A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking, 2nd Edition

3 SUFFICIENT REASONS

Critical thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking aimed at deciding what to believe or what to do. As we saw in Chapter 1, part of what makes critical thinking reasonable is that it aims at finding or providing reasons for our decisions and beliefs. It is important to have reasons for thinking that our beliefs are true, that we have chosen the proper goals, and that our plans to reach them will be effective. If we do not have any reasons, then we will be right only by luck and relying on luck is not much of a strategy. Of course, we want more than just to have any old reasons; we want to have good ones. But what does it mean to say that a belief is based on or supported by certain evidence? And how do we know how much evidence is enough? This chapter is all about what it means to have good reasons for your beliefs and plans.

We want our beliefs and decisions to be based on enough evidence.

3.1 CRITICAL THINKING AND ARGUMENTS

We can think critically about any subject matter and our thinking can take many different forms. But in every case, thinking critically about what to believe or do involves providing or considering reasons. As we saw in Chapter 1, critical thinking is also reflective thinking and this means in part that thinking critically requires thinking about our reasons as reasons. It requires making our reasons explicit and thinking about whether they provide enough evidence for the decisions we have to make.

Whenever we are thinking ...