Week 6 - Thinking about Your Thinking and Critical Writing

Activity 1 :: Activity 2 :: Activity 3 :: Activity 4

Key Concepts and Questions

As you read the text and work through the MindEdge Modules, you'll want to pay particularly close attention to the information regarding the following key concepts:

1.  Impediments to critical thinking:

• Egocentrism: the natural human tendency to view everything within the world in relationship to oneself.
• Sociocentrism: group egocentricty, to be group-centered.

2.  Ethical reasoning:

• Understanding ethical concepts and principles
• Distinguishing ethics from other domains of thought

3.  Using the elements and standards to strategically analyze your own thinking:

• For thinking to be high quality, we must routinely assess it by breaking down the parts of thinking and applying the standards.
• We must rationally and strategically challenge our egocentrism and sociocentrism

4.  Characteristics of advanced thinkers:

• An understanding of the powerful roll that thinking plays in quality of life
• An understanding of the relationships among thoughts, feelings, and desires
• Regular monitoring of thoughts, feelings, and desires
• Effective use of a rancge of strategies for improving thinking
• The habit of regularly critiquing plans for improvment
• The intellectual insight and perseverance to develop new habits of thought
• A deep commitment to intellectual integrity
• Sensitivity to inconsistency and contradictions
• The intellectual empathy necessary to put themselves in the place of others
• The intellectual courage to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs, and viewpoints in opposition to their own