I think what you present captures something crucial about critical thinking but underestimates the radical sociality of reason and fails to account for its own status. Karl Popper's work seems related. You seem to be (more or less) contrasting science and metaphysics, but your embrace of science is itself metaphysical. This isn't bad or good, but it should be accounted for.

Another approach: 'ground' a metaphor that signals our intention to set up camp on solid ground. It seems to me that much of philosophy has been a debate about where this ground is or whether it exists at all. Popper wrote about the swampy foundations of science.


Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

There's an old thread about this here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12759/poppers-swamp-observation-statements-factsinterpretations/p1

To make this more concrete, let's say that I think I saw a ghost or a flying saucer. Do I completely trust my memory ? Or do I take others into account ? 'Pure' experience is a tricky concept.