On Critical and Creative Thinking: Examining Sound Judgment.

INTRODUCTION The Critical and the Creative. In this essay, I shall argue that essential to sound judgment or what others may call effective thinking is the skillful (creative) implementation of rules and procedures on the one hand, and a certain awareness (critical) of the limitations of such implementation on the other. This thesis partly disputes the presupposition that judgments - in order to be sound - must be established on a basis that is either …

…explained earlier: the point that because attaining sound judgments or critical reasoning is always a hands-on process, a process that involves circumspective familiarity, thinking and judgment them-selves must be is neither critical without being innately familiar nor the other way around. It extends this position by further pointing out the fact that since skills constitute sound judgment, being skillful is not being uncritical nor being critical is not being un-skillful.<Tab/>