"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Famous Aristotle misquote
Critical thinking is in demand. The Foundation for Young Australians’ 2017 The New Basics report shows that the demand for critical thinking has risen 158% for early career jobs in the three years prior. Research by Robert Half Talent Solutions shows that critical thinking is one of the most important aptitudes employers looked for in employees in 2021, and it is ranked fourth in the top 15 skills for 2025 in the World Economic Forum’s 2020 The Future of Jobs Report. The Australian Industry and Skills Committee reports that critical thinking is one of the top skills many industries need, and one could argue that critical thinking is even indispensable going forward to be able to effectively manage misinformation. Yet, reports from FastCompany and Seek show that, as important as this skill is, it is sorely missing from too many applicants. Why is it missing? Are we teaching it correctly? Is critical thinking a skill or is it more of an “attitude” towards the thinking process? More importantly… can it really be taught to just anyone and, if so, to what extent?
Definitions for critical thinking abound on the internet. The Australian Curriculum defines it as a skill that is “at the core of most intellectual activity [and] that involves students learning to recognise or develop an argument, use evidence in support of that argument, draw reasoned conclusions, and use information to solve problems”. It further argues that some common features students require to become critical thinkers include “deep content-rich knowledge to tackle cross-disciplinary, and diverse problems” and “inquiry and self-correction based on reflection on other's arguments”. The latter feature resonates with, and reflects on, other definitions I have read on critical thinking, including my favourite: “Playing Devil’s Advocate”. What does it mean, then, to think critically?
“If you can’t be the Devil’s Advocate, you can’t think critically” claims (paraphrasing) Canadian clinical psychologist and public intellectual Dr Jordan B. Peterson, in a quote that sadly I cannot reference (I might have heard it on a video or podcast). When I first heard him make the claim, it resonated within me, just like when something true is being uttered, but not knowing exactly why it was true, or how. It was only after some time mulling over the topic that I managed to formulate my own definition of critical thinking, and to relate it to the Devil’s Advocate:
To think critically [about something] is to negotiate a hierarchy for all possible (and often competing) outcomes, explanations, lines of thought, and heuristics that govern the subject at hand.
This definition, like others you can find about the subject, contains many (hopefully all) of the components required to figure out what is required to develop and foster critical thinking. Let us explore these components.
It is self-evident that there are many ways to think about a problem; many vantage points from which to observe it; many sources from which to gather data about it; many explanations for what caused an outcome; many ways to connect the dots. Worse, the more complex a problem, the more these elements multiply, and the ways in which to connect the dots (that is, the way in which the elements interact with each other) increase exponentially. But it is simply not possible that all the explanations we can come up with are valid – some are flat out wrong – or that all of them are equally valid. We are thus forced to think. But to think means, in practice, that we are required to figure out which of these explanations will come out on top, and to think critically means we must criticise each explanation to the best of our mental abilities, considering the information we currently have about the problem, and compare it with the next best available explanation. We are thus figuring out a hierarchy for these explanations; only one will come out on top and will inform our conclusions. For now, at least.
Yet this otherwise “simple” process is hindered at every step of the way, most often by our own minds. The first evident problem we face when trying to think critically about a problem is that we are often ignorant about the true extent of the problem, and about the multiple other dimensions a problem has. We tend to think the side we are familiar with when facing a problem is the most important or the only side a problem has, and that what we know about the problem is all there is to be known about the problem, leading to the famous Dunning-Kruger effect. We all suffer from it on different domains of knowledge. This is the easier problem to solve, however: it is usually not difficult to expand the domain of knowledge on a given topic via lectures, books, conversations, and more.
The second, less evident, and much harder problem to solve – and I will argue the real problem that needs to be tackled to foster critical thinking – relates to our predispositions towards competing lines of thought. To be able to think critically we need to be mentally, and more importantly emotionally, open to alternative explanations, other sources of data, conflicting viewpoints, and opposing conclusions, which will collide with our current explanations, data, and conclusions. Hidden in the above definition is the fact that whoever is engaging in critical thinking requires a willingness to negotiate all the possible outcomes, hierarchies, theories, etc., if the person is ever to think critically and be good at it. This is the hardest problem to deal with because it involves testing our cherished and beloved theories, explanations, and conclusions against other compelling lines of thought, data, and conclusions – and they might be destroyed in the process. It is not easy to want to do this. But it is paramount, critical even, to do so: our cherished conclusions and explanations are often wrong, and we cannot afford to blind ourselves to the truth if we are in pursue of it – if we want to think critically.
What happens if we cannot allow ourselves to entertain other lines of thought, in fear that we might lose face with the people we care about, or in fear that our worldviews, our deeply held beliefs or political affiliations (and sometimes the perceived identity attached to such things) crumble and fall? The process of critical thinking is halted; it is stopped right on its tracks. We fail to think critically or, more commonly, we only pretend to think critically within the confinements of a known and fail-safe framework that only allows for “safe” conclusions, skewed by design and in rejection of any explanation that might contradict the axioms of the current framework. To truly think critically, therefore, we must be open and able to entertain conflicting lines of thought, conflicting data, the viewpoints of people who study the same problem from different angles and perspectives, and more. We need to be able and open to play Devil’s Advocate, within our own heads first and with other people as well. The Devil might be right, after all, while we view the problem through a framework that does not have substantiated axioms on which to stand.
But even people who have mastered critical thinking as a process due to their domain-specific training (scientists, for example) can often fail to engage in critical thinking in other situations. This is not due to their lack of domain-specific knowledge on a different matter, but because even the best critical thinkers can fall prey to personal biases, confirmation biases, to religious attitudes, to the predatory nature of ideologies that explain the world at large, or to the allure of the feeling of being right. You would not believe the things I have heard some colleagues say or the attitudes they adopt when certain topics are discussed; colleagues that are otherwise among the most critical thinkers I have ever met. “Why?” I asked myself many times. The answer came to me as I grew older: these people are already sold emotionally to an explanation that resonates with the way they view the world due to their emotionally charged experiences. The worst thing intellectuals can do is to fall in love with their own theories and explanations – and God knows how often that happens.
It not difficult, then, to understand why some people have difficulty engaging in critical thinking. Some beliefs – as wrong as they might be – are too sacred, too deeply held, too much of a part of our identities and history, to be questioned. Yet they might need to be questioned, for the sake of inquiry and truth-seeking, even when the discussion about “Truth” is never-ending, complex one.
What can be done, then, to foster critical thinking? And can anyone do it? I would start by answering “Yes” to the second question. Nothing I have seen, read, or thought on the topic leads me to believe that there is an impediment to any person to engage in critical thinking, besides the restrictions the people themselves impose on their minds. Furthermore, there are ways to foster our capacity to think critically, while I am awfully aware these can be thought of as “undesirable”, “controversial” or at least “unorthodox”.
Similar to the immune system, the mind requires challenging to grow in scope, to become sharper and more nuanced. If my earlier point did not make this point evident enough, the reader can enjoy a worthwhile lecture from psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the topic. Too much cleanliness can also have negative consequences for our immune system and increase the incidence of leukemia. The mind is no different: it needs to be challenged with different perspectives, ways of thinking, and arguments. After all, this is central to cognitive behavioural therapy and can be useful to counter patterns of negative and destructive thought, anxiety, and more. The FRIENDS program is a successful example of this approach. Another highly implementable approach is to foster debate competitions and assignments in schools and universities, but not telling the students whether they would have to be for or against a given position, thus forcing them to have to come up with the best arguments for both sides (teams can be assigned on the day, after the homework is done). A colleague of mine has told me this is how he and others have been taught, but from personal experience I am also aware not everyone has been this lucky. However, there might be people that might have more limited success with these approaches due to their personality composition in trait Neuroticism or if they suffer from anxiety sensitivity. Nonetheless, I would go on and state that there is no reason for people not to try to step out of your mental comfort zone for the sake of broadening perspectives and mental growth.
Where is the controversy, then? If you are smart enough, you probably already noticed that pushing for anxiety-producing therapies or mental challenges (they will cause anxiety in some people depending on how sensitive they are to the challenge or topic at hand) runs contrary to calls for “safe spaces” that some people want to institute in many different settings such as classrooms in schools or universities (although the interpretation of what exactly constitutes a “safe space” can be a matter of debate). But what is the alternative? A world of mental sterility where only certain views are approved due to their innocuousness in the name of “mental health” and “respect”? What “health” can we talk about when lack of “sickness” is simply lack of exposure and not a sign of a healthy and robust “mental immune system”? Can we even think critically in such sterile conditions? How can we effectively foster critical thinking in a world where diverging opinions are being labelled as "harmful", as "misinformation", or get reported on social media and taken down to the collective detriment, and when people who espouse them face retaliation that could cost them their careers or positions?
This is not to say that the solution is to be as offensive and contrarian as possible for the sake of challenging one another, or to simply expose people to the most challenging alternative views we can find, and against their will. But it is to say that we need to slowly but surely challenge us by exposing ourselves to different views, arguments, perspectives, theories and knowledge. There is no other way to know if we are as right as we claim to be, and the alternative – to limit our capacity for critical thinking or, worse, pass legislation limiting speech or creating governmental entities to deal with the problem – is much more undesirable.
The key to foster critical thinking, I would argue, is a more robust “mental immune system”, rather than simply trying to “teach it” directly. But we do not foster this robustness through sterility. We do this by exposure. Maybe it is about time we “expose” our minds more often to other people’s perspectives and thoughts for the sake of a skill as desirable as critical thinking. After all, even the Australian Curriculum agrees that critical thinking involves “inquiry and self-correction based on reflection on other's arguments” (emphasis mine).