these pauses because these breaks in overstaying our welcome can cause paralysis when it comes time to change willingly or be changed by force. And we all know which is preferred and less painful.
“Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in.” ~ Daniel Levitin.
