Critical reasoning week 1 journal: defining the subject

The journal's own instructions tell you what it is for and it is worth taking at face value: you will probably do as much or more thinking than writing, and if you write long reflections you should then edit them down to their essence. That is a real instruction about method rather than a courtesy. It means the marks are not for volume, and a journal that reaches the page requirement by restating the readings has misread the assignment. It also warns you against the easy failure on the first prompt, which is copying one of the many definitions of critical thinking available online; the instruction says explicitly not to be tempted, and to form your own so that it is meaningful to you. Four to six lines is very short, which is the constraint that makes it hard. Plan what you want to say before you start writing, since the editing down is where the work happens.

Writing your own definition in four to six lines is genuinely difficult and the difficulty is the exercise. The published definitions each foreground something different: the disciplined evaluation of reasoning, reflective judgement about what to believe or do, the identification and assessment of assumptions, or a set of dispositions rather than a skill. Read a few, notice what each includes and excludes, then decide what you think is central and write it in your own words. A useful test is whether your definition rules anything out, since a definition that covers all careful thought is not doing work. It also has to be a definition you can live with, because the instruction says you will carry it with you through the course and it will be judged against how you actually reason in later weeks. Write it long first and then cut, which is the method the instructions themselves recommend.

The second prompt asks you to infer something from what you have read so far, which is why it says considering just what is in this week's readings. The authors are pointing forward to chapters you have not read, so you are being asked to reason from the foundations laid in the first three chapters to what those later chapters must be about. Two moves are needed. First, identify the two concepts the authors say those chapters emphasise, which the text names and which you should take from the text rather than guess. Second, explain why they would be the heart of the matter given what chapters one to three have established. That second part is the actual thinking; the first is a comprehension check, and a journal that answers only the first has done half the prompt. Say what the first three chapters set up that the later ones would need, since that is the inference being asked for.

Defining those two concepts in your own words is a separate instruction from naming them, and the journal asks how you define them. Do not simply reproduce the text's definition, since the exercise mirrors the first prompt: understanding is demonstrated by restatement in your own terms, and by being able to say what would count as an instance and what would not. Then say why the authors find them important to critical thinking specifically rather than to reasoning in general. If the two concepts turn out to be the ones the whole book is building towards, say what the earlier chapters were doing to prepare for them, because seeing a text's architecture is exactly the kind of reading this course is trying to teach. Give an example of something that would count and something that would not, since that is the clearest test of a definition.

The third prompt is the reflective one and it asks for three things: your greatest challenge for the session in general, your challenge for this class in particular, and how the first three chapters' concepts could help you meet those challenges as well as challenges in your personal life as a family and community member. Be specific rather than modest: time management, unfamiliarity with formal reasoning, difficulty separating a claim from the person making it, or a tendency to argue for positions you already hold. Then apply an actual concept from the reading, naming it, which is what distinguishes reflection from confession. On execution, keep to two to three pages excluding title and references pages, one inch margins, double spaced, twelve point Times New Roman, with a title page and a references page as needed, and cite anything beyond the textbook properly. Name the concept and say how you would use it, rather than gesturing at the reading in general.