Unit 2 Critical Thinking 批判性思维 思辨 Keynote Address — July 23, 2007 By Richard Paul, Director of Research and Professional Development at the Center for Critical Thinking, Chair of the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking The 27th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking — July 23— 26, 2007 Berkeley, CA In college education and in daily life, critical thinking is of vital importance. Richard Paul, in the following section, gives an enlightening discussion of the issue. What is critical thinking? There are many ways to define it. It is a system for opening every existing system. It opens up business, chemistry, and sports like tennis and basketball. It opens up professional practice. It opens up ethnics and enables us to see through ideology. It enables us to put things into intellectual perspective 它让我们以知识的眼光看待事物. A system that opens up systems is one way to think of critical thinking.开发各种系统的系统，这是看待批判性思维的一种方式。 Here is the first definition of critical thinking. Or, critical thinking is thinking that analyzes thought 分析思想, that assesses thought 评估思想, and that transforms thought for the better 升华思想的思维. Here is the second definition of critical thinking. There’s a third way to talk about critical thinking overlapping and related to the other two. It’s thinking about thinking while thinking in order to think better. Here is the third definition of critical thinking. Everyone thinks. We have no choice about that. But, not everybody thinks about their thinking. And not everyone who thinks about their thinking thinks about it well. You can worry about your thinking. You can think badly of your thinking. You can be embarra...
