Let’s Get Critical: Part I

Long before a gaggle of chatbots began to creep in on academia’s professional turf, humanities professors have been extolling the virtues of learning the humanities because it teaches, among other things, the skill of critical thinking.

Now that AI is being advertised to students as a study aid, private tutor, or (unabashedly) a way to cheat on everything, we are all frantically trying to figure out what it is we can offer students. The answer? Critical thinking. It’s always been a part of our sales pitch, but now with renewed vigor.

We can split the claim that AI is unhelpful for critical thinking into two parts. First, while AI can provide all kinds of output, it cannot think critically for us. If you want to turn in an assignment, or create a presentation for your new boss, AI can do that for you; if you want to create critical thoughts in your own mind, it cannot. Second, AI will always be biased, either because its training data is biased, or because its output must always be aligned with the business aims of the companies that create it.

Of course, we can challenge both of these claims. First, while AI cannot think critically for us, there are plenty of clever ways to engage with it to practice critical thinking. For instance, you can write an argument, feed the argument to AI, and then ask it to critique your argument. You can then edit your writing and repeat the process. For the truly curious, AI chatbots can be intellectual sparring companions. Second, while AI output must in some way be aligned with the values of the company that creates the system, maybe it can still produce some kind of critical output. Just ask Claude to critically analyze its last response and it will produce something that, at least on the surface, looks critical.

All this attention on critical thinking and AI’s potential impact on it has got me thinking. What precisely is critical thinking? And what’s it good for anyway? In this two-part series, I will offer an answer to both of these questions. Let’s start with the first question.

Critical thinking is a skill.

This claim is central to the rest of my analysis. By labeling critical thinking a skill, I do not mean to say it is only a skill; for instance, it may also be a natural ability, something that some people can engage in more naturally than others. All I mean here by claiming that it is a skill is that it can be improved with practice. Furthermore, it seems to be like other skills in that you can lose proficiency if you stop practicing. This is one of the great fears that the AI boom has ushered in; if the bots are thinking for us, our minds might atrophy and we might lose crucial skills like the ability to hold those in positions of power accountable.

Critical thinking is a kind of optimistic thinking.

I do not want to make the claim that all critical thinking is inherently optimistic. Some people who practice critical thinking are genuinely pessimistic. However, when I think about my own use of critical thinking, I spend most of my critical energy thinking about what is wrong with systems that are genuinely important for humanity, e.g., systems of government and informational technologies. I do this not because I enjoy noticing the horrors of our collective social life, but because I think it is possible to imagine a better way forward.

Being critical is, when done well, a hopeful practice. It takes some effort to remember this because being critical is often depressing; it requires spending a lot of time analyzing something and noticing all of the problems it has. This is both emotionally and intellectually draining and can leave you wondering: what is the point of doing anything? But if you keep an optimistic wind in your sails, the skill of critical thinking can be a positive force.

Critical thinking is a macro-skill.

Critical thinking is the culmination of several other skills working together. While likely incomplete, here is a short list of the sub-skills involved:

Sustained attention. In order to be critical about something — an idea, an argument, an action, a person, a company, a state, a religion — you need to be able to focus on it. You need to be able to witness it long enough to understand what, if anything, is criticizable about it. Without sustained attention, you cannot be critical.

Suspension of judgment. Neil Postman articulates this point nicely in Amusing Ourselves to Death when he talks about the skills required for reading. In order to read well, you need to be able to wait on drawing a final conclusion until you finish the written work. This is true of being critical as well (a point that Postman is perfectly well aware of). When I am being critical of something, I need to take in enough of whatever it is I am being critical of before issuing my judgment.

Clear articulation. Good critical thought needs to be clearly articulated, at the very least to yourself, but insofar as you want your criticism to reach an audience, then to others as well. Whether written or spoken or by some other means, one needs to think about the delivery of their criticism so that it is understood and appreciated by its audience.

Justification. Good criticism ought to be justified criticism. There should be a connection between the criticism, e.g., the choice to enter the war was unconstitutional, and the justification, e.g., the Constitution states that congressional approval is required for war. Understanding whether a criticism is justified requires a lot of thought and effort. You need to think about what kinds of reasons count as good reasons, not just for you but for your audience as well.

Imagination. One of the cornerstones of good criticism is imagination. You need to turn the object of potential criticism around, over and over again, to find the cracks. It often requires wandering down strange corridors of the mind to discover a critical point about something.

These sub-skills each require practice, which makes the art of critical thinking a challenging skill to master. As you practice, you may find some components easier to develop than others.

Critical thinking poses a question.

Finally, behind the act of thinking critically we will always find a question. For instance, when the state passes a law, the critical mind awakens. Who does this law benefit? Who does it harm? Who wrote this law and for what purpose? What lobbyists were involved? What are the intended consequences of this law? Are those intended consequences just? What are the unintended consequences of this law? Are those likely? Are they desirable? Was the process through which the law was written and passed fair? What standard of fairness are we using? Is that measure a good one? Will this law be easy to repeal if we learn the consequences are deleterious to social harmony? Did we need this law at all? Could we solve the problem without getting the government involved? And so the list of questions goes on.

Critical thinking involves answering critical questions. While the content of these questions is as diverse as the topics about which we can be critical, the basic questions that sit beneath them are simply: What is wrong with this thing? What could be improved?

It is easy for the critical mind to become weary and get lost in a sea of possible questions. It is also worth noting that while we can probably be critical of everything if we want, not everything needs to be criticized. If you find yourself outside, enjoying a sea breeze, it may not be the time or place for the critical mind. Asking the question what is wrong or what could be improved misses the point of enjoying a sea breeze. Sometimes the right thing to do is just to be.

This brings us to the fact that this is a skill that needs to be practiced and cultivated with care. Having good mentors helps, but in the end one often needs to work out for themselves how to get their own mind in the critical spirit at the right time and place and in the right way. This takes lots of practice and a lot of trial and error.

While this is an incomplete account of what the skill of critical thinking is, I think it is a reasonable starting place. But this only answers the first question. What about the second? What is the value of this skill anyway? What do we say to the skeptic, who thinks the critical spirit is a waste of time? Now that the AI revolution is upon us, they say, just relax and ask your personalized AI assistant what to think. Why should you want to know how to do this for yourself? I will offer an answer to this in Part II.