An approach to critical thinking

Via Arts and Letters Daily, an article describing philosophical heuristics we all can use to improve our own critical thinking. Heuristics are techniques to help you solve problems or make decisions. You know them as rules of thumb, educated guesses, or estimates (among other terms).

Some heuristics suggested:

• When listening to arguments, mentally add “…as opposed to…” to identify a counterpoint.
• Examine extreme claims (“everyone knows…”) by looking for extreme counterexamples. For example, does the claim hold when applied to the very first instance? “Everyone knows the universe started with the Big Bang.” What started the Big Bang?
• Identify the truth dependencies of an argument. What true statement does the argument depend on? What truth does that true statement depend on? And so forth.
• Take an argument to its extreme to see how far you can take it.