Critically Working on a Text

You may not know it, but all texts have a goal. When a writer creates it, or a speaker talks, they knowingly or not knowingly have something they want us to do. I mentioned speakers because they often have prepared speeches and even if they don’t we can write down their words and work with it. So one of the main ideas about texts from critical thinking is that we need to determine possible reasons the author had in mind. Of course we can look for cognitive biases, for fakes and errors, for deliberate manipulations. But these fakes and manipulations can serve different purposes.

For example an author can use manipulations with cognitive biases to promote science, which may create a dilemma for a reader. On the one hand it could be more effective than the same text without manipulations. On the other hand if a reader recognizes this trick, he or she may trust the author less. As an extreme example an author can denounce use of biases by others while using cognitive biases too. I can’t say it should be prohibited, but it may show the author in a negative light.

Of course you may not be a member of the intended audience for an author. In this case the author doesn’t care that you don’t believe him or her, because he or she aim for other people. You can create a situation like this deliberately, if you find a text clearly written for a narrow group with similar views. If these people expect specific thing being told to them they will agree with these thing anyway, even if the text have logical errors, fakes and incorrect references. For example a flat Earth believer wouldn’t argue with the text about how the Earth is flat. In the same time a person with opposite views can just reject the whole text, even if it has something correct and truthful.

The way of critical thinking is not denying the whole texts, it isn’t also a blind agreement with anything you read. You should look for reasons why the text have been created and evaluate it step by step, from different views and contexts.