The Question: How might a layman be provided with basic tools to aid in successfully navigating the world, and most importantly, be aided in being independently capable of sustaining critical thinking, to the point of possessing and learning to use an initial approach to debunking and evaluating beliefs and belief systems? — William Wallace

Isn't the best answer to this question years of institutional education?

Indeed! Unfortunately, no perfect worlds.
By the way, the automatic moderation of comments by new users (no complaint!) delayed my mini-rollout of initial posts. Now have to wait for some free time in order to continue.

They don't want to be spammed. I'll wait to see your posts, try them one at a time.

[Nota Bene:

• For whatever non-life-threatening health reasons, I can only post when able, an unpredictable affair. Sorry if a tad sporadic. Hope to add 4-5 short blurbs in a relatively brief time period, Mother Nature willing.
• Preference is shown for using lay terms and straightforward vernacular whenever possible.]

Grounded Reasoning
In practice, we often snatch whatever principle or value we might find handy out of need or preference and apply it to argument. When push comes to shove, unstated assumptions come to the fore, and often things are at best left as a matter of opinion to be disagreed upon, even in matters of fact. It would be of use not only to have some starting point or common ground, not impossible in principle. Far harder is agreeing on its derivation, on where we source the foundation for a given argument. What is a legitimate view, on what authority can one speak? Most of us, in my view, default to employing what is felt to be logical reasoning from scientific fact or religious precept, often crossing is-ought boundaries, or ignoring the non-divine nature of human endeavor, as the case may be. Is that all there is in terms of choices? How can I know when I'm right and the other guy is wrong, by golly?

A Basic Worldview
Legitimate as reasoning from fact may be, there is much to be said about reason itself, or what makes a fact, some of which will be the focus of this discussion, some best left to argument among philosophers (inhabiting arcane web sites on the interwebs). Let us assume, for a rather optimistic moment, that we wish, not to abandon all we know or dismiss long-held conviction, but to order our thoughts in such a way as to make many matters of heated discussion a tad easier to handle.

After quite a number of rounds of arguing with scientists, philosophers and gadflies of varying sorts and reputations, you may find the task of agreeing with anyone on some sort of ground zero nigh impossible. But for entertainment purposes, and so no one will call us quitters, we'll make a go of it anyway.

Where to start? OMG, reality? In trouble already! Hold on, hold on. Step back and consider: basically we can all agree there is the stuff we think inside our heads, and the stuff out there, not to put to fine a point on it. Speaking of points and heads...

We actually will need to put a finer point on it. Darn. Consider this:

• Conceptual space: Refers to the full and broadest extent of human thought, knowledge and imagination, including science, fiction, woo, myth, and the proverbial kitchen sink.
• Physical space: Refers to the natural world, famously the subject of scientific inquiry.

Already the anti-realists are leaping out of armchairs, smoking pipes turned toward us in menace, slapping slippers at the ready! Let us invite them to the instrumentalist waiting room, shall we, and perchance we shall meet again, in some future post yet waiting collapse of its wave function.

For now, we shall consider that physical space is possible to map using science, and our best current understanding of that mapping resides in conceptual space. This is rather convenient, there being a tether to our argument, appeals to measurement and repeated results being both possible and quite handy. Rather productive, too, and pragmatic. So convenient, and so handy, in fact, that everyone want in on the act, inventing alternatives to fact and claiming proper tethers. Are they all mad?

Pausing for refreshment, we are suddenly faced with an immediate quandary. Among the different choices we are to make to ease the woes of reading this post, all of which choices are (say) equally healthy, science is silent. Mute, the ruddy bastard! The very second we wish to have a life, goners. Sucks, indeed.

[More to come: Mapping Conceptual Space]