Tag Archives: Critical Thinking

End of Daze

09 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Politics, Religion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

So, apparently that eminent theologian and Master political strategist Michelle Bachman is declaring that the United States might be facing utter destruction from the Wrath of God for allowing gay marriages. There’s nothing especially news worthy about ignorant people spewing infantile nonsense. I don't want But Bachman was elected to Congress, and even had serious aspirations for the office of President. In order for this to have occurred, Bachman had to receive significant support from a wide range of the public – people who voted for her, people who volunteered for her, people who donated money to her various campaigns, and so on. How is it that so much support was so eagerly forthcoming so as to create Bachman’s political successes and nourish such high ambitions, especially given how disturbingly limited her cognitive faculties apparently are? Are Americans just stupid for buying in to such staggering infantilism? In particular, what is it about “end of days” cultism that it finds so much appeal to so many Americans? Continue reading →

Oh Ashley …

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Ethics, Objective Morality

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Schadenfreude – the pleasure one takes at hearing about or seeing other people’s troubles – is not a viable standard for ethical evaluations, even when the people whose troubles we are rejoicing in are the absolute scum of the earth and deserve all the things, and even worse, that are happening to them. Feeling good about other people’s troubles, quite aside from indicating a rather profound flaw in one’s character (a flaw a great many of us suffer from), is logically – and therefore morally – vacuous; it is a form of the argumentum ad misericordiam, and therefore patently fallacious.Rabbit Hole But more than just the logical issues involved, I want to spend some time considering the ethical dimensions attached to schadenfreude, specifically as these relate to the recent Ashley Madison hack. Continue reading →

I Chose My Data “Carefully” …

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Cherry Picking, Critical Thinking, Logic

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Cherry-picking data is often times (and somewhat inexplicably) not even classified as a fallacy. Thus for example, my favorite “go to” source on all things fallacious, the Fallacy Files, does not list it anywhere in its otherwise quite comprehensive encyclopedia. Cherry picking (Gary Curtis, over at Fallacy Files, and I exchanged some cheerful emails, and the simple answer as of this writing is that it simply hadn’t occurred to Gary to add an entry on the subject. He hopes to post something on his weblog in the not too distant future, and once it is up I’ll link to it HERE. [UPDATE: Gary Curtis has now posted his comments at Fallacy FIles.]) Continue reading →

Not Safe, Merely Sorry

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Logic, Social Media

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

And now for a brief bit on applied critical thinking …

Dunce

Logical reasoning and critical thinking are habits. And like all habits, they can be cultivated and nurtured through various forms of positive reinforcement, or they can be suppressed and even eliminated with sufficient amounts of negative reinforcement. So there is never a good time to abandon rational thought on the excuse that, just in case, this one time, it might be wrong. Error is the risk we take when we attempt to say what is true. Error is the guarantee we ensure when we give up on that attempt – ironic, since the excuse for giving up is to avoid error. I bring this up, because the excuse is often presented by persons insistently advancing some demonstrable piece of nonsense that, “It is better to be safe than sorry.” Which is to say, some abjectly ridiculous claim is asserted with the statement that, “I don’t know if this is true or not, but blah blah blah blah.”

As a matter of fact, No, it is not better.

Continue reading →

The “G” Word

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Altemeyer, atheism, Critical Thinking, God, Whitehead

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Philosophers need not be physically courageous (such as soldiers, police officers, or fire fighters), but they should be morally brave. So permit me to swallow my trepidation and make an initial offering about the much vexed “G” word – that is, “God.”

God and man

There is actually quite a great deal of very good stuff out there in the world on the subject; sadly, little of it ever rises to the surface of popular consciousness. But let’s start by considering some of the more grotesquely fatuous twaddle that is out there, so that we can end an a relatively high note.

Continue reading →

What is a Fallacy?

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Logic, Philosophy of Logic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

There are many more ways of reasoning poorly than there are of reasoning well, just as there are vastly more ways of getting lost than there are of proceeding directly to your destination. (A quick note on that last analogy: not every circuitous path is a mistake; depending on time and tide, sometimes there are aesthetic values other than efficiency of travel and timeliness of arrival at play in an actual journey.) Even the most detailed catalog of fallacies must content itself with providing little more than a generic list.Doh My favorites such list is The Fallacy Files; besides their basic list, the Files also provides a well worked out taxonomy. But what is a fallacy? I can give a list of bird species without ever saying what a bird is. The Files do offer an answer to this question, but I wish to propose a slightly different approach. Where I am going is definitely outside the mainstream when it comes to saying what a fallacy is, but I believe a substantive argument can be made for the case I present here.

Continue reading →

HERSTEIN’s FIRST LAW

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in General Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic, Psychology

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Never underestimate human capacity for denial.

I first formulated the above phrase – and flattered myself by naming it – some decades ago; so long, indeed, that I’ve no clear idea when I first said it. Other people have probably said similar things, long before I ever first quipped the idea. But my first contact with the phrase was in my personal act of formulating it. The second person to invent the wheel still invented it if she didn’t know about the first person. The earliest example of the exact quote (it is important that you search on the quote, otherwise the search registers all the words, regardless of their order) that I can find on Google brings up the pseudonym of “Logic Deferred” as first stating the phrase publicly back in February of 2010. Feel free to click on the pseudonym to see who it is that comes up. But as I said, I’ve used the phrase for many decades now.

DerpAnd I am quite sincere about this statement: Never underestimate human capacity for denial. Smart people can be the worst cases when it comes to denial, because rather than using their intelligence for inquiry, they will use it to justify their ideology.

Continue reading →

Black Devils

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in appeal to emotion, Critical Thinking, Ferguson, General Philosophy

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, ,

“And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.” This is how Officer Darren Wilson described Michael Brown in the moments before Wilson killed the unarmed Brown. According to Wilson, Brown wasn’t angry, infuriated or even enraged – because for Wilson, Brown wasn’t even human. Notice that Brown’s face isn’t even his (Brown’s) face; Wilson calls Brown’s face an “it.” (Found on pp’s 224 — 225 of Wilson’s testimony.) Brown was a demon, he was a black devil. And because Brown was a black devil, it required nothing more than Wilson feeling he was threatened for the threat to have the legal standing of an objective fact. rabid-dogs

Continue reading →

The Road To Hell

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Ethics, General Philosophy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

In case you don’t know, the above mentioned stretch of pavement is not laid down with brick or asphalt. Rather, it is paved with “good intentions.” I “intend” to have a few words on the subject; I hope they are “good.” If our intentions are good, and we are lucky, we hope things will turn out well. After all, our intentions were in the “right” place, so what more could one ask (much less require)? But this rhetorical question brings us to the very heart of the problem: “luck” is not a method, and “hope” is not a plan. Road To HellBy justifying ourselves on nothing more than our intentions (and our hopes for luck, as far as they go), it is arguably the case that what we really “hope” to do (if we are lucky) is completely separate ourselves from any responsibility for the consequences of our actions. However, let us not assume that things are quite so simple in either direction. Permit me to savagely gloss a few classical ideas from moral philosophy. Continue reading →

Open Mindedness

03 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Critical Thinking, General Philosophy, Logic, Philosophy of Logic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

What does it mean to be “open” minded? Open mindedness is supposed to be found at some far end of (some) spectrum (or other) from “closed” mindedness. But what “spectrum,” and what “end”?

There is a saying – variously and unreliably attributed to everyone and no one in particular – that many people would profit from taking to heart: “One ought to have an open mind, but not so open that one’s brains fall out.”

Continue reading →