# Contested concept: critical thinking

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: The conflict over what constitutes 'critical thinking' in the age of AI masks a disagreement over whether it is an internal mental process (independent analysis) or a successful outcome (correctly identifying bugs, regardless of the tool used).
- **Canonical**: `/concept/critical thinking` (data: `/concept/critical thinking.json`)

## Senses in use
- **A measurable cognitive score or mental engagement level that decreases when tasks are externalized.** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **The active, independent logical analysis and verification required to deeply understand and validate technical problems.** — used in 4 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Regularly choosing the easiest solution via AI tools deprives developers of the deep, challenging work necessary to build technical experti…](/claim/claim_09b651bbe635.md) _(sense: The active, independent logical analysis and verification required to deeply understand and validate technical problems.)_
- [A survey of 319 knowledge workers revealed that higher levels of confidence in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are associated with lower level…](/claim/claim_1da657168c1f.md) _(sense: A measurable cognitive score or mental engagement level that decreases when tasks are externalized.)_
- [Cognitive offloading—the act of using external tools to reduce the mental demand of a task—is identified as a primary driver of the decline…](/claim/claim_1f75936dc561.md) _(sense: A measurable cognitive score or mental engagement level that decreases when tasks are externalized.)_
- [The specific technical skills required to validate code generated by Large Language Models (LLMs) are the same skills that atrophy when a d…](/claim/claim_7e4c44dd27c0.md) _(sense: The active, independent logical analysis and verification required to deeply understand and validate technical problems.)_
- [The analytical skills required to verify the correctness of AI-generated code are the same skills that tend to atrophy when a developer rel…](/claim/claim_9843670f5ef7.md) _(sense: The active, independent logical analysis and verification required to deeply understand and validate technical problems.)_
- [An experienced software engineer describes a process of transferring errors to an AI and applying the resulting solutions to his code witho…](/claim/claim_b13308c04232.md) _(sense: The active, independent logical analysis and verification required to deeply understand and validate technical problems.)_
- [Research involving 666 participants found a significant negative correlation between the frequency of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool usa…](/claim/claim_d3539f5de374.md) _(sense: A measurable cognitive score or mental engagement level that decreases when tasks are externalized.)_
- [Cognitive offloading—the delegation of mental tasks to external tools—is identified as a primary cause of declining critical thinking score…](/claim/claim_d5b5071fe753.md) _(sense: A measurable cognitive score or mental engagement level that decreases when tasks are externalized.)_