Edward Glaser (1941) Believed Critical

Edward Glaser (1941) believed critical thinking involved an approach inclined to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that one experiences, knowledge of the techniques of logical inquiry and reasoning, and some skill in the application of those techniques.

Critical thinking skills involve a careful assessment of any belief or idea in relationship to the facts that support it and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. Critical thinking also demands the capacity to identify problems, gather information, and recognize unspoken assumptions and values. Furthermore, a facility with language in order to interpret thoughts with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination is of the essence. Glaser believed that individuals with good critical thinking skills have the ability to appraise arguments, see the logical relationships between propositions, and formulate the appropriate conclusions and generalizations (Glaser, 1941).

Logical thinking involves deductive and inductive logic. Deductive logic consists of two or more premises that produce to a conclusion. The conclusion must logically follow the premises in such a way that if the premises are true then the conclusion is true for the argument to be valid. The basic form of deductive thinking is the syllogism. A syllogism contains two or more premises and one conclusion. There are three types of syllogisms, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive.

Inductive logic is a method of reasoning that uses deductive logic but can only reach a less-than-certain conclusion. In a good inductive argument the premises provides some degree of support for the conclusion, the stronger the support the more robust the conclusion (Hawthorne, 2009).

Rational appeal and emotional appeal are two basic strategies used in persuasive thinking. According to Herbert F. Mosley (2009) rational appeal uses facts, evidence, photos, or reliable witnesses, to convince an audience of the rationality of a proposition. An emotional appeal focuses on altering values, biases and beliefs to convince an audience to accept the proposition.

An effective persuasive thinker follows a structured process when using an emotional appeal. Mosley (2009) indentified five steps in this process; 1) establish creditability, 2) acknowledge the audiences position, 3) construct a rational for your position using facts, statistics, authorities, analogies, precedents, examples, and cause and effect, 4) resettle values, biases and beliefs by offering a more solid rationale that satisfies their needs better than the one they currently hold, and 5) have the audience acknowledge their new position.

Scientific thinking is related to the scientific method, a four step process of observation, hypothesis formulation, experimentation, and verification. Observation is the process of examining the world, events, nature and other phenomenon which make individuals question and wonder about the many causes and effects of how things work. A hypothesis is commonly derived by formulating if-then statements. For a hypothesis to be proven experimentation must take place. Experimentation is the process of testing a hypothesis in a controlled environment and results are then documented. Verification is the analysis of data to see if the data supports or disputes the hypothesis (Schafersman,1997).