So what is Critical Thinking?

People ask me this often. I've been teaching and writing about critical & creative thinking all my professional life. For 35 years. What am I really saying when I say I foster, teach, develop critical and creative thinking skills? Here's a spontaneous list... I'm sure I'll come up w/ more once I've hit published. But here goes, in no particular order:

analysis

evaluation

comprehension

acquisition of facts

synthesis

application

problem solving

decision making

self reflection

praxis

narratives

frameworks/mindsets

world views

dispositions

neuroplasticity

flow

flexible thinking

suspending one's ego

meta-cognition

theory of mind

logos, mythos, pathos, ethos

moral reasoning

deliberation

discussion

perspective taking

executive functioning

organization

organizing thoughts

categorization

paradigms

socratic thinking

insight

privileging data/knowledge/observations

durable categories

bias

unpacking & surfacing assumptions

unpacking & surfacing conclusions

unpacking & surfacing judgments

weighting data; data sets.....