Hello Friends,

These letters are to encourage critical and higher-order thinking in order to improve how you experience your world.

Today, I will introduce you to: The Eight Thinking Principles to achieve Critical Thinking.

I see it as the solution for any problem afflicting our mind.

I started learning and teaching these principles when I began my PhD and academic career.

What happened was profound.

Implementing the skills meant I HAD to ask myself every day about WHY I thought the way I did.

I accidentally liberated my mind—I experienced a profound intellectual and consciousness awakening.

Suddenly I began to heal all my cognitive grievances because the answer to why things were the way there were, were not personal.

I could separate my everyday experience as a person, with the way the world was.

I hear that this experience is similar to what people describe as possible through deep meditative practice, or through psychedelic therapies.

I now know it is also possible through practicing a very important element of critical thinking called deep, REFLEXIVE THINKING.

You can do this yourself starting today.

It is not:

Overthinking and stressing out

It is:

Conscious thought awareness, and organisation

Reflexive thinking helps us:

• Become aware of our inherent tendency toward bias

• Question what we take for granted

• Examine and adjust to context, place, and situation

• Critically self-reflect on our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviour

• Remain committed and open to a revision of beliefs

N.B: Those who believe they do this and presume they've reached an endpoint in their cognitive learning are merely circling back to the starting point.

There is no end game.

BALANCE

The critical thinking practice of reflexive thinking leads you to be able to balance emotion with logic.

Some of us are more logical thinkers, where others may be more emotional thinkers.

There are a range of reasons for diversity of thought backed by mountains of scientific evidence.

There are biological and personality dispositions, as well as social and environmental reasons.

As soon as we stop making excuses for HOW we think and instead learn to understand WHY we think that way, we learn about our cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

Once we do this we can heal our thinking faults, and start our journey to become healthy thinkers.

People who achieve balance with emotional and logical thinking skills are incredibly alluring.

Attempting to arrive at a state of sounding reasonable at all times should be your aim.

Too logical and you alienate people.

Too emotional and you alienate people.

The answer to all your problems is REFLECTION.

To begin your practice in becoming a better thinker, I want you to ask yourself one thing every time you ask a question or respond to someone:

Why did I say that?

Take the time to answer this single question each and every time. Especially when your emotions alert you to it.

This reflective process will enable you to know yourself better than ever before.

But you have to be VERY honest with yourself or you will not get there.

Critical thinkers stop reacting to the internal and subjective desire, and instead move outward to the objective.

Once you have honestly worked through where all of your prejudices, biases, needs, desires, wants, hopes come from you can settle them within yourself.

It is at this point you be the type of thinker who successfully can learn, influence, persuade, solve, teach, guide, and lead.

THE EIGHT THINKING PRINCIPLES

There are eight fundamental intellectual traits required to arrive at a place where you can master reflexivity, and successfully balance emotional and logical intelligence.

This will take you years to master, but you will see results immediately.

1. CHOOSE HUMILITY IN THE FACE OF YOUR OWN EGO

The ego has no humility, remember that.

Watch when your ego rears its ugly head—notice it.

Intellectual humility means recognising the limitations of your own knowledge.

For example, if you have been reading a lot about one topic, but have little knowledge in an opposing field, you must remain open. I see this a lot with experts in one single field, who become loyal to what they know, and militantly reject all other ideas, despite validity.

It is so easy to be egotistical about how much you think you know.

Be aware of the potential flaws in your own reasoning.

For example, I asked a question once on my socials:

A psychologist, a biologist and a sociologist walk into a bar. A conversation about the worlds problems begin. Who is right?

A critical approach to this idea would begin with awareness that the answer is not very straightforward. Given the complexity of the question, it is unlikely a clear conclusion can be firmly stated.

Given the intersections between each category, and the robust, valid scientific evidence which has been produced by each discipline, it is likely that each have very valid points.

The interesting part was that some people responded with certainty on who was more qualified, and therefore who was right despite the fact I stated the exercise was a ‘critical thinking’ one.

The problem: When asked to justify their selection, they doubled down, rearing the ugly head of the ego, while humility was nowhere to be found.

The beginnings of critical thinking can only start with humility.

2. BE COURAGEOUS IN YOUR PURSUIT TO UNVEIL WHAT IS RIGHT

Argue with confidence.

To argue is not to fight.

Argue means to provide logical and reasonable points which support what you think you may know.

Be brave enough to desire others to agree with you due to your ability to convince with reason as opposed to an expectation of conformity through aggressive tactics.

Intellectual courage also means despite social pressure, you are willing to speak about what is right.

The intellectually courageous may speak up about controversial topics which we see cause great social divide. Beware though, while you are expressing that “courage”, if you are aggressive, angry and emotional, it is not intellectual courage or critical thinking.

Courage also extends to be willing to listen to ideas which you do not share yet or have never thought about.

3. TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING, EMPATHY IS REQUIRED

Is where you want to know why others think the way they do and you value exploring different perspectives.

In order to think about how people think, you need to first accept that we have the biological capacity to actually participate in the thinking process.

We also have unique factors which contribute to this diverse thinking.

There are biological, psychological and social reasons which influence our thinking style. These includes our sex, age, cognitive propensities, culture, the way we were raised, education, what books we read, or who we look up to.

The cleverest thinkers intersect multiple lenses to understand phenomena.

For example, there is plenty of credible scientific evidence to suggest men and women think differently for various reasons which include biological reasons as well as social reasons.

If you reject credible information which can be backed by valid evidence because of bias then you are not ready to be a critical thinker.

The willingness to understand someone else’s position enables forward progress.

You have more chance of arriving to a mutual or reasonable conclusion when you respect alternative credible ideas.

If one person is biased, and only views the world through their own lens, believing their own lens has greater moral value, then that person is not a critical thinker.

4. IT IS ONLY THE AUTONOMOUS THINKER WHO IS FREE

Think for yourself.

Without learning how to do this, we can become conformative thinkers who lack confidence to seek more information.

This occurs in many societies where creativity, curiosity, and innovation are not encouraged. They are replaced by an expectation of conformity and obedience.

Mini activity: can you spot which society or what elements in society this has happened with?

In some totalitarian or authoritative societies not only is autonomous thinking not encouraged, but punishable by law and death.

An important seminal book to remind us of the dangers of a lack of autonomous thinking, and the corrupting allure of power, is Animal Farm by George Orwell.

I highly recommend you not only read it, but reflect on it.

Autonomous thinking is important but you must be able to ensure it remains reasonable. We must keep grounded so we do not come up with wild, ridiculous ideas which harm and divide or silence as opposed to enable intellectual growth. Thus, we need to ensure we maintain logic and rationale and emotional intelligence.

Where your independent thinking affects others, you must think about why. So—think for yourself, but maintain a commitment to reasonableness.

5. TO THINK WITH INTEGRITY YOU MUST FIRST BE HONEST

Think and communicate with honesty.

This goes back to what I said earlier about asking yourself WHY. You must be aware of your intentions when you speak and react.

Most of the time people are preoccupied with winning rather than learning.

Hold yourself to the same standards that you expect from others.

Hypocrisy has been written about throughout history in philosophical texts as the sin which we can barely shake as humans.

As I watch interactions every day we are ALL marred by the easy ability to be a hypocrite.

The deceit humans engage in so regularly and unconsciously is fascinating. The more honest you are willing to be with yourself the greater you intellectual power will be.

Making human mistakes is not the problem—in fact the mistakes are necessary.

The point is to learn afterwards. 

When you speak with people you must be willing to be honest about why you hold a certain perspective or if the conversation breaks down, reflect on why.

To begin our journey in honesty we must face our thoughts.

What ideas have been most prevalent in your household and social world?

Are there biological factors which are contributing to your ideas?

What is your personality like?

What books do you read?

A critical thinker begins only when they become an honest thinker.

Hold yourself, your thoughts and perspectives accountable first, before you expect to hold the thoughts of others accountable.

6. KNOW THAT ONLY THE BRAVE PERSEVERE

If you are firm about an idea, thought or concept, be willing to put in the hard yards to back yourself up.

That means first be brave enough to try and prove yourself wrong.

It is a daily occurrence to see people have firm views about so many different things.

Perhaps you dislike a certain public figure with a passion, while others adore them.

Or you have never experienced racism so you believe it does not exist.

Or you have experienced racism so you believe all people are racist.

But ask yourself this, before you have come to your very firm conclusion, have you persevered to find out more?

How much time have you committed to learn about both sides of an issue before you have decided to be so strongly opinionated about its logic?

Or is your reaction today still attached to the emotion which was attached to the original event instead?

I cannot count the amount of times I have changed my mind on an idea or topic the more I learnt about it.

Be bravely honest with yourself.

Don’t be so sure about something you cannot be so sure about.

Ask questions, persevere in your lifelong learning journey to learn more.

7. YOU MUST REMAIN CONFIDENT ONLY IN REASON

You must believe that over time humanity is best served by reason (not political identity, not unregulated emotion) as the best means to gain knowledge, and solve problems.

This one is the most important right now—a lack of understanding about the importance of REASON is plaguing our information rich society right now.

You must be aware if you are being unreasonable.

You must know if you are speaking from a biased or emotional (unhealed, unfair) perspective.

This is very relevant now as we suddenly have unreasonable expectations of knowledge conformity.

For example, it may be reasonable to make room for a teenage daughter or son to have some leeway with emotional outbursts given age, hormones, life stage, and social pressure.

It is unreasonable to suggest that all of those behaviours are simply because of bad parenting.

It is reasonable to suggest due to strong evidence that breast feeding is nutritionally best, but it is also reasonable to suggest that some women may not be able to breast feed, therefore alternative methods become relevant. It is also reasonable to point out that breast feeding is reducing in societies where women work more.

It is reasonable for a migrant woman with strong cultural roots who has emigrated from a conservative society to the English-speaking West, to hold conservative views about women’s social roles and behaviour. It is unreasonable for a Western woman to authoritatively dictate what behaviour is right and wrong for other women.

But mostly, it is unreasonable for a person to disallow a reasonable conversation about the above topics and instead react with aggression.

It is reasonable to talk about different ways of being, and seeing and finding mutual ground.

It is unreasonable to expect a right and wrong answer for issues of cultural and ethical complexity where many people think differently about the same issue.

8. SEEK INTELLECTUAL FAIRMINDEDNESS

You must enter conversations in good faith upholding a concept called charitable translation.

That means that you will make the effort to treat all viewpoints with fairness and charity regardless of your own beliefs, emotional reactions, or community norms of the time.

There are ethical dimensions which drive your ability to know what is fair-minded and what is not.

There is a golden rule however with regard to this which is the reciprocity of morality.

Interestingly, these values historically have been ingrained in all religious texts across the spectrum of diverse religions and ethical traditions.

For example, there are universal ethical absolutes which most people know are socially taboo. Therefore they govern people’s social choices equally.

But as there are also many polarising views about topics—those should all be up for fair-minded discussions given their universal complexity. 

Mastering the art of critical thinking or balancing emotional and logical intelligence is about first learning the art of deep reflexive thinking.

By honing these skills, we gain the ability to navigate social interactions with finesse, becoming sought-after companions, respected leaders, and responsible individuals.

Achieving this balance is a journey that requires dedication and habitual self-reflection.

We must be willing to cultivate intellectual humility, courage, empathy, autonomy, integrity, perseverance, confidence in reason, and fair-mindedness before we can become liberated thinkers.

I wish your mind only success!

Stay tuned for the Sunday Synapse, which will be delivered to your inbox every Sunday! Get ready to take on a new week better than you were last week!

If it does not bring value to you, just hit the unsubscribe button below.

Send me an email with feedback, what you like, don’t like, want more of, or just to say hi!

Until next Sunday, take care.

Dr. Esha.