According to Mark Mason in his essay "Critical Thinking and Learning," an integrated concept of critical thinking requires five components: Reasoning skills, a critical attitude, a moral orientation, knowledge of critical thinking concepts, and knowledge of the subject matter (Mason 344). But in order for critical thinking skills to apply universally, individuals must evaluate claims the same way regardless of factors such as culture. Although such factors do affect our ability to evaluate claims, scholars like Harvey Siegel and Colin Evers argue that a "transcultural rationality" exists and provide evidence that although cultures reason differently, people process cognitive tasks the same way across cultures (qtd. in Mason 345).

Critical thinking requires (1) a relativistic view of the nature of human knowledge and (2) rhetorical literacy. Rhetoric and critical thinking both address the nature of human knowledge, but critical thinking requires doubt about the accuracy of our perception of reality (Browne and Freeman 305). Our biological constraints (e.g., limited eyesight, mental health, etc.) limit the scope and accuracy of the information we perceive, which prevents us from perceiving all information completely or accurately. For example, humans have a limited range of hearing that prevents us from detecting sounds above or below certain frequencies, but even a mentally and physically flawless individual couldn't process all available information every second of the day, at least not at this stage of our brain's evolution.

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