THE ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT IN REASONING

All reasoning has a PURPOSE.

* Why are we thinking about this? What is our goal?
* Take time to state your purpose clearly.
* Distinguish your purpose from related purposes.
* Check periodically to be sure you are still on target.
* Choose significant and realistic purposes.

All reasoning is an attempt to figure something out, to settle some QUESTION AT ISSUE or to
SOLVE SOME PROBLEM.
* Take time to clearly and simply state the question at issue.
* Express the question in several ways to clarify its meaning and scope.
* Break the question into sub-questions. What sub-questions (or problems) do we need
to address first in order to deepen or broaden our general understanding of the question at issue?
* Identify if it is a factual question, a preference question, or a question that requires
judgment.

All reasoning is based on ASSUMPTIONS.

* What assumptions or presuppositions underlie our thinking?
* Clearly identify your major assumptions and check for their probable validity.
* Check the consistency of your assumptions.
* Re-examine your question at issue when assumptions prove insupportable.

All reasoning is done from some POINT OF VIEW.

* What point(s) of view is (are) being expressed? What POV(s) is (are) not being
expressed?
* Identify your own POV and its limitations.
* Seek other POVs and identify their strengths as well as weaknesses.
* Strive to evaluate all POVs fairmindedly.

All reasoning is based on DATA, INFORMATION AND EVIDENCE.

* What kind(s) of information do we need to access in order to deepen our
understanding?
* Restrict your claims to those supported by sufficient data.
* Lay out the evidence clearly.
* Search for information against your position and explain its relevance.

All reasoning is expressed through, and shaped by, CONCEPTS AND IDEAS.
* What basic theories, laws, definitions, principles, concepts or ideas are essential to our
reasoning?
 * Identify each major concept that is needed to explore the problem, and precisely define
it.
* Explain the choice of important concepts and the implications of each.
* Define when concepts are vaguely or inappropriately stated.

All reasoning contains INFERENCES by which we draw CONCLUSIONS and give meaning to
data.
* What conclusions or solutions does our reasoning lead to? Tie inferences tightly and
directly from evidence to conclusions.
* Seek inferences that are deep, consistent and logical.
* Identify the relative strength of each of your inferences.

All reasoning leads somewhere, has IMPLICATIONS and CONSEQUENCES.

* What are the possible consequences and implications of our reasoning? Trace out a
variety of implications and consequences that stem from your reasoning.
* Search for negative as well as positive consequences.
* Anticipate unusual or unexpected consequences from various points of view.

CRITERIA-BASED STANDARDS FOR CRITICAL THINKING:

Clarity and Precision: Was the answer you received clear and specific enough for you to
understand?

Accuracy: Did any part of the answer seem to be possibly inaccurate or false?

Relevance: Did any part of the answer seem to fail to relate to or bear on the
question?

Depth: Did the answer deal with the complexities of the question?

Breadth: Did the answer seem to ignore any important point of view?

Logic: Did the answer make good sense overall?

Significance: Were you able to extract meaning from the answer?

Meta-Cognition: How have you thought about your thinking?

IWL METACOGNITION INVOLVES.

1. Consciously asking yourself the questions "What do we know?", "How do we

know?", "Why do we accept this or believe this?", "What is the evidence for?". It
involves being aware of what questions you consciously raised during the thinking
process, and which ones triggered a purposeful line of reasoning.

2. Being aware of gaps in available information. How do those gaps affect your thinking?
Sometimes, you will need to recognize when a conclusion is being reached or a decision
made in the absence of complete information. Then what? How might you tolerate the
ambiguity or uncertainty? How do you know when to get off the CT wheel and arrive at a
conclusion or decision, however temporary?

3. Discriminating between observation and inference, between established fact and

subsequent conjecture.

4. Recognizing that words are symbols for ideas and not the ideas themselves. Therefore,
use only words of prior definition or words rooted in shared experience in forming a new
definition. Avoid technical jargon.

5. Probing for assumptions, particularly the implicit, unarticulated ones behind your
reasoning. Which memes have you so taken for granted that you cease to be aware of
them?

6. Drawing inferences from data, observation or other evidence (and recognizing when firm
inferences cannot be drawn see #2 above). Drawing inferences relies on a number of
different reasoning processes, such as "If then" propositions, analogies,
acknowledging variable factors, etc. By what logic did you arrive at your conclusions?

7. Applying relevant knowledge of principles and concepts, as well as their limitations, and
visualizing in the abstract changes in outcomes if any particular principle or concept is
applied to the problem at hand.

8. Learning to become aware if your argument is inductive or deductive that is, if your
line of reasoning is proceeding from the particular to the general, or the general to the
particular.

9. Testing your own line of reasoning and conclusions for internal consistency.

10. Developing self-consciousness about your thinking and reasoning. What did you learn
about your own mind and the way you think in the process? How could you have thought
about this better, or at least differently?
KINDS OF QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT WELL ASK YOURSELF IN THE PROCESS

Clarity: How can I elaborate?

How can I illustrate what I mean?
What example/s can I give?

Accuracy: How can I check on that?

How could I find out if that is true?
How could I verify or test that?

Precision: Can I be more specific? Exact?

Can I give more details?

Depth: What factors make this a difficult problem?

What are some of the complexities of this question?
What are some of the difficulties we need to deal with?

Relevance: How does that relate to the problem?

How does that bear on the question?
How does that help us with the issue?

Logic: Does all this make sense together?

Does the first paragraph fit in with the last?
Does this paragraph follow from the previous?
Does what I'm saying follow from the evidence?

Significance: Is this the most important problem or most central idea to consider?
Which of these facts are the most important?

Breadth: Do I need to look at this from another perspective?

Do I need to consider another point of view?
Do I need to look at this in other ways?

Fairness: Is my thinking justifiable in context?

Are my assumptions supported by evidence?
Is my purpose fair given the situation?
Am I not distorting concepts to get what I want?