Guide to Critical Thinking

The Importance of Critical Thinking
Why should you care about critical thinking? What can it offer you? Suppose you must make 
an important decision—about your future career, the person with whom you might want to 
spend the rest of your life, your financial investments, or some other critical matter. What 
considerations might come to mind? Perhaps you would wonder whether you need to think 
about it at all or whether you should just, as the old saying goes, “follow your heart.” In doing 
so, you are already clarifying the nature of your decision: purely rational, purely emotional, 
or a combination of both.
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Critical thinking involves carefully assessing 
information and its sources.
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Section 1.1 
What Is Critical Thinking?
In following this process you are 
already starting to think critically. First 
you started by asking questions. Once 
you examine the answers, you would 
then assess whether this information 
is sufficient, and perhaps proceed to 
research further information from reli-
able sources. Note that in all of these 
steps, you are making distinctions: You 
would distinguish between relevant 
and irrelevant questions, and from the 
relevant questions, you would distin-
guish the clear and precise ones from 
the others. You also would distinguish 
the answers that are helpful from those 
that are not. And finally, you would 
separate out the good sources for your 
research, leaving aside the weak and 
biased ones.
Making distinctions also determines the 
path that your examination will follow, 
and herein lies the connection between 
critical thinking and logic. If you decide you should examine the best reasons that support each 
of the possible options available, then this choice takes you in the direction of logic. One part 
of logical reasoning is the weighing of evidence. When making an important decision, you will 
need to identify which factors you consider favorable and which you consider unfavorable. You 
can then see which option has the strongest evidence in its favor (see Everyday Logic: Evidence, 
Beliefs, and Good Thinking for a discussion of the importance of evidence).
Consider the following scenario. You are 1 year away from graduating with a degree in busi-
ness. However, you have a nagging feeling that you are not cut out for business. Based on 
your research, a business major is practical and can lead to many possibilities for well-paid 
employment. But you have discovered that you do not enjoy the application or the analysis 
of quantitative methods—something that seems to be central to most jobs in business. What 
should you do?
Many would seek advice from trusted people in their lives—people who know them well 
and thus theoretically might suggest the best option for them. But even those closest to us 
can offer conflicting advice. A practical parent may point out that it would be wasteful and 
possibly risky to switch to another major with only 1 more year to go. A reflective friend may 
point out that the years spent studying business could be considered simply part of a journey 
of self-discovery, an investment of time that warded off years of unhappiness after gradua-
tion. In these types of situations, critical thinking and logical reasoning can help you sort out 
competing considerations and avoid making a haphazard decision.
We all find ourselves at a crossroads at various times in our lives, and whatever path we 
choose will determine the direction our lives will take. Some rely on their emotions to help 
them make their decisions. Granted, it is difficult to deny the power of emotions. We recall 
more vividly those moments or things in our lives that have had the strongest emotional 
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