Describe the Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Ethics

Eric Gregg

Gen/201

2-2-16

HARRY LOWE

Describe the Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Ethics Ethics is a term that we use to define what is right and what is wrong when people conduct their day-to-day lives. Combing critical thinking with ethics creates a process of evaluation, which, over time can help a person determine their own ethical standards. Critical thinking as defined in the dictionary is stated as “The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment”. One noticeable sentence fragment in that definition would be “Objective analysis and evaluation”. Objective analysis means you need facts or proof and not feelings or opinions to help you come to a conclusion. After you come to that conclusion you need to evaluate your analysis to determine if in fact your conclusion is correct to make the right judgment call. Critical thinking is a process that can be broken down into 6 steps: 1. KNOWLEDGE- this is the most important issue for obvious reason. 2. COMPREHENSION- understanding the material that has been presented to you and being able to explain it. 3. APPLICATION- using what you know of the material and being able to use it or apply it. 4. ANALYSIS- taking what’s been presented to you and breaking it down in order to be more clear and understanding of the form and content. 5. SYNTHESIS- taking what you analyzed and using any other information you have collected to come up with a new theory. 6. EVALUATION- Take what you have gathered and go over it, review it and make sure everything is understood.
When using and understanding how critical thinking works it makes solving problems a little easier. For example a person that owns gas station A (GSA) sees another gas station going up across the street, gas station B (GSB). Using critical thinking the owner of the GSA needs to figure out how keep his current customers from going to GSB and how to get as many of the future customers business to come to GSA. Same thing goes for the owner of GSB. Benefits of this process help make finding the best answer possible for whatever situation arises. The one with the best critical thinking process (assuming they both did some critical thinking) will more than likely is the better store business wise. In my ethical lens inventory (ELI) my blind sport revealed that I am satisfied to early or at a low level. Basically I stop once I am satisfied with what I need and forget about the end results. This is not something I like and I will make more of an effort to notice when this is happening and avoid doing it. Of the four lenses my lens is the Results lens, which means I lean towards autonomy and sensibility. After reading everything in the results lens I found that it was pretty much dead on. Millions of decisions are made everyday and when people are making those decisions they are influenced in some way or another. When faced with making a decision or choosing a certain outcome my personal ethics factor in heavily because those personal ethics are exactly what they say “Personal”! Ethical Standards are developed overtime and not overnight, so when you are making that decision at whatever stage of life you are at, your developed ethical standards will guide you in the decision making process to get the desired or necessary results. In the professional world ethics is what makes a business a good or bad business. To make the interest of the company and the customers above your own is what makes employees, good employees. In society you would think or some would hope that everyone would have the same set of ethics or follow a certain moral form of ethic standards. But in this world everyone has and follows their own set of ethics that were developed since they were born and continue to evolve until death. Society creates its own ethics and sometimes they are great and some not but to each individual they are their own.