Toward a New Knowledge and Way of Knowing

The focus of Thinking Critically is to advance and enhance better engagement of the issues and conditions of our time. Better engagement requires advanced understanding and uncommon insight and delving deeper into the analytics.

What is the difference between “thinking” and “thinking critically”? Are we to believe that “critical” implies thinking harder or more diligently? In practice, the notion of critical is more critiquing than conquering. It is more deliberative than automatic.

We know from the work of Daniel Kahneman, that about 98% of the time our thinking is fast, intuitive, automatic, heuristic, and emotionally charged. This is how we “think on our feet”. Conversely, only a small part of thinking is slow, conscious, controlled, deliberate and analytic. This is how we “think critically”.

Our ability to think critically, to think reflectively, is a learned process. Most of the process is based upon critical questioning, assessing claims and arguments, and examining facts. The goal is to seek better understanding and clarification.