Critical Thinking and the Concealed Reef of Contradiction

Without question, critical thinking is a highly celebrated concept and ability the world over. It is regarded “as one of the most important cognitive skills that one can develop” (Shamboul, 2022). But what does critical thinking mean? Critical thinking is described as “a high-order thinking activity for ‘deciding what to believe or do’” (Dong, Li, and Chang, 2023). This does not suggest an instinctive decision; rather, it refers to a deliberated decision—as it were, a consideration of one’s choices in order to determine if that belief or action merits continued adherence or abandonment.

Higher-order thinking activities are commonly described as analysis, synthesis, inference, and metacognition; the latter being understood as the introspective process of thinking about one’s thinking and the awareness of one’s progress based on the measures one imposes on thought (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). However, it is regarded as accomplishing more than just analyzing information toward making decisions: “it is using skills and strategies that will make ‘desirable outcomes’ more likely” (Halpern, 2007). This is perhaps why 78% of business executives and 84% of hiring managers surveyed by Hart Research Associates in 2018 identified critical thinking/analytical reasoning as the most important skill desired in their employees (Hart Research Associates, 2018). These results are second only to the ability “to effectively communicate orally,” which is at 80% for business executives and 90% for hiring managers (ibid.). These findings demonstrate that critical thinking and effective communication not only share coeval priority; they are also regarded as quintessential aptitudes. “People with excellent critical thinking skills are commonly thought to be purposeful, reasoning, and goal-directed when solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions” (Dong, Li, and Chang, 2023; cf. Lovegreen, 2020). All such descriptions require an adept command of effective communication to clearly articulate the problems and solutions while navigating the challenges presented by the various personalities involved. The above descriptions and analysis are all very interesting but presuppose that critical thinking is a valid concept.

Criticality in contemporary reasoning entails the analytical, the composed, the significant, and the choice (Jenkins, 2017). All of these are requisite elements for the administration of mental judgments. While some may include the ideas of dispassion, impartiality, and objectivity, such ideas serve as the intellectual’s operative myth (Novick, 1988). To be sure, the difficulty of distinguishing between the judgment and the range of accuracy with respect to the judgment is highly subjective. Such is not the focus of our query at this time. The point is that if thinking is intrinsically critical, then critical thinking is a vacuous term—a contradiction in terms (Lat. contradictio in terminis). The issue at hand is that thinking (that is, of the kind identified above), no matter how banal, is by definition a critical act.

Some, however, may claim that there are categories of “noncritical thinking,” as identified by the act of basic memory recall (Halpern, 2007). However, basic recall still requires distinguishing what ought to be recalled from what could be recalled, what appears to be recallable, what ought not to be recalled, what one wants to recall, what should be recalled, and what is recalled. Thus, recall invokes the analytical, the composed, the significant, and the choice that was made by an act of distinction. Take, for example, the spelling bee. An individual doesn’t want to participate but is required to. So they intentionally spell the word “fat” as “phat” so they can be disqualified.

What ought to be recalled is the spelling of “fat”; what could be recalled is any form of simple-to-complexified alphabetic combinations; what appears to be recallable could be “fat,” “fatt,” “faatt,” “phat,” “phaat,” “phaatt”; what ought not to be recalled could be “farse,” “dog,” “cephalopod,” etc.; what one wants to recall is “phat”; what should be recalled is “fat”; and what is recalled, in this case, is “phat.” However, this last item is contradicted by the thought-out motive of not wanting to participate and to receive the outcome of sitting down as quickly as possible. We thus see a reversal: what one ought to, can, and should recall is “fat”; what is recalled is “phat” because the motive of noncompliance overrides the compliant and the correct. This clearly demonstrates that recall is not an act of noncritical thinking, but an act of thinking that is inherently critical.

The foregoing demonstrates that critical thinking is a contradiction in terms. It presumes that an ambiguous and indeterminate reef lies between the islands of banal/instinctive thinking and critical/coherent thinking. I dare say that critical thinking ranks as one of the most intellectually specious idioms because the term, if positively invoked, calls to mind a noble and sagacious value. However, this hallowed term contradicts itself by creating a false dichotomy between noncritical thinking and critical thinking, thus negating the idea of nobility and sagacity that the term critical thinking claims to hold. The word critical in the term critical thinking is nothing more than a vague predicate. It is time to abandon the term critical thinking to the historical bin of noncoherent reasoning.

In it’s place, it’s time to embrace the term “Coherent Reasoning!”

Citations

1. Dong, Manxia, Fuli Li, and Huiming Chang. “Trends and Hotspots in Critical Thinking Research Over the Past Two Decades: Insights from a Bibliometric Analysis.” Heliyon 9 (June 2023): 1–12 (1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16934.
2. Hart Research Associates. “Fulfilling the American Dream: Liberal Education and the Future of Work. Selected Findings from Online Surveys of Business Executives and Hiring Managers.” Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2018. https://www.aacu.org/research/2018-future-of-work.
3. Halpern, Diane F. “The Nature and Nurture of Critical Thinking.” Pages 1–14 in Critical Thinking in Psychology. Edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Henry L. Roediger III, and Diane F. Halpern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511804632.002.
4. Jenkins, Rob. “Why college graduates still can’t think.” The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. March 23, 2017. https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/03/college-graduates-still-cant-think/.
5. Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning. “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” J Pers Soc Psychol 77.6 (1999): 1121–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121.
6. Lovegreen, Valerie. “Critical Thinking Pedagogy and Quality Assurance in the United States.” Pages 13–28 in From Pedagogy to Quality Assurance in Education: An International Perspective. Edited by Heidi Flavian. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 2020. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-83867-106-820201004/full/html?skipTracking=true.
7. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1988.
8. Shamboul, Howaida A. E. “The Importance of Critical Thinking on Teaching Learning Process.” Open Journal of Social Sciences 10 (2022): 29–35. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2022.101003.