ABSTRACT

Critical thinking is the art of assessing truth claims according to certain general principles or cannons (Dauer, 1989, p. 3). There are two aspects of “truth assessment” in critical thinking: (1) isolating and gathering “facts” that may be accepted without question and (2) reasoning from those accepted “facts” (or likely facts) to determine the truth or falsity of the claims. In this assessment, we look for maxims to determine what may be accepted without question and canons for identifying what reasons are good reasons (Dauer, 1989, p. 5). Critical thinking is a way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false. Critical thinking skills include observation, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and explanation.