Habits or Traits of Mind
The habits of mind that characterize a person strongly disposed toward critical thinking include a desire to follow reason and evidence wherever they may lead, a systematic approach to problem solving, inquisitiveness, even-handedness, and confidence in reasoning.
When individuals possess intellectual skills alone, without the intellectual traits of mind, weak sense critical thinking results. Fair-minded or strong sense critical thinking requires intellectual humility, empathy, integrity, perseverance, courage, autonomy, confidence in reason, and other intellectual traits. Thus, critical thinking without essential intellectual traits often results in clever, but manipulative and often unethical or subjective thought.
Read more about this topic: Critical Thinking
Famous quotes containing the words habits, traits and/or mind:
“Tell my son how anxious I am that he may read and learn his Book, that he may become the possessor of those things that a grateful country has bestowed upon his papa—Tell him that his happiness through life depends upon his procuring an education now; and with it, to imbibe proper moral habits that can entitle him to the possession of them.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men’s attitude toward women and women’s passive acceptance of this attitude.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The mind of the people is like mud,
From which arise strange and beautiful things.”
—W.J. (Walter James)