Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Abstract
At its core, critical thinking is a purposeful mental activity that takes something apart, via analysis, and evaluates it on the basis of an intellectual standard. In this context, that something is an argument and the intellectual standard is logic, the study of arguments. This is important because, as Alfred Tarski notes (xiii-xiv), … logic, by perfecting and by sharpening the tools of thought, makes men and women more critical-and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are incessantly exposed in various parts of the world today. The assurance that critical thinking is basic to ethics comes from the application of the logical principle of non-contradiction, which states…that when two ethical judgments are diametrically opposed, one must be mistaken (Ruggiero, 73, adapted). There is also the assurance that comes from logic being uncompromising in ethical matters, for it does not allow the luxury of ignoring the implications of our ethical judgments. Rather, it demands that we analyze ethical judgments by their logical implications (32, adapted). Critical Ethics (as a unified account of normative and meta-ethics) uses critical thinking to get around the limitations of personal belief and indoctrination to get to what ought to be done and why to improve the human condition. For, if we teach only moral beliefs (whether as a set of absolutistic or relativistic normative codes)-no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be to a particular culture or community-the adherent will have a hard time.
College/Unit
College of Arts, Sciences and Technology
Publication or Event Title
Academia Letters
DOI
10.20935/AL147
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Talavera, I. (2021). What is Critical Ethics and Why it Matters?. Academia Letters https://doi.org/10.20935/AL147
