ABSTRACT
For the past few years I have defended a view about the nature of critical thinking (and how to teach it) that runs counter to the dominant view in North America. 1 I have argued that the major ingredient of critical thinking is context-specific, field-dependent knowledge and information. And, contrary to the received opinion, critical thinking has little (if anything) to do with so-called general reasoning skills or the like. My view of critical thinking, moreover, has led me to reject courses in informal logic, and to advocate approaches to critical thinking which attempt to increase one's capacity for understanding complex concepts, information, and problems-as the traditional disciplines try to do. Thus, the differences between the standard approach and my own view are twofold: we disagree over both the ingredients of critical thinking and how to teach it.
