Critical Thinking

If you are obtaining simple basic facts from an encyclopedia, then you can be fairly certain that the information it contains is accurate. Research would be a lot simpler if you could have the same degree of trust in every source in print or on the Web as you can in the text of a respectable encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Consequently, the writing process involves a good deal of critical thinking, in addition to creative thinking, and from a very early stage. The ability to think critically is vital when you are revising your own work, but critical thinking also ought to come into play while you are doing your research, firstly so that you can distinguish between what is useful and valuable for your own purposes in your sources and what is not, and secondly so that you do not necessarily take everything as ab- solutely true and accurate because it happens to appear on paper or the Web.

Perhaps we should first clear up a common misapprehension. Critical thinking is not the same thing as negative thinking or censorious thinking. Assessing a piece of writing critically does not mean that you deliberately set out to try to find fault with it or prove it to be worthless. A good literary critic picks out and praises what is good in something at the same time that he or she recognizes and, if appropriate, censures anything that is inaccurate, carelessly thought out, or poorly expressed. The main work of criticism is to analyze and evaluate things as to their nature and their quality. Critical think- ing, to put it another way, is all about making distinctions: distinguishing the good from the bad, the useful from the useless, the accurate from the inaccu- rate, and so on. You may or may not be called on to pass judgment on the intrinsic literary merits of a piece of writing, but you will certainly need to be able to decide whether a source is valuable and/or trustworthy.

The first distinction that we usually need to make is between fact and opinion. A fact is something that is objectively and demonstratively true or something that actually happened and can be proved to have happened. An opinion is what someone believes to be the case. There is nothing wrong with having opinions or with having beliefs or preferences, but what one person believes, another person may dispute, and as the proverb says, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” Opinion is always debatable and does not have the same credibility as fact.

This much is obvious. Problems arise, however, from the fact that people are naturally comfortable with their own opinions and generally believe that other people ought to share them. Consequently, they may present them as if they were facts. People also sometimes present opinion—or allegations—as fact because they are not conscientious enough about distinguishing the two or because they deliberately set out to mislead others. Whatever the motives, it is important for us as readers and researchers not to be misled. We should apply our minds critically to what is presented to us and retain a degree of skepticism until convinced.

Let us examine the distinction between fact and opinion a little further on the basis of a few examples. The statement “Charles Dickens was born in 1812” is a statement of fact. No normal person would want to go to the bother of checking through the official records to verify a date given in thou- sands of reliable sources. That is something we can take on trust. The state- ment “Charles Dickens was a great writer” is not a statement of fact, however. Millions of readers over a period of more than 150 years may have believed Dickens to be a great writer, but that does not make it an indis- putable fact. Some people—a small minority, admittedly—dispute his great- ness. The precise meaning of the word great when applied to a creative artist is also sometimes a matter of debate. In any event, the word great implies a judgment, and judgments are always open to question. This does not mean that we cannot venture to make such statements, simply that when we make them we should be aware that we may be called upon to justify them. Like- wise, when we read them, we should expect the persons who wrote them to be able to back them up.

The statement “Red wines are made from purple grapes, the skins of which are left in the vats with the juice during the early stages of the fermen- tation process” is another statement of fact. The statement “Red wine is the perfect accompaniment to a steak,” on the other hand, is a statement of opin- ion. It sounds rather similar to what was said in the passage quoted in the previous section, but the encyclopedia-type article was more guarded. It put forward a more general proposition: “Table wines, as their name suggests, are drunk primarily as accompaniments to meals.” Not only is it speaking of table wines in general, but it adds the important qualifying word primarily, precisely because the author knows that people often drink ordinary red or white wine on its own. Similar qualifying words, mainly and usually, are also used in the passage with respect to the circumstances under which the other types of wine mentioned are normally drunk.

Since they contain these qualifications, we can accept these statements as generally true, that is as having more or less an equivalent status to fact. If we formulate the statement in a more specific way, however, and say, as above, “Red wine is the perfect accompaniment to a steak,” then we are on less factual ground. Plenty of people might argue that a steak tastes better if you drink beer with it, or plain water, or nothing at all. Again, the use of the judgmental adjective perfect is an indicator that we are dealing with an opin- ion, as was the use of great in the statement about Dickens. If we were deter- mined not to stray from strict fact, we should have to say something like “Red wine is often drunk with a steak” or add a phrase to show that we rec- ognize that what we are saying represents a commonly held belief: “Many people think that red wine is the perfect accompaniment to a steak.”

In the examples given above, the distinction between fact and opinion is pretty clear, and the issues being discussed are relatively minor insofar as the question of whether red wine goes well with steak is not a matter of life and death. But if in the course of researching a piece on the subject of wine you came across the statement “Drinking red wine can prevent heart disease,” how ought you to treat it? Is it a fact or an opinion?

You will notice that statement says “can prevent,” not “prevents,” so the writer is exercising some caution. Does that make it safe to present this slightly qualified assertion as a fact? Unless you are a medical specialist, you are unlikely to have at your fingertips the knowledge that would enable you to answer that question. So you have to think critically. You might first want to investigate the credentials of the publication in which you found the infor- mation. If it appeared, for example, in something published or sponsored by the wine industry, you might feel that it would be in the industry’s interests to suggest that drinking one of its products had important health benefits and treat the information with caution. If you discovered it in a reputable scien- tific journal, you might be more inclined to believe it, especially if it were to be supported by a battery of statistics. Even so, you might well be aware from experience that even experts disagree. What one scientist claims to have proved today, another scientist will often claim to have disproved tomorrow. If you are able to consider the evidence and weigh it and decide definitely in favor of one side or the other, then all well and good. But if you do not have the knowledge or cannot do the necessary research to reach clarity on the issue, then you ought not to suggest to your reader that you know the true facts. The safest rule is to treat everything that you do not know for certain to be fact as opinion, and to word what you write in such a way as to make it clear to your reader where facts end and opinions start.

To summarize:

• critical thinking is the art of making distinctions; 
• critical thinking should be used first and foremost to ascertain what is valuable and useful for your project and what is not; 
• the distinction between fact and opinion is of primary importance; 
• if in doubt, be skeptical.