Why You Should Embrace Uncertainty in Your Critical Thinking
Thinking about epistemological understanding and why we need it.
Posted April 23, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
A core component of critical thinking (CT) is the application of reflective judgment – used as we navigate the information presented to us during our thinking. According to King and Kitchener (1994), reflective judgment refers to an individuals' understanding of the nature, limits, and certainty of knowing and how this can affect how they defend their judgments and reasoning in context, as well as an individual’s acknowledgement that their views might be falsified by additional evidence obtained at a later time. The ability to ‘take a step back’ in this way implies an epistemological understanding (Dwyer, 2023) ; and by ‘epistemological understanding’, I mean understanding the nature of knowledge itself – what it is and how it’s gained.
At the heart of the epistemological understanding necessary for CT is the acknowledgement that knowledge is simply ‘information’. That information is either true or false. People hold false beliefs, remember events inaccurately, etc. Some even create misinformation or disinformation that others will believe and treat as knowledge. However, until it is recognised as false, it remains ‘knowledge’ to the individual who believes it. Thus, not all ‘knowledge’ is true. Similarly, information that is true, or factual, is only so as long as it is true or factual. For example, up until 2006, there were nine planets in our solar system, now there are eight – not because scientists can’t count; rather, because we have learned more about the nature of celestial bodies (consider a past post regarding why ‘ proof’ (and its derivations) is the dirtiest word in CT) .
Simply, the more we learn, the more we adapt our understanding (in a positive way) of the world around us. Being open to learning new information and acknowledging levels of assuredness around it (see the discussion of credibility in a previous post ) facilitates epistemological understanding. Through such understanding, we learn that there is always a level of uncertainty . Thus, good thinking and decision-making always reflect a level of caution because we can never be sure of anything. The point of this post is to address the concept of uncertainty and discuss how, despite a negative connotation, it can be useful for guiding our thinking and, as a result, why we should embrace it.
Uncertainty is, perhaps, an undervalued cognitive state, from a ‘learning’ standpoint. For example, consider an example used in another post regarding one perspective on the Socratic Paradox:
When engaged with the Oracle of Delphi, who told Socrates that he was the wisest person in Athens, Socrates believed the Oracle. But how could a man who knows nothing be the wisest man? Socrates concluded that if he knew nothing and was wiser than everybody else, then it must be due to him being the only person in Athens who recognised their own ignorance.
In the midst of thinking about a topic or trying to make a decision, the ability to say ‘I don’t know’ is not an admission of ignorance, rather it is a sign of good thinking; one that exhibits intellectual humility and integrity (Paul, 1993). Acknowledging uncertainty allows us to evaluate what we know and what we don’t, so as to steer our efforts to seek further information. Simply, uncertainty keeps us in check and it facilitates caution in our thinking. Likewise, it is reasonably speculated that uncertainty may act as a driving force for students in their academic careers, particularly when dispositions toward CritT, like truth-seeking, inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, scepticism and resourcefulness are considered in context (Dwyer et al., 2016; Quinn et al., 2020).
We see Socrates’ observation at work in our daily lives as well. Consider the Dunning-Kruger effect in context, which exemplifies the tendency for low-skilled individuals to overestimate their ability in tasks relevant to said skill and highly skilled individuals to underestimate their ability in tasks relevant to said skill (e.g. Kruger and Dunning 1999; Mahmood, 2016). The ‘ wise ’ embrace their uncertainty with respect to knowing what they don’t know and the novices fail to recognise their contextual ignorance. Indeed, a great portion of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s research was conducted on similar notions, facilitating one of his more famous conclusions: “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: Our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 201).
Uncertainty exists all around us. We can ignore it and use whatever information we have available (and believe it to be true), in a manner akin to the old adage ‘ignorance is bliss’. Alternatively, we can embrace it for what it is and actively engage CT and new/additional information to enhance the likelihood of successful thinking and decision-making.
Dwyer, C. P. (2023). An evaluative review of barriers to critical thinking in educational and real-world settings. Journal of Intelligence , 11 (6), 105, doi.org/ 10.3390/jintelligence11060105.
Dwyer, C. P., Harney, O., Hogan, M. J., & Kavanagh, C. (2016). Facilitating a Student-Educator Conceptual Model of Dispositions towards Critical Thinking through Interactive Management. Educational Technology & Research, doi: 10.1007/s11423-016-9460-7.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast & Slow . UK: Penguin.
King, P. M., & Kitchener, K. S. (1994). Developing Reflective Judgment: Understanding and Promoting Intellectual Growth and Critical Thinking in Adolescents and Adults. CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, (6): 1121–1134.
Mahmood, K. (2016). Do people overestimate their information literacy skills? A systematic review of empirical evidence on the Dunning-Kruger effect. Communications in Information Literacy , 10 (2), 3.
Paul, R. (1993). Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. Rohnert Park, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Quinn, S., Hogan, M., Dwyer, C., Finn, P. & Fogarty, E., (2020). Development and Validation of the Student-Educator Negotiated Critical Thinking Dispositions Scale (SENCTDS). Thinking Skills & Creativity, 38, doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100710.
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Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland, where he also lectures.
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