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Critical Reasoning and Writing CRITICAL REASONING AND WRITING Noah Levin Golden West College Book: Critical Reasoning and Writing (Levin et al.) Cross Library Transclusion template('CrossTransclude/Web',{'Library':'chem','PageID':170365}); TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE 1: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING, REASONING, AND LOGIC What is thinking? It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. ‘Thinking’ is perhaps the most intimate and personal thing that people do. Yet the more you ‘think’ about thinking, the more mysterious it can appear. Many people believe that logic is very abstract, dispassionate, complicated, and even cold. But in fact the study of logic is nothing more intimidating or obscure than this: the study of good thinking. 1.1: PRELUDE TO CHAPTER 1.2: INTRODUCTION AND THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS- THE TROLLEY PROBLEM 1.3: TRUTH AND ITS ROLE IN ARGUMENTATION - CERTAINTY, PROBABILITY, AND MONTY HALL 1.4: DISTINCTION OF PROOF FROM VERIFICATION; OUR BIASES AND THE FORER EFFECT 1.5: THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 1.6: DIAGRAMMING THOUGHTS AND ARGUMENTS - ANALYZING NEWS MEDIA 1.7: CREATING A PHILOSOPHICAL OUTLINE 2: LANGUAGE - MEANING AND DEFINITION Rational people ought to concede he was right about one thing: many disagreements stem from linguistic problems. To resolve this, we simply (though it’s not actually simple) must use language clearly and precisely. If we eliminate all linguistic issues, then we’re left with the more meaningful philosophical problems, and real arguments can now happen since we know exactly what we’re talking about. 2.1: TECHNIQUES OF DEFINING- “SEMANTICS” VS “SYNTAX” AND AVOIDING MORE AMBIGUITY 2.2: CRITERIA FOR FRAMING DEFINITIONS- IT’S ALL ABOUT CONTEXT AND AUDIENCE 2.3: DEFINING TERMS APPROPRIATELY 2.4: COGNITIVE AND EMOTIVE MEANING - ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 2.5: FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE AND PRECISION IN SPEECH 2.6: DEFINING TERMS- TYPES AND PURPOSES OF DEFINITIONS 3: INFORMAL FALLACIES - MISTAKES IN REASONING What is a fallacy? Simply put, a fallacy is an error in reasoning. It employs a method of reasoning to reach a conclusion that is usually incorrect, but the flaw isn’t in the claims or conclusions, but rather in the connections between them (although the method of reasoning can sometimes go right in informal fallacies, formal fallacies are always wrong and those will be covered later). 3.1: CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES - ALL THE WAYS WE SAY THINGS WRONG 3.2: FALLACIES OF EVIDENCE 3.3: FALLACIES OF WEAK INDUCTION 3.4: FALLACIES OF AMBIGUITY AND GRAMMATICAL ANALOGY 3.5: THE DETECTION OF FALLACIES IN ORDINARY LANGUAGE 3.6: SEARCHING YOUR ESSAYS FOR FALLACIES 4: DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS Logic is the business of evaluating arguments, sorting good ones from bad ones. In everyday language, we sometimes use the word ‘argument’ to refer to belligerent shouting matches. If you and a friend have an argument in this sense, things are not going well between the two of you. 4.1: PRELUDE TO DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS 4.2: STATEMENTS AND SYMBOLIZING 4.3: PROPOSITIONS, INFERENCES, AND JUDGMENTS 4.4: VALIDITY AND SOUNDNESS 4.5: COMMONS FORMS OF ARGUMENTS 4.6: FORMAL FALLACIES 4.7: FORMALIZING YOUR ARGUMENTS 1 9/28/2021 5: INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS Unlike deductive arguments, inductive reasoning allows for the possibility that the conclusion is false, even if all of the premises are true. Instead of being valid or invalid, inductive arguments are either strong or weak, which describes how probable it is that the conclusion is true. Another crucial difference is that deductive certainty is impossible in non-axiomatic systems, such as reality, leaving inductive reasoning as the primary route to (probabilistic) knowledge of such systems. 5.1: PRELUDE TO INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS 5.2: COGENCY AND STRONG ARGUMENTS 5.3: CAUSALITY AND SCIENTIFIC REASONING 5.4: ANALOGY 5.5: STATISTICAL REASONING- BAYES’ THEOREM 5.6: LEGAL REASONING AND MORAL REASONING 5.7: EDITING YOUR FINAL ESSAY BACK MATTER INDEX GLOSSARY 2 9/28/2021 Preface Licensing Information Unless otherwise noted, all content contained herein is either not under copyright in the United States (primarily due to the expiration of the copyright) or the work has been released into the Public Domain by the author. All content is under a license that allows this work in its entirety to be reproduced and reprinted, but not for commercial purposes. Due to licenses that apply to certain sections of this book, it is safest to presume this work as a whole to be under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. How to Cite this Work When citing this work, please make sure that this conforms to the rules for citing an edited volume in your citation style. For APA style, all you simply need to use is “Levin, N. (Ed). (2019). Critical Reasoning and Writing: An Open Educational Resource. N.G.E. Far Press.” Remember that the author(s) of every piece in this work are noted, and if there is none listed, then it is the work of the editor. To cite a specific chapter, use the citation information listed in the footnote at the beginning of the chapter and include it as being from this volume (if desired, and as appropriate to your style). For example, to cite Chapter 2 in this work for APA style, you would use, “DiGiovanna, J. (2013). Introduction to Critical Thinking. In Levin, N. (Ed). (2019). Critical Reasoning and Writing: An Open Educational Resource. N.G.E. Far Press.” You can find all my works available wherever there is a desire to read them. And for FREE here: NGE Far Press A Phony Publisher for Real Works http://www.ngefarpress.com You can contact the author at the above website or at [email protected] Critical Reasoning and Writing: An Open Educational Resource Collected and Edited by Noah Levin, PhD Golden West College Huntington Beach, CA Last Revision: January, 2019 Originally Released August, 2018 Noah Levin 1 9/28/2021 https://human.libretexts.org/@go/page/30517 CHAPTER OVERVIEW 1: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING, REASONING, AND LOGIC What is thinking? It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. ‘Thinking’ is perhaps the most intimate and personal thing that people do. Yet the more you ‘think’ about thinking, the more mysterious it can appear. Many people believe that logic is very abstract, dispassionate, complicated, and even cold. But in fact the study of logic is nothing more intimidating or obscure than this: the study of good thinking. 1.1: PRELUDE TO CHAPTER 1.2: INTRODUCTION AND THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS- THE TROLLEY PROBLEM 1.3: TRUTH AND ITS ROLE IN ARGUMENTATION - CERTAINTY, PROBABILITY, AND MONTY HALL Only certain sorts of sentences can be used in arguments. We call these sentences propositions, statements or claims. 1.4: DISTINCTION OF PROOF FROM VERIFICATION; OUR BIASES AND THE FORER EFFECT 1.5: THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD The procedure that scientists use is also a standard form of argument. Its conclusions only give you the likelihood or the probability that something is true (if your theory or hypothesis is confirmed), and not the certainty that it’s true. But when it is done correctly, the conclusions it reaches are very well-grounded in experimental evidence. 1.6: DIAGRAMMING THOUGHTS AND ARGUMENTS - ANALYZING NEWS MEDIA 1.7: CREATING A PHILOSOPHICAL OUTLINE 1 9/28/2021 1.1: Prelude to Chapter 1 Critical Thinking “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” – Rudolph Steiner. What is thinking? It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. ‘Thinking’ is perhaps the most intimate and personal thing that people do. Yet the more you ‘think’ about thinking, the more mysterious it can appear. It is the sort of thing that one intuitively or naturally understands, and yet cannot describe to others without great difficulty. Many people believe that logic is very abstract, dispassionate, complicated, and even cold. But in fact the study of logic is nothing more intimidating or obscure than this: the study of good thinking. Before asking what good thinking is, we might want to ask a few questions about thinking as such. Let’s say that thinking is the activity of the mind. It includes activities like reasoning, perceiving, explaining, inventing, problem solving, learning, teaching, contemplating, knowing, and even dreaming. We think about everything, all the time. We think about ordinary practical matters like what to have for dinner tonight, all the way to the most abstract and serious matters, like the meaning of life. You are thinking, right now, as you read this sentence. Some may wish to draw a distinction between thinking and feeling, including sense perception, emotional experience, or even religious faith. Some might want to argue that computers or animals are capable of thinking, even if their way of thinking is somehow different from that of humans. And some might say that the question is an absurd one: everyone knows what thinking is, because everyone ‘thinks’ all the time, and everyone can ‘feel’ themselves thinking. We are somehow ‘aware’ of thoughts in our minds, aware of information and knowledge, aware of memories, and aware of likely future probabilities and so on. Thinking is a first-order phenomenological insight: it’s a bit like knowing what the colour ‘red’ looks like, or knowing the taste of an orange. You know what it is, but you probably have an awfully hard time describing or defining it. Thinking, in this way of ‘thinking’ about thinking, is an event. It is something done, something that takes place, and something that happens. There are a lot of serious philosophical (as well as scientific) questions about the nature of thinking.
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