It’s incredible that critical thinking texts can describe skills of logical deduction, inference, and argument as if thinking were something other than an activity which real people do together.  Critical thinking is not just private pondering, nimble mental gymnastics, or a bland set of teachable skills.

The Ethical Practice of Critical Thinking explores the ethical questions it poses:  How do we sustain discussion when we apply and uphold worthy standards of thinking?  How can critical thinking sustain and respect our dignity and worth when we think together about issues which matter for us?  How can we sustain our group, organization, or meeting as a place worthy of each other and our best thinking?  At our best, we argue in ways that uphold worthy standards of critical thinking, we respect each other’s dignity as we try to think about things which matter for us.  Even in our conflicts, we can make our group, organization, or meeting a place where we can fight together in our thinking without falling apart.

If you agree that this ethical side to critical thinking deserves your attention, then you might ask other questions:  Are fallacies just mistakes in reasoning or should we be ashamed of them?  Is mathematical reasoning truly above ethics or is it soaked with it, just as much as arguing with words?  Finally, in the middle of a media culture which can be mundane, distracting, stupefying, and hectic, how can we manage to come together to think hard - and keep thinking?