Synthesis Paper: Philosophy

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another truth. Lastly, induction deals with the scientific method of inquiry to attain valid conclusions.

Critical thinking uses logic on evaluating questions, claims, and arguments, it is a discipline which separates the truth by experiences, opinions and false beliefs. Intellectual standards by Gregory Bassham (2011), discusses the different standards and barriers of critical thinking. Standards of critical thinking is applied on analyzing how well the use of reasoning on different questions or issues. It helps individuals interested on logic to practice their reasoning. There are eight essential standards of critical thinking.

Clarity is the main component of all standards it is the way of understanding a statement clearly. Whenever you present a statement it must be broad enough to be understandable. Precision is how detailed is a statement, it requires enough information to be specific. Accuracy is essential to get to the heart of the truth, only facts are accepted. Relevance simply means that the statement you formed must relevant or still connected to the issue, for instance, a math teacher asks his class, both train and a car left from Cebu to Manila at 3:00pm, car travels at six kmh and train will take six hours to get there, what time will the train get to Manila? The math teacher only asked for what time the train will be in Manila. Therefore, the information only related to train is important. Consistency in beliefs is a must. Think about your beliefs, are they inconsistent with each other? There are two forms of inconsistency, logical and practical. Logical inconsistency occurs when there’s a conflict between your beliefs. For example, Jim both believed that not implementing same sex marriage is discriminatory and God only made two sexes, then Jim is logical inconsistent. Another is practical consistency, where you saying you’re believing a certain thing but not reflecting on what you’re doing. For example, Fiona said that her friends are more important than her boyfriend, but she often seen together with her boyfriend, therefore Fiona is practical inconsistent. Logical correctness, completeness, and fairness are the last three standards of critical thinking. Logical correctness indicates the right reasoning from well-founded beliefs. Completeness involves in-depth analysis which intent to be free from criticism. Fairness concern is to be free from any biases and to think objectively, but this never happen, instead you can think objectively with a little help of subjective thinking.

Even though, you almost mastered your reasoning with the help of critical thinking standards, it is hard for an individual to consider as a critical thinker, if he/she possessed one or more of these barriers. These barriers are self-planted traps and can harm the progress of your work. There are four main barriers of critical thinking.

Egocentrism refers to a habit to see the reality centered on oneself, these people think there knowledge is way more superior than others. There are two classifications of egocentrism. Self-interested thinking is the tendency to accept and support a claim because of self-interest reasons or to gain advantage which oppose to objective goal of critical thinking. Self-serving bias is the tendency to overvalue oneself, it shows exaggeration to oneself abilities which also disapproves to critical thinking. Sociocentrism also known as group-centered thinking, are the behavior of people thinking unreasonably as a group. Sociocentrism is divided into two classifications. Group-bias tends to see ones culture or group better than the others. People lived in city as example, tends to think they live way better than people lived in province. Conformism is the trend which groups tend to conduct rules, beliefs and tradition on their own, these regularly common to group called fans club. Stereotype are the ones who believe that a person on a particular group have similar characteristics to all members of it simply just because he/she is with that group. Unwarranted assumptions is the facts and beliefs a person takes without engaging any reason why he/she believes it. Same thing as common sense or the information a person take from different sources without thinking any about it.

Overcoming these traps are easy by simply knowing your own barriers, and perform a great effort and commitment to avoid them. Critical thinking is not all about analyzing claims and arguments but also analyzing your own way of thinking. “Know yourself.” Quote from one the first and influential philosopher Socrates.

Identifying issues and building arguments are one of the reasons why logic and critical thinking are being studied. There are countless numbers of issues being argued by lots of people, and because of the presence of the social media, the majority of people becomes foolish on their biased and unsupported claims, which is why arguments have been forgotten.

Issues has to identify first before proceeding to an argument. Issue is said to be a topic which is the focus of discussion or a debate and stated in a question type format. There are two kinds of issue, the descriptive and prescriptive issue. The descriptive issues are mainstream media type of issue that questions the past, present, or future while the prescriptive issues deals with the moral issues and usually questions the difference from right to wrong (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p.16-17). Browne & Keeley (2007) also provide ways to identify an issue. First, locate the main point, particularly if the issue is not stated clearly and specifically. Sometimes the issue is stated to look complicated, you just have to determine the purpose of the writer. Lastly, there is no certain correct way of identifying and stating an issue. The issue is often written in interrogative sentence, but same as the first rule you just have to identify the main point of an issue that writer wants to address.

Arguments are set to be the fruit of an issue, it is a way which people choose side to support. Constructing and recognizing an argument isn’t easy, it uses critical thinking skills and the relationship of conclusion and premise same as logic which premise has to be related to conclusion to support it. The conclusion are indicated with words such as hence, thus, and accordingly while premise are indicated with since, because, and for, with help of these indicators you can recognize every part of a claim. However, sometimes an argument also can be considered as valid without the use of these indicators which conclusion and premise are already expressed on the claim itself. There are two classifications of truth based on opinion, the subjectivism and relativism (Bassham et al., 2011; Moore & Parker, 2005). Subjectivism is a principle which different opinion two people expressed can be correct on a factual or non-factual issue.