Other Interpretations
Here are a few more interpretations of critical thinking:
"[Critical thought] consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth (Willingham, 2008).”
"We [American Philosophical Association Delphi Panel] understand CT to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based (Facione, 1990)."
"Critical thinking is the ability to engage in purposeful, self-regulatory judgment (Abrami, et al., 2008)."
"Critical thinking is reflective and evaluative thinking oriented toward what to think, to believe and to do. Critical thinking implies not only complex skills (related to logical, creative and caring thinking) but also a critical spirit (related to social and dialogical skills and predispositions). As philosophy does, critical thinking aims at the development of autonomous thinkers who can engage in a constructive scepticism—the best means to improve the quality of human experience (Daniel & Auriac, 2011)."
What to do?
With so many competing, conflicting, and confounding ideas it is difficult to approach the subject of critical thought. There are two basic ways to alleviate this problem. First, an umbrella term could be used to encompass all aspects of all definitions of critical thought. This is proposed by Lewis and Smith who group critical thought alongside ideas such as problem solving and decision making under the ideas surrounding higher order thinking(1993). Alternatively, a bare-bones version could be used that takes ideas common to most critical thinking definitions as is proposed by Paul, Elder, and Bartell (1997). I feel the latter option is most beneficial. While the definition does lose some of the subtleties common to many iterations, it provides a simple working version for critical thought.