Heather Diehl
Critical thinking and ethics
Professor Collum
6th September 2015 Critical thinking and ethics
I think a lot of our decisions on a day to day basis are because of critical thinking and ethics. I also think ethics is sort of a step in the critical thinking process. When making a decision something you’re going to ask yourself is if the decision is going to break any ethical values? A good example of this would be to say a student was invited to a party. Then the student finds out that the party is going to have drugs and underage drinking involved. The student wants to go because all of his/her friends are going but does not want to go because it could end up bad. The first thing the student is going to think about when deciding to go or not would be their own personal ethics or values. This is the same for all problem solving, decision making and career/social responsibilities. Critical thinking and ethics do and always will go hand in hand.
The definitions of both critical thinking and ethics are important in understanding the way they impact the steps through critical thinking. Critical thinking is defined as the objective to analysis and evaluates an issue to form a judgment. An example of this would be my decision to attend online or traditional based college. Before starting online school I thought critically about the pros and cons of the two main different types of colleges. I analyzed and evaluated my different choices until I came up with a solution. On the other hand ethics would be defined more as principles that govern a person’s behavior. A lot of times ethics are thought about first when a person is in the stages of the critical thinking process. The six stages in the critical thinking process are, to remember or recall the ideas, to be able to understand or explain them, knowing how to apply or use them, analyze or dividing the ideas into sections, evaluating or rating different aspects of the information and to create or invest in something new. Throughout the six steps you are able to process all the information you need to make a clear precise decision about an idea or event. Personal ethics and critical thinking both influence decision making but will also show many benefits when solving problems. Personal ethics influence decision making because it’s referring to the ethics that a person identifies as important in everyday life. For example, when a person thinks going to church every week is extremely important, they’re not going to ditch church to go to a movie. That decision is being based off a personal ethic. In that situation the personal ethic is known first hand but then also using the critical thinking process may be necessary. Using the critical thinking steps, being able to remember and understand why church is a top priority can be helpful. The benefit of using the steps is not only to reassure yourself the decision you’ve made is correct but to also make sure your thoughts are completely thought through. Ethics in professional and societal responsibilities can be tricky situations. Sometimes a job may require someone to do a task they are not completely okay with. For example, I work at a domestic violence shelter and sometimes there are situations where we have to turn people away. Ethically I am not okay with this because I think no one should ever be turned away, however it is my job to sometimes tell people that we are full and cannot take them. Professional ethics refers to the ethics that a person must obey in order to respect their interactions and meetings with other people in their professional life. Social responsibility is known as an ethical theory, where individuals are held responsible for fulfilling their duties as a citizen. The actions made by each individual must benefit the whole society. Critical thinking and ethics are both very important in our lives. They go hand and hand and without one or the other some decisions might not be as easy to make. As humans we are always making decisions. We make different types of decisions in school, in our career and even going places like to the movies. With the critical thinking steps and using our own personal ethics we are able to make the best choices for ourselves.