Critical Thinking Exercise: Applying Critical Thinking Guidelines

The following are some guidelines for critical thinking.
    1.    Ask questions; be willing to wonder.           5.    Avoid emotional reasoning.
    2.     Define the problem.                                   6.    Don’t use either/or thinking or overgeneralize.
    3.     Examine the evidence.                               7.     Consider other interpretations.
    4.     Analyze assumptions and biases.                8.    Tolerate uncertainty.

Each of the statements below violates at least one of the guidelines for critical thinking.
On a separate sheet of paper identify the guideline that was violated and give a brief explanation for your choice.
 
    1.     A political editorial supporting severe penalties for the production and sale of pornography pointed out that all societies are repressive to some extent, and that it was Freud who pointed out that repression is the price we pay for civilization.

    2.     Since we have never been visited by extraterrestrials, and have had no communication from outer space, we can safely assume that intelligent life exists only on our own planet.

    3.     It is pretty obvious that smoking marijuana causes people to crave more potent drugs, like cocaine and heroin. Statistics show that almost all the people who become addicted to drugs smoked marijuana before they began using more potent drugs.

    4.     Jezebel bought a bottle of pain reliever because a TV commercial claimed that most hospitals prescribe it.

    5.     You’re either for us or against us.

    6.     I get disgusted with my science classes. We study the “principle of this” and the “theory of that.” Aren’t there any laws? Why can’t scientists make up their minds and stop acting like they don’t know anything for sure?

    7.     People tend to become forgetful as they get older. This is just one of the natural consequences of aging, and it would be a waste of time to look for specific causes or ways to prevent the problem.

    8.     People of different ethnic backgrounds just can’t live harmoniously in the same neighborhood. Almost everyone I’ve talked to thinks the same way. This is a gut feeling, and we aren’t likely to be wrong.

    9.     The increase in violence by adolescent gangs in this country is just another result of the liberal thinking that has more sympathy for criminals than for their victims.

    10.     Why are the people in this class so much betterlooking and intelligent than people in other introductory classes?

    11.     You can tell that Alice is a lot smarter than her brother. She wears those thick glasses and has a high forehead.

    12.     A mother was trying to dissuade her son from marrying a girl he had met just three weeks before. The son’s response was “But I know she’s the one; the first time I saw her I began to tremble and see spots before my eyes, and I had flutters in my chest and strange sensations in my stomach. When I’m with her, I feel like I could just take off and fly.”

    13.    I looked at several issues of the Journal of Parapsychology, a periodical that publishes research on psychic phenomena. Every article confirmed the existence of ESP, so I don’t understand why most psychologists are skeptical about it.

    14.    Let’s just make up our minds and buy one or the other of the houses. I’m tired of thinking about it, and all this investigation and indecision is making me nervous.

Answers