Critical Thinking is Hard… to Define?

What is critical thinking?

You would think such a simple question would have an easy answer. But as I sit here reviewing a paper recently submitted to a journal, I’m struck yet again that academics love to over complicate things. 

In this article, the authors attempt to define critical thinking by citing previous definitions.  The problem – none of these definitions make any sense.

How academics define critical thinking 

Consider the one by Elder and Paul, 2020, who define critical thinking as “The art of thinking about thinking while thinking in order to make thinking better.” Huh?  “…thinking about thinking while thinking…” If anything, that sentence captures a lack of thinking. Perhaps they are referring to metacognition, which is the awareness of one’s own thought processes.  But the way they word that sentence seems to purposefully obfuscate the definition. 

Consider next the definition by Ennis (1985), who define critical thinking as “reflective and reasonable thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.” While this is moderately better, it still leaves me confused.  Since thinking is also included in the definition, we could extrapolate that “critical” is just “reflective and reasonable”.  But that’s not how we generally use “critical”.  When we say “I was critical of that definition,” I’m saying I judged a definition to by its merits and faults and found it to be lacking. It’s not just “… deciding what to believe or do,” but rather judging “…what is best to believe or do.”

Sternberg (1986) defines critical thinking as “The mental processes, strategies, and representations people use to solve problems, make decisions, and learn new concepts.” I like that they don’t use the word “thinking” in their definition.  And I like that they focus on human applicability to real world situations. Yet, I found the multiple “ands” to be sign that they can’t narrow down the concept sufficiently. 

How to define critical thinking better

It’s easy enough to pick apart other people’s definitions and sloppy thinking.  But how would I do it.

Well, a good definition should do a few things. First, it should capture some aspect of reality that entails a meaningful concept we can use in our thoughts and in conversation with others. Second, the concept should fit within a genius/species framework, highlighting some particular aspect of a more abstract concept. Third, it should parsimoniously capture the essence of that concept, avoiding extraneous words. Fourth, it shouldn’t use circular reasoning, including the same word in the definition that you are trying to define. If I had more time to think about it, I could probably come up with other requirements for good definitions

Here’s where the Oxford English Dictionary shines. The world leader in dictionaries gained it’s notoriety for a reason, presumably.  It defines critical thinking as “the objective, systemic, and rational analysis and evaluation of factual evidence in order to form a judgment on a subject.” This captures an aspect of reality – judgments made objectively. It captures one aspect of thinking – judgments – but further narrows the concept by those made objectively rather than judgments through emotional or subjective means. Furthermore, the definition limits the concept to judgments about some subject. It answers the question “Is that particular subject good or bad”? 

I honestly can’t find a fault with this definition. 

Academic laziness?

Why can’t academics be as precise in their definitions? 

As a whole, academics are very smart people.  They have the capability to define terms precisely and meaningful. So why don’t they when discussing a term such as critical thinking? Is it laziness?

No. It’s not laziness. At least not for most academics. Then why?

In short, they purposefully define words in odd ways.  They do this to make hijack those words and use them in ways they shouldn’t. They commit an intellectual slight-of-hand, slightly altering the definition of a word so that it covers a topic it shouldn’t. Then they can claim this “new” discovery and publish a paper on how original and unique their ideas are. After one academic makes a new definition, the next academic cites this “new” definition, modifies it slightly, then published yet another “new” definition, creating a subtle shift in the meaning. Eventually we get “…thinking about thinking while thinking…”. 

I don’t have an easy answer to this problem, but that’s my best understanding of what’s going on. What are your thoughts?