The Assurance of the Critical Thinker


Poor writing shames us.

Let us know the characteristics of poor writing to avoid them:

•The thesis or argument is a repetition or prompts, and shows no indication of where the rest of the writing will lead.

•Simple summaries are relied upon, rather than integrative analyses. It is critical that relationships between concepts are described, rather than merely pointing out the existence of relationships.

•There is no order, or poor order, in the summaries, argument presentation, evidence, or general organization of the writing structure. Chronology is lacking, there is no segue in between paragraphs, and summaries are weak.

•Arguments are presented, but the relationship between them are not.

•There is a heavy use of abstractions: words or phrases used to sound like critical thinking when they actually are not indicative of analytic thought.

•Conclusions are not properly supported by the evidence. The premises may not be valid, or even if true, do not logically support the conclusion. A conclusion can be proven incomplete or invalid using other scenarios.

Slide 2

The critical thinker avoids poor and unclear writing by following proper steps in the pre-writing process:

·Plan ahead when selecting a topic. Ensure that is it the right topic to engage in for a particular purpose. In order to do this effectively, it is important to understand what your goals and initiatives are. This will allow you to plan ahead effectively. Organization is also a key at this point: prioritize concepts and arguments and reorganize how they will be presented. The chronology must make sense.

·Determine how you will gather your evidence. What kinds of sources should you use and where can you find them? How do you know they are credible?

·Engage in an active acquisition of information. Do not assume that even reputable sources are the ultimate truth-bearers. To be a critical thinker means to be a questioner of everything. The same occurs when writing critically: any piece of information should be accounted for by being examined, parsed, and validated, using the steps outlined in previous chapters for argument analysis. There should always be an active questioning of the information.

Slide 3

·Look thoroughly at the evidence and do not jump to conclusions:


a. Look at the evidence: Always ask yourself, "is there more evidence?", "is there more valid evidence?" Always be aware of the possibility that there be more evidence and other arguments that you are unaware of.

b. Examine the specificity of the argument: is it to general? Is it too confounded by extraneous details?

c. Are there alternative explanations? Many arguments are presented as being logical and sound and have evidence to support them. However, alternative explanations may always be available. It is important to keep in mind cases of observationally equivalent hypotheses.

·Be aware of tautologies and truisms.

A tautology is a statement that repeats itself. Redundancy should be avoided unless it adds directly to a piece of writing.

For example, when asked what the weather will be like tomorrow, a tautological responses could be, "it is either going to rain, or it is not going to rain." The answer can never be disproved; it is intrinsically correct. The weather tomorrow indeed will either be rainy, or it will not be.

A truism is a self-evident truth.

An example of a truism is: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Both tautologies and truisms should be avoided in critical writing.

Slide 4

·Oversimplification should be avoided by examining alternative explanations. Oversimplified explanations are brief ones that lack depth and breadth, both hallmarks of critical thinking.

·Poke holes in all arguments, including, and perhaps especially, yours.

·After reading, understanding, learning and embracing knowledge from your sources, now define how you will approach your argument. Gather your evidence and understand the material. This will help you understand what the arguments already are, what strengths and weaknesses they have, and how you want to approach an argument. Bear in mind that all arguments must be valid and reasonable, and all conclusions must be supported by valid premises.

·Break the argument into its constituents and analyze the relationships between and among them. This can be done by compare/contrast, cause/effect, ranking, and drawing inferences.

·Summarize the evidence critically.

·Organize it and examine all its relationships.

Present your arguments using the skills you've learned in previous chapters.


 

Last modified: Friday, August 14, 2020, 12:51 PM