Barriers to Critical Thinking Essay
Critical thinking entails context-independent skills that enhance individual judgment, situational analysis, evaluation, inferences, and attitude (Monteiro et al., 2019). It involves a systematic formulation of beliefs and statements by upholding rational standards. Therefore, critical thinking allows the assessment of existing ideas and devising new ones (Vaughn, 2019). This aspect enables people to incorporate logic in reasoning, evaluate arguments, and analyze evidence. Despite the importance of critical thinking, some elements of the immediate environment can compromise individual efforts to think critically. These impediments are psychological and philosophical obstacles that sabotage critical thinking.
Psychological Obstacles
Individual psychological tendencies and habits can affect behavior and influence people’s thoughts, creating recurring aspects that impend critical thinking. According to Vaughn (2019), psychological barriers to critical thinking are self-interested thinking (ego-centrism) and peer pressure. These obstacles hinder the systematic evaluation of reasoning and arguments because they convince people to base logic on personal views or group beliefs. Strategies for addressing psychological barriers to critical thinking are avoiding selective attention, making a conscious effort to assess opposing evidence, considering all options, and proportioning beliefs according to reasons’ strength.
Philosophical Obstacles
A personal worldview entails ideas that enable people to extract sense from a wide range of essential life issues. However, varying worldviews can hinder critical thinking when people rely on subjective relativism- “the idea that the truth depends on what someone believes in” (Vaughn, 2019, p. 44). Therefore, subjective relativism is the primary philosophical obstacle for critical thinking because it leads to a subjectivist fallacy when people use firmly held beliefs to support claims. Other philosophical obstacles are skepticism and social relativism. It is possible to avoid these barriers by being open-minded in reasoning, expressing willingness to suspend judgment, and making claims based on reasons’ strength and appeal to credibility.
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References
Monteiro, S., Sherbino, J., Sibbald, M., & Norman, G. (2019). Critical thinking, biases and dual processing: The enduring myth of generalizable skills. Medical Education, 54(1), 66-73. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13872
Vaughn, L. (2019). The power of critical thinking: Effective Reasoning about Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims (6th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Identify and describe one psychological and one philosophical obstacle to critical thinking that you currently struggle with. Without getting too personal, give examples of how these obstacles impede your critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Lastly, discuss at least one strategy you intend to employ in overcoming each obstacle and why you think these strategies will be successful.
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