Objective Critical Thoughts example essay topic

Logic and Perception A human's ability to think constitutes the human's ability to live. Though life can and does go on without thought, thoughtless life would hold no meaning for most of us. Our thoughts fill our days and give meaning and purpose to our days to come. Through perception, we become aware of our environment through physical sensation (Merriam-Webster, 1997, p. 546).

Every single experience and observation, every smell and sound, that enters our mind through perception is then fused together and associated with other related fusions to become thought, ... our very lives as we know them. The ability to sift through our thoughts and peel away the individual facets of those sensations and perceptions which make up our thoughts is called critical thinking. More specifically, critical thinking is the act of combining various, associated thoughts and perceptions with logic and reason to form educated assumptions and answers which speak to that which we did not know before. Critical thinking, just as its name implies, is absolutely vital to life and ensures that the world around us operates in an orderly fashion. Without critical thinking, the world would be full of experienced and seasoned people with a vast sea of knowledge at their disposal, but no way to apply it to any part of daily life. Whether we are aware of it or not, we all think critically on an extremely regular basis, so much so that thinking critically often comes, well, "without thinking".

Even so, we could all stand to become better and more frequent critical thinkers. Too often, we rely purely upon perception to lead us to assumptions and answers. We tend to perceive situations with a mind which is closed by personal barriers which block the process of critical thinking. Instead of delving into the "why's and how's", we simply take things for their face value. At this point, we are usually ready to apply a sound logic to hasty and incorrect perceptions, an application which typically leads to false inferences.

Logic is defined as, "a science that deals with the rules and tests of sound thinking and proof by reasoning" (Merriam-Webster, 1997, p. 436). Logic is much like a scientist's experiments and rules by which he / she turns an unfounded hypothesis into a theory or law based upon observed tests. Logic, while sound and reliable by nature, when applied to unfounded perceptions, will typically produce compromised results. Herein lays the real power of critical thinking.

It seems to me that, logic, when applied to thoroughly objective critical thoughts, will produce a correct and well-founded answer. Therein also lays the problem: thoroughly objective critical thoughts. Our open-mindedness and objectivity are too often undermined by personal barriers which stem from "our exposure to cultural and genetic forces" (Kirby & Goodpaster, 1999, p. 13). These personal barriers include enculturation, self-concept, ego defenses, self-serving biases, expectations, emotions, and stress, among others. I have noticed that I tend to be most susceptible to enculturation and expectations / schemata. For example, I had never researched the role of the Pope before, and for that matter, I did not know much about the Catholic Church either.

I was raised Protestant, mostly Baptist and Methodist. Even today, my family and I attend a Church of the Nazarene, which is somewhere in between the two. I always subscribed to the ethnocentric idea that Protestant was right and Catholic was wrong, but not because of any particular reason other than that this is what I was taught. If I were to be asked a question like, "What kind of role does the Pope play in the foreign affairs", I would have replied with a quickness, "none".

Up until about two months ago, I thought that the Pope was simply a figurehead of the Catholic Church, a figurative mascot with no real power or sway. It was much to my surprise when I learned that Pope John Paul II was a veritable leader in the field of foreign policy, not with his own country, but for every country on the globe. I was amazed to find out that he was a linguistic genius who had all but mastered at least ten different languages so as to more easily promote peace in different regions by all but eliminating the language barrier which so often exists between foreign negotiators. Inspired to know more of the impressive man, I read to find out that he shared almost every opinion with me on the major issues that we in the United States deem important (abortion, peace, et al). Each little fact that I uncovered about the man led me to ask further questions and quest for more information. After twenty-six years, my enculturated wall had been broken down on the subject of the Pope.

I had re-thought my earlier, close-minded assumptions of him and was finally thinking critically on the subject. To use the same example, I had formed expectations of the Pope, a sort of religious stereotype. Prior to learning more about Pope John Paul II during the last week of his life, my only strong ideas of the Catholic Church and its leaders were inspired by weekly news of a new child molestation case within the ranks of bishops and priests. So, based on the actions of a few, I expected the same sort of debauchery from all.

In fact, I remember alluding to the Pope at one point as the ring leader of the whole sexually errant bunch (in a much more politically incorrect choice of words). After letting go of this stereotype, this expectation, I found out that I actually admired the gentleman for the great things he did with his life and in the lives of others. Though I am still quite uneducated about the differences between my Nazarene beliefs and those of the Catholic faith, I have learned a great lesson about the differences between assumptions born from perception and logic and those of critical thinking. I have also corrected a mistake in my own thoughts and beliefs concerning one of the most important men of the twentieth century.

This example and several others not cited have come to my attention in the last week to inspire me to implement a new though pattern, a new thought process which involves a sort of "tabula rasa" of my own to be filled by knowledge born of critical thinking, as opposed to a full page of unfounded perceptual logic. Indian poet, playwright, essayist, and Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore, summed up my newfound process by saying, "A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it". (web)

Bibliography

Merriam-Webster (Eds. ). (1997).
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Kirby, G.R., & Goodpaster, J.R. (1999).
Thinking (2nd Ed. ). Prentice-Hall, Incorporated, an imprint of Pearson Education, Incorporated. Tagore, R., Quote retrieved May 22, 2005, from search on website, web.