Eth 316 Ethics and Social Responsibility - Critical Thinking and Ethics

ETH/316 Ethics and Social Responsibility

Critical Thinking and Ethics

April 20th, 2015

Critical Thinking and Ethics

        Critical thinking is to think clearly and rationally. With one’s independent and reflective thinking, they should be able to understand logical connections between ideas, detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning, solve problems thoroughly, and reflect on one’s judgment with their own beliefs and values. Meanwhile, the definition of ethics is a little more complex to pin down. Someone’s ethic beliefs could be influences by their religion, how they grew up, or as simple as how they feel, so not everyone’s ethic beliefs are the same. Ethics refers to logical standards of right and wrong with the usual terms of rights, fairness, benefits to society, and specific assets. A couple examples that might have different thoughts due to someone’s ethical reasoning from other would be abortion orphysician assisted suicide, which has no true right or wrong answer.

The principles and rules of one’s critical thinking is based on their ethical reasoning. Someone’s reactions towards specific situations would have to come from the thoughts and feelings of that person, whether it was coming from religious belief, culture, or how they were brought up. For example, if you grew up in a Christian house hold, you should practice marriage with only one person of the opposite sex. Islam men, on the other hand, are allowed to have up to 4 wives. Either religious practice is good or bad, it all goes down to their culture beliefs.

If everyone followed the rules and guidelines of logic, there would still be a need for ethical decision making. One’s logical answer isn’t always the same as another. It all goes back to religion and personal beliefs. Logic doesn’t have one answer.