CRITICAL THINKING

Just what are the characteristics of critical thinkers? The following comes from a book, Challenging Your Conceptions, by Randolf Smith. According to him, critical thinkers:

• are flexible - they can tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty:
• identify inherent biases and assumptions
• maintain an air of skepticism
• separate fact from opinions
• don't oversimplify
• use logical inference processes
• examine available evidence before drawing conclusions.

When faced with an issue or problem, critical thinkers will develop as many possible answers, solutions, or explanations for the issue or problem that they can. Then they devise ways to differentiate among the proposed solutions.