Critical Thinking Vs. Strong-Sense Critical Thinking

I believe that every other person and I frequently make use of critical thinking on daily basis. Due to its familiarity, we often times forget the existence of critical thinking itself and take it for granted. I do not think I ever took my time to sit down and try to define “critical thinking.” Being exposed to the word, critical thinking, first simple definition that came up in my mind is the thought of judging and reevaluating a statement. But critical thinking is more than that: critical thinking is the ability and the willingness to assess claims and to make objective judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons and evidences rather than emotion or anecdote. Thus, never did I also actually correlate in my mind the need of critical thinking to our future career: helping professions. Having been taught in class and directly seeing the words about how critical thinking can benefit us in the future made me

While we critically think, we need to remember not to be too judgmental and closed-minded but open-minded. If we are going to be a critical thinker, we want to aim the use of strong-sense and not weak-sense critical thinking. Professor Richard Paul mentioned in the book makes distinctions between these two. Weak-sense critical thinking is closed-minded by using critical thinking to protect your own beliefs. This method takes in reasoning that is beneficial in supporting your beliefs and neglecting those that do not. Strong-sense critical thinking is more open-minded by being able to take in other beliefs. However, that does not mean everyone will end up disregarding their initial beliefs. After critical examination, people’s initial beliefs can be strengthened as well. So, remembering to be open-minded while respecting our judgment that we hold is important. Critical thinking is necessary, so might as well aim to fully make a use of it by using strong-sense critical