Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking

Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.

                                                - Sigmund Freud

"Thinking" is a conscious purposeful mental activity, and "critical thinking" refers to the processes and methodologies that employ reason, insight, awareness, imagination and sensibility in order to criticize and evaluate a text or an object or a thing. The criticism may be severe or favorable, but it is generally a scholarly interpretation involving a number of significant activities such as reason, etc. Some of the basic questions critical thinking is concerned with are given below:

·         How to improve reasoning skills?

·         How to construct arguments?

·          How to put forward acceptable evidence to construct arguments?

·         How to be objective concerning reasoning skills, arguments and evidence?

·         How to be analytical (considering similarities, differences in a topic) by emphasizing comparison, differentiation, relation in an argument.

·         How to be evaluative (giving opinion or judgment) by ways of assessment, comment, interpretation?

·         Is critical thinking simply a tool to find faults?

·         How to give importance to rhetorical (art of employing language) considerations in responding to an object or a work of art?

·         How to believe, create objective and universal response?

·         How to handle deductive/inductive distinction?

·         How to develop syllogistic logic?

·         How to be sensible in response?

Thinking Critically

What is Critical Thinking?

Dictionaries tell us that we use the word thinking to mean more than nineteen different mental operations. These range from reasoning to solving problems to conceiving and discovering ideas, to remembering, to day-dreaming. Some of these forms are conscious, focused, and directed, while others are automatic and undirected…..

Most of us associate the word critical with being negative or finding fault. Although that is one way to use the word, a critical view can also be one of appreciation. The original meaning of the word comes from the root form skeri, which means to cut, separate or sift; thus the original idea conveyed by the word was to take something apart or to analyze it. Here in its core idea is not negatively but a procedure for analyzing knowledge and then evaluating it. Moreover, critical is also related to the Greek word Kriterion, which means a standard for judging. Putting together these two original ideas, we see that the word critical means analyzing on the basis of a standard.

Today there are as many definitions of critical thinking as there are writers on the subject. But all would agree that critical thinking is a purposeful form of mental activity; many would agree that it involves learning conscious awareness of the thinking process itself. Finally, all agree that it is one of guided by standards.

Controlling Crime

WHAT STOPS US FROM COMMITTING CRIMES?

If a society is to continue to function smoothly, then the members of that society need to behave in orderly ways; they need to follow certain norms and obey certain rules. How does it happen that most people in a society agree to obey the rules? According to sociologists, there are tow kinds of controls that influence the way an individual behaves. These are referred to as internal controls and external controls.

INTERNAL CONTROL

Imagine you are in a music store and you see a CD that you want. The price is $20. You have only $5 with you, but the thought of stealing the CD does not occur to you. Why not? The answer is internal controls. Internal controls are those you impose on yourself based on your values, beliefs, and fears.

One of the values you hold is that stealing is wrong and that honesty is right and good. To continue to feet well about yourself, you don’t steal. So the first aspect of internal control is how you feel about yourself. The second aspect of internal control is the possible disapproval of friends and family who might become aware of your stealing. You do not want to have to talk with your parents or husband or wife or children or friends about why you stole a CD. The third factor operating to discourage you from stealing is the fear of being arrested. Many shops display signs such as "The store prosecutes shoplifters to the full extent of the law" and employ store detectives to identify shoplifters. Finally social forces such as whether you steal or not. You may be afraid of social consequences, such as losing your job or losing the trust of your work colleagues. In a study of national property crime arrests, researchers compared the percentage of arrests within two populations: people with full-time job and people who were not employed. The researchers found that the percentage arrested among those who were not employed was much higher.

External controls

For some individual internal controls will not be enough to deter them from breaking the law. Most societies also impose external controls or punishments of some kind to discourage people from committing crimes. There are three main kinds of external controls: public embarrassment; the payment of money, or fines, and imprisonment. If a police officer stopped you for speeding, you would probably be embarrassed as other passing motorists stared at you. If you were going fast enough, you would also be asked to pay a fine as well as court costs. If you were driving while drunk, you would be taken to jail, fined, and have your drivers, license away from you.

There are number factors that influence the effectiveness of these external controls in stopping people from committing crimes. Their effectiveness depends, for example, on how certain it is that the crime will be punished. If there is little likelihood of being caught, the external controls may be weak or ineffective. It also depends on how severe the punishment is. The threat of being sent to prison is more likely to prevent people from breaking the law than the threat of paying a small fine. For some crimes, external controls do not seem to be very effective. For example, a person who commits a "crime of passion" is in a state of uncontrollable rage or feel, overwhelming pressure and may not give any consideration at all to the consequences of his or her actions.