What exactly is, 'critical thinking'?

Answer 1

you don't allow emotions or opinions of others cloud your analysis.

Answer 2

Critical thinking is not so easy to explain in a few words. It means 'considering' rather than 'believing'. It means living with 'cognative dissonance', in fact -welcoming- it.

It also means being skeptical, at least in the classical sense of 'skepticism', meaning the idea that nothing can be known for sure. We need to understand that in the real world most things are much more complicated than we can understand, so at best our understanding is an 'approximation', and we should keep an open mind. Two theories or ideas that might seem contradictory at first often can both be useful in their own ways.

Answer 3

Critical thinking is defending your(school-of-thought) against
all others.
As we not only all appreciate darwin-ism(we are darwinists,
i can now say),
but this current universal code enables us all to,as it were,
puy-our-true-faith into defending our(worked-out) views
and,as we all know,the best or most correct one-the view that
is closest to the truth,will shine-out and of course, "win-out"
So,in connection with my school-of-thought,i may say that
"critical thinling" involves an element of "learning from ones
mistakes".
An example of this can be found this afternoon,on yahoo answers philosophy section,where cetain individuals have
stated that "there are questions to all answer"
We deny this,and we say further that its aa easy mistake to
make-rather its a mistake which we definately can learn from.
Similarly,there are other typical questions(not all of a
darwin-ian nature)the answers of which,although not immediately forthcoming,because they are presently unknown,nevertheless we have and still do come very close
to answering.
Eg,kurt Godel's famous-but-hardly-understood proof of the
Incompleteness of arithmetic(and whether there is an answer
for and to every math function).

Answer 4

Critical thinking represents a set of rules that one uses to determine the truth value of a statement, or position.
Critical thinking obeys the laws of logic. Critical thinking avoids relying on authority (Just because the Pope said it, it doesn't make it true). Critical thinking examines the value of statements according to whether or not they are justified, and not to whether or not they defend a certain position, etc...

Answer 5

Critical thinking is essentially thining clearly, taking into account all the facts and not being swayed by emotion. For a more detailed description, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

Answer 6

Getting beyond what you've been told.

A great example is in the on line book.. "Gospel Enigma." A little extra thinking Changes Everything in that story.

Answer 7

The application of reason and logic to an idea in order to determine an answer or result.

Answer 8

Don't believe until it's proven

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.shtml