ABSTRACT
A basic controversy in the 'thinking skills debate' revolves around claims that critical thinking consists of generic skills. The characteristic methods and contents of the familiar disciplines, or domains of knowledge, constitute the skills to which we refer when talking about critical, or creative thinking. For a domain-theorist like Michael Oakeshott, induction into the 'languages' of the principal academic disciplines actually is teaching critical thinking. Harvey Siegel 's insistence on the two clear-cut alternatives, acceptance of relativism or rejection in favour of 'atomistic criteria of rationality', is symptomatic of a problem about levels of generality in the critical thinking debate; that what at first sight might appear to be an outright contradiction between views arises because they are broadcast on different wavelengths. The 'problem of transfer' is the result of a misconception about the organisation of mind.
