Critical Thinking Is an Important and Valuable

Critical Thinking is an important and valuable skill. The perception process in critical thinking allows information to be sorted, organized, interpreted and evaluated. Creation of importances in this process is crucial, as it allows information to be ranked according to its logical strength and importance.

Intuitively, almost everyone has a basic understanding of critical thinking. It is articulate reasoned thought, based on reason and insight, as opposed to emotion and a lack of logic. Facione (1998) notes that at one level we can think of critical thinking as "good thinking, almost the opposite of illogical, irrational, thinking" (p. 1).

The perception process of critical thinking is crucial. Facione (1998) notes that perception is an important component of beginning to evaluate the credibility of information. In the perception process, an individual selects what information to pay attention to, organizes the information, and interprets and evaluates this information.

The creation of importances is a critical component of the perception processing in critical thinking. Here, interpretation of information in order to discern its meaning or significance is an essential start. Once meaning, significance, and categorization has been determined, information can be "sorted" in terms of relative importance. This involved analyzing information, and evaluating factors such as its logical strength and credibility. Thus, a good critical thinker will be able to infer reasonable conclusions from information, and create a ranking of importance of the given information.