Critical Thinking : Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life

Like its parent text, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, Second Edition, this book focuses on an integrated, universal concept of critical thinking that is both substantive and practical; it provides readers with the basic intellectual skills they need to think through content in any class, subject, or discipline, and through any problems or issues they face.

Whatever you are doing right now is determined by the way you are thinking. Whatever you feel---all your emotions--- are determined by your thinking. Whatever you want---all your desires--- are determined by your thinking. If your thinking is unrealistic, it will lead you to many disappointments. If your thinking is overly pessimistic, it will deny you due recognition of the many things in which you should properly rejoice.Test this idea for yourself. Identify some examples of your strongest feelings or emotions. Then identify the thinking that is correlated with those examples. For example, if youfeelexcited about college, it is because youthinkthat good things will happen to you in college. If you dread going to class, it is probably because you think it will be boring or too difficult.In a similar way, if the quality of your life is not what you would wish it to be, it is most likely because it is tied to the way you think about your life. If you think about it positively, you will feel positively about it. If you think about it negatively, you will feel negative about it.For example, suppose you came to college with the view that college was going to be a lot of fun and you were going to form good friendships with fellow students who would respect and like you and, what is more, that your love life would become interesting and exciting. And let's suppose that hasn't happened. If this were the thrust of your thinking, you now would feel disappointed and maybe even frustrated (depending on how negatively you have interpreted your experience).For most people, thinking is subconscious, never explicitly put into words. For example, most people who think negatively would not say of themselves, "I have chosen to think about myself and my experience in a negative way. I prefer to be as unhappy as I can make myself."The problem is that when you are not aware of your thinking, you have no chance of correcting it if it is poor. When thinking is subconscious, you are in no position to see any problems in it. And, if you don't see any problems in it, you won't be motivated to change it.Since few people realize the powerful role that thinking plays in their lives, few gain significant command of it. Most people are in many ways victims of their thinking, that is,hurtrather thanhelpedby it. Most people are their own worst enemy. Their thinking is a continual source of problems, preventing them from recognizing opportunities, keeping them from exerting energy where it will do the most good, poisoning relationships, and leading them down blind alleys.Or consider your success as a student in college. The single most significant variable in determining that success is the quality of your thinking. If you think well when you study, you will study well. If you think well when you read, you will read well. If you think well when you write, you will write well. And if you study well, read well, and write well, you will do well in college. Certainly your instructors will play a role in your learning. Some of them will do a better job than others of helping you learn. But even the best teachers cannot get into your head and learn for you. Even the best teachers cannot think for you, read for you, or write for you. If you lack the intellectual skills necessary for thinking well through course content, you will not be successful in college.Here is the key question we are putting to you in this book. If the quality of a person's thinking is the single most significant determinant of both their happiness and their success---as it is---why not discover the tools that the best thinkers use and take the time to learn to use them yourself? Perhaps you will not become proficient in all of them, but for every tool you learn there will be a payoff.This book will alert you to the tools the best thinkers use and will exemplify the activities and practice you c