Philosophy
It's difficult to overstate the importance of the skills associated with critical thinking. Obviously, you want to have the ability and the know-how to recognize and evaluate the quality of arguments and the evidence provided to support them fairly, and to develop defensible arguments of your own whenever you want to persuade others that your point of view is worth endorsing.
But critical thinking is not just about mental skill. It also requires the adoption of certain moral values without which those skills we talked about before might be put to bad or unfair use. Some of these values include integrity, honesty, humility, and the ability to recognize when you've made some terrible logical blunder. Of course, when you simply re-affirm bad arguments, even though they have been shown to be fallacious, defending them is only going to require that you produce even worse arguments, rife with fallacy and dishonesty, so even if you don't believe in the values above, it would still be better to cut your losses and quit while you're ahead.
Anyway, in my critical thinking classes I usually assign a project that requires students to identify instances of certain informal logical fallacies as they occur in the real world, and the following is a two-minute sample based on the now infamous episode in which Bill O'Reilly thought he could "prove" the existence of God based on his own ignorance (just go to the second slide to see the logical analysis).
If he had just said "my bad, I made a mistake, that really was a bad argument" he probably would not have lost the respect of so many people...
- 5 Invalid Arguments That God Does Not Exist
We have already dealt with some logical fallacies and you know how to classify them. Logical fallacies are often used in advertisement and politics but are even more explicit when it comes to religious debates. ?Does God exist?? is one of the oldest philosophical...
- Logical Fallacies Examples ? Appeal To Novelty And Age
As always let's begin with a simple definition. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning which usually relies on a wrong assumption made in the argument. Appeal to emotion is one of the most popular types of logical fallacies ? examples of these...
- Michael Shermer - The Baloney Detection Kit
In this blog we have featured previously a basic intro to logic and argumentation, a primer on the importance of critical thinking, a fun intro to informal logical fallacies, and many more relevant entries. And yet the main point cannot be emphasized...
- The Importance Of Critical Thinking
I think a good case can be made that becoming a critical thinker is analogous to learning a new language: as you start to develop this set of skills, you start seeing the world in new and interesting ways, expanding your intellectual horizon in unexpected...
- Logical Fallacies
If you've paid attention to the kind of discourse that's become increasingly popular over the past few years, you may have noticed that it seems we have made the unfortunate choice to collectively sacrifice evidence and reason in favor of ideology...
Philosophy
Bill O'Reilly's Logical Blunders
But critical thinking is not just about mental skill. It also requires the adoption of certain moral values without which those skills we talked about before might be put to bad or unfair use. Some of these values include integrity, honesty, humility, and the ability to recognize when you've made some terrible logical blunder. Of course, when you simply re-affirm bad arguments, even though they have been shown to be fallacious, defending them is only going to require that you produce even worse arguments, rife with fallacy and dishonesty, so even if you don't believe in the values above, it would still be better to cut your losses and quit while you're ahead.
Anyway, in my critical thinking classes I usually assign a project that requires students to identify instances of certain informal logical fallacies as they occur in the real world, and the following is a two-minute sample based on the now infamous episode in which Bill O'Reilly thought he could "prove" the existence of God based on his own ignorance (just go to the second slide to see the logical analysis).
If he had just said "my bad, I made a mistake, that really was a bad argument" he probably would not have lost the respect of so many people...
- 5 Invalid Arguments That God Does Not Exist
We have already dealt with some logical fallacies and you know how to classify them. Logical fallacies are often used in advertisement and politics but are even more explicit when it comes to religious debates. ?Does God exist?? is one of the oldest philosophical...
- Logical Fallacies Examples ? Appeal To Novelty And Age
As always let's begin with a simple definition. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning which usually relies on a wrong assumption made in the argument. Appeal to emotion is one of the most popular types of logical fallacies ? examples of these...
- Michael Shermer - The Baloney Detection Kit
In this blog we have featured previously a basic intro to logic and argumentation, a primer on the importance of critical thinking, a fun intro to informal logical fallacies, and many more relevant entries. And yet the main point cannot be emphasized...
- The Importance Of Critical Thinking
I think a good case can be made that becoming a critical thinker is analogous to learning a new language: as you start to develop this set of skills, you start seeing the world in new and interesting ways, expanding your intellectual horizon in unexpected...
- Logical Fallacies
If you've paid attention to the kind of discourse that's become increasingly popular over the past few years, you may have noticed that it seems we have made the unfortunate choice to collectively sacrifice evidence and reason in favor of ideology...