Overview
- Let’s start by defining our terms: “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication as a guide to belief and action…” (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2013, para. 3)
Critical thinking is most certainly NOT:
- Acquiring knowledge without evaluating it
- Evaluating information without investigating it
- Being argumentative or critical of others
-------------------------------------------------------------
Ethical Relativism and the Meaning of Life
With regard to relativism, I wanted to share something with you all. I teach full time at a community college in Dallas, Texas. Many of my students are just out of high school and tend to embrace the relativistic view that morality is a matter of personal opinion rather than universal truth. But I'm wondering, if relativism is the correct way of seeing things, and therefore if "truth" regarding matters of life's ultimate purpose (which necessarily encompasses the good and the just) are merely personal and subjective ("I have my own 'truth' and you have yours;" "Since moral truth is personal and subjective, don't judge me or tell me how to live my life"), then wouldn't we have to respect, or at least tolerate, everyone else's personal "truth," especially whenever it may differ from our own? This certainly sounds like a good recipe for establishing respect and tolerance of cultural, ethical, and life-style differences, all of which appear to be good things on the surface. But if we embrace this view (i.e., moral and cultural relativism), then can we still legitimately condemn as evil such things as National Socialism, or the atrocities committed in the name of Islam by ISIS----both of which groups are grounded in a particular vision of the "truth" which, although not shared by you or me, is nevertheless someone's "truth"? Wouldn't our opposition to such groups be based on nothing more than our own "opinion," which is no "truer" than anyone else's, since everyone is entitled to his or her own truth?