Thinking Critically & Creatively
An important aspect of moving further along in your academic career is developing an increasing ability to come up with original ideas. 'Original' does not necessarily mean 'earth-shattering - nobody ever thought this before!' One useful guide to exactly what the University expects you to be able to do is the Graduate Attributes Checklist.
Critical Thinking
The two primary concerns of critical analysis are:
- evaluating the work of other people
- developing your own argument
In order to do either of these things, you need to have an understanding of persuasive and rhetorical devices.
Premises and Conclusions
To critically analyse the premises of an argument, there are a number of questions you can apply.
- What is the basis of a premise statement? (a specific fact, generalisation, authority?)
- Are there implicit or assumed premises?
- Are general claims applicable to all situations?
- Are there terms that require more definition and specificity?
If the premise is faulty, the whole argument is faulty.
Using the questions above, examine whether the following premises and conclusions are valid and accurate.
- Helping someone to commit suicide is the same as murder.
- Murder is wrong.
- Therefore helping someone to commit suicide is wrong.
Looking first at the conclusion, we can see that no matter whether you agree, it does follow from the premises. The second premise is difficult to argue against and requires considerable engagement with the definition of 'murder'. However, the first premise is operating under significant assumptions and leaves plenty of room to argue against, leading to a weak conclusion.
US foreign policy is guided by religious ideals. Any interference by the US in the politics of the Middle East is doomed to fail because the religious ideals of the US are antithetical to the ideals in that part of the world.
What is the argument here?
- Religious ideals opposed to those in the Middle East are doomed to fail.
- The US is guided by religious ideals opposed to those in the Middle East.
- US foreign policy in the Middle East is doomed to fail.
How can you critically analyse these premises and conclusion?
The first premise is difficult to prove - the argument would have to be analysed in terms of the interrelationship of religion and politics in the Middle East; the Middle East would have to be defined; and examples of 'failed' oppositional religious ideals in the Middle East would have to be given. The first premise is a very broad argument on its own.
The second premise would need to be deconstructed in a similar fashion to the first. It would require evidence of the US's reliance on religious ideals in its foreign policy and ways in which those are antithetical to those of the Middle East.
Given the broadness and difficulty in proving the two premises, the conclusion is unlikely to be arguable in anything shorter than a minor thesis.
How critical are you?
People talk a lot about critical analysis, but if you had to identify how 'critical' you are of information, could you do so? In placing yourself somewhere in the stages adapted from Perry (1970) below, select one of the statements that is most appropriate for each of the three different contexts:
- when you were new to this or another degree;
- when dealing with material in your discipline that you understand well; and
- generally speaking, perhaps even in a purely social context.
When do you use critical thinking?
Critical thinking is something you do every day, not only in relation to your study. Although you may vary in the extent to which you engage critically with information, it is something you already do in your daily life. Look at the activities below and decide whether they involve critical thinking.
[Activity adapted from UniLearning]
Mind Maps
Mind maps (or concept maps) are great for brainstorming and working out key relationships between a number of ideas and elements of an argument. They allow you to see the connections between ideas you already have, connect new ideas to knowledge you already have and organise your ideas logically without being tied to a rigid structure.
You can create mind maps for chapters, articles or lectures, or as a writing plan drawing from many sources. The basic steps in creating a mind map follow:
- Using a whole page, take the keywords and write them down.
- If relevant, write down the disadvantages/advantages near the appropriate keywords.
- Write simple phrases or keywords for the evidence near the appropriate keywords.
- You may like to use different colours or shapes to represent different elements. (Eg. Use blue to show evidence and red to show an argument.)
Have a look at JCU's site on mind mapping for a number of great examples.
