Critical thinking is active evaluation about truth claims and the reasoning and motives of those who supports those claims. Critical thinking examines what is being presented and attempts to verify what is true, what is false, and what could be malicious manipulation. From a friend who says “you wouldn’t like this ice cream” as they devour the whole container, to a serial killer who claims they need help putting something heavy into their van, critical thinking allows us to ask why they are making a claim.
When we are children, critical thinking would be an obstacle for learning speech, how to tie our shoe, how to behave, or do simple mathematics. If our parents are effective, we take instruction to hold their hand or get out of the street without question or hesitation. Appropriately, we think like children. We accept things at face value, believe most everything we hear, and repeat those things as if they are the Gospel truth.
As time goes by, we encounter people who make false claims and also people who deliberately try to trick us. We develop a certain amount of critical thinking.
Before we completely lose our innocence and learn about serial killers and seductive genocidal dictators, there is this in-between age where we are developing our views about society, politics, morality, God and religion. This is also the stage of life when we realize how desperately we want romance.
It is an age of vulnerability.
My hope is that this teaching will help you avoid some pitfalls in life that bring suffering and death, and also to help you evaluate the dogma that you firmly established without the use of critical thinking.
Critical thinking can also help you verify, that you understand what you are learning, such as with chemistry or physics. Asking why and how will help you master the topics you are learning.
You may notice that people very often accuse their opponents of the very thing they are guilty of: people who are obsessed with race and who slander other races, are constantly accusing others of racism.
Those who want to control every aspect of your life often talk about attacks on our freedom and democracy.
In that same way, “critical thinking” is claimed to be the foundation of liberal theology. Liberal theology is the teachings about God, by those who deny God’s power, moral teachings, or existence. It is an extreme form of skepticism that rejects God’s ability to do what is impossible for us, or to find an excuse to justify what God says is immoral. An obvious example of this, is about Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea: liberal theologians claim that it could have been a shallow portion of the sea that the wind exposed; but the obvious problem would be that the entire Egyptian army drowned in the same place after following the Hebrews into the sea.
To overcome being deceived by those who claim to use critical thinking, we must not assign truth to those who claim to use logic, reason, and science, but to those who can demonstrate it.
We see praise for critical thinking in Acts 17:11 (NIV) “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
How can I know if I’m right about something that I learned in the past? It would be foolish to think that I’m right about everything that, I think I know.
Going forward, I recommend that you become more conscious about sorting your beliefs into different bins: “likely true”; “likely false”; “confirmed true”; “confirmed false”; or “under consideration”.
Keep in mind that you may have already stored many truth claims into these bins before you learned any critical thinking; perhaps because someone you admire and respect told you one thing or another, perhaps it is part of your culture or tradition. Once you have put an idea into a “confirmed” bin, be extremely careful not to let some clever argument change your designation without evidence that shows that your previous conclusion was faulty. You may need to reexamine and research again.
This workflow is parallel with the scientific models of Hypothesis, Theory, and Law.
There is the similar model of Plato and Socrates’ called “dialectic” used by Carl Marx and other Socialist. The dialectic model assumes a constant battle of ideas where one wins the battle and is determined to be true, only until the next challenger comes along. But, ultimate truth (like a scientific law) can never be known, and nothing is permanently settled. This is the perfect environment to be irrationally and impractically skeptical about things that you don’t want to believe.
Both models use reason and arguments, but the dialectic model mandates a constant struggle and forbids concrete and absolute truth.
Cults
One sign of a cult is that that they demand you believe something with no rational basis: The Mormons or Latter Day Saints ask you to ignore all the false prophesies of their claimed prophets, and every other rational evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud and authored their holy books IF you at one time had a positive emotional reaction; a glimmer of hope after reading a small portion of their text that claims you will receive a “burning in your bosom” to confirm the text.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, who go out to make converts, are instructed not to accept or read any literature from anyone outside of their organization. They are conditioned to think that if they question anything that the Watchtower publishes, they are denying Jesus as Christ because they claim that the Watchtower is the second coming of Jesus, in spirit.
Faith and Logic
An atheist will often present faith as an alternative to logic, or logic as an alternative to faith. However, the Christian faith calls on us to use logic to determine that God exists, and that He is worthy to have us put our faith in Him. The same way you put your faith in a dictionary to give you a correct definition, or to put your faith in a traffic light to prevent accidents at an intersection.
God has given miraculous signs to confirm His prophets. You can reason that if a man can do the impossible, and that man claims to be sent with a message from God, then the miracle is the sign from God confirming the message. Even most atheist will confirm this when they say “If the clouds opened up and a voice came down from Heaven saying I am God, believe in me, then I would believe.” Well, that is just what God did to confirm that Jesus was His son. We will look at evidence for some miracles in future lessons.
First determine if God exists, then if Jesus is God, then if you can trust the Bible. If Jesus raised Himself from the dead, then you can trust Him. If Moses parted the red sea, you can trust him. If Daniel predicted future kingdoms, then you can trust him. If Jesus fulfilled many prophesies throughout the OT, you can trust them both. If all that is true, then you have an authority that can be trusted over any other “argument from authority” such as a scientist whom you do not know. So, if you never did the experiments or collected the data, why would you ever allow yourself to doubt God when a stranger tells you something that you have not verified?
But, don’t be confused into thinking that God wants your blind trust to believe that Jesus is His son or that the Biblical prophets speak for Him, if that were true, God would not have sent them with miracles. Rather, God rewards your faith for trusting in Him when other voices accuse God of being evil, or present an alternate form of morality or way to live your life. Faith is expressed in obedience just like you would follow the instructions of the coach that you trust in.
Experts and Authorities
If you believe in God (the creator of the universe), and if you believe that the Biblical text is truth revealed by God, than that is the only reliable authority for anything. If you believe in God, but are not sure if the Biblical text, or the Quran, or the Book of Mormon, or the publications of the Watchtower, or the text of I Ching etc. are revealed truth from God, then test them the best you can, because if God is giving revelation and teaching, that should be your foundation for testing other truth claims.
Every other source of truth is open to be questioned. And, it is important not to be satisfied with an answer that you don’t understand. If the issue is important, dig in and find the truth. As Galileo Galilei has said:
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
You are that individual; if something is true, it can be explained to you. It may take a long time to learn a complex truth, but you must be careful not to assign something to the “confirmed true bin” until you have understood it for yourself. For this reason, make it a habit not to make truth claims when you are not certain. It is better to say “I have heard it said…[such and such]” or “This source claims…[such and such]” or “I have been taught…[such and such]”
One friend gives you this advice, and the other says the opposite. One scientific study contradicts another. The pastor from this church says not to believe the teaching of that one. So, test those things that are important, consider the rest, but the mature mind does not blindly accept things presented as definitely true. Some sources are more trustworthy than others. For me, the most trustworthy is God.
Decorum
Aristotle said that politics is the science of morality. Political topics are important, but sometimes people who talk about politics are angry and hateful.
Can we debate and learn about these things in a safe and respectful environment? Yes! This environment is called “decorum”. Decorum is orderly and polite behavior. Decorum gives space for all ideas to be proposed and cross examined. Many of our future lessons will cover political topics: some truths are self evident, others are very complex. Avoid or correct an environment that lacks decorum, do not trust education by force or fear.
Decorum is the environment needed for honesty and critical thinking in a group.
Deceptions:
This course on critical thinking has been tested by scientists, scholars, and theologians; and proven to be the most effective course available on critical thinking.
Did you believe that? Did you get a red flag signal about that claim? This is level one trickery.
The most basic advice for critical thinking is “don’t believe everything you hear”. And the most practical thing you can do to keep from being mislead is to ask “What do you mean” and “How do you know?”.
“What do you mean” should come first, and it is essential to establish before anything can be evaluated. Let the person making a truth claim elaborate on what they mean, and do not attempt to evaluate a large mass of proposals as a whole, but get specific.
“What do you mean?” AND “How do you know?” Make them your habit. Take this on as homework: ask those two questions twice a day for at least a week to make them a habit. Look for an opportunity to use them. If you are speaking to a teacher, parent, or your boss, “How do we know” would be more respectful. Even if it is something you already believe to be true. If you are told “Black lives matter”, ask “What do you mean?” If you are told “The sun is made up of hydrogen and helium”, ask “How do we know?”. If you are told “Jesus is our Savior” Ask “What do you mean”, if you are told “You must be a member of a Church” ask “How do you know?” If you are told “This is the best solution” ask “Best for what, or what criteria are you using, and have you tested this?
Know your limits!
When I was young, I thought sophistication meant “grown up and complex”, I got this idea from how it was used in popular culture.
Here is the definition of sophistication from an early publication:
Sophistication – noun
The act or process of sophisticating.
The process of perverting or misleading by sophistry; hence, loosely, any perversion or wresting from the proper course; a leading or going astray.
Adulteration; debasement by means of a foreign admixture.
That last part means changing the meaning of things by adding a bunch of non-related jargon.
The meaning is still held in the word sophistry (subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation) and it’s origin is with the ancient Greek sophists who would make their reasoning more and more complex to try to force something to be true (mental gymnastics).
Or, like a quote from the Vaudevillian W.C. Fields “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with…” <well, let’s say baloney>.
If you are being introduced to an argument or a science that is far from your understanding, this is the place that sophistries are implanted!!! Don’t put an idea in your “definitely true” bin that you don’t understand, not even if you really want to believe it, or if your favorite pastor, teacher or political pundit told it to you.
Satan’s best trick as a sophisticate is to deceive using the truth… That should sound strange to you, and I hope you have the critical mind to be suspicious of such a claim, but I will prove that satan uses the truth to deceive:
Speaking about the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, satan says to Eve in Genesis 3:5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
After Adam and Eve eat of the fruit, this is what God says in Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”
So, what was the deception? Satan inferred that knowing the evils of rape, torture, betrayal, murder and all other evils were good things that God was keeping from them.
Again, when satan tempted Jesus in the desert, he quoted true statements from scripture “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
One lesson from that temptation is not to be manipulated by the truth, and another is never do something because you were dared to do it.
I met a man when I was young by the name of George Stan. He was an amazing 2-stroke motorcycle mechanic, and he was also a Jewish Rabbi. He told me he had a test for boys, before their bar mitzvah celebration of becoming a man; it was this riddle:
Two men climbed down a chimney. One came out clean, and one came out dirty: which one bathes?
Pause for a minute if you want to try and solve this riddle.
Give up? The correct answer that shows critical thinking is: “How can a man climb down a chimney and come out clean?” This shows you are no longer thinking like a child.
The part of the riddle that was false was “one came out clean”. This is a truth claim, also called a thesis. In lesson two, we will learn about formatting an argument so that you can test it. If a thesis is false, the entire argument is “unsound” or unreliable for determining truth.
Many arguments are partially unspoken, and presented in the form of a question. For example: “How can you believe the testimony of a thief?” So, the riddle or test that George Stan presented shows the importance of examining all the parts of a question for signs of a sophistry.
If you are of the age to learn critical thinking, then you are of the age to be suspicious of multiple choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks; those are there to condition you into acceptance and compliance, without critical thinking. For more on that, see the research of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
Here’s some good father’s advice given to Sky Masterson In the musical “Guys and Dolls”:
An ear full of cider. The tell tale sign of a scam is that they focus on your greed and offer something you think is a sure bet: something you think is impossible like the jack of spades squirting you in the ear with cider, or something you think can’t miss, like picking out the red ball in a shell game.
Magic shows are an important lesson about our ability to be fooled. Two famous magicians (Penn & Teller) have a TV show called “Fool Us”, where they invite other magicians to attempt a magic trick that Penn & Teller cannot explain. An exceptional magician by the name of Asi Wind was able to fool Penn & Teller using misdirection, fancy contraptions, and something that neither I, Penn nor Teller can identify.
I recommend you watch this performance on Asi’s YouTube Channel to appreciate it.
Asi Wind put in a lot of time to create special machinery just to create an illusion. People with criminal intent will do the same thing.
Tommy Carmichael, Michael Balsamo, and others used the same skills to find weaknesses in slot machines, and then create devices that would cheat the machines: they made millions of dollars of illegal profits before getting caught and going to prison.
Other people make sophisticated plans and presentations when selling a pyramid scheme or a get rich quick program. But ask yourself “Why would a person give up the chance to make tens of millions of dollars that his program promises, so that he can make only a million or two selling his program?” They always say it is because they are benevolent and want to help other people. Like this friendly guy who wants to give free candy to children.
How can I protect myself from being scammed? Some scammers can trick you out of a little money; others can take your life. Another piece of homework is to research “social engineering”. It is the science of manipulating other people for crime, political movements, or selling products for example.
A very intelligent friend of mine was almost taken in by a scammer over the phone who posed as his sister-in-law needing money to get bailed out of jail. Something he learned was that one hysterical woman is hard to tell from another, especially when you have never hard your sister-in-law hysterical before.
As our culture drifts farther away from God, it is even more important to be cautious of strangers.
Proverbs 6:23 – 26 For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life, keeping you from your neighbor’s wife, from the smooth talk of a wayward woman. Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life.
It is important to realize that some people have nurtured their evil, and that we have the ability to become just as evil if we choose to nurture evil thoughts and desires. We will cover that in detail as we discuss the sinful nature of mankind. But keep in mind the scripture that warns us about our own heart deceiving us towards evil. Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV) “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
The communists have elaborate programs to deceive and we will cover that in later lessons. But look at this Quote from Alexander Trachtenberg at the National Convention of Communist Parties:
“When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But, take it, we will.” ~
Judging
Let’s take a look at “he said, she said”. You have two sources with contradicting claims. If you want the truth, can can’t just side with the person you like the best or against a person that you don’t like. That would be evil in God’s sight.
Proverbs 18:17 tells us “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines.” – So, go and find experts who hold the opposite position or find multiple optional positions and hear them all. Don’t put an idea in your “definitely true” bin until you have heard all sides of the issue.
Science
When it comes to acquiring knowledge, we gain an immeasurable advantage by getting it from the writings and teachings of others. It is impossible for any person to have first hand, experiential knowledge, of all topics and to have confirmed every study and experiment for themselves.
This is the “chink in the armor” in the age of knowledge, a very great vulnerability.
Science is an authority that most people blindly obey.
The father of propaganda Edward Bernays leaned heavily on the words and publications of scientists and doctors to manipulate the public. What he did is now called Social engineering. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and Bernays leaned exclusively on psychology to get more people to smoke tobacco, eat certain commodities in larger amounts, and even to overthrow a government.
Listen to his testimony that explains why all of America changed what they ate for breakfast, and notice that the doctor he used was one employed by his own public relations company:
Edward L. Bernays Beech-Nut Packing Co
Regarding the breakfast campaign: modern studies show the large breakfast to be bad for our health and a contributor to obesity. In addition, it was not a scientific study, but a survey of opinions who were responding to friendly letter with a suggestion that we now know creates a bias.
The following are excerpts From the Book: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman – Adventures of a Curious Character by the Nobel Prize winning Physicist Richard P. Feynman, in a section titled “Cargo Cult Science” that was adapted from the Caltech commencement address given by Feynman in 1974.
First Feynman identifies the symptom:
“There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you’ll see the reading scores keep going down – – or hardly going up – – in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There’s a witch doctor remedy that doesn’t work.”
… [Feynman gives more examples on crime and parenting according to the experts]
“So we really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.”
Next Feynman gives the analogy of “Cargo Cult Science” (read that in his book).
Then Feynman identifies the cause (what is missing):
“It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – – a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – – not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked – – to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can – – if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong – – to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn’t soak through food. Well, that’s true. It’s not dishonest; but the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it’s a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will including Wesson oil. So it’s the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.”
Feynman goes on to talk about a famous miscalculation about the charge of the electron by another famous Physicist named Millikan and how theories after that one slowly graduated to the correct number. The phenomenon was that “When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong”. This is the exact claim of those scientist who hold to a young earth who have also presented known young items to get radio carbon dating tests, and get back reports with ages from hundreds of thousands of years to millions of years.
Feynman chides the scientific community for lying to the laymen (the general public) and gave the example of questioning a friend who was wondering what to tell a radio audience about the applications of his work. When Feynman said “there aren’t any.” And the friend’s response was “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.”
My friend’s daughter gave a similar testimony to me in about 2018, that she was working on a funded study that had a goal to prove a certain thing, and that she was pressured to produce data that supported the goals of the funding. Giving the implication that, if she didn’t produce, she would be cut; if the study didn’t produce, it would be cut.
It makes sense. Why do we think that a policeman, a lawyer, real estate agent, doctor, politician, or a car salesman could be corrupt or biased, but never a scientist?
We must separate the scientific method from the scientific industry and be aware of scientific politics. A politician has a lot easier time saying they are voting for the science rather than I am voting for Monsanto, Pfizer, or for the goals of The United Nations. It is no surprise then that the history of University supporting philanthropists are filled with foundations that are funded by men previously identified as greedy monopolizers and a former US President:
Carnegie Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Pfizer Foundation
Monsanto Fund – Now that Bayer pharmaceutical and biotechnology company bought them, it’s part of the Bayer Fund
The Clinton Foundation
The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation (Yes, THAT Jeffrey Epstein, and the foundation money went primarily to Universities for science and education)
Clearly, Dr. Feynman was right that we have science that doesn’t work because those who publish reports in scientific journals are not clearly stating the data that would cause doubt on their conclusions and theories. Funding comes primarily from corporate interests (the same people who fund political campaigns). Funding is rarely granted for repeating and testing previous studies. Furthermore, the general public does not read scientific journals; they listen to sound bites of “influencers” who are responding to news outlets, who are told by managers what to say and portray on “news” shows.
Let’s take a video break and think about our influencers.
My apologies if Howard Beale offended you in any way.
Here is a more recent exhortation with a similar conclusion:
Like the cult, science has become an area that you are forbidden to question. Not science itself or the scientific method, but certain scientific studies or authorities.
I’m now going to use one of the most restricted and controversial scientific topics of our time. Try not to think so much about your beliefs on this topic, but on how the criticism of Dr. Feynman regarding scientific integrity applies: how so many voices, and so much data has been hidden regarding COVID 19 and related public policy. I am also going to bring up financial incentives in this real world example.
Critical lesson!!!
The following portions of content are intended to cause doubt and pause. How should we react to such presentations? I present myself as someone with no personal interest on the subject matter and also a person who is acting for the benefit of the reader. However, I also present that satan himself is a propagandist who will also present items of concern and doubt. So, how do we sort these things? For example, over 50 former U.S. intelligence officials — including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper all signed a statement saying that the Hunter Biden Laptop showing criminal activity, including child sex crimes and treasonous deals with hostile governments “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”.
This is extremely compelling testimony. And yet, Hunter Biden’s lawyers now claim the laptop as his property and no one is still making the claim that the laptop is unauthentic. So, let me suggest some rules/guidelines about fantastic stories like UFOs, government conspiracies, and the like:
1 Evidence is not proof, but if it is sound, then it calls for investigation on important issues.
2 Consider the source: you MUST invest time to know the general strategies of satan and of evil people; you must study history and the sinful nature of mankind.
3 What is required is discernment. You will get this by a long life of meditating on the words of God while interacting with this sinful world. It takes time and you WILL experience failure, you WILL be deceived from time to time.
Let’s look at the world’s largest philanthropist regarding the vaccination of the world: Bill Gates.
Many people don’t know that the COVID vaccines are the very first wide scale experiment with mRNA vaccines. It is a mass experiment. Some doctors have raised the question about some of the mRNA remaining in the body and having unintended consequences. Doctors have lost their jobs and even their licenses over their diversions from the mandates of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Whatever the differences are between the new mRNA vaccine, and the traditional egg grown vaccines of the past, I would have to lean on the reports of others who actually work in these fields.
Among the general public who does not have the knowledge to understand, or even the access to the relevant studies, we must at least have access to the motives, biases, and the suspicious activities of the players involved.
Here is Doctor Anthony Fauci talking about the difficulty in rolling out an mRNA treatment (something that had never been done before), and his colleague Rich Bright on October 29th, 2019 (a month before the COVID breakout in Wuhan China) “…but it is not too crazy to think that an outbreak of a novel avian virus could occur in China somewhere. We could get the RNA sequence from that, beam it to a number of regional centers, if not local, if not even in your home at some point, and print those vaccines on a patch and self administer.”
In 2017, Dr. Fouci emphatically predicted the outbreak.
The major news outlets are all showing their paid sponsorship by Pfizer and others making the vaccines, and all of the social media channels have forbidden any question of effectiveness of the recommended health policies including masks, marshal law (a suspension of the Constitution) regarding public gatherings, alternative treatments, and business operations.
Quotes from Jordon Triston Walker: Pfizer Director of Research and Development – Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Study: “There’s something irregular about their [women’s] menstrual cycles” and “I hope we don’t find out that somehow this mRNA lingers in the body”.
We MUST activate our critical thinking about those who are influencing our thoughts, freedoms, and our morality.
The same mindset that is prevalent and controlling in Universities, social media, and increasingly in government, that are now saying a man can give birth, is the one that tells us that the very thing needed for all plants to grow (including our food supply) is pollution, and that the World Bank can now monetize and control it with carbon credits. This is also the same voice that tells us that life can come from dirt if it is soaking in ammonia and hit with lighting (see Stanley L. Miller et. el).
Closing
It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But, aside from miscalculations and foolish ideas, we also have to occasionally face off with hustlers, swindlers, and the minions of satan, who, wants to kill, steal, and destroy. Our depravity goes from children sneaking cookies to serial killers and genocidal maniacs who have very successfully and methodically tortured and killed millions of people.
Start the practice today: “What do you mean?” and “How do you know?”
More resources:
Keeping reason away:
What is critical thinking?:
Basic Logic, Propositions and Syllogisms (Aristotle’s Logic)