Critical thinking is more or less playing Devil’s advocate. Or should I say playing Devil’s advocate plays a key role to critical thinking.
Critical Thinking- “the process of thinking carefully about a subject or idea, without allowing feelings or opinions to affect you”
Devil’s Advocate- “someone who pretends, in an argument or discussion, to be against an idea or plan that a lot of people support, in order to make people discuss and consider it in more detail”
Playing Devil’s advocate is arguing both sides of the spectrum. With that, you are constantly looking into opposing viewpoints and challenging those prevailing ideas to thoroughly breakdown arguments and come to ultimate conclusions.
Teachers will often play Devil’s advocate to help provoke discussion with others. Maybe you find yourself playing Devil’s advocate at times as well. Have you had a stance on something and heard someone else defend that stance, but do so in a way that you started defending the opposing view, questioning the stance you originally held as more information is processed?
It can drive you crazy, questioning reality, but in reality, we should be questioning everything. There is just too much out there, and with internet as large as it has become we have to keep an open mind and look at everything. The core things for critical thinking is analysis, inference, and evaluation, and sometimes playing Devil’s advocate will help as well.
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