Critical Thinking | Neutreality

Types

Meaning

Expression

Origin

Purpose

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Critical Thinking

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What is critical thinking?
A careful reasoning of new information

The term “critical thinking” was introduced in the early 20th century through John Dewey and popularized by educators and philosophers.

How did critical thinking become a thing?
Humans kept running into wrong beliefs, which led to actions that produced unideal results. The only reliable way to fix that was to question, test, and reason more carefully. Over time, that habit was refined into a method and then taught as a skill.
The documented practice dates back to philosophers that lived in 6th century BCE ancient Greece.

Many animals show behaviors like planning, problem-solving, tool use, and flexible decision making. They can evaluate situations, adapt strategies, and even innovate.
However, their thinking is yet to be abstract or self-reflective, it's situational.

What is the purpose of critical thinking?
To judge efficiently and reliably

In today’s era, information validation is becoming more crucial than ever, new technologies allow false content to spread faster and on a larger scale than ever before. Bias is a threat that’s hard to overcome and we aspire to ensure we accept information not because it feels right, but because it is right.

How is critical thinking expressed?

Reaction

Belief is only relevant when a decision is influenced by it.

Credibility itself isn't enough to determine whether the new information is worthy of attention.
The degree to which information appears to be true isn't necessarily the same value as to whether we should perceive that information as true, the severity of the implications it entails plays a role in assessing whether it's worth of belief.

Complete certainty about authenticity is impossible, choosing to act only under great certainty is extremely impractical.

A simpler model is therefore needed to quickly assess whether information is worth acting on by focusing on a few core factors.

Credibility + (100% − Credibility) x Implications x Credibility = Rate of belief

Credibility

False (0%)
Unlikely (25%)
Possible (50%)
Likely (75%)
True (100%)

Implications

Insignificant (0%)
Minor (25%)
Moderate (50%)
Major (75%)
Extreme (100%)

After choosing to believe something, it does not immediately translate into action, because there other actions to choose from, a decision that is made based on risk and benefits whose value is determined relative to your needs.

Example:
Every person that enters the building speaks of a rich man who's giving away 1,000 dollars to each passerby. Even your friend who never lies, comes and shows you a video. This does not mean you'll go and collect, it only means you'll consider it.

Because, in this imaginary scenario, you're actually rich, and these 1,000 dollars offer less benefit than staying and helping your partner get through a panic attack.

Benefit = Good implications
Cost = Bad implications

Opinion = (Likelihood × Potential Benefit) − (Likelihood× Potential cost)

Benefit

Insignificant (0%)
Minor (25%)
Moderate (50%)
Major (75%)
Extreme (100%)

Risk

Insignificant (0%)
Minor (25%)
Moderate (50%)
Major (75%)
Extreme (100%)

Credibility refers to how likely is information to be true.

It is not the same as truth, because a credible claim can later turn out to be false, and an incredible claim can later turn out to be true.

Logic

Does it make sense?

Evidence

What’s the strength and quantity of supporting evidence?

Assumptions

How much does it rely on speculated premises?

Verifiability

Can it be tested?

Alternatives

Are there alternative explanations?

Different types of Critical Thinking

What is it?
A definite conclusion that follows a premise.

What is its purpose?
To show what must follow from what you accept as true.

How did it become a thing?

Deduction became formalized in ancient Greek philosophy, especially through Aristotle. People had always reasoned deductively before that, but Aristotle studied it systematically and turned it into a formal method.

He noticed that some arguments have a structure where the conclusion is unavoidable.

This became the foundation of formal logic. Later, mathematics, philosophy, law, science, and computer science all developed more advanced forms of deductive reasoning.

Example

"Daniel doesn't like seafood"

A fish is a sea animal, therefore Daniel doesn't like eating fish.

What is it?
Dismantling something to its components.

What is its purpose?
To understand the structure of things
To make something clearer by identifying its parts and relationships.
Complex things are hard to understand as a whole.

How did it become a thing?

Humans often face problems that are too complex to understand all at once.

Example
Two people use the same recipe to cook a meal.
Still one tastes bad while the other tastes good.
Dismantle the process into the different steps that are involved.

Did they use a different brand for their ingredients?
Different freshness of the products?
Did one of them didn't wash the hands?
Do they use a different cookware?

The cause for the difference can be many different things.

What is it?
Choosing the explanation that seems most reasonable given the available clues.

What is its purpose?
To avoid over-complication

How did it become a thing?

People have always used abduction in ordinary life, guessing causes from signs, interpreting tracks, diagnosing illness, solving crimes.

It became a formal philosophical idea through Charles Sanders Peirce, he treated abduction as a distinct kind of reasoning, separate from deduction and induction.

Example
"The grass is wet".
The best explanation may be that it rained, though a sprinkler is also possible

What is it?
Reasoning from specific examples to a general rule.

What is its purpose?
To learn from patterns.
It is used when we cannot have absolute proof but still need reasonable conclusions.

How did it become a thing?

Humans needed to learn from experience.
Long before formal philosophy, people noticed patterns:
fire burns, seasons repeat, certain plants are edible, clouds often mean rain.

Philosophers later studied this kind of reasoning more carefully, but induction became especially important in modern science through thinkers like Francis Bacon, who emphasized observation and experiment:

Observe many cases, detect patterns, form general laws, then test them further.

Example

The sun has risen every day, so it will probably rise tomorrow.

What is it?
Assessment means examining something carefully in order to understand its condition, level, quality, risk, or performance.

It is close to evaluation, but usually more structured.
Essentially asking "What is the current state of this thing?"
Assessment’s strength is structured judgment. Its weakness is that it depends on the quality of the criteria and the skill of the assessor.

What is its purpose?
To understand the current state of something so a better decision can be made.

How did it become a thing?

It became a thing because people needed reliable ways to judge condition or ability before acting.
So assessment developed as a way to make judgment more systematic and less random.

Example
A doctor examines a patient’s symptoms, temperature, blood pressure, medical history, and test results.
The doctor is assessing the patient’s condition.

What is it?
Figuring out the best approach to solve a problem

What is its purpose?
To turn understanding into action.

How did it become a thing?

Early humans had to solve survival problems: how to find food, build shelter, avoid danger, make tools, and cooperate.

Later, it became more formal in mathematics, engineering, philosophy, medicine, and military planning. In modern psychology and education, problem solving became a studied mental process: researchers looked at how people define problems, use strategies, make mistakes, and improve solutions.

It became “a thing” because life constantly presents gaps between the current state and the desired state.

Example
A restaurant receives many complaints about slow service.
Problem solving investigates whether the issue is too few staff, bad kitchen layout, poor scheduling, confusing orders, or slow payment processing.
The solution may be hiring, redesigning workflow, changing the menu, or improving the ordering system.

What is it?
Showing how something follows from something else.

What is its purpose?
To justify a result by showing its source and logical path.

How did it become a thing?

People needed to show not just what they believed, but why it follows.
This made knowledge more reliable. Instead of saying, “This seems true,” derivation says, “This follows from these earlier accepted things.”

Example
A store gives a 20% discount on a $50 item.
20% of $50 is $10.
$50 − $10 = $40.
Therefore, the final price is $40.
You can see where the result came from, instead of just accepting it.

What is it?
A logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on at least two premises

(One of many possible structures for logical arguments.)
Argument = the broad category. Any reasoning where premises support a conclusion.
Every syllogism is an argument, but not every argument is a syllogism.

The thread also connects this to validity and soundness. Validity is about whether the structure works. Soundness is about whether the structure works and the premises are actually true. A syllogism can be valid in form even if its content is false.

Reductio ad absurdum is not a single argument form like a syllogism. It is a proof strategy or inference rule used inside logical arguments.

What is its purpose?
To test whether a conclusion follows logically from given premises.

How did it become a thing?

Did I mention syllogism is something that the ancient Greeks invented? Because it's important; syllogisms are one possible formal system for constructing valid arguments, but they're not the only one. In modern times (1850 and later, roughly) logicians don't really study syllogisms; they study newer, more sophisticated systems for constructing valid arguments, like natural deduction.

Example
Logic is supposed to give us rules that we can use to construct valid arguments independently of what the sentences are about.

This is why it's often called formal logic, because it's about the form of the arguments. If you've constructed an argument according to valid formal rules, then the argument is valid and it doesn't matter what the argument is about.

Syllogism is one of those structures used in arguments.
(Argumentation in terms of form and rules.)

All A are B.
All C are A.
Therefore, all C are B.

It doesn't matter what sentences X, Y and Z are.
Any argument that you construct according to this pattern is valid.

What is it?
Extending a pattern beyond the known data.

(The ability to figure out the rest of an equation.?)

What is its purpose?
To predict.

How did it become a thing?