The pragmatics of critical thinking

The notion of critical thinking (CT) has attracted intensive research interest over the years in a number of scientific fields, i.e., education, psychology, logic, rhetoric, to mention but a few. However, due to its multidirectional orientation, it has proven hard to pin down. More recently, it has realistically been viewed as a notion that can be organized into types or sub-skills, each of which can be duly considered relative to the distinctive details of a specific subject (McPeck 1981McPeck, John. 1981. Critical Thinking and Education. New York: St. Martin’s.). The current work observes the type of CT exercised in playing adventure games, particularly in solving puzzles. Importantly, the obvious link of CT to inferential reasoning notwithstanding, the prospect of a pragmatic description of the notion at hand is overlooked in the relevant literature, as is the prospect of a pragmatic description of videogaming. In order to compensate for this double oversight, the current work draws on the insights of relevance theory, securing a unifying framework of pragmatic analysis. More specifically, as will be shown, playing an adventure game engages the player in exercising a type of critical thinking that is oriented towards the task of solving a problem or puzzle. In this light, a puzzle is composed of a series of mental challenges, addressing which contributes to the construction of a relevance-driven syllogistic process; a type of process that is geared towards the derivation of contextual effects that are relevant to the aim of solving the puzzle.