intellectual integrity in critical thinking examples

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Valuable Intellectual Traits

Valuable Intellectual Virtues (September 2014). Foundation For Critical Thinking, Online at website: www.criticalthinking.org )

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Critical Thinking

• What is Critical Thinking?
• Intellectual Standards
• Elements of Thought

Intellectual Traits

• Intellectual Traits - What Are My Intellectual Habits?

Critical Thinking and The Intellectual Traits by Dr. Richard Paul

Quiz yourself on intellectual traits.

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If standards of thought are applied, a student has potential to grow into an individual who exhibits the intellectual character described by the Paul- Elder Intellectual Traits. These intellectual traits include intellectual integrity, independence, perseverance, empathy, humility, courage, confidence in reason and fair-mindedness (Figure 1). - By Crest + Oral-B Professional Community

Intellectual integrity  – this trait requires that the standards that guide actions and thoughts need to be the same standards by which others are evaluated. an individual exhibiting this trait treats others with kindness while avoiding harm and outwardly projects this trait. this trait eliminates double standards and hypocrisy., intellectual autonomy  – this trait requires an individual to use critical thinking tools, such as the paul-elder model, and to trust their own ability to reason critically. for example, a dental professional exhibiting intellectual autonomy will ask questions about new products and will critically think through all aspects of the products to determine their implications of use. these individuals do not have to rely on others to do their thinking., intellectual perseverance  – the tag phase for this trait is "never give up" and encourages individuals to work through any difficulties. a clinician exhibiting intellectual perseverance has to depend on their critical thinking toolkit to keep working through challenging patient issues or unfamiliar situations., intellectual empathy  – an individual achieves intellectual empathy when they actively put themselves in someone else’s shoes in terms of how they think and feel. for instance, a dental clinician may encounter a patient who has a different viewpoint about certain dental preventive agents such as fluoride. a clinician exhibiting intellectual empathy strives to understand the patient’s point of view in order to think fully about the situation before responding to it. while the clinician does not have to agree with your patient’s point of view, intellectual empathy demands that they accurately represent the thinking of a different view despite what they believe., intellectual humility  – individuals exhibiting intellectual humility accept they are human and that they do not know everything. they continue to learn and grow as they age. they acknowledge their limitations. dental professionals exhibiting intellectual humility are okay to tell patients they are not familiar with a certain product, technique, condition or research behind the product or technique, and acknowledge that they are an ongoing learner in the profession., intellectual courage  – individuals with intellectual courage stand up for their beliefs and the conclusions they have fully thought through, especially when it is difficult to do so. sometimes it will not be a popular or common thought, but if they stand up for their beliefs, change can occur., confidence in reason and fair-mindedness  - utilizing the elements of thought and the standards will lead to confidence in reason and fair-mindedness and requires individuals to look at all of the evidence and relevant points of views and arrive at conclusions that embodies the intellectual traits. this allows dental professionals with confidence in reason and fair-mindedness to trust, as thinkers, to come to sound conclusions for patient care simply by applying the framework to their thought process. 2-6.

Dr. Richard Paul briefly defines and discusses the Intellectual Traits and the importance of fostering their development in students. Excerpted from the Spring 2008 Workshop on Teaching for Intellectual Engagement. Apr 15, 2008 - (9:53)

• Quizlet on Intellectual Traits of Critical Thinking
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Ideas to Action (i2a)

• Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework

Critical thinking is that mode of thinking – about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them. (Paul and Elder, 2001). The Paul-Elder framework has three components:

• The elements of thought (reasoning)
• The  intellectual standards that should be applied to the elements of reasoning
• The intellectual traits associated with a cultivated critical thinker that result from the consistent and disciplined application of the intellectual standards to the elements of thought

According to Paul and Elder (1997), there are two essential dimensions of thinking that students need to master in order to learn how to upgrade their thinking. They need to be able to identify the "parts" of their thinking, and they need to be able to assess their use of these parts of thinking.

Elements of Thought (reasoning)

The "parts" or elements of thinking are as follows:

• All reasoning has a purpose
• All reasoning is an attempt to figure something out, to settle some question, to solve some problem
• All reasoning is based on assumptions
• All reasoning is done from some point of view
• All reasoning is based on data, information and evidence
• All reasoning is expressed through, and shaped by, concepts and ideas
• All reasoning contains inferences or interpretations by which we draw conclusions and give meaning to data
• All reasoning leads somewhere or has implications and consequences

Universal Intellectual Standards

The intellectual standards that are to these elements are used to determine the quality of reasoning. Good critical thinking requires having a command of these standards. According to Paul and Elder (1997 ,2006), the ultimate goal is for the standards of reasoning to become infused in all thinking so as to become the guide to better and better reasoning. The intellectual standards include:

Intellectual Traits

Consistent application of the standards of thinking to the elements of thinking result in the development of intellectual traits of:

• Intellectual Humility
• Intellectual Courage
• Intellectual Empathy
• Intellectual Autonomy
• Intellectual Integrity
• Intellectual Perseverance
• Confidence in Reason
• Fair-mindedness

Characteristics of a Well-Cultivated Critical Thinker

Habitual utilization of the intellectual traits produce a well-cultivated critical thinker who is able to:

• Raise vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely
• Gather and assess relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively
• Come to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
• Think open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
• Communicate effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems

Paul, R. and Elder, L. (2010). The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. Dillon Beach: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press.

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Video Series

• Strong Sense Versus Weak Sense Critical Thinking
• Articulate Your Own Definitions Of Intellectual Virtues
• Distinguish Intellectual Humility From Intellectual Arrogance
• Identify Your Prejudices
• Distinguishing What You Know For Certain From What You Do Not Know
• Target Your Assertions
• Examining Your Groups’ Beliefs
• When Have You Defended A Popular But Irrational Belief?
• Consider The Opposite Of Intellectual Courage – Intellectual Cowardice
• Reconstructing Arguments In Good Faith
• Create A Plan For Practicing Intellectual Empathy
• When Have You Been Hypocritical?
• When Have You Been Inconsistent Or Contradicted Yourself?
• Imagine A World Where People Embody Intellectual Integrity
• Intellectual Perseverance
• Identify Blind Faith In Your Past
• Identify A Failure In Reasoning On Your Part
• When Have You Been Intellectually Autonomous? When Have You Lacked Intellectual Autonomy?
• Articulate The Interrelationships Between And Among Intellectual Virtues

Pursuing Truth: A Guide to Critical Thinking

Chapter 21 intellectual virtues.

Over the past twenty chapters, you have learned some basic tools that can make you a good critical thinker. At this point, you should know how to:

• Distinguish good arguments from bad arguments.
• Use the technical tools of logic to assess the relationships between premises and conclusions.
• Evaluate different sources of information.
• Identify fallacious reasoning.
• Use the tools of basic probability theory.
• Reason well about causation.
• Identify the ways human psychology and situations keep us from reasoning well.
• Make rational choices in groups and other social contexts.

The tools themselves, though, don’t make a person into a good critical thinker. I’m reminded of a person I knew who blamed his poor golf game on his old, cheap set of clubs. He finally bought a very expensive set of professional clubs, and his average score got worse , not better. The problem was not in the tools that he had — the problem was he didn’t know how to use them. Even knowing how to use the tools of critical is not enough, though. No amount of knowledge of logic, probability, or psychology will help if a person simply does not care. A good critical thinker is one who has the tools available, knows how to use them, and cares enough to use them well.

A good critical thinker is a certain kind of person, a person marked by the intellectual virtues. Being intellectually virtuous is not the same thing as being intelligent or being knowledgeable. A person may well be very intelligent and knowledgeable, but also be careless, arrogant, and closed-minded. So, what is a virtue, and more specifically, what are the intellectual virtues?

21.1 Virtue

A virtue is a state of character that makes one better in virtue of having it. Most of the time, when people discuss virtue, they are referring to moral virtue. Think of moral virtues as the qualities that morally good people have, like honesty, charity, courage, etc. There are also character states that make a person morally worse, like dishonesty, miserliness, and son. These are called vices.

Virtues have several aspects. First, they aim at something. In the case of the moral virtues, the aim is moral goodness. The person having the virtue is motivated to bring about that goal. Finally, the person who has the virtue can reliably succeeded at achieving the goal. For example, the courageous person is motivated to, or wants to, act courageously. Their actually succeeding in doing what courage requires can’t be merely accidental, however. That’s why the reliability requirement is necessary. The virtuous person can recognize situations where charity or courage is appropriate, requiring the ability to make true moral judgments about the situations in which they find themselves.

Aristotle pointed out centuries ago that one can think of virtues being on a mean. That is, courage is kind of like a midpoint between cowardice and rashness. The courageous person is not so overwhelmed with fear that he cannot act when he should, but also does not act rashly in circumstances where it would be foolish to do so.

21.2 Intellectual Virtue

Intellectual virtues are traits that aim at things like truth, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. The intellectually virtuous person desires these things, is motivated to achieve them, and has the qualities that enable her to do so reliably. Exercising each virtue will require certain skills, and the good judgment to know when exercising those skills is appropriate.

In Cultivating Good Minds , Jason Baehr identifies nine key intellectual virtues. ( Baehr 2015 ) He divides them into three useful categories:

• Virtues required to initially motivate learning.
• Virtues required to guide the learning.
• Virtues required to overcome obstacles to learning.

21.3 Motivating Learning

The first virtue is curiosity. People who are curious naturally want to gain knowledge, to learn new things, and to seek truth. The truly curious person wants more than simply to know that something is true, she wants to understand why it is true. People with the virtue of curiosity seeks more than just knowledge of trivia, they seek knowledge of issues and matters that are worthy of our attention.

The second virtue is intellectual autonomy. To be autonomous is to be independent, or self-governing. To be intellectually autonomous is to think for oneself. Intellectually autonomous people do not succumb to the bandwagon fallacy, that is, believing something merely because others believe it, nor do they change their minds simply because someone disagrees with them. The examine evidence for themselves, and decides whether the beliefs offered by others are well-supported or not.

The third virtue that motivates learning is intellectual humility. The humble person recognizes his own intellectual weaknesses and mistakes. Intellectually humble people are aware of what they don’t know, and the ways that their thinking needs improvement or is prone to error.

21.4 Guiding Learning

The first virtue that guides learning is attentiveness. The attentive person is present in the situation. This presence is not merely physical. We all have had times when we were physically present, but distracted or “checked out.” The attentive person actively and carefully listens — listens to understand, not just thinking about how to respond. Finally, the attentive person recognize the important details, and can differentiate those details from the trivial.

The next virtue is carefulness. The careful person avoids reasoning errors, and takes care to avoid falling prone to cognitive biases. In order to do this, of course, one must know that counts as a fallacy or cognitive bias.

The last virtue that guides learning is thoroughness. The thorough person is not satisfied with what is superficial; the thorough person wants to truly understand. Thoroughness demands something more than just a recounting of the facts. The thorough person desires an explanation of those facts, and an understanding of how the facts or connected.

21.5 Overcoming Obstacles

The first virtue that is needed to overcome obstacles to learning is open-mindedness. The closed-minded person is not willing to consider alternative viewpoints or beliefs. The open-minded person is willing to consider alternatives to his own beliefs, and is not afraid to have his own beliefs criticized. It’s important to recognize that one can be open-minded but still firm in his beliefs. If a belief is true, it should stand up the evidence.

Next is intellectual courage. The intellectually courageous person is willing to suffer a potential loss or harm in the pursuit of the truth. The intellectually courageous student is willing to answer questions in class, when others are too afraid of having the wrong answer. The intellectually courageous person is willing to stand up for her beliefs, even when they are unpopular.

Finally, there is intellectual tenacity. Unfortunately, learning is just hard. There are no magic formulas or secret tools that can make something like learning a second language easy. The intellectually tenacious person is wiling to stick to it. Intellectually tenacious people don’t just give up when they don’t understand something, or when a text is difficult to read. Intellectually tenacious people don’t give up with they fail, they rethink their approaches and try again.

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How to think effectively: Six stages of critical thinking

Credit: Elder / Paul

• Researchers propose six levels of critical thinkers: Unreflective thinkers, Challenged thinkers, Beginning thinkers, Practicing thinkers, Advanced thinkers, and Master thinkers.
• The framework comes from educational psychologists Linda Elder and Richard Paul.
• Teaching critical thinking skills is a crucial challenge in our times.

The coronavirus has not only decimated our populations, its spread has also attacked the very nature of truth and stoked inherent tensions between many different groups of people, both at local and international levels. Spawning widespread conspiracy theories and obfuscation by governments, the virus has also been a vivid demonstration of the need for teaching critical thinking skills necessary to survive in the 21st century. The stage theory of critical thinking development, devised by psychologists Linda Elder and Richard Paul , can help us gauge the sophistication of our current mental approaches and provides a roadmap to the thinking of others.

The researchers identified six predictable levels of critical thinkers, from ones lower in depth and effort to the advanced mind-masters, who are always steps ahead.

As the scientists write , moving up on this pyramid of thinking “is dependent upon a necessary level of commitment on the part of an individual to develop as a critical thinker.” Using your mind more effectively is not automatic and “is unlikely to take place “subconsciously.” In other words – you have to put in the work and keep doing it, or you’ll lose the faculty.

Here’s how the stages of intellectual development break down:

Unreflective thinker

These are people who don’t reflect about thinking and the effect it has on their lives. As such, they form opinions and make decisions based on prejudices and misconceptions while their thinking doesn’t improve.

Unreflective thinkers lack crucial skills that would allow them to parse their thought processes. They also do not apply standards like accuracy, relevance, precision, and logic in a consistent fashion.

How many such people are out there? You probably can guess based on social media comments. As Elder and Paul write , “it is perfectly possible for students to graduate from high school, or even college, and still be largely unreflective thinkers.”

Challenged thinker

This next level up thinker has awareness of the importance of thinking on their existence and knows that deficiencies in thinking can bring about major issues. As the psychologists explain, to solve a problem, you must first admit you have one.

People at this intellectual stage begin to understand that “high quality thinking requires deliberate reflective thinking about thinking”, and can acknowledge that their own mental processes might have many flaws. They might not be able to identify all the flaws, however.

A challenged thinker may have a sense that solid thinking involves navigating assumptions, inferences, and points of view, but only on an initial level. They may also be able to spot some instances of their own self-deception. The true difficulty for thinkers of this category is in not “believing that their thinking is better than it actually is, making it more difficult to recognize the problems inherent in poor thinking,” explain the researchers.

Thinkers at this level can go beyond the nascent intellectual humility and actively look to take control of their thinking across areas of their lives. They know that their own thinking can have blind spots and other problems and take steps to address those, but in a limited capacity.

Beginning thinker

Beginning thinkers place more value in reason, becoming self-aware in their thoughts. They may also be able to start looking at the concepts and biases underlying their ideas. Additionally, such thinkers develop higher internal standards of clarity, accuracy and logic, realizing that their ego plays a key role in their decisions.

Another big aspect that differentiates this stronger thinker – some ability to take criticism of their mental approach, even though they still have work to do and might lack clear enough solutions to the issues they spot.

Practicing thinker

This more experienced kind of thinker not only appreciates their own deficiencies, but has skills to deal with them. A thinker of this level will practice better thinking habits and will analyze their mental processes with regularity.

While they might be able to express their mind’s strengths and weaknesses, as a negative, practicing thinkers might still not have a systematic way of gaining insight into their thoughts and can fall prey to egocentric and self-deceptive reasoning.

How do you get to this stage? An important trait to gain, say the psychologists, is “intellectual perseverance.” This quality can provide “the impetus for developing a realistic plan for systematic practice (with a view to taking greater command of one’s thinking).”

“We must teach in such a way that students come to understand the power in knowing that whenever humans reason, they have no choice but to use certain predictable structures of thought: that thinking is inevitably driven by the questions, that we seek answers to questions for some purpose, that to answer questions, we need information, that to use information we must interpret it (i.e., by making inferences), and that our inferences, in turn, are based on assumptions, and have implications, all of which involves ideas or concepts within some point of view,” explain Elder and Paul.

One doesn’t typically get to this stage until college and beyond, estimate the scientists. This higher-level thinker would have strong habits that would allow them to analyze their thinking with insight about different areas of life. They would be fair-minded and able to spot the prejudicial aspects in the points of view of others and their own understanding.

While they’d have a good handle on the role of their ego in the idea flow, such thinkers might still not be able to grasp all the influences that affect their mentality.

Advanced thinker

The advanced thinker is at ease with self-critique and does so systematically, looking to improve. Among key traits required for this level are “intellectual insight” to develop new thought habits, “ intellectual integrity” to “recognize areas of inconsistency and contradiction in one’s life,” intellectual empathy ” to put oneself in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them, and the “ intellectual courage” to confront ideas and beliefs they don’t necessarily believe in and have negative emotions towards.

Master thinker

This is the super-thinker, the one who is totally in control of how they process information and make decisions. Such people constantly seek to improve their thought skills, and through experience “regularly raise their thinking to the level of conscious realization.”

A master thinker achieves great insights into deep mental levels, strongly committed to being fair and gaining control over their own egocentrism.

Such a high-level thinker also exhibits superior practical knowledge and insight, always re-examining their assumptions for weaknesses, logic, and biases.

And, of course, a master thinker wouldn’t get upset with being intellectually confronted and spends a considerable amount of time analyzing their own responses.

“Why is this so important? Precisely because the human mind, left to its own, pursues that which is immediately easy, that which is comfortable, and that which serves its selfish interests. At the same time, it naturally resists that which is difficult to understand, that which involves complexity, that which requires entering the thinking and predicaments of others,” write the researchers.

So how do you become a master thinker? The psychologists think most students will never get there. But a lifetime of practicing the best intellectual traits can get you to that point when “people of good sense seek out master thinkers, for they recognize and value the ability of master thinkers to think through complex issues with judgment and insight.”

The significance of critical thinking in our daily lives, especially in these confusing times, so rife with quick and often-misleading information, cannot be overstated. The decisions we make today can truly be life and death.