Critical Thinking is the ability to comprehensively evaluate competing accounts of the same situation without reference to EITHER subjective preferences OR an unchanging / transcendent standard of explanation.

That is, Critical Thinking makes it possible to “objectively” analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competing accounts by deploying specific criteria to any “explanation” of a concrete situation: comprehensiveness or completeness / consistency or coherence / and elegance or simplicity.

In achieving this, Critical Thinking also adds two key components:

a) the ability to analyze situations of any sort from the perspective of all the actors involved – be they individuals / corporations / of all the actors involved – be they individuals / corporations / political parties / public officials / governments / ethnic groups / religious communities / etc. etc. etc. – without necessarily agreeing, or identifying, with the values and interests motivating those actors; and, in that context,

b) the ability to assess the validity of communications from those actors by analyzing both how they say what they say and, no less importantly, what they DON'T say.

That is, critical thinking empowers people by enabling them to ascertain a pretty good idea of the “truth” – even when the relevant actors are lying – from the way those actors organize their communication of that lie.