What are the four things that critical thinking presupposes or rests on, according to its core thesis?
Critical thinking is reasoning that (1) requires certain cognitive abilities, (2) springs from epistemic attitudes/virtues, (3) obeys intellectual standards of argument, and (4) respects ethical/dialogical norms.
The core thesis ("Grundthese") packs four distinct foundations into one definition — and they map onto four different failure modes if any is missing:
- Cognitive abilities ("faculty-traits") — the raw mental skills: analysing, inferring, distinguishing claims from reasons. Without them you literally can't do the work.
- Epistemic attitudes/virtues — dispositions like curiosity, intellectual honesty and humility. Skill without the disposition to use it well gets you a clever sophist, not a critical thinker.
- Intellectual standards of argument — the rules of logic and good reasoning that act as "quality assurance" for thinking. They keep the thinking valid, not merely fluent.
- Ethical/dialogical norms — fairness, respect, honesty towards others in dialogue. Reasoning happens with people, so how you treat their views is part of doing it well.
The word epistemic (from ancient Greek epistēmē = knowledge, cognition) means "concerning knowledge and its conditions" — the questions of how knowledge comes about, and what counts as certainty and justification.
Tip: Read the four as ability → character → logic → ethics. A critical thinker needs all four; drop any one and the reasoning breaks in a predictable way.