Critical Thinking Recommended Reading List

“Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you’re thinking in order to make your thinking better.” ~Richard Paul “The over-whelming preponderance of people have not freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs. They are unreflective thinkers. Their minds are products of social and personal forces they neither understand, control, nor concern themselves with. Their personal beliefs are often based in prejudices. […] Read more »

The Importance of Proper Communication

One thing that I often notice in my correspondences with people is the lack of substance and detail in their writing. For instance, they do not define their terms when such terms may have many meanings (such as “unity” or “liberal”), they do not answer possible questions a reader might have within the body of their text, for example they are not clear or precise, they may not ensure accuracy, […] Read more »

A Guide to Leftist Fallacies

I would add the strawman fallacy, as well as the single cause fallacy. The strawman is because they misrepresent arguments often, and even repeat the strawman ad nauseam, and the single cause fallacy is because they constantly reduce complex and nuanced arguments to simple arguments (giving multilogical problems monological solutions). They even combine these two fallacies by turning them into an ad hominem by reducing the character of the person […] Read more »

Socratic Questioning Lecture w/ Examples (7 Videos)

We recommend the Socratic Method for all discussions, interactions, conflict resolution, teaching, and processing emotional upsets, as it is a “mode of questioning that deeply probes the meaning, justification, or logical strength of a claim, position, or line of reasoning. Socratic Questioning can be carried out in a variety of ways and adapted to many levels of ability and understanding (CriticalThinking.org).”   Read more »

Socratic Questioning vs Sophistry

There are two main ways to have a debate, one is to view it as a power struggle to be won, and the second is to see it as an opportunity to progress and grow. The sophists in ancient Greece would use “the tools of philosophy and rhetoric to entertain, impress, or persuade an audience to accept the speaker’s point of view,” as a means of winning an argumentative power […] Read more »

Critical Thinking in Every Domain of Knowledge and Belief

This is why it is very difficult to go into an open-minded discussion with some individuals, because many people have emotional attachments underlying their beliefs, and this causes them to be intellectually dishonest in the discussion. Unlike us, they do not want to know the truth, but they just want to prove their point, as it soothes their underlying emotional needs that they are attempting to meet by converting, dehumanizing, […] Read more »