Using the Tools of Critical Thinking for Effective Decision Making

hello I'm Linda elder I am an educational psychologist and president of the foundation for critical thinking welcome to this session this conversation critical thinking conversation with our fellows we're focused today on the idea of using the tools of critical thinking for effective decision-making I'm going to be referring to one of our books entitled critical thinking tools for taking charge of your learning of your professional and personal life and so if you have the book you may want to to pull that out if you don't I'll be giving you of some page numbers which you can

look at later if you'd like to go deeper into these ideas there are many angles from which we can approach effective decision-making we are going to focus on a couple of those hopefully fruitful angles here in this session I have chosen to focus on two major areas in decision-making one on big decisions the big decisions that we're making the big decisions that we have made the big decisions that we may make in the future and the second is considering alternatives when making decisions and really a third will be connecting these two discussions with the first

principles of critical thinking or the primary tools that have been articulated in the field of critical thinking studies to this point first let's talk about the big decisions that you have made to this point and and consider these decisions from a rather deep approach in comparison to the approaches that we tend to see taken in human societies today in the past 20 or 30 years we have seen an explosion of pop psychology literature focusing on decision-making many of this much of this literature promises to change our lives overnight if we follow these one two three

step approaches to decision making some of these books offer these one two three step approaches again their procedural that we are to follow and they offer trees for us to follow this is one one pattern that we see in this literature another pound that we see is an emphasis on one or two let's say powerful ideas and critical thinking but offering these one or two ideas as it were the whole enchilada but when we understand the complexities in human decision-making and in living a human life then we ask deeper questions because we understand that these

superficial approaches aren't getting us far enough in the direction of cultivating fair-minded critical societies or for us personally making the highest-level decisions in our own lives in Chapter nine of our book we focus on the art of making intelligent decisions and I suggest that you spend some time with the introductory material and I'm just going to bring in a few of the ideas that you'll see there for you now and I'm beginning on page one 83 and 84 and I'll just be summarizing some of our points that we're making in this chapter let me read

some of these points to you and then discuss the most basic patterns of thought and behavior in your life represent the most basic decisions you have made so let's let's bring this two to reality for us let me say this in other words the wet the basic ways in which you are living today and thinking today come from or can be found in or are implied by the most basic decisions the big decisions you've made to this point so take your intimate relationship or relationships you've made decisions big decisions that have led you to this

path and perhaps you've you've made some decisions regarding intimate relationships in your life that have not been so good and you've you've felt the consequences of those poor decisions in a very important area of your life and so and let me take this further the most important decision we can make is how and what to think about the ways in which we're living our lives how we think how we feel what we want in other words we need to take a much higher level of command of the decisions that are that we're facing every day

that we're that we're making by implication but that we maybe even don't realize it we're making and so again one one thing that we can do is to look at the the domains in our lives in which we it the important domains of our lives and ask ourselves well what decisions have have I made to this point that have led me here if I can understand that then I can understand the decisions I'm likely to make in the future and where those decisions are likely to lead me so I will have a much higher command

over the decisions that I make in the future if I can command understanding of the decisions I've made in the past big ones have led me here and the deceit I'm making right now so let us look at a an activity that we can that we can engage in that comes from the book that I'm focusing on and it comes from page 187 we've just lifted this thing fair did this test the idea of experience for you to to help you take theory that I'm focusing on and bring this into your thinking in a way

that brings it a lot alive and and gives you leverage for making different decisions potentially in the future and this is just the kind of activity that we want to engage our students in so that they are not just hearing the theoretical points that we're making but they're also applying the theoretical points as we move through the content of the course so let's look at this activity I want you to spend just a few minutes on this you won't have time to write this down probably you can find this activity again on page 187 of

the book right now I'd like you to just take some notes as if you are going to answer this or complete these statements so looking back on your life to this point consider the big decisions you've made or are making and complete these statements now you'll need to focus on one at a time so what is the big decision that you've made either deliberately or not in other words you may have gone along with some decision that someone else made for you that was a decision that you made and so you you made this decision

by implication by going along and not saying no I don't want to do that what is this big decision what are some important consequences of this decision for your life now and what are some possible implications of this decision you've already made for the future and as important what might you change number four I might change the course of my future by changing my thinking in this situation or with regard to visits situation in the following way so I'm just going to give you a couple of minutes to consider this big decision and and begin

to answer these questions so let me add just a few thoughts on on recognizing the need for important decisions in thinking about this concept of big decisions more deeply than we tend to and then we'll move on to our next major point there are many questions that we can ask about the big decisions that face us or are facing us or have basis in our lives I'm just going to articulate these in slightly different ways for your consideration one thing I can ask myself is am I happy with the with the way that I'm living

my life now if I am truly and honestly then it's likely that I have made some very good decisions to this point but if I am happy in certain parts of my life but not happy in other parts of my life if I want to look at my life honestly then as a critical thinker I'm going to be interested in those areas of my life in which I'm not happy I'm going to be focusing on those and I'm going to take that seriously those problems within that domain seriously and I'm going to ask myself well

why am I not happy and what can lead to that happiness how can I get command over the big decisions that I'm making in my life so that I can reach a higher level of self-realization or happiness or however we may explain that higher level of living so what big decisions are you now facing how are you approaching these big decisions which big decisions would you rather avoid or are you avoiding making and why what are the most significant issues in your lives that you need to face and to deal with you see I'm articulating

the same ideas in slightly different ways to take me to a deeper and deeper level of realization of the need to face these big decisions that I may want to avoid making and if I'm uncomfortable right now because there's an area of my life that really don't want to face that's the area that the that the the highest level critical thinker will walk into and say I wanted to deal with all these problems and I want to deal with them now because they're big they're affecting the quality of my life so these are some thoughts

on big decisions we're going to come back in a minute to these big decisions and length is to our overall theory let's consider now alternatives often we fail our thinking fails at the level not only of understanding that we have a big decision before us that we're not facing but also we often fail the level of failing to recognize alternatives the critical mind is also the creative mind if a mind is truly critical is it is not criticizing in the in the sense of simply looking for problems in someone's thinking or an issue the person

who's the cynic no the person who is truly critical in in in view and in worldview who's developed her critical capacities or his critical past capacities is also highly creative and considers alternatives naturally over time that is as you get better and better at thinking about alternatives and considering them the these alternatives begin to come to you more automatically as you reason through these big decisions because you've opened your mind to possibilities you're not afraid of ideas maybe nine of these ten ideas that you that you generate won't work maybe they're not feasible but you

needed to go through the nine to get to the tenth which is feasible and will solve the problem or lead us to some higher plane some higher level of living so often we again fail to consider alternatives because our thinking is simply not not not open-minded enough we're shutting down we're closing down the alternatives rather than saying well let's see let's just throw these out there and see what may may follow if we take this path versus if we take this path here is another activity from our book and this comes from page 189 again

it asks you to reflect on reflect on an experience that you've had recently so think of a situation you were in recently in which you were not considering alternatives that if you had considered would have raised your thinking to a higher level quality complete these statements the situation was now want you to describe the situation again I'll give you a few minutes to do this so go ahead and begin as you wish the alternatives I could clearly see at the time were these the important alternatives I miss though were these and the reason I missed

them was because and had I considered all the relevant important alternatives I would have acted the following were a ways rather than the ways that I did act so you notice in the in the process that we detail or that we lay out here for you the reader we're asking you to first tell us about the situation then get further into the problem or the issue here I'm asking you to consider alternatives that you can see and alternatives that you missed and I want to know why you miss them I can replace myself when I'm

when I'm focusing on a problem or a problem in my life and I'm thinking of why it didn't work out the way that I thought it should have or could have then I'm going to ask myself which alternatives did I miss and why why wasn't I seeing those because I need to see those sorts of alternatives next time to avoid this same kind of problem and that gets you into the fifth point here so let me pause give you just two minutes two and a half minutes or so to write out your initial thoughts on

this let us continue and I would like to make some additional comments about the importance of accurately recognizing alternatives and then we'll move forward to our theory of critical thinking links some of these thoughts to that theory people often fail in the area of considering alternatives at two levels or in two forms one is erroneously believing that something is an alternative when it is not or in other words thinking unrealistically so people who are believing that something is an alternative when it's not realistic and the other is failing to recognize an alternative or thinking too

narrowly and I focus a little bit on that second point already when I mention that the critical mind is naturally also the creative mind consider these types of things that people might say when they are thinking erroneously about alternatives they're thinking unrealistically these are in quotes I know he's got major faults but he loves me and I can help him change so this is the the naive female who thinks that she is going to be able to change this male that she's an intimate relationship with though he has got major faults but he loves me

see that's unrealistic thinking and here's another there I know there are lots of problems in our relationship but we love each other and that is all that matters again the same problem if there are lots of problems in our relationship then how can we be happy in those conditions it's not realistic to think that we will be happy and then we ask yourself what is a sacrifice it willing to make for staying in that situation another I know I'm not doing well at my job but I will eventually be recognized I know I'm not -

I know I'm I know I'm not doing well at my job so it's not it's unrealistic - then therefore think that you're going to be recognized if you're not doing well at your job another student problem in thinking I know I need to learn this but I can learn it by cramming the night before the exam son realistic but it's also something that we as teachers have to take some responsibility for because we've taught students that this is what learning entails we've taught them that learning is something that it's not and that they can actually

approach learning in this way that's not realistic that's not how you're going to learn it's not how you're going to discipline your mind that's not how we're going to transform human societies to more civilized societies to ones that value fair-minded critical thinking and foster intellectual virtues so these are some considerations when we think about alternatives opening our mind considering alternatives not closing the mind that down but also understanding the importance of being realistic in this approach now I would like to link some of the thoughts that that that we've been discussing with the theory of

critical thinking that is the at the heart of our approach now we can we could begin a session on effective decision-making by focusing on these elements of reasoning we can we can start here rather than from the point that I started because I can say whenever we are whenever we are facing any decision it's essential that we understand what let's say important decision that we understand the elements of reasoning in bed in our thinking and and so I could say and there's a lot of fruitfulness in in taking this approach so I could say if

you are facing a major decision write out your purpose what is the purpose of the decision or what is what is the what is the question at issue what exactly is the problem articulate this complex problem multiple ways before you begin to approach it because if you do your thinking will be better by implication because of the pre thinking that you're doing here focusing on the question I can say think through the information make sure you gather the relevant information the information that is relevant to solving this problem I can say beware of the interpretations

that you're making as you move through the process beware of your inferences and understand that when you come to this final decision it's a conclusion or it is hopefully a solution but it certainly is an inference in other words it's a step of the mind in which the mind says I've considered all these possibilities I'm going to make this big decision and here is going to be my major inference or my main conclusion I'm going to decide to marry this woman or not or I'm going to approach my students in the classroom in the following

ways when I enter the new semester because I've made these new big decisions these are inferences these are steps of the mind and therefore when we make therefore we understand if we understand this that when we make what when we make this inference or we decide in the following way we could have made some other inference or some other sets of inferences and gone some other path we could have said no I don't think this person is going to really make me happy and so I'm going to say no to this relationship or when thinking

about the impact of our behavior on the earth we have big decisions to make here what what how are we making these big decisions what inferences are we coming to about the earth the health of the earth and how we should be behaving as as actors upon the earth affecting the earth so I can I can approach big decisions from these elements of reasoning I can say what concepts are you using to begin your thinking where does your thinking begin when you think about for instance the the health of the earth or or the condition

of the of the earth and end and it's it's the condition of its resources the condition of the of the the air the water so forth I can say what concepts am i beginning with when I approach this big problem well if I'm thinking environmentally that I'm going to use environmental theories and want to use scientific theories which will help me understand the impact of human action on the earth and I'm going to avoid using concepts like what is in my vested interest what is what what what is best for me right now at this

moment living in a highly superficial world in in you know highly superficial human societies you see so our concepts are our beginning places and they're a good place for us to begin to think about how we're defining these big decisions at the very foundation what it and then I could ask what is our assumption based what do we assume to begin with do we assume that the earth can can manage an unlimited number of people living on the planet in the form that we've been living or the forms we've been living on it is is

this an assumption that we make or do we assume that there is a limit to how much a pressure a fragile ecosystem like the earth can take what are our assumptions where is our beginning place in that intimate relationship where your gumption what is your beginning place what do you take for granted about a relationship we can relate this to any number of decisions that we make as administrators we must hire individuals to to work in certain positions and we make assumptions about those individuals we we bring those assumptions in the room we want to

ask themselves what are those assumptions and are they justifiable in this context we can ask ourselves about the implications of hiring this individual versus this other individual what might be implied by his attitude or his orientation towards this set of problems and in fact we'll see what the consequences are when and if we hire this individual because will will will experience the person's thinking in action every day and so and we can also enter the point of view we can also enter the elements of reasoning and therefore decision-making from the from the point of view

of point of view so we can ask ourselves how am I looking at these decisions that I'm making how am I looking at the the the department in which I'm functioning how do I look at the problems that we face as a community how do I look at problems as an administrator as a decision-maker what point of view what frames of reference what worldview what perspectives what orientations do I bring into the room and by implication what points of view do others bring into the room that I need to consider notice I've been focusing on

the elements of reasoning the elements of thought all of these will be directly applicable to any decision that we make because whenever we're reasoning through any problem or issue these parts are present whether we realize that they're present or not we're using these these elements each of us is using these elements as reasoner's when we're approaching discussions regarding decision-making and then we can ask ourselves to what extent are we applying this intellectual standards to this process intellectual standards are the standards by which intellectuals or good reasoner's judge reasoning and they're the standards by which intellectuals

have always judged reasoning throughout human history we pull together these standards we have nine here we tend to focus on fundamentally in our work we we consider these essential intellectual standards but they come from a much larger group of intellectual standards that exist in all natural languages or the languages that we speak every day in this case I'm speaking English some of you speak other language as your primary language but whatever that language is we will be your natural language within these we languages we have these standards that we've been developing and accumulating throughout human

recorded history and the important point for us now is that if we're making big decisions then we need to be adhering to these intellectual standards systematically and to do that we must have a deep enough understanding of them to be able to leverage their use in context so if we go back to for instance that two main areas that we focus on today one was the first was focusing on big decisions that we're now facing I want to enter this theory at the at this standard the standard of significance we've been focusing on a decision

or a problem that's the element of reasoning of problems or question and we've been focusing we focus mainly on this question of Sigma this standard of significance and I ask you to apply the standard of significance this to some of the decisions you've made in your life and I've argued that it is these these big decisions that have largely led you to this point and so if we if we enter now the discussion at the point of view of intellectual standards then we see that significance is a key standard and essentially intellectual standard that we

should be using as reasoner's every day because we face many problems questions concerns we're faced with a huge amount of data of we've got groups companies organizations all over the world trying to enter our world with their data with their information with their arguments and they're saying hey I'm significant give to my cause follow my lead follow my path so we as thinkers have to make these important decisions more or less every day as to how to spend our time and whether this is a significant use of our time whatever this is that we're being

asked to do or that we're doing engaging in ourselves the decisions that we're choosing the ways the paths that we're choosing let's make sure they are significant paths that's the argument in looking at our second let's say focus we we were primarily concerned with considering alternatives and so we wanted to make sure that we were considering the relevant information relevant alternatives and we want to think about those alternatives deeply and we may have to consider multiple viewpoints and considering the alternatives so we need to think maybe broadly we may need to unpack the decision the

problem the issue in multiple ways to understand what the problem is that we're actually facing to pull the problem part into multiple questions that we can deal with as individual questions but then also recognizing them as a cluster of existing as in a cluster of questions so we can we can enter this the same content considering alternatives from the point of view of intellectual standards as I'm doing here we can also enter at the point of view of the elements of reasoning again so if I'm reasoning through a big decision I need to consider alternatives

by implication then again what's the question at issue articulate that precisely what is our purpose are we clear about our purpose and then here is where the focus on alternatives to me really comes into play in a let's say in a in a in a way that's easily illuminated we have to gather data facts and evidence too to consider the alternatives and so we want to consider a sufficient amount of information to solve this big problem or make this big decision so often we fail at the level of considering that all of the relevant information

we often fail at the at the point of considering alternative points of view when considering alternatives often we're not thinking through implications or were failing to see the assumptions you see that we're making what I want you to see is the the dynamic way in which the elements of reasoning exist in the mind in the human mind and the many avenues for entering decision-making that exists and that we're already taking because we're already considering our purpose we're already considering questions at issue but we're not necessary unpacking these ideas and using this language as a framework

for reasoning through these problems these decisions that we're facing everyday and we need to make sure that we are again adhering to intellectual standards in this process now I have not talked about the third conceptual set in our approach in our framework and that is intellectual traits or virtues again when we think of decision-making effective decision-making we tend to take a a highly superficial approach first to this then do that if it's complicated to this other thing if that doesn't work try this and when we make those moods first of all we misrepresent what's happening

in the mind in fact and we we truncate our thinking and we fail to see alternatives and we fail to see even that we have big decisions that we need to make but we also fail to see how the these intellectual virtues in the cultivation of these intellectual virtues are essential to effective decision-making because we don't make first of all effective decisions in a vacuum usually we are we affect other people we influence other people and we are influenced by other people as social creatures and we if we approach problems in a in a formulaic

or let's say a skills-based approach as in the following gather this relevant information to solve this problem state the problem what are some possible solutions have you thought through all of implications some of these moves we're making right here and those are good moves but in real life one of the big problems that we face is that that people are coming to these decisions and discussions about making decisions with let's say intellectual baggage so instead of coming to meetings and discussions embodying these intellectual virtues we as humans tend to embody the opposite of these virtues

so let's just take intellectual humility as an example all of us are often the opposite of this or in by the opposite of this which is intellectual arrogance thinking that we know more than we know when we are aspiring to these into into these intellectual traits then we are continually trying for instance to distinguish in fact between what we know for sure and what we don't know we're exhibiting we hope embodying intellectual humility and I'm giving you shortcuts to this because there's more obviously to this this theory but a main point I'm trying to make

here is that often people fail in their decision-making because of their intellectual arrogance because they already believe that they are the way the truth and the light and they don't have anything to learn they already have all the answers and so when you give them an alternative when you offer another solution what happens is they give you reasons why they can't consider those and in other words they're exhibiting intellectual arrogance they can't hear you so that's one example of an intellectual trait that is essential for effective decision-making if we're if we're good at decision-making then

we're good at understanding what we don't know it is and we are and we're very careful not to overstate what we do know and we often will say things like well no that's not true and then wait a minute maybe it is true maybe I don't have maybe I don't have that all the information you're right but that's an that's another point of view I haven't considered that let me let me let me back up a minute because I was thinking of it this way and I'm what I'm doing here is trying to exhibit and

to embody in my own mind a movement from a place of intellectual arrogance where I'm walking and saying no I already know the answer to wait a minute I need to really rethink and regroup because that rethinking and regrouping doesn't happen like that I already believe I know the answer now you're giving me some better reasoning it's going to take me a minute to adjust to that but I can't adjust to it if I don't have something called confidence and reason happening in my thinking in other words I can hear you at all all though

I think I already know the truth because I have confidence that in the final analysis good reasoning will carry us through and that we're looking for the best reasoning in a given situation we're not looking for a given person's reasoning but the best reasoning so if on a given point as it turns out my reasoning is the weakest of all the people in the room then I want to see that and I want to see that as soon as possible and I want to hear the all the other ways of thinking that are superior to

my own and I want to enter those those in good faith those those viewpoints and I want to be moved by those better ways of thinking in when I'm doing this I mean I am I am trying to embody I'm trying to achieve or to reach let's say this virtue of confidence and reason so think about this for a minute let me have you just give give take a couple of minutes and consider the intellectual virtues consider specifically how the lack of these virtues affects your decision-making in your daily life I focus specifically on two

intellectual humility and confidence and reason to what I said are you intellectually arrogant and to what extent does that intellectual arrogance impede your decision-making ability and to what extent do you embody confidence and reason in other words to what extent do you really listen to the other side and can you be moved by that argument that's better than yours especially when you think that you are ready as it were know it all or no much know what is important to know within a given domain so process for a few minutes the question again being to

what extent do do you lack these virtues and this is a lack of these virtues affect your ability to make effective decisions just for a couple of minutes so let us continue it I want to make one other primary point about this the intellectual virtues and I want to mention that in our theory in our primary theory in vibe that I mean the theory that has been developed through the foundation for critical thinking for the past thirty five plus years beginning with our founders were dr. Richard Paul in the in the 1980s and prior to

that what Paul did is he put together he pulled together the language of critical thinking in a way that's just very helpful he developed the concept the elements of reasoning he developed the the intellectual standards in a cluster as we understand them now and he could he developed the concept of intellectual trades further he and other paulien scholars have focused on the barriers to intellectual development therefore the barriers to effective decision-making and we can see these in the opposites of the intellectual trades and that is the problem of let us just turn this egocentric thinking

and the problem of again just as a quick term socio centric thinking to understand why we often don't make effective decisions we have to understand not only that we often just lack the language and we lack alternatives we don't think out of the box we can't relax our mind to consider alternatives we also come to problems and issues often as highly egocentric and/or socio centric persons I'm just going to to unpack this ever so slightly forest right now we often see in meetings for instance people who are oriented toward us a highly eccentric way in

other words to them it's their way or the highway they can't hear anything that we're saying they lack intellectual humility they're highly intellectually arrogant they lack the ability to enter other points of view and and so they're there they're very close-minded they're also and sometimes or often selfish person so we think about ego centrism think of rigidity and thought and think of being selfish now this is a shortcut and there's much more here but for the purposes of this discussion students often come to class as highly egocentric persons just as we do and and they

often fail to see how their egocentricity is affecting their ability to make good decisions in their lives because they're so focused on the here and now the the immediate media gratification they lack intellectual perseverance they don't have the concept of intellectual perseverance it's something that very few humans really understand because we don't know what it means to intellectually persevere through intellectual difficulties so we have the problem of egocentric thinking laziness and and and thinking that we already know everything there is to know then there is a problem of socio centric thinking and this affects again

all of us because we're we are highly social creatures we think in herds we think in groupthink without realizing that we are doing this very often and so we can ask ourselves well how is groupthink or socio centric thinking affecting the thinking that we're doing as a group right now in making this decision that we're making and there if you if you observe humans and groups you can easily see how they influence one another and how early they do in a given meeting just stand back and watch what happens as soon as everyone arrives who's

fit to who first who's in the crowd who's not who's in the in-group and who's in the out-group who's going to be listened to and who's going to be ignored and why are they going to be ignored you see these are the hidden some of the hidden questions that that affect our ability to make good decisions that we often ignore but they're the the great elephants in the room that we can't afford to ignore and so it's a socio centric thinking and egocentric thinking our concepts that we want to understand we need to unpack we

need to relate to the intellectual virtues we need to understand how difficult it is to achieve these virtues because of these intrinsic forces within us that lead us to do things that are irrational behave in all kinds of irrational ways to make irrational big decisions and to stay with those decisions and not to change them though our lives will be much better if we did change them the mind easily traps itself through egocentric thinking the mind easily thinks that it's it's way is the right way all it needs is one other person to validate it

very often or two or three other people and just because we're being validated by our colleagues does not mean our thinking is of high quality the question is are we adhering to intellectual standards we're making decisions and are we embodying these intellectual virtues because it's through this embodiment that we will achieve the level of self-development that we're capable of and that we will be able to foster in the long run truly fair-minded critical societies I want to invite you to to go further in our book tools for taking charge of your pressure and personal life

I want you to recognize along such that anything that's worth learning is going to take some time and we're only beginning to get into these concepts I want to invite you to attend our upcoming international conference we offer this for you to join us we believe in online learning but we also very much enjoy the brick and mortar process we all come together once a year to celebrate our work to learn from one another and to be able to go into these conversations much more deeply and you may also want to join us for a

follow-up Fellows Academy critical thinking if taken seriously is something that happens over the long run you're making big decisions every day by living your life that you're living the question is are you commanding that decision-making process and do you have tools that you're actively using we for moving forward and cultivating your own mind we've been focusing on some of these tools I've covered a lot of ground but I would say if you're doing one thing well every day you're taking one idea seriously in critical thinking every day and you're really bringing that idea into your

thinking and and giving it life that's the idea so I've offered many possibilities start anywhere and you'll see that the races towards to the tortoise is not to the hare we need many more tortoises in critical thinking to create the world that were capable of creating thank you I'm Linda elder we'll see you next time you