Critical Thinking Logic & Problem-Solving - Book Review
- Dr. Moria Levy
- Jun 16
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 30
The book "Critical Thinking Logic & Problem Solving" by Neuronswaves Laboratory is a practical guide for anyone who wants to improve their skills, techniques, and practices related primarily to critical thinking alongside logical thinking tools and problem-solving.
Main topics covered in this review:
Prerequisite traits and skills
Developing critical thinking
Critical thinking framework (activity stages)
Dealing with challenges
Habits for improving skills
Supporting tools
Problem-solving
Communication
The book is structured as a practical guide, including numerous examples and exercises, and certainly has the potential to advance the capabilities of anyone who follows it. We hope this summary serves as an appetizer to reading the entire book and a reminder for those who have already read it.
Recommended!
Prerequisite Traits and Skills
What is critical thinking? It's a directed process of examining, understanding, and evaluating information through a structured methodology.
The central traits and skills that will help us advance critical thinking processes:
Curiosity: The desire to know more
Skepticism: The ability to question
Self-awareness, open-mindedness, and humility: Understanding that we don't know everything and aren't always right
Empathy and listening: Including active listening, critical listening, listening to the way of speaking and what is said between the lines
Analytical ability
Creative thinking: Knowing how to think outside the box (both to generate critical thinking and to solve problems)
Decision-making ability based on information, insights, analysis, and alternatives
Ability to reflect and re-examine decisions periodically
Developing Critical Thinking
What should everyone do to develop critical thinking?
Ask questions: Open questions, non-leading questions, questions that help progress, deep questions, follow-up questions, and reflective questions. Use hypothetical scenarios and feedback.
Read extensively and talk with different people: Provides knowledge; gives perspective and understanding of diverse directions.
Invest time in independent thinking (don't automatically rely on what others say)
Take breaks; the brain works when we are seemingly resting
And... practice.
Critical Thinking Framework (Activity Stages)
The authors present the widely accepted Paul-Elder framework for critical thinking:
Defining the goal
Understanding the need - the question before us
Gathering information
Interpreting information
Taking into account perceptions and assumptions
Understanding implications
Taking a position
Dealing with Challenges
Yes, obstacles, biases, and typical errors hinder our ability to perform good critical thinking.
Main obstacles:
Looking at the world through our prism
Social pressure
Feelings of pressure, fear of failure
And... acting on autopilot and sticking to our comfort zones
Biases, heuristics, and typical errors:
Confirmation bias: Our desire to confirm previous assumptions when confronted with new information
Confusion between correlation and causation: We tend to attribute correlation between parameters to a direct relationship where one affects the other
Availability bias: Projecting available information and considering it reliable because of its availability
An error at the beginning of the process diverts our attention, and we all continue in the wrong direction.
The belief that if many think in a certain way, the way is probably correct
Blind reliance on the opinion of "authorized authorities."
Binary thinking: If A is right, then B is wrong, and vice versa
Generalizing based on too few cases
Escaping to solutions that are easier for us to implement or positions that are easier for us to accept
The desire to compromise, even when inappropriate
This is just a partial list of what the book represents. It's no wonder this is a complex and advanced skill.
Habits for Improving Skills
Strategies that help continuously improve critical thinking skills and strive for excellence in the field:
Separating facts from opinions
Understanding assumptions in depth
Analyzing opinions
Identifying situations
Creating connections between information items and/or opinions
Forming opinions
Discovering contradictions
Judgment
Supporting Tools
Below is a series of supporting tools to promote critical thinking. These tools develop logical thinking, and many are also suitable for advancing problem-solving.
Deductive and inductive thinking (reasoning from the general to the specific and from the particular to the general)
Patterns: Recognizing and understanding repetition and the patterns they represent. Enables analytical view of events - structure, logic, and connections between information items.
Emotion management: Not ignoring emotions. These can dim the ability for critical thinking (stress, fear, etc.), and emotions can sharpen critical thinking ability (passion, caring, etc.). One must learn to balance.
5W2H questions: Using the classic questions What, Who, When, Where, Why, How, How much/many. Some questions support information gathering and understanding the information and situation well; others help deepen understanding. The book offers a systematic approach to effective questioning.
SCQH model: A model that identifies understanding the problem (first half) and directing solutions. This includes understanding the context (situation), the meaning of the problem, and its implications (Complication). These lead to questions that help understand the gap between the current and desired state (Questions), and from here, hypotheses can be raised regarding appropriate solutions (Hypothesis).
MECE and synthesis: MECE refers to mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive principles. In a simple explanation, it breaks down into components that don't overlap and provides a complete coverage of possibilities. Using this principle helps effectively break down a problem into its components. Incorporating synthesis allows for grouping sub-components and arriving at a straightforward MECE model.
Pareto 80:20: Effective investment in the 20% that constitutes 80% of the importance. It can be translated into different dimensions, such as the probability of a malfunction that caused a problem, the severity or meaning of the problem, and more. Streamline critical thinking processes and problem-solving.
Top-Down & Bottom-Up: Complementary work approaches for analyzing a problem, from conception to details or vice versa.
Logic trees: Hierarchical tree diagrams can be used for different purposes in thinking processes. Breaking down into branches, sub-branches, and leaves can serve various purposes, such as description, problem analysis, decision-making processes, or ways to implement solutions.
Problem-Solving
Problem-solving uses the tools above (at least most of them) and includes the following key stages:
Understanding the problem
Defining the desired state
Identifying gaps between the desired and current state
Identifying the root causes of the existing situation
Defining alternative and complementary solution possibilities
Evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of options; prioritizing solutions according to investment, urgency, problem likelihood, and significance; systematic data-based decision-making and weights regarding the optimal option or combination of options
Implementation: defining roles and responsibilities of implementers (RACI and DARE matrices)
Evaluating results
Communication
Critical thinking is an essential skill for everyone. But to make our voice heard in an organization, society, or the world - the skill to communicate what we've learned from the critical thinking process is required.
The book suggests how to:
Present an argument: from situation to complexity, to resulting questions to the answer we've learned
Convey the message: building the narrative through storytelling tools
We hope this review helps readers understand the importance of critical thinking skills, offers the foundations of critical learning development, and inspires all to learn more in-depth through reading the book and additional complementary materials.
Critical thinking is a cornerstone to our success as individuals and society.