Here is our predicament. Critical thinking is scarce. Leadership depends on critical thinking. Consequently, leadership is scarce. Consider the facts.
In business and the professions, the reliance on mergers and acquisitions instead of creative competition to generate growth suggests a preference for process over thinking. And what line of reasoning has delivered the waste and inefficiency that has accompanied the bureaucratisation of corporate life, the widespread spending of profits instead of investing, the failure to articulate a vision for the technological workplace of the future, seemingly endemic ethical scandals, relentless churn, and a chronically disengaged workforce?
In politics, recurrent crises like out-of-control debt, illegal immigration, environmental degradation, unaffordable healthcare, the student loan disaster, burgeoning education budgets that bear no fruit, constitutional breakdown, the massive human and financial costs of unremitting social dysfunction, and apocalyptic geopolitical nightmares, all confirm that critical thinking has given way to incorrigible scheming in the corridors of power.
Inevitably, excuses erupt from the people who preside over these predicaments, the current favourite being ‘complexity’. But the most complex material entity in the universe is the human brain – and we are still light years away from fathoming the depths of the mind. So the reality is that we have some decisive advantages that we are not using as best we might.
We have intellect, the power of critical thinking. But what is it exactly? And how do we use it? And why don’t we use it? Let’s address these questions in that order.
We are rational animals; we have conceptual reasoning over and above the purely perceptual reasoning we share with other animals. The innate urge to explain things makes the question “Why?” the mark of humanity. Answering the “why?” enables us to ask, “where next?” And we shape our future in remarkable ways.
The Latin word ‘intellectus’ means ‘read from within’. To think critically means to use our intellect, to get inside things, immersing ourselves in an issue so as to understand the reality and deal with it. Critical thinking entails objective analysis, forming judgments, uncovering insights, and generating innovative possibilities. It is active, goal-oriented thinking.
Our critical thinking faculties are intellect (conception, abstraction, and logic), free will, sense perception, instinct, language, memory, imagination, cultural literacy (a well-stocked bank of knowledge), and the emotional and attitudinal attributes of a lively curiosity, confidence, practical wisdom, courage, self-discipline, a sense of justice, and a spirit of adventure.
Critical thinking covers all goal-oriented thinking: problem solving, decision-making, creative thinking, and employs both inductive and deductive methods of reasoning. Faddish concepts like higher-order thinking are just repackaging, as is seen by perusing Bloom’s taxonomy – memory, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, creation.
But remember, you cannot understand the way you or others think unless you understand the worldview in play, the sense of ultimate purpose, the way the meaning of life is interpreted.
Grammar, the Socratic method, syllogisms, Socratic logic, propositional logic, logical fallacies, the Scholastic Disputatio, and rhetoric are essential topics to cover. The process for developing critical thinking must be an everyday activity, so that it becomes a habit.
Next, “How do we use it?” Well, first check the contents of your arsenal, all the critical thinking faculties identified above, and unleash them by asking questions, the key activity in critical thinking. All brainstorming has to start with a puzzle, which is just another name for a question that produces further questions.
There are many ways of provoking probing questions, and then reframing them so as to address the challenge from different perspectives, but it is the well-stocked mind that bears the most fruit. G K Chesterton told us, “Thinking is connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.” The more knowledge you accumulate, the more connections you will generate. Cultural literacy determines the reach of your critical thinking.
Plato’s dialogue, “Meno” is a brilliant demonstration of the Socratic method, the way to get to truth by asking the right questions. Socrates shows the noble, Meno, how to guide an uneducated slave boy to prove Pythagoras’ theorem simply by asking him questions. Imagine the joy in classrooms all around the world if more mathematics teachers read Plato.
The most important question of all is about your prime objective, your vision. Chesterton put it in a nutshell: “What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.” Without clearly understanding what the right thing to be achieved is, asking “what is wrong?” is meaningless.
Ultimately, your answer to ‘what is right’ in every challenge will be shaped by your worldview, which brings us to the third and final question: why is critical thinking not used as it should be today? There are two prime reasons: ideological thinking and the demise of education.
The tragedy of the modern West is a susceptibility to ideological thinking, which is not thinking at all, but rather enslaving oneself to the ideas of others. Ideology is a narrow view of reality that excludes all evidence that contradicts it; it is about power and control. It is the nemesis of critical thinking, which by definition is about reality, that is, truth. Ideology distorts language, giving words meanings that are in outright contradiction of reality.
Amid all the ideological shrieking in the West today, the worldviews of most people need honest auditing. Intellect is the bridge of reason that can bring people of all cultures together; when people refuse rational dialogue, they are enslaved either by ideology or insanity.
The demise of education has also sabotaged critical thinking. State schooling is now about technical skills and social control. The rich heritage of learning that gave us Antigone and Achilles, Coriolanus and Camille, Hamlet and Heathcliff, Rosinante and Raskolnikov has been trashed, and the cultural literacy essential to critical thinking shuttered.
Of course, critical thinking is hard work, generally shirked by the majority. The belief that we can resolve all issues with management techniques and technology rather than thinking for ourselves is now embraced by most people. But why be like most people?
Thank you Andre-an excellent and very challenging article! I need to reflect deeply on my own levels of “intellectual laziness” Enjoy the rest of your week.