In the process of critical thinking, the first and most crucial step is knowing the facts. Without such knowledge, one cannot back up any conclusions that that person has made and in effect that person cannot think critically. Although it is understandable that no person can know every single fact about a certain field, making conclusions when one has no knowledge of the facts is immoral. The Church separates this from ignorance (being unaware of the facts) and calls it culpable ignorance (erroneously stating ones opinions without educating ones self on the topic).
The RB gave an example of this by showing the difference between a doctor's diagnosis of his patient versus the author diagnosing the same person. Although the doctor may not know everything about health and medicine, his diagnosis will be much closer to being correct than the person who knows next to nothing about medicine.
The Catholic Church also states that a person's conscience is primary to critical thinking, so primary in fact that it takes precedent over Church teachings when deciding how to act. However, our conscience may be in error so we must constantly be bringing in new facts to educate our consciences so that we can make the best decisions. The Church encourages people to educate their consciences by reading encyclicals issued by the church.
The Principle of Contradiction states that nothing can be and cannot be at the same time. Although this definition may seem a bit sketchy at first, when we look at examples it is easy to see how this works.
Aristotle recognized that reason operates according to this and and developed three principles of logic.
1. Principle of Identity: A=A : A human being is a human being.
2. Principle of Excluded Middle: Either A or not-A : A mammal is either a human being or not a human being
3. Principle of Contradiction: not both A and not-A : A mammal can not be a human being and not be a human being at the same time
A person's argument is only as valid as how well he defines his/her terms. This means that if a person is using language that he/she does not fully understand, than that person is not expressing an informed opinion. The author of the RB described a lengthy conversation that he had with woman who stated that "all religions are really alike." The woman made broad generalizations about religions as a whole such as "They help people to lead better lives," and all name "some type of God." But as the author begins to explain the intricate details of each religion, such as Buddhists trying to attain nirvana as opposed to Catholics striving to get to heaven, we see that they are quite different. from each other.
For another example of this, let us consider the statement "Most Catholics are insincere." To understand the validity of this statement we first have to understand what the speaker means by "insincere." Does he mean those that go to Church weekly or those that donate to the Church regularly? As you can see, knowing and defining the words we use allows us to clearly state what we believe.
In the story of Socrates and the Delphic Oracle, Socrates is proclaimed the wisest man alive for realizing how much he did not know about the world while others were quarreling over who was the smartest. This describes what it means to be intellectually humble. Everyone will experience some time in their life where they believe that they are well informed about a certain subject and will eventually be corrected, but the worst mistake one can make is to be arrogant about what we know and not admit that we could possibly be wrong.
An example of this that I experience a lot is about my being a part of the rifle team here at SLUH. I have been told by countless people that have told me, "Rifle can't possibly be a sport because it barely requires any physical activity." But, contrary to this belief, I know from experience that keeping yourself from moving or swaying while in position holding a twelve pound rifle dead steady is far from easy. It takes both mental and physical conditioning to be able to do this effectively, but for those that have not shot before they are unaware of and are simply assuming they know about it.
For almost every issue or debate there will always be multiple perspectives, or more than one way to look at the issue. Many times we become blinded by our personal perspectives and automatically reject any other that we might hear. There are many examples of this in our own religion. For instance, if there is a God that is all powerful and benevolent why would he want evil. But wouldn't all of the wonderful things he has created and all of the beautiful things we see on a daily basis give us reason to believe in God? To be a truly critical thinker, however, one must try to look at all perspectives and bring all of these in to mind.