The definition, assessment, predictive validity, demographic correlates, and promotion of critical thinking at the college level are addressed in this article. Although the definitions of critical thinking vary substantially, a common theme is the linkage of conclusions to relevant evidence. Assessment measures range from quasi-standardized instruments to informal class assessment and include both generic and subject-specific formats. Although critical thinking potentially serves both as a predictor of college success and as a criterion of suceess, its greater utility may be as a predictor. nonetheless, the college experience in general and critical thinking courses in particular offer some promise for promoting critical thinking. However, efforts to infuse critical thinking activities into subject-specific courses have produced marginal improvement in critical thinking.

Some authors have argued that consideration of alternative claims, theories, or worldviews is necessary for a proper or sound critical assessment of a claim or set of claims. However, an understanding of interpretation and beliefs as inherently holistic suggests that interpretation already involves the recogllition of alternatives, and that therefore assessment also necessarily involves their comparison. Starting from this idea, it will be argued that presuppositions can be regarded as limits to the range of alternatives that are considered by the author of the claims, as seen by an interpreter making the assessment. However, a result of this consists in the fact that these assumptions can only be found in the conversational interaction between the author’s and the interpreter’s broader belief systems. Some implications for a conversational form of criticality will also be derived from here.

The close relationship that thinking bears to doing is perhaps the foundational idea in the plilosophy of education. This idea makes its first systematic appearance in the thought of Charles S. Peirce. In order to appreciate Peirce’s discovery, we cannot interpret hirn through the eyes of Richard Rorty, who obscures Peirce’s insight by making distinctions Peirce would have resisted. thought and action coincide most essentially in Peirce’s concept of the “scientific” method for fixing beliefs. This method is the most reliable guide for justifying thought because it requires humans to act upon the world. Only such action helps reveal a steadily friendlier and more dependable environment. Rorty misses this idea of Peirce’s in so far as he clings to a radically romantic conception of creativity.