Logic And Critical Thinking

Lesson 5: Barriers To Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is essential to using your overall experience, background, common sense, and
other attributes to become more aware of how your efforts for success are being spent. When you
have barriers to the critical thinking process, it can seriously harm your ability to move forward.
There are a number of factors that hinder a critical thinking. Some of them are: lack of background
information, poor reading skills, bias, prejudice, superstition, egocentrism (self-centered thinking),
sociocentrism (group-centered thinking), peer pressure, conformism, provincialism (narrow,
unsophisticated thinking), narrow-mindedness, closed-mindedness, relativistic thinking,
stereotyping, scapegoating, rationalization, etc. Among them, some powerful barriers are discussed
below.

1) Egocentrism
Egocentrism is the tendency to see reality as centered on oneself. Such a barrier is making the
person think about himself and leads to the inability to not to sympathize with others to understand
their issues and problems. Even highly educated and intelligent people are prey to egocentrism.
Almost no one is immune to self-interested thinking. For example, Most factory workers support
laws requiring advance notice of plant closings; most factory owners do not. Of course, some of
these beliefs may be supported by good reasons.
From a psychological standpoint, however, it is likely that self-interest plays at least some role in
shaping the respective attitudes and beliefs. All of us are affected to some degree by egocentric
biases. And one’s ego can be one of the most significant barriers to critical thinking. Egocentrism
can be manifested in self-interested thinking( like saying this benefits me and only me) and its the
assumption that “what is most important is what I want and need.” the other is superiority bias(also
known as illusory superiority or the better-than average effect) to see oneself as better in some
respect than one actually is.

2) Sociocentrism: Sociocentrism is group-centered thinking. It can hinder rational thinking by

focusing excessively on the group. It can distort critical thinking in many ways like group bias and
conformism. Group bias is the tendency to see one’s own group (nation, tribe, sect, peer group, and
the like) as being inherently better than others while conformism refers to our tendency to follow
the crowd - that is, to conform (often unthinkingly) to authority or to group standards of conduct
and belief. Most people absorb group bias unconsciously, usually from early childhood.

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Although most people outgrow nationalistic biases to some extent, few of us manage to outgrow
them completely. Clearly, this kind of “mine-is-better” thinking lies at the root of a great deal of
human conflict, intolerance, and oppression. Authority moves us. We are impressed, influenced, and
intimidated by authority, so much so that, under the right conditions, we abandon our own values,
beliefs, and judgments, even doubt our own immediate experience.

3) Unwarranted Assumptions And Stereotypes

The third factor that impedes critical thinking is unwarranted assumptions and stereotype.

 Unwarranted Assumptions: taking something for granted without “good reason” such
assumptions prevent us from seeing things clearly. You go to class at the scheduled time because
you assume that class is being held at its normal hour and in its same place. You don’t call the
professor each day to ask if class is being held; you just assume that it is. Such assumptions are
warranted, which means that we have good reason to hold them. When you see a driver coming
toward you with the turn signal on, you have good reason to believe that the driver intends to
turn. You may be incorrect, and it might be safer to withhold action until you are certain, but
your assumption is not unreasonable.

 Stereotypes: the word stereotype comes from the printing press era, when plates, or stereotypes,
were used to produce identical copies of one page. We assume that individual people have all
been stamped from one plate, so all politicians are alike, members of ethnic groups, professors,
women, teachers, and so forth. Stereotypes are basically fixed mental pictures in one’s head. it's
over generalized ideas & mostly contain false elements. For example, All Chinese are alike.
Stereotypical conceptions will often be false or misleading.

Typically, stereotypes are arrived at through a process known as hasty generalization, in which one
draws a conclusion about a large class of things(in this case, people) from a small sample. If we
meet one south African who talk a lot, we might jump to the conclusion that all south Africans talk a
lot. If we are conscious of our tendency to stereotype, we can take measures to end it.

4) relativistic thinking

Relativism is the view that truth is a matter of opinion. Its strongest challenges to critical thinking.
Two popular forms of relativism are:

 Subjectivism: is the view that truth is a matter of individual opinion. Whatever an individual
believes is true, is true for that person. For example, suppose Adella believes that abortion is
wrong and Obang believes that abortion is not always wrong. According to subjectivism,
abortion is always wrong for Adella and not always wrong for Obang. Both beliefs are true – for
them.

 Cultural Relativism: this is the view that truth is a matter of social or cultural opinion. In
other words, cultural relativism is the view that what is true for person A is what person A’s
culture or society believes is true. Drinking wine, for example, is widely considered to be wrong

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in Iran but is not generally considered to be wrong in France. According to cultural relativism,
therefore, drinking wine is immoral in Iran but is morally permissible in France. Thus, for the
cultural relativist, just as for the subjectivist, there is no objective or absolute standard of truth.
Relatively few people endorse subjectivism or cultural relativism in the pure, unqualified forms
in which we have stated them. Almost everybody would admit, for example, that 1 + 1 = 2 is
true, no matter who might be ignorant or deluded enough to deny it. What is true is whatever
most people in a society or culture believe to be true. What relativists usually claim is not that
all truth is relative, but that truth is relative in some important domain(s).

Most common form of relativism is moral relativism. Moral relativism comes in two major forms:

 Moral subjectivism: which is the view that what is morally right and good for an
individual, A, is whatever A believes is morally right and good. Thus, if G/meskel believes that
premarital sex is always wrong, and Eden believes that it is not always wrong; according to moral
subjectivism, premarital sex is always wrong for G/meskel and is not always wrong for Eden.

 Cultural moral relativism: view that what is morally right and good for an individual, A, is
whatever A’s society or culture believes is morally right and good. If culture a believes that
polygamy is wrong, and culture B believes that polygamy is right, then polygamy is wrong for
culture a and right for culture B.

Cultural moral relativism is a very popular view. There are two major reasons people seem to find it
so attractive.

One has to do with the nature of moral disagreement. Cultural moral relativism seems to
imply that we must be tolerant of other cultures’ moral beliefs and values. If culture A
believes that polygamy is wrong, and culture B believes that it is right, then culture a must
agree that polygamy is right for culture B, no matter how offensive the practice may be to
culture A.

Another reason people find cultural moral relativism attractive is that it seems to support the
value of tolerance. Throughout history, terrible wars, persecutions, and acts of religious and
cultural imperialism have been perpetrated by people who firmly believed in the absolute
righteousness of their moral beliefs and practices. Cultural moral relativism seems to imply
that we must be tolerant of other cultures’ moral beliefs and values.

There are deep problems with cultural moral relativism.

 First, does the fact that there is deep disagreement in ethics show that there is no objective
moral truth. People disagree vehemently over whether god exists, whether there is an afterlife,
and so forth; yet we do not conclude from this that there is no objective truth about these
matters. It may be difficult to know whether god exists. But whether he exists is not simply a
matter of opinion. Thus, deep disagreement about an issue does not show that there is no
objective truth about that issue.

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 Second, cultural moral relativism does not necessarily support the value of tolerance.
Relativism tells us that we should accept the customs and values of our society. Thus, if you live
in an intolerant society, relativism implies that you too should be intolerant. The fact that people
disagree so much about ethics does not show that moral truth is simply a matter of opinion, but
it should make us cautious and open-minded regarding our own ethical beliefs.

Relativism can teach us an important lesson about the value of intellectual humility. But we do not
need relativism - which is a false and confused theory - to teach us this lesson. We can learn it just
by opening our hearts and minds and thinking critically about the challenges of living an ethical
life.

5) Wishful Thinking: is state of believing something not because you had good evidence for it but
simply because you wished it were true. Throughout human history, reason has done battle with
wishful thinking and has usually come out the loser. People fear the unknown and invent
comforting myths to render the universe less hostile and more predictable. They fear death and
listen credulously to stories of healing crystals, quack cures, and communication with the dead.
They fantasize about possessing extraordinary personal powers and accept uncritically accounts of
psychic prediction and levitation.

Wishful thinking is believing what you want to be true no matter the evidence or without evidence
at all, or assuming something is not true, because you do not want it to be so. Examples: Angels do
exist. It makes me feel better to think they are with me, so I'm justified in saying they are.

Referance

1.logic and critical thinking(phil1011)

2. www.lifeincharge.com/5-barriers-to-critical-thinking

3. www.criticalthinking.org

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