Jon’s Network

I mentioned before that in Susan Wolcott’s: Steps for Better Thinking Rubric(.pdf), skilled thinkers use general principles to interpret information, i.e. they use a model and they know which model they are using.

Since critical thinkers know which model they are using, they can easily question their model and adapt it to new facts and reality. They know the strengths and weaknesses of their model and know about many other models that could be used to interpret reality.

The Critical Thinking Community calls such a thinker a strong sense critical thinker:

strong sense critical thinker: One who is predominantly characterized by the following traits: 1)an ability to question deeply one’s own framework of thought, 2) an ability to reconstruct sympathetically and imaginatively the strongest versions of points of view and frameworks of thought opposed to one’s own, 3) an ability to reason dialectically (multilogically) in such a way as to determine when one’s own point of view is at its weakest and when an opposing point of view is at its strongest.

Strong sense critical thinkers are not routinely blinded by their own points of view. They know they have points of view and therefore recognize on what framework of assumptions and ideas their own thinking is based. They realize the necessity of putting their own assumptions and ideas to the test of the strongest objections that can be leveled against them.