🧠 CRITICAL THINKING Thinking, Choosing, Deciding: The Art of Inhabiting the Truth   E N S A Y O   F I L O S Ó F I C O

 

✒ PHILOSOPHICAL-JOURNALISTIC ESSAY |  Ideas & Thought Writing

⏱ Reading time: ~11 min

◆ To think critically is not to distrust everything, but to learn to choose and decide when the world is filled with competing stories to be true.     Choosing and deciding are, at first glance, the most common verbs in the language. We use them every day without seeing beyond their apparent function. But if we open them, if we extract the etymology and put them in the light of philosophy and ethics, we discover that they are the deepest articulation between thought, freedom and morality.     This essay proposes a journey: from the origins of critical thinking in Socratic Greece to the engine room of digital post-truth; from the distinction between ethics and morality to the question that returns like a philosophical boomerang: are choosing and deciding the articulation that is needed between the two?

 

🏛️  I.  The Origin: Socrates and the Scandal of Asking

There is an image that sums up, better than any definition, the birth of critical thinking: a man in the public square of Athens, barefoot, asking questions.

That man is Socrates (470-399 B.C.), and his crime was the most subversive of all that a society can imagine: to make people think for themselves. His method, maieutics – from the Greek mayéin, 'to give birth' – did not offer answers but shed light on the contradictions hidden in the certainties of others. With a finely calculated irony, Socrates feigned ignorance in order to lead the interlocutor to examine his own assumptions. And when he discovered that these assumptions were fragile, the interlocutor was faced with the only philosophical task that matters: to think again.

The Socratic gesture is, in essence, the first historical formulation of critical thought: not the denial of all truth, but the demand that every statement be examined. As Plato summed it up in the Phaedo, the unexamined life is not worth living.

It is worth stopping here. Socrates emerged in Athens during a deep political and cultural crisis. The Sophists – his contemporaries – had popularized relativism: if everything is a matter of perspective, if there are no universal truths, then any argument has the same value as its opposite. Socrates rejected this nihilism not from authority, but from method. He didn't say 'I know'; it said 'let's examine together'. That attitude is still today the most accurate figure of critical thinking.

 

"Critical thinking is having the desire to seek, the patience to doubt, the fondness to meditate, the slowness to affirm, the disposition to consider, the care to put in order and the hatred for all kinds of imposture." — Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 1605

 

The philosopher Max Black would be the one who, in his 1946 book on logic, would use the term 'critical thinking' in a systematic and academic way – the paternity of the modern concept is attributed to him. But the practice already existed, in Socratic maieutics, in Platonic dialectics, and in Aristotelian rhetoric, centuries before anyone named it by that title.

Aristotle would add a crucial dimension to the Socratic project: phronesis, practical judgment, the wisdom that allows us to deliberate well about what we should do. For Aristotle, critical thinking is not an abstract exercise but the necessary prelude to ethical action. Here appears for the first time the link that this essay proposes to explore: critical thinking as a bridge between knowledge and moral decision.

 

🔤  II.  The Words That Hide a World: Choosing and Deciding

Choosing and deciding may seem, by all accounts, to be a couple of the most common verbs. We use them every day and hardly see anything beyond themselves than their own function.

But etymology—that archaeology of language—reveals something unexpected to us. The word decide comes from the Latin decidere: 'to resolve' and, more literally, 'to cut'. Whoever decides cuts the ambiguity. It puts an end to the suspension of judgment and commits its its will to a path. It is not a minor act: it is the moment when reflection ceases and action begins. As the RAE defines it, deciding is 'forming the purpose of doing something, or making a choice, after reflection on something'. The cut is the result of thinking.

Choosing comes from the Latin eligere: 'deliberation and freedom to act'. The RAE complements it: 'to choose or prefer someone or something for a purpose'. Here appears a dimension that does not have such an explicit decision: freedom. Choosing presupposes real options, it implies the awareness that there is more than one possible path. Those who choose not only act: they recognize their condition of being free.

Together, choosing and deciding draw the complete map of the human act: free deliberation (choice) that becomes commitment (decision). And that map, drawn with precision, leads us to a question of great philosophical importance that critical thought cannot avoid: if choosing implies freedom and deciding implies cutting, what is the basis of both? In reason, in duty, in the common good? That is: in ethics or in morality?

 

📖 Etymology and Meaning: the key verbs of the critical act
Decide	From Latin decidere: 'to cut'. Resolve after reflection. Committing the will to an action.
Choose	From Latin eligere: 'deliberation and freedom to act'. Choose with awareness of the available options.
Critical	From the Greek krinein: 'to separate', 'to judge', 'to discern'. Those who think critically separate the true from the false.
Mayeutics	From the Greek mayéin: 'to give birth'. The Socratic method that illuminates knowledge through questions.
Phrónesis	From Greek: prudence or practical wisdom. For Aristotle, the virtue of deliberating well about action.
Post-truth	Context in which the influence of objective facts is less than that of personal emotions and beliefs.

 

⚖️  III.  Ethics and Morals: The Articulation That Is Needed

Decision and choice: are they the articulation that is needed between ethics and morality? The question is so dense that it is convenient to start by undoing a frequent confusion.

In everyday speech, ethics and morality are used synonymously. In the philosophical realm, however, distinction matters. Ethics – from the Greek ethos, 'way of being' or 'character' – is the philosophical discipline that reflects on the principles that should govern human conduct; Analyze the rational foundations of right and wrong, look for principles that guide action beyond custom or authority. Morality – from the Latin mos, moris, 'custom' – is the set of norms, values and conventions that a particular society considers correct or acceptable; it is constructed, transmitted and socially reproduced.

In other words: ethics reflects; morality regulates. Ethics questions the rules from reason; morality lives them from habit. A society can declare 'moral' a practice that ethics, when examined rationally, condemns. Human history is full of these gaps. As the philosopher Gustavo Bueno points out, ethics refers to the behavior derived from the individual's own character, while morality refers to the customs that regulate the behavior of the individual as a member of a social group. One emanates from within; the other comes from outside.

 

"Ethics is not made by itself, it is born with us." — Fernando Savater, Ethics for Amador

 

Now, where does critical thinking operate in this scheme? Exactly on the hinge. Critical thinking is the instrument that allows the individual to confront the received moral norms with the ethical principles examined. It is the ability to ask oneself: 'Is this norm that society imposes on me rationally justifiable? Do I commit to it because I understand and value it, or simply because I have inherited it without examination?'

Decision and choice are, in this sense, the dynamic articulation between ethics and morality. When I decide and choose with critical thinking, I do not limit myself to obeying the prevailing moral norm or abandon myself to pure individual whim. Deliberation: I put my reason, my character, my freedom and my responsibility towards others at stake. Free choice (ethics) and decision committed to the common good (moral) merge in the act of thinking critically and acting accordingly.

Kant formulated it with geometric precision in his categorical imperative: act in such a way that the maxim of your conduct can become a universal law. For Kant, moral action does not come from the fear of social sanction or the pursuit of pleasure, but from practical reason: the autonomous will that legislates itself. In this scheme, choice is the exercise of rational autonomy and decision is the commitment to the law that this autonomy generates. Without critical thinking, neither of the two steps is possible: those who act by inertia or social pressure do not choose or decide – they execute.

 

"Act only according to that maxim by which you can will at the same time that it becomes universal law." — Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785

 

Aristotle, from another shore, proposes eudaimonia – happiness as flourishing – as the horizon of ethical action. For him, knowing what the good is is not enough to act rightly: it is necessary to have cultivated the virtues, to have exercised character. Critical thinking, in an Aristotelian key, is not only an intellectual skill but a moral habit: the habit of examining before acting, of deliberating before deciding.

The tension between Kant and Aristotle—between formal duty and material good, between universal law and particular virtue—is not easily resolved. But both agree on something: without reflection, without the critical examination of one's own principles and of the norms received, there is neither genuine ethics nor morality. There is only automation.

 

🌐  IV.  The World of Competing Stories to Be True

Critical thinking was always necessary. But in the 21st century, it has become urgent in a new and disturbing way.

We live in the post-truth era: a scenario in which the influence of objective facts on public opinion is given less weight than that of personal beliefs and emotional reactions. The term, chosen as Word of the Year by the Collins dictionary in 2017 and by the Royal Spanish Academy in 2016, names something that has always existed – manipulation, rumour, propaganda – but that digital technologies have amplified exponentially.

Social media has transformed the information ecosystem in a way that the Greeks could not imagine but that Socrates would have recognized immediately: the problem of the sophists back, with algorithms. Digital platforms are designed to maximize attention and engagement, not the truth. An MIT study (Vosoughi et al., 2018) showed that fake news spreads on Twitter up to six times faster than true news, because it is more novel and emotionally activating.

Why do we believe them? Cognitive psychology offers uncomfortable answers. Confirmation bias leads us to consume information that reinforces our previous beliefs. Filter bubbles – generated by algorithms that learn our preferences – lock us into circuits where our ideas are not only reinforced but rarely questioned. The theory of 'lazy reasoning' (Gaozhao, 2021) suggests that we tend to be reluctant to develop critical thinking about news when we read it online; It's easier to share than to verify.

 

📌 Cognitive biases that critical thinking must confront   ▸ Confirmation bias: we tend to accept as true what confirms what we already believe.   ▸ Bandwagon effect: we adopt ideas because a majority holds them, without examining them.   ▸ Lazy reasoning: resistance to elaborate analytical thinking on information received online.   ▸ Reasoned reasoning: we evaluate as true news that is consistent with our ideology.   ▸ Familiarity effect: what we have heard repeatedly seems truer to us, regardless of its veracity.   ▸ Magical thinking: proven positive correlation between credulity in fake news and esoteric thinking (Redalyc, 2021).

 

Scientific research on susceptibility to fake news is conclusive on one point: poor analytical thinking performance is the most consistent predictor of credulity in the face of misinformation. In other words, those who have not cultivated the habit of examining ideas before accepting them are vulnerable. It does not matter their formal educational level, their political ideology or their access to information. The critical variable is the habit of thinking.

What is the antidote? Critical thinking. But—and this is a warning that researchers repeat—not as an abstract skill but as concrete practice applied to specific knowledge. As Mercier and Sperber (2017) point out, the best way to overcome cognitive biases and uncover fallacies is to debate with others who do not fully share our point of view. Critical thinking is not solitary: it is dialogical. It requires interlocutors, it requires friction, it requires the clash with difference.

 

🔬  V.  What, then, is critical thinking?

The journey we have taken now allows us to propose a definition that integrates the philosophical, ethical and practical dimensions of the concept.

In its most basic dimension, critical thinking is the ability to analyze and evaluate the consistency of reasoning, especially those statements that society accepts as true in the context of everyday life. But this definition—correct but insufficient—omits something essential: critical thinking is not only epistemological (about how we know) but also ethical (about how we act).

Thinking critically is, at the same time, an intellectual disposition and a moral commitment. Intellectual, because it requires the cultivation of certain skills: identifying premises, detecting fallacies, evaluating evidence, distinguishing facts from interpretations, recognizing one's own biases. Moral, because it implies an attitude towards the other and towards the truth: intellectual honesty, epistemic humility, respect for evidence even if it contradicts one's own beliefs.

 

"The essential point of critical thinking is: I can be wrong. For this reason, critical thinking cannot be taught independently of knowledge." — Faculty Research, Fake News in the Post-Truth Era, 2021

 

That phrase — I may be wrong — is the hard core of critical thinking. It is not nihilistic relativism: it does not claim that all ideas are worth the same. He affirms something more precise and more demanding: that the examination is permanent, that no belief is exempt from revision, that openness to correction is a condition of the genuine search for truth.

Critical thinking is also not generalized skepticism. It does not consist of doubting everything indiscriminately. It consists of doubting with method, in asking with criteria, in demanding evidence with humility. Francis Bacon formulated it four hundred years ago with a precision that no algorithm has improved: the desire to search, the patience to doubt, the slowness to affirm, the hatred for all imposture.

 

🔗  VI.  The Articulation: Critical Thinking, Choice, and Moral Decision

We've come a long way. We can now answer the question we posed at the beginning: are choice and decision the articulation that is needed between ethics and morality?

The answer is: yes, but only if they are mediated by critical thinking. Without it, choosing is not freedom but whim, and deciding is not commitment but automatism. With it, choosing becomes the conscious exercise of rational autonomy – the ethical act par excellence – and deciding in the cut that commits the individual to the common good that the morality of his community – reviewed and examined – proposes to him.

Critical thinking is, in this scheme, the hinge between ethics and morality. It operates between philosophical reflection on principles (ethics) and the social norm that regulates conduct (moral). When I critically examine a moral norm, I elevate it from the level of custom to the level of principle: I ask myself if it is valid, if it is just, if I can make it my own not by inheritance but by conviction. And when I decide to act accordingly, I turn reflection into action.

This articulation has a practical consequence that goes beyond abstract philosophy. In a world saturated with competing narratives – fake news, confirmation algorithms, political and emotional post-truths – critical thinking is the only vaccine available that does not require a laboratory. It takes time, it requires habit, it requires the willingness to be uncomfortable with one's own ignorance. But it is possible to cultivate it, and cultivating it is an act that is both intellectual and moral.

 

"I just know that I don't know anything. And that awareness of one's own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom." — Socrates (via Plato, Apology of Socrates)

 

Socrates died because of that conviction. In 399 B.C., he was sentenced to death for corrupting the Athenian youth—that is, for teaching them to think for themselves. The accusation reveals, with painful clarity, that critical thinking has always had enemies: those who benefit from the credulity of others, those who have an interest in not examining the rules, those who prefer comfortable consensus to uncomfortable truth. None of that has changed in twenty-five centuries. Only the mechanisms of thought control have been modernized.

That is why the question at the beginning – what is critical thinking, and how is it articulated with choice, decision, ethics and morality – is not an academic question. It is, in the fullest sense of the expression, a political question. A question about what kind of citizens we want to be, about what kind of community we want to build, about whether we are willing to be uncomfortable with complexity or prefer the instant relief of the story that confirms what we already know.

 

✍️  VII.  Conclusion: Critical Thinking as an Act of Freedom

At the end of the tour, one thing becomes clear: critical thinking is not a technical skill. It is a way of inhabiting the world.

From Socratic maieutics to research on fake news in the post-truth era, the common thread is the same: the quality of our personal and collective life depends on the quality of our thinking. Not its speed, not its volume, not its ability to process data. Of their depth, of their honesty, of their willingness to review what we think we know.

Choosing and deciding are the verbs that translate that thought into action. To choose, with the awareness of the freedom that implies; decide, with the weight of the cut it demands. Ethics and morality are not separate territories but different planes of the same commitment: that of living according to examined principles, not simply inherited.

Critical thinking is, in short, the most everyday and most demanding act of freedom that exists. It does not require a public square like Socrates', nor a chair like Kant's. It requires only what was always necessary and always difficult: stopping, asking, doubting methodically, and then – with all that weight on one's shoulders – choosing.

 

🧠 CRITICAL THINKING · PHILOSOPHICAL-JOURNALISTIC ESSAY

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Main references: Plato, Apology of Socrates · Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics · Kant, Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres (1785) · Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning (1605) · Max Black, Critical Thinking (1946) · Vosoughi et al., MIT, Science (2018) · Mercier & Sperber, The Enigma of Reason (2017) · Redalyc, Fake News and Unfounded Beliefs (2021) · RAE · Iberdrola, The Value of Critical Thinking (2021)

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