PHIL 3010 C168 Critical Thinking and Logic latest
Exam 2024 Complete question and answer WGU
Module 1 - What is Critical Thinking?
What is Critical Thinking?
Critical thinking is an intellectual model for understanding issues and forming reasonable and
informed views on them. It embodies a set of reasoning skills that, when properly applied, can
help us determine what we should believe and how we should act.
- Define critical thinking and the key concepts underlying it
- Identify the bad mental habits that commonly impede good thinking
- Outline criteria a skilled critical thinker follows in reasoning through any problem
- Explain weak-sense critical thinking versus strong-sense critical thinking
- Define the essential intellectual traits of a critical thinker
- Implement suggested tactics for improving your thinking.
- Define three basic functions of the mind (thinking, feeling, wanting) and explain their
interrelationship.
Critical thinking is the art of thinking about thinking while thinking in order to make thinking
better.
Critical thinking comprises three interlinking dimension:
1. Analyze one’s own thinking - breaking it down into its component parts.
2. Evaluate one’s own thinking - identifying its weaknesses while recognizing its
strengths.
3. Improving one’s own thinking - reconstructing it to make it better.
Impediments to sound thinking include bad habits:
- making generalizations unsupported by evidence
- letting a stereotype shape our thinking
- viewing the world from one fixed vantage point
- forming false beliefs
- dismissing or attacking viewpoints that conflict with our own
- thinking deceptively about our own experiences
Critical thinking is characteristically:
- self-directed
- self-disciplined
- self-monitored
- self-corrective
,Critical thinking demands a commitment to surmounting two barriers native to everyone:
- egocentrism - the tendency to view everything in relationship to oneself
, - sociocentrism - the assumption that one’s own social group is inherently superior to all
others
First order thinking
- spontaneous and non-reflective
- contains insight, prejudice, good and bad reasoning
- indiscriminately combined
Second order thinking
- first order thinking that is consciously realized (analyzed, assessed, and reconstructed)
Weak-sense critical thinking
- ignore the flaws in their own thinking
- often seek to win an argument through intellectual trickery or deceit
- lacks higher-level skills and values of critical thinking
- makes no good faith effort to consider alternative viewpoints
- lacks fair-mindedness
- employ lower-level rhetorical skills
- employ emotionalism and intellectual trickery
- hide or distort evidence
Strong-sense critical thinking
- defined by a consistent pursuit of what is intellectually fair and just
- strive to be ethical, empathize with others’ viewpoints
- will entertain arguments with which they do not agree
- change their views when confronted with superior reasoning
- employ their thinking reasonably rather than manipulatively
- requires fair-mindedness combined with learning basic critical thinking skills
Fair-mindedness is to bring an unbiased and unprejudiced perspective to all viewpoints
relevant to a situation.
intellectual unfairness feels no responsibility to represent viewpoints with which they disagree
fairly and accurately.
Characterization It’s Opposite
Intellectual Humility - commitment to Intellectual arrogance - overestimation of
discovering the extent of one’s own ignorance how much one knows
on any issue
Intellectual courage - confronting ideas, Intellectual cowardice - fear of ideas that do
Exam 2024 Complete question and answer WGU
Module 1 - What is Critical Thinking?
What is Critical Thinking?
Critical thinking is an intellectual model for understanding issues and forming reasonable and
informed views on them. It embodies a set of reasoning skills that, when properly applied, can
help us determine what we should believe and how we should act.
- Define critical thinking and the key concepts underlying it
- Identify the bad mental habits that commonly impede good thinking
- Outline criteria a skilled critical thinker follows in reasoning through any problem
- Explain weak-sense critical thinking versus strong-sense critical thinking
- Define the essential intellectual traits of a critical thinker
- Implement suggested tactics for improving your thinking.
- Define three basic functions of the mind (thinking, feeling, wanting) and explain their
interrelationship.
Critical thinking is the art of thinking about thinking while thinking in order to make thinking
better.
Critical thinking comprises three interlinking dimension:
1. Analyze one’s own thinking - breaking it down into its component parts.
2. Evaluate one’s own thinking - identifying its weaknesses while recognizing its
strengths.
3. Improving one’s own thinking - reconstructing it to make it better.
Impediments to sound thinking include bad habits:
- making generalizations unsupported by evidence
- letting a stereotype shape our thinking
- viewing the world from one fixed vantage point
- forming false beliefs
- dismissing or attacking viewpoints that conflict with our own
- thinking deceptively about our own experiences
Critical thinking is characteristically:
- self-directed
- self-disciplined
- self-monitored
- self-corrective
,Critical thinking demands a commitment to surmounting two barriers native to everyone:
- egocentrism - the tendency to view everything in relationship to oneself
, - sociocentrism - the assumption that one’s own social group is inherently superior to all
others
First order thinking
- spontaneous and non-reflective
- contains insight, prejudice, good and bad reasoning
- indiscriminately combined
Second order thinking
- first order thinking that is consciously realized (analyzed, assessed, and reconstructed)
Weak-sense critical thinking
- ignore the flaws in their own thinking
- often seek to win an argument through intellectual trickery or deceit
- lacks higher-level skills and values of critical thinking
- makes no good faith effort to consider alternative viewpoints
- lacks fair-mindedness
- employ lower-level rhetorical skills
- employ emotionalism and intellectual trickery
- hide or distort evidence
Strong-sense critical thinking
- defined by a consistent pursuit of what is intellectually fair and just
- strive to be ethical, empathize with others’ viewpoints
- will entertain arguments with which they do not agree
- change their views when confronted with superior reasoning
- employ their thinking reasonably rather than manipulatively
- requires fair-mindedness combined with learning basic critical thinking skills
Fair-mindedness is to bring an unbiased and unprejudiced perspective to all viewpoints
relevant to a situation.
intellectual unfairness feels no responsibility to represent viewpoints with which they disagree
fairly and accurately.
Characterization It’s Opposite
Intellectual Humility - commitment to Intellectual arrogance - overestimation of
discovering the extent of one’s own ignorance how much one knows
on any issue
Intellectual courage - confronting ideas, Intellectual cowardice - fear of ideas that do
