CRITICAL THINKING IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL IN THIS COURSE!!

Critical thinking is the disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication. The ability to think critically is an essential attribute of responsible citizenship, too, since it is necessary for intelligent participation in democratic society, not just in social scientific pursuits.

What is Critical Thinking? Some useful criteria:

1.  Question anything that is argued to you as – or which you wish to argue as – “obvious” or “natural,” or “unquestionable” or “taken-for-granted.”

2.  Merely dismissing or rejecting research without having your own good reasons is not good political science. In your discussion and arguments, makes your points and/or ask questions that stimulate thought and reflection! Avoid statements questioning the integrity or reliability of those with whom you argue. Challenge their ideas, their evidence and their arguments. Everyone’s conclusions need good evidence as well as good theory.

3.  Know what you are talking about, as much as possible. This is why it is called research. Your primary responsibility as a student of political science is to know [search again] what has already been investigated and published about your particular topic. Speaking in ignorance or simply from your own emotional commitments is not political science.

4.  Never forget that you are not writing on a blank slate. Find existing evidence, theory and philosophy that support you.

5.  Check out the sources of information you use in support of any political science argument. In the age of the Internet, this is extremely difficult. Many sources of political information are themselves players in politics. Thus, their information cannot be presumed to be neutral. It must be tested against more reliable sources.

6.  Understand and accept also that no conclusion is, in itself, completely conclusive. There is always room for questioning and doubt. New issues and questions arise. Scholarship is a conversation. Always be open, but critical – that is, seek the underlying (and often unarticulated) assumptions of the research you encounter, as well as the research you create. It will always be there. Disagreeing with such assumptions is almost always a good reason to question research findings. But understand, too, that we all have your assumptions. Hence, everyone’s work is always subject to the scholarly criticism of others.

7.  Think about the implications for a particular conclusion or argument, including your own.

8.  Include relevant information and discard irrelevant information, but be clear on your criteria of “relevance” and be willing to reconsider it in light of good critical commentary.

9.  Be consistent in your own thoughts, concepts and arguments. Avoiding logical contradictions.

10. Be clear about your research findings – i.e., be precise, definite, specific, concrete, distinct and exact; and, by the same token avoid being vague, obscure, nebulous, blurred, confused, intangible, indefinite, imprecise, fuzzy, foggy, or indeterminate.