Critical Thinking and Decision Making

“I think, therefore I am.” – Rene Descartes. “Give no decision ‘til both sides thou'st heard.” – Phocylides (The Quotation Page) Critical thinking and decision making: what are they? Are they related? Do they have any relevance to our daily lives? Critical thinking and decision making are, in fact, closely intertwined, and can have profound effects upon both our professional and personal lives.
Critical thinking is a process that involves examining an idea or premise to determine several different criteria:
“What are the issues and the conclusions? What are the reasons? What words or phrases are ambiguous? What are the value conflicts and assumptions? What are the descriptive assumptions? Are there any fallacies in the reasoning? How good is the evidence? Are there rival causes? Are the statistics deceptive? What significant information is omitted? What reasonable conclusions are possible?” (Browne, 40)
These questions all have the same end point as a focus...