The pragmatics of critical thinking

Abstract 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 1981 ). 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.