CriticalThinking is MetaThinking, is to thing about how you think, in order to find you own biases to try to eliminate them.
Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses conclusions
I think CriticalThinking is different from CriticalSpirit as it exist, on WardsWiki around OctoberZeroFive. To me CriticalThinking requires a few key conditions, and having a CriticalSpirit could be one of these ingredients.
But what people call "critical thinking" differs widely. For example, I often use economic models to select one choice over another. But I often get flak for this for reasons that so far escape me, but appear to be a form of ArgumentByElegance to me. My point is that an economic argument is not "critical thinking" to the other party. People start from a different base. Related: CommonSenseIsAnIllusion. --top