Critical Thinking

Criticism is to define borders. When breaking something down until it is simple, it is important that that part bears the characteristics of the whole. If we can break it down to the smallest part that shows itself, we can analyze how these parts are put together. We can take it apart again into its building blocks and put it back together again as we wish, in our own paradigm, from our own point of view. So every time we use the expression criticize, consciously or unconsciously, it is to take apart the structures as much as possible and recreate them in our own presence.

When we say critical thinking, we mean scientific thinking. If we expand it a little more, we mean philosophical thinking. To summarize; if something comes to us critically, it is not dogmatic for us, otherwise it is dogmatic. If we accept it as it is (everyday use is part of this), it somehow becomes dogma. It is now dogmatic for us, even if it is not dogmatic itself. For example, this is why Socrates was against writing. Because philosophy is a process of creation. If it is written down, it becomes dogmatic for the next generation. Scholastic thought, which takes Aristotle as dogmatic, is an example of this. In dogmatics, there was no prosecution, no investigation, no criticism.

The prosecution by the prosecutor is a critical thinking. The work of dividing a painting into squares and transferring it to our own canvas, square by square, and dividing it into those squares is critical thinking. We can say that it is modeling something by reducing it to scale.

 In order to think critically, a non-emotional connection must first be established, and then it must be decided whether the simplification is logical or factual. In the same way, when putting the pieces together, we have to decide from the beginning whether to put them together logically or factually. The method of putting the pieces together is still a problem of critical thinking. Therefore, the first point we will attempt will be squaring, breaking into pieces and putting them back together again.

Aristotle says in his metaphysics that if you catch the simple, you will not make mistakes. That's why the unified is difficult. Socrates is the man we will put at the top of critical thinking or the one who laid the foundation. Because documentation and argumentation came with Socrates. In Socrates, whom we know through Plato's dialogues, whatever the subject or issue was, the method was always the same. A man talked about love and asked what love is. He said let's simplify it as much as possible and justify it. Life without justification is not worth living. Justifying everything, that's what we call an argument. Justifying something with good reasons. Socrates says that without this, there is only dogmatic thinking.

 Before Socrates, Democritus, Heraclitus and Parmenides were also pioneers of critical thinking. Plato even calls Parmenides “our father” and says that we must kill our father or we cannot philosophize. Parmenides is of the motto “everything exists, is one and unchanging, change is not possible” and its exact opposite, Heraclitus is of the motto “everything changes”. These guys must not think so simply. Because everything changes is really a simple mode. We already see that everything changes, you don't need to be Heraclitus to say that. In order to recognize change, at least either the subject or the object must be constant. Since you can say that it is the same river, there must be someone who observes it, that is, there must be a constant. If I don't remain the same at that moment and moments (T0, T1 and T2), I cannot know that it is the same river. So at least there has to be a sameness in me. Then either I am not changing or the concept is not changing. At least something is not changing so that we can be aware that everything is changing. In fact, everything changes, paradoxically, some things do not change, others change in comparison to them, and when we refer to these, it means that others change. We don't know in detail what Heraclitus said here, but what is very famous today is “the only thing that does not change is change itself.”Parmenides makes this clear by saying that existence is one and being as a predicate does not change. Plato, on the other hand, thinks that Parmenides founded philosophy. Because; in Plato's famous question, he asks the question “what is the same law as change?”. So this is the main question, both from Parmenides and Heraclitus, there must be change and there must be the sameness. So what is the same as change? Timaeus' famous question; what is it that exists in change but is invisible, what is it that appears but does not exist. This is the great motto of the debate between Timaeus and Socrates. Although Plato includes both of them (Parmenides + Heraclitus) and calls Parmenides his father, he starts critical thought with Socrates. So why does he put Socrates at the beginning of critical thought? Because Parmenides tells us something, that is, he gives a clear conclusion. He says nothing changes, change is illusion. Parmenides, how did you come to this conclusion? You don't give us that. You have determined your conclusion, and if we object to it, we don't know where and how to object. That is why Socrates is the founder of logic for the first time. Another reason why Plato killed Parmanides is that Parmanides did not specify how he came to this conclusion for deconstruction.

 Thereupon Plato creates a field of being (on), a field of non-being (ukon) and a field of being other than being (meon). One became two, the third had to come, and the logic began. Plato was the first to mention this multiple argumentation. Because in togetherness (unity) there is no logic. There is nothing to talk about except what is. Plato said that without critical thinking, we cannot analyze a result, an entity. We either accept it wholesale or reject it wholesale, both of which are dogmatic. Aristotle wrote the rules for this in 20 years. Our daily life flows with Aristotle's logic, Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics. Aristotle laid out this argumentation in the Organon.

Aristotales does a good job and comes from the letter to the word, from the word to the sentence. He finds meaning in the word for the first time. For him, the atom is the word. It is a square in the quadrature technique. Aristotle calls this primary meaning. In Greek, we don't have what we call “concept”, we have the word. Because what we call meaning in real life emerges in sentences (semantics). Aristotle then starts to think about the Greek language and realizes that when the subject and the verb do not come together, the meaning we are looking for does not come out. Aristotle moves from language to logic. A meaningful sentence can only be formed when the subject-predicate relationship comes together. This is the first systematic structure we know in critical thought. Although the Socrates-Plato duo did this, it was Aristotle who wrote it. When we say that we move from here to there and from there to here, we use Aristotelian logic. Critical thought takes its ground from this Aristotelian logic. So what is the subject predicate relation? In an argumentation, when we are going to justify something, when we are going to object to it, or when we are going to approve it, how do we establish the subject predicate relation? How does meaning happen. I wonder whether language gives birth to thought or thought gives birth to language. In the ancient world, thought gives birth to language. But for the last 150 years (analyticians) language gives birth to thought. It's not that chickens don't talk because they can't think, but that they can't think because they can't talk.

When we come to Kant, the modern world as a whole, the philosophy of history, what we call scientificity, everything factual, logical and this modern world was completely reshaped after Kant. When we talk about critical thinking, Kant is the second great pinnacle. Because his work is already called critical thinking. Critique of pure reason. Critical has the meaning of line-length border. He drops the bomb in the first book. The first critique is really the most voluminous of the three books, where he says the main things. The third critique is where he wants to arrive. He says, “I shattered knowledge for the sake of a faith.” Kant's faith is freedom. He states that he wrote three volumes of criticism just to be able to say that man is free. Spinoza had the world of necessity, Kant saw this necessity. Newtonian mechanics came soon after. It reinforced Spinoza. Newton said that everything (push and pull) is within certain laws. Kant is an admirer of Newton in everything. In Spinoza's philosophy, man is not free in the Kantian sense. In Spinoza, freedom is not knowing distant factors. In a way, when a stone falls, if it had a mind, it would freely say, “I'm going to the ground. Newtonian mechanics came to reinforce this and Kant was in this Spinoza Newtonian world. In this context, today's world is Spinozaian. There are chemicals, sub-atomic particles, everything works with them somehow.

Kant, no matter what, there must be something transcendent, above this technological knowledge or this knowledge of necessity that will make human beings human. He says, “I want this to happen, I feel it in me”. But he cannot prove or justify it. That's why he says he limited knowledge for the sake of a belief. In other words, he says he is trying to divide it. This belief is the belief that man is free. Until Kant, all philosophy was dealing with what exists and what does not exist. Ontology was based on “on ‘, that is, ’there is ”. How do we know that being, that is, on is existence itself. All our episteme knowledge is based on this "there is". For example, what is a lie? What is falsehood? It is when what actually exists and my knowledge of it match or not. For example, it is a statement of Aristotle; to describe what exists differently from what exists is a lie and a mistake. What is truth is to describe what exists as it exists. Plato identifies these. Kant never addressed the question of what is and what is not. He addressed the question of what I can know. The first criterion is what can I state, the second criterion is what can I do, the third criterion is what can I hope for. And everything is for “what can I be”. In other words, he begins to draw the boundary with a trilogy of what I can know and what I can do so that I can hope for what I can be. Whether we realize it or not, knowingly or unknowingly, we are on the path of this Kantian critical thinking.

Kant said that what Aristotle said is completely true, but it does not give me the possibility of the object, I will add something more. Aristotle wrote the canon (the minimum conditions for knowing something, namos, nous) and Kant said I will write the true version of Organon. The rule of thinking is three, in fact it is one, non-contradiction. When we think of this non-contradiction, we come to identity and the impossibility of the third state, so it becomes three. According to Aristotle, when the smallest meaningful sentence comes out of your mouth, it has to follow this rule. At the philosophical level, the meaningful sentence passes from there to the proposition. Here, what is a proposition? Not every sentence is a proposition, but every proposition is a sentence. He's trying to get the “is” in there. This table; This is table . How can this "is" to be said? Is this "is" true? Does my knowledge and that which exists outside of me fully materialize? Is there full agreement, so that we can call it accrual, so that we can say that the right has been fulfilled. Truth was to know what exists as it exists. So there is what exists and there is my knowing. If these are known with complete certainty (which was Spinoza's aim), then truth emerges.

Kant begins the transcendental deduction with this; Aristotle gave us the minimum rules of thought, but this does not give us knowledge. Aristotle's Organon gives the minimum conditions of knowledge. But I will give you the elements that provide knowledge. Here Kant begins to elaborate at length and with first-class care my way of approaching and the possibility of approaching before the being itself. He gets remarkable results. For example, we cannot go from conditional to unconditional. All our knowledge is conditional. Human beings do not know unconditional knowledge. We can know things that are conditioned by two transcendental elements, time and space. We cannot transcend time and space in anything we know. He produces such a workmanship of thought, I explain the mechanism of thought in such a way that according to this you cannot go from the known to the unknown, you cannot go from the conditional to the unconditional. In the world where you see the parts, there is no such thing as the whole. The whole is an idea, God is an idea, being Universal is an idea. Therefore, it lays down the conditions of our knowing.

 In all philosophers, we have no categorical propositions. We don't have any propositions that we recognize something, that are certain, that would be basic premises. What does this mean; for example, snow is white (Russell). “We look at it, “there is a condition” that if it is white, then the proposition Snow is white is true. We cannot categorically say that Snow is White. Again, we cannot say that all Swans are white, which is its example. Then we have no knowledge of the main thing that will pull that “is” out of time and space, under what condition, how, by what right we put our foot there. Later on, we will elaborate on the philosophy of logic and mathematics.

For example, the science of statistics takes human behavior in social sciences and gives results. It acts as a transformer and quantifies qualitative elements. But can this be done and how much can it be done? How will we transform our factual observations into data with a transformer. Statistical Institutions give us statistics about everything and from there we make mathematical modeling. We do mathematical modeling of the laws of physics.

For example, David Hume talks about morality based on experience, facts, events. He does not engage in any logical argumentation. Because according to him, there is no logical construct in morality. There is no logical necessity. For example, he asks us; imagine a person like this, what would he do if he were like this? Imagine such and such a person, what would he do if he were like this?” he takes us to particular cases. For example, what will David Hum say when we say, “No, I don't do as you say”? The nature of objecting to Hume's narrative is not the same as the nature of objecting to Aristotle's narrative or Spinoza's narrative. One brings logical imperatives and the other brings factual habits. Objecting to factual habits is not the same as objecting to logical difficulties and necessities. It was Kant who tried to untie these knots and asked “how do I know what and how do I know it?”.

After Kant, the word truth fell out of science. It became a literature of such-and-such among what we can only know. This is exactly how the academy is now. We cannot know with things in themselves. Being is not a predicate. As Leibniz stated, we are in the world of phenomena. After this point, there is no more truth. What we can know is among phenomena. We covet the behavior of phenomena. If we can put a mathematical model to those behaviors, if that model can explain the phenomenon, then the matter is closed for us. Today, physics is the correspondence between the model and the phenomenon. Now we cannot call knowing knowing. We cannot define knowing. There is no knowing. If we fit our model to the phenomenon, and if our model explains the phenomenon every time, the subject is closed. The one that gives the best explanation becomes scientific. And we declare this truth as fact. The important thing for the scientist is the least error. But you cannot explain this to Aristotle or Plato. They would say that if something exists, it exists and I can know it, and if I, as an intelligent being, cannot know it, who can? After Kant, it is enough for the model to explain the phenomenon. What we call critical thought today is the relationship between these phenomena in this model. If you can justify this relationship, it is science if it can be challenged. When we put the model, you should be able to show the contrary with evidence. When you play with a parameter, the model must collapse or the model must not hold the phenomenon. It must fail every time. The more the model is falsifiable, objectionable and we can make something out of it, it is scientific. When it is not falsifiable, it is dogmatic.

So now we are humble and there is no more truth. There doesn't seem to be anything justifiable about the Truth anymore. The way the world asks the question has changed. “What is there and what is not there” has gone to ‘Can I even know, it i can, how can I know’. Whereas before, the question of what went from what to how, after Kant, how was prioritized and the question of whatness emerged. Truth left the stage and was replaced by facts.

Critical thinking is thinking that separates things from each other, and the more it separates, the more successful it is. After all, what can I know and how do I know that "is" is there?

What is a critical thinking argument and what is the difference between a deductive and an ampliative argument?

Critical thinking is making sure that what we believe is based on sound reasons.

You are talking to your friends about who is coming to your birthday party. He tells you very confidently that Adam is not coming to the party. You are not sure whether to believe your friend. So you ask, “Why do you think that?” He can give you many reasons. Let's make an example about 3 of the answers he/she can give. The first answer is “I am annoyed with Adem and I want to have a good time at the party” the second is “Adem is very shy and doesn't go to parties much” the third is “Adem is already in Holland and it is impossible for him to come here until the afternoon”

The first answer gives us no good reason to believe that Adam will not come to the party. But the second reason is a good reason to believe that Adam will not come to the party. If Adem is shy and rarely goes to parties, it is likely that he will not come to the party. The third reason is a good reason, if he is in the Netherlands and it is impossible for him to get from there to here until the afternoon, he is guaranteed not to come to the party.

So we need to know that there are good and bad reasons to make a judgment. A valid excuse is an invalid excuse. But they are excuses. Critical thinking is making sure that what we believe is based on good reasons. So one of the key skills you learn when you study critical thinking is to distinguish between good and bad reasons before you believe something. We use the word good here in the sense of valid. The fact that an idea has a good reason, that it is based on a good reason, is more closely related to the concept of reality. The fact that a thought has a good reason means that it is Probable. Therefore, the thought becomes realistic. The fact that a thought is based on good reasons makes it certain. It matters because we want our thoughts to be true because we are rational beings. Rational People want to have right thoughts, not wrong thoughts. And the best way to be rational in this way is to frame our thoughts in terms of good reasons and only good reasons.

An argument is a set of statements that together form a reason for another statement. For example, your friend presents you with two statements. Adam is very shy and Adam doesn't go to parties much. Together they give a reason to think that Adam will not come to the party. We call the statements that make up the reason the premises of the argument. Adam is too shy is the primary premise. Adam doesn't go to parties much is the second premise. The statement that these premises give us reason to believe is called the conclusion of the argument. A good argument is an argument in which the premises give a good reason for the conclusion. So the premises make the conclusion true. In this case we can say that the argument supports the conclusion. Good arguments support the conclusion and bad arguments do not. The key to critical thinking is to learn to judge arguments not by whether they are good or bad, but by whether the premises support the conclusion

 Example first argument: I am annoyed with him and I want to have a good time at the party. Result: Adam will not come to the party. These premises make the conclusion unrealistic. Being annoyed with him and wanting to have a good time does not strengthen the idea that Adam will not be at the party.

Example: Adem is already in the Netherlands and it is impossible for him to get here until the afternoon. So again, Adam will not come to the party. If the premises are true, the conclusion is guaranteed to be true.

Even if the first argument seems bad, it can be turned into a good argument by adding another premise. For example, if your friend is the one who decides who will be invited to the party, then the fact that he is annoyed with Adam and wants to have a good time at the party is a good reason to think that Adam will not be at the party. We can call this an implicit premise.

In the argument that Adam is now in Holland and cannot come to the party on time, if Adam is in Holland and will not come here on time from there, then the fact that Adam will not come to the party must be true. These Vanguards guarantee the result. This kind of argument where the Precursors guarantee the truth of the conclusion is what we call a deductive argument. In a deductive argument, the conclusion drawn by the precursors has to be true.

In the Adam is shy and doesn't go to parties argument, even if the premises are true, the conclusion can still be false. Even if Adam is really shy and doesn't want to go to parties, he can still overcome his shyness and suspend his behavior of rarely attending parties. Unlikely, but still possible. The truth of the premises of this argument does not make the truth of the conclusion certain. The truth of the premises makes the conclusion probable but not certain. If the argument is supposed to be deductive, but when the argument is considered in detail, if its premises do not make the conclusion certain, that is, if the conclusion is likely to be false even if the premises are true, then it is a bad argument. But in the case of an ampliative argument, when one realizes that the truth of the premises does not make the truth of the conclusion certain, this simply means realizing that the argument is an ampliative argument.

If you object to the argument “Adam doesn't go to parties much, he is shy” by saying that the conclusion might be wrong, you are missing the point. In an ampliative argument it is taken for granted that this conclusion is not guaranteed by the Precursors. So this is inherent in the nature of the ampliative argument, which literally means complementary. It's just a complement to existing ideas. The complementary argument only gives us reasons to think that the conclusion is possible.

So knowing the type of argument is a prerequisite for knowing the methods and tools to use to decide whether it is a good argument or not. There are different tools to use to evaluate ampliative and deductive arguments.

Critical thinking means making sure that our beliefs are based on good reasons. A good reason is a reason that makes that belief probable or true. An argument consists of a set of propositions, which we call premises. These premises come together to form a reason for another statement, which we call the conclusion of the argument. In a good argument, the premises support the conclusion. That is, the Premises give you a good reason to believe the conclusion. Because they make the conclusion possible. A deductive argument is one in which the conclusion is made certain by the premises. If the Premises are true, then the Conclusion must be true. An ampliative or complementary argument is an argument in which the premises do not make the conclusion certain. But they make the conclusion possible. So they still give you a good reason to believe the conclusion.