CRITICAL THINKING AS KNOWLEDGE VALIDATION: AN INTERPRETIVE ANALYSIS OF ITS EPISTEMOLOGICAL PURPOSE, DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE, AND EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

In contemporary debates on higher education, critical thinking is often taken for granted as an unquestionable pedagogical ideal, yet it is frequently reduced to a generic argumentative skill or to a decontextualized academic ability. Such reductionism becomes particularly problematic in academic environments shaped by information overload, the circulation of biased content, and the growing difficulty of sustaining well-grounded processes of rational deliberation. This article adopts a qualitative, theoretical–interpretive approach aimed at understanding critical thinking as an epistemological rationality oriented toward knowledge validation rather than as a set of isolated cognitive techniques. From this perspective, critical thinking is conceptualized as a deliberate practice of intellectual self-regulation that disciplines inference, constrains interpretive arbitrariness, and enables the formulation of revisable judgments grounded in evidence and source comparison. The study systematizes critical thinking as a dimensional architecture integrating cognitive skills, intellectual and ethical dispositions, and knowledge as an indispensable substrate that provides content, disciplinary specificity, and experience. It is argued that higher education must move beyond the simulation of criticality based on instrumental procedures and instead promote pedagogical and cultural conditions that strengthen intellectual autonomy, ethical deliberation, and resistance to misinformation.