Critical Thinking Explored
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” Christopher Hitchens
Many today write about the Future of Work (FOW) and the 21st-century skills required. Many cite the skills of problem-solving, creativity and critical thinking as the means for humans to add value in a world dominated by AI-IOT-Cloud Computing-Edge Computing-VR-Robotics…. EO Wilson (1999), the Harvard Professor and founder of computational biology, makes the point well in one of my favorite quotes:
“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”
Wilson makes an interesting point about the relationship between wisdom and synthesis, critical thinking and creativity (“put together the right information at the right time”).
Problem-solving has been well described by the renown scholars George Polya[1] and Herbert Simon[2]. Creativity I explained simply in this Medium article[3] and relied on writings from Einstein and Poincaré to hopefully bring clarity. The purpose of this article is to define critical thinking, develop a 6-part framework to learn critical thinking and show the relationship between critical thinking and wisdom.
A recent article, “Critical Thinking Development: A Stage Theory” by Linda Elder with Richard Paul, for the first time, got me thinking about critical thinking. The article was good enough to pique my interest, but it had one big drawback. The article was for teachers to prepare themselves to teach critical thinking. This proposed approach was disappointing. I think the better approach would be to focus on helping children to learn critical thinking.
I spent three years working on the 1:1 computer project One Laptop per Child, founded at the world-renown MIT Media Lab. Amongst the Media Lab’s many fields of competence are child and student learning. This expertise is based in large part on the writings of Jean Piaget (the seminal thinker in the field of child development), Marvin Minsky (who helped launch artificial intelligence in the 1950s) and Seymour Papert (a mathematician who studied under Piaget). With such a strong foundation in student-centric learning at the Media Lab, it should come as no surprise that I would take a similar student-centric approach to define critical thinking.
Minsky, amongst many other scholars, said that knowledge could be acquired in three ways — analysis, kinesthetics and culture. I see parallels to my view of critical thinking, which includes three domains — Experience, Metacognition and Wisdom. The metacognition, “thinking about thinking”, came first in my framework. I was well trained at the Media Lab to focus on fundamentals or first principles. Next came the experience, learning by discovery, play and iterative approaches. This is pure Piaget. However, after fifteen years of university teaching, I noticed that student thinking was impeded by a fear of being wrong and an unwillingness to take risks. It might be easy to say that exams and teacher quality in public schools were the cause, but I concluded that culturally we are trained to first make negative judgments. For example, professors frequently criticize and give low grades. They rarely recommend additional books or videos to help the student learn. I teach my students that if they cannot frame a problem in the positive, they do not understand the problem. To get to the positive, one has to inevitably get to a solution and not overthink the problem (for fear of being wrong). Reversing this tendency to negative judgment is what made it clear to me that we needed to include wisdom as part of critical thinking.
If I were to define critical thinking, I would say:
“The highest order of thinking, based in experiential learning, high level metacognition and wisdom.”
When we examine the three domains — Experience, Metacognition and Wisdom — we realize that they are better understood by breaking each down into two sub-domains, which are shown below.
It should be pointed out that each of the six sub-domains has six stages of development, which are shown below.
Experience is the natural process of daily living where we perceive the world and select data to create information in order to reduce uncertainty. Evolution has programmed us to discover and we develop skills to better process data. Discovery is in large part a utility seeking function. We seek new things; we enjoy them and a byproduct is we learn new skills. This skill development is aided by the natural development of the human brain, where the stages of development are well documented.
Metacognition is where information is processed into knowledge, where creativity, insight and mental frameworks create the unique and novel contributions that hopefully advance humanity. In the more advanced stages, writing, talks and teaching provide opportunities for knowledge to be integrated into more comprehensive findings.
Wisdom I define in my own way. Wisdom is “never being wrong” or perhaps as Google put it years ago, “do no harm”. This is not a call to avoid risk but rather to be more thoughtful in one’s decisions. An important part of wisdom is reaching a point where you are comfortable with self-validation and do not need external validation. The Master Thinker realizes that he is simply a part of the greater whole of nature and the universe. I might give credit here to Buddhism, but others would cite the Stoics, Kabbalah, other schools of thought and religion or modern physics.
Now I would like to explore the six stages of each sub-domain, which are shown below.
In Experience, Skill begins in Stage 1 as the explore-exploit natural behavior that is fundamental to all living organisms. Exploration is a naturally iterative process of test, mistake, test, learn, advance. As long as you do not kill yourself or run out of cash (economic man) there is very little risk except opportunity cost. The next stage sees the individual become more purposeful in their learning, followed then in Stage 3 of experiments with analysis of information to knowingly organize knowledge. This is the stage at which I think most people stop. In Stage 4 the appreciation for assumption is developed and the role of assumption in shaping the knowledge. While not always so profound, Newton changing the assumption to have the earth circle the sun illustrates the power of assumption. Research shows that humans learn to teach at about two years old but cannot learn to read until five. The natural ability to teach returns in Stage 5, partly as a means to integrate one’s thinking. The last stage of Skill development is to explore epistemology, a theory of knowledge. Is one an empiricist, a rationalist or a quantum physicist?
Discovery begins in Stage 1 with play. Play brings the energy to begin discovering and learning. Some people find a passion (stage 2) that prompts them to explore a subject, e.g. boat building. Carl Jung, the renown Swiss psychiatrist, said that this passion was as fundamental to humans as the drive for survival and the desire to reproduce. In Stage 3 the learner makes plans for how to learn and starts to read intensively, fueled by their passion. In Stage 4 one focuses more, begins to understand first principles in a field of study, transitions from novice to aspiring expert and pushes themselves outside their intellectual and emotional comfort zone. In Stage 5 you realize that the proper focus is on doing “what you enjoy”, whether it be intellectual, emotional, physical or all three. Stage 6 is marked by a desire to share one’s learnings.
Frameworks in Metacognition are mental models, which are defined by Shane Parish at Farnum Street as:
“A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. They are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason. Using them increases your clarity of understanding, providing direction for the choices you need to make and the options you want to keep open.”
An example of a framework might help. If you have a complex problem, start with the desired result and work backward to today. Another — in a social problem, look for the negative asymmetry of information and reverse it to solve the problem.
In Frameworks, Stage 1 is all reasoning by intuition, which according to Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman is System 1 low energy thinking. In Stage 2 you develop analytical abilities (frameworks), what Kahneman calls System 2 thinking, where considerable energy is required for the processing. In Stage 3, a critical stage, the early frameworks are internalized to become System 1. This transition reduces energy use and increases mental efficiency. If this stage is completed, then thinking is increasingly based on an ever expanding set of frameworks (Stage 4). In Stage 5 more frameworks become low energy System 1. In Stage 6 all thinking is based on frameworks.
In Metacognition Thinking about Thinking in Stage 1 characterizes thinking before you realize thinking is a discipline. In Stage 2 passion drives knowledge acquisition. In Stage 3 knowledge acquisition is formalized and integration of knowledge becomes an important activity, what the psychologists call chunking. In Stage 4 the discovery is producing alternative ideas (creativity) and insight is driving the selection process for novel and/or unique solutions. In Stage 5 one increases their understanding through more writing, talks and teaching. In Stage 6 one realizes the natural tension between the abstract and the tangible. This is much of the discipline that enables one to master the three fundamental fields upon which all knowledge is built — philosophy, mathematics and physics. Schopenhauer said that “art makes the emotions tangible”. Math makes much of physics abstract and thereby understandable. Philosophy tries to translate physics and math into the tangible through metaphysics. Since the time of the first cave painting, man has challenged himself to perfect the relationship between the abstract and the tangible and it is the highest form of cognition.
Wisdom is the ultimate accomplishment for the critical thinker where your understanding of yourself and your place in the universe bring a unique perspective to your thinking and thoughts. The first stage of Validation is validation by parents or an external approver. Stage 2 is where you recognize your own accomplishment yourself, a critical phase. Stage 3 is the pursuit of achievement and Stage 4 is where this pursuit is more targeted to diversify experience. Stage 5 is another critical stage where one ceases to judge others or oneself. This approach is not fatalism but more a realization that most things are not important. In Stage 6 you validate yourself fully and have no need for external validation.
In the last domain in Wisdom the Master Thinker begins Stage 1 learning to trust, followed by Stage 2 where sharing is learned. These two stages provide the fundamental skills upon which collaboration in groups, trade and community function. In Stage 3 one starts to notice and appreciate wise people. In Stage 4 one learns to frame things in the positive, little is to be gained from a negative outlook. In Stage 5 one begins to see themselves merely as a part in a greater whole, where the realization is that the whole is what is important. In the terms of the physicist, one realizes their microstate as a particle in the macro state of the universe. In Stage 6 one accepts their mortality.
I have not seen any writers on critical thinking devote much attention to wisdom. This drawing perhaps explains the relationship best. It was developed for Genentech, one of the most transformative companies in the 20th century.
Conclusion
The framework is designed to be a self-assessment tool where the individual tries to objectively determine their stage for each of the six sub-domains. It is expected that most individuals will be at a different stage for each of the six sub-domains. However, I think that an individual with a wide range of stages across the six domains is probably deceiving themselves and should re-evaluate their highest stages. Also, I think the domains are more likely to be more advanced toward the left. When the individual is satisfied with their analysis of stages, then they should decide which stages they want to advance first. I would tend to advance purposefully first in Experience and Metacognition. Validation is the emotional bridge that one crosses to become wise and should naturally be the last to develop.
“Be honest, frank and fearless and get some grasp of the real values of life… Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself.”
— W.E.B. Du Bois
Note: I have not spoken here much about emotions or what some call emotional intelligence. The natural system of all organisms is to process information in the most efficient way, which implicitly relies on probability as Claude Shannon explained[4]. Inherent in this processing is the issue of signal and noise. All human behavior, excluding survival instincts and reproduction, is derived from two concepts — trust and sharing. In my view, all other “emotional behavior” is learned from culture. This cultural input is where noise is added to the signal for the human. For some background on this concept, follow this logic — trust, sharing, barter, money, self-interest, sexual attractiveness, marriage, property rights. All of socio-economic behavior can be derived from trust and sharing. The noise started probably with barter. (The concept that emotion contributes to the noise was derived from a conversation with a colleague.)
[1] https://math.berkeley.edu/~gmelvin/polya.pdf
[2] Newell, A. and H.A Simon, Human Problem Solving, Englewood Cliffs, NJ., Prentice
[3] https://medium.com/@rhhfla/some-thoughts-on-creativity-and-critical-thinking-f5c7f41465b6
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Communication
