Almost everyone is familiar with the words ‘critical,’ ‘reading’ and ‘thinking’ but not everyone really understands what it means to put them together in practice. Critical reading is the prerequisite for critical writing according to Wallace and Poulson (2003) but surely critical thinking is the prerequisite for critical reading. In this blog post I shall refer to critical thinking as a superset of critical reading. I consider critical thought to be precursor to the ultimate state of cognitive, emotional and intellectual emancipation, that of ‘freethought.’

So what is critical thinking and how can it lead to critical reading, critical writing and freethought? Well, being able to examine and question a work of literature is not far removed from being able to examine and question one’s own thoughts. In fact, it is easier because literature lays out, in black and white, the thoughts of another person (albeit not always as clearly as one might wish for — my mind is suddenly recalling tortuous readings from Foucault, Butler, Derrida and other postmodern obscurantists). Our own mind is not always so clearly laid out in black and white for us to critically examine. We are pattern-seeking mammals, we see what we want to see for example: faces in clouds, or on the surface of Mars, or perhaps mythical figures burnt onto toast. We also have a tendency to record the hits and ignore the misses — an example of this might be belief in the efficacy of prayer (every individual who imagines that their prayers to find their lost car keys were answered neglects to consider the billions of unanswered prayers to end world hunger, cancer etc.).

We humans operate according to ingrained habit, we make assumptions based not only on our critical evaluation of a situation but of our blind acceptance due to our innate slavishness towards authority, our childhood indoctrination and our cultural immersion. We learn to accept the majority viewpoint even though that has been demonstrated, time and time again, to be incorrect. The Aztecs and Incas once believed that only the sacrifice of a young virgin girl every day would ensure the sun would rise the next morning; Europeans once believed that slavery was moral and correct and what’s more mandated by the creator of the universe. All social change and progress throughout history has resulted from small groups of individuals who were brave enough to stand against the majority beliefs and assumptions. They were vilified and labeled as extremists, terrorists or public enemies. Now they are lauded for their impassioned stances, their advanced thinking and their perseverance in the face of ridicule and ostracisation.

What, one might ask, has this all to do with critical thought and critical writing? The answer is everything. According to Wallace and Poulson (2003):

"In some cases, students’ previous academic training has emphasised deference to ‘older and wiser’ authority figures. Such students may naturally perceive that writers are expert purveyors of knowledge and wisdom that should not be questioned, but rather accepted and absorbed. The cultural adjustment to critical engagement with the ideas of those in ‘authority’ can be disorientating, but it must be achieved in order to meet the criteria for assessing postgraduate study in the western university tradition" (p. 3-4).

The challenge, with critical thought (and reading), is not only to ensure that even the claims of authority figures are scrutinised, it is also incumbent upon the critical thinker to assess all claims to knowledge both within and beyond the academy from the standpoint of disparate cultural influences and other biases. As Wallace and Poulson point out, academics often hold “very different views about the same phenomenon" (p. 6), often this is manifest as the supporting of different theories or explanatory frameworks for a common observable phenomenon. Relativism just doesn’t work here, there is always a ‘better’ theory and a ‘worse’ one. This is always true for the physical sciences, most-often true for the “value-laden” social sciences (Wallace and Poulson, 2003, p. 5), and perhaps true to a somewhat lesser extent for the arts and humanities. Cultures are not all equal when epistemological knowledge and understanding is being sought. A smile is a smile, and a tear is a tear regardless of country or culture. A mother’s loss of her child is the same unbearable tragedy at all times and in all places. Blood is red wherever you go.

One could in fact (and I often do), make the argument that culture exists solely in order to provide a framework of acceptance which replaces independent thought. It certainly appears often to ring fence and protect from criticism certain practices and beliefs that have been handed down through the generations that no freethinker could ever condone or support (infant genital mutilation, bloodsports, oppression of women to name but a few).

To conclude: the intellectual nirvana of ‘freethought’ results from the capacity to recognise that both ‘authority’ and ‘culture’ share in common the one thing that is the always the enemy of critical inquiry: automatic respect. It is only by being able to reset such automatic respect to a baseline of zero prior to examining a particular significant claim that critical and sceptical inquiry can be vigorously pursued. Freethought occurs after one has fully broken free from the boundaries of one’s indoctrination and enculturation and is thus able to look back in at them from the outside — critically and unencumbered.

"If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness." — Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

References

Poulson, L. & Wallace, M. (2003). Learning to read critically in teaching and learning. London: SAGE.

Sagan, C. (1996). The Demon-Haunted World. New York: Ballantine Books.

(Note: I attempted to indent the two lengthy quotes but the formatting is lost upon saving so I added the quotation marks and lightened the text colour.)