Mrspaceowl

"...modern-day philosophers such as Paul (1993) [...] posits that ‘Critical thinking is based on two assumptions: first, that the quality of our thinking affects the quality of our lives, and second, that everyone can learn how to continually improve the quality of his or her thinking’ (p. 23). This definition pushes the debate of critical thinking and analysis to something that can be learned or taught. But most importantly, Paul’s theory focuses on the search for truth and distinguishes between sophistic thinkers, who use their critical thinking capacities to defend their own interest by unearthing fallacies in other people’s arguments and reasoning but fail to apply these same principles to their own, and then ‘true’ critical thinkers, who are unbiased in their critique and searchers of truth, hence question their own disposition. [...]

Paul’s critique of earlier philosophical perspectives on critical thinking focused on identifying minimal conditions for an adequate theory of critical thinking. Paul’s arguments were premised on the following:

human thinking pervades every aspect of life and every dimension of the human mind
though it is human nature to think, it is not natural for humans to think well (human nature is heavily influenced by prejudice, illusion, mythology, ignorance and self-deception)
therefore, we need to be able to intervene in thinking, to analyse, assess it, and where necessary, improve it." -- Succeeding in postgraduate study, Session 3: Critical and analytical thinking, 2.1 The philosophical approach - The Open University