Critical Thinking: A Cheatsheet
Dynamite questions to ask when you are willing to second-guess yourself.
- What would it take to convince me that I am wrong? (Falsifiability)
- How could I empirically prove the exact opposite of what I suspect to be true? (Null hypothesis)
- How could someone else argue that my position is illogical or irrational? (Self-debate)
- Who benefits the most when I hold this belief? (Critical discourse analysis)
- How would a rational person who holds an opposing viewpoint explain and justify their position? (Empathy)
- Can I conceptualize an alternative position that does not yield a binary ‘true or false’ dichotomy? (Non-dualism)
- How does my position and experience in society inform my assumptions and perspective? (Reflexive intersectionality)
- What unconscious mental shortcuts can I identify in my reasoning and rationale? (Cognitive bias mitigation)
- How can I guard myself against the illusion that I am reasoning objectively? (Skepticism)
- What beliefs have I already unconsciously accepted in order to arrive at my present position? (Presuppositions, tacit assumptions)
- What do the words that I use to express my beliefs connote implicitly that they do not denote explicitly? (Semantics, pragmatics)
- What are the psychological, social, institutional, or cultural costs of changing my mind? (Motivated reasoning)
- How would my identity be threatened if my beliefs or reasoning were shown to be flawed? (Externalize epistemology)
- If faced with sufficient counter-evidence, would I care about truth enough to abandon my present beliefs? (Ideological commitments)
- Who is framing, shaping, and informing the questions that I can even think to ask? (Social influence)
- What questions am I most afraid to ask? (Courage)