Thinking critically

 The goal of critical thinking is to challenge and question our beliefs and coming to our most
fallacy free conclusions as we can possibly come to and to make decision that are wise. The
purpose of critical thinking is to come to correct conclusions
 Claim: when a belief (judgment, opinion) is asserted in a declarative sentence, the result is a
claim
 Beliefs and claims
 When we come to a conclusion, we have a belief
 A belief is propositional (can be expressed in a declarative sentence)
 These beliefs become claims, statements and assertions
 Factual opinion/belief/claim = objective opinion/belief/claim = opinion/belief/ claim whose
truth is independent of whether anyone thinks it is true.
 Not taking claims at face value
 Separate fact from opinion
 Objective and subjective
 Objective claim: whether it is true or not is independent of whether people think it is or
isn’t
E.g., ‘God exists’ or ‘there is life on Mars’
 Subjective claim: whether a subjective claim is true or not is dependent on whether
people think it is or not
E.g., ‘Obama is one cool daddy depends on who you ask’
 Objective opinions are factual opinions but that doesn’t mean they are right
 Recognize logical flaws
 Fallacies, biases, appeal to emotion
 Consider context
 What are the speaker’s interests? Who would like me to believe this?

Subjective vs. objective

 Belief or fact
Is the claim about the world? Could it be verified?
 Known or unknown
An unknown fact is still a fact. (E.g., does God exist? How many grains of sand are there on
the beaches of Spain?)

Exercise: Belief or fact?

Fact (can be proved and fact can be wrong)
Belief (cannot prove)
Belief (nothing to prove)
Fact (The pretty colors of the Venus fly trap attract bugs to their death)
Belief (depends how you think about better; better for what)
Fact (specific part)
Belief
Fact (can talk to all people to test)
Relativism and moral subjectivism
Relativism
 Truth is not objective, but depends on the speaker
 Protagoras (cold and hot)
 The idea the truth is relative to the standards of a given culture. There is no independent
‘God’s-eye view’ meaning culture’s standards that can be seen to be more correct than
others’
Moral subjectivism
 Relativism applied to ethics
 There are no moral truths outside of groups
 The idea that moral opinions are subjective. If you think something is morally wrong, then it
is morally wrong for you and you don’t need to consider any further truth
Issues: in this case, an issue is merely a question

Biases
 Cognitive biases
 Skew our apprehension of reality and interfere with our ability to think clearly, process
information accurately, and reason objectively
 We tend to evaluate an argument based on whether or not we agree with it rather than
think of it logically
 Belief bias (the conclusion sounds reasonable, so the reasoning must be good)
 Tendency to evaluate reasoning by the believability of its conclusion
 Confirmation bias (pay attention to anything that confirms your position, while disregarding
what doesn’t)
 Tendency to attach more weight to evidence that supports our viewpoint
 Availability bias/heuristic
 Assigning a probability to an event based on how easily or frequently it is thought of
 E.g. Judging from the news, violent crime is rampant
 False consensus effect—assuming our opinions and those of the people around us are
shared by society at large; all my friends coted NDP, they are sure to win
 Bandwagon effect (People tend to agree with those around them)
 The tendency to align our beliefs with those of other people
 Negativity bias (easier to make people hate the alternative and support you via elimination
than love your proposal)
 We tend to give greater weight to evidence that are scary, negative, produces fear
rather than positive evidence (plane crash speaks more than thousands of safe flights).
As critical thinkers, we are not just trying to be pragmatic, we want to understand
things and seek the truth
 Loss aversion bias (people judge a loss harsher than a win for equal amounts) (e.g. losing
$100 vs. winning $100)
 We are far more resistant to losing something and see things in a way that tries to
maintain what we are losing. We want to recognize this trait
 In-group bias
  ‘We are liberals because we care about the poor and the environment; they are
conservatives because they are uneducated rednecks that watch Fox News’
 You are less critical of opinions from people whom you form a group with. (heat fans
tend to agree with heat fans) (Ops disagree with other ops). We show more animosity
towards groups with an opposing mindset
 Fundamental attribution error (other people characteristic flaw, me circumstance)
 ‘I was late because of car problems. She is lazy’
 Have one understanding of the behavior of people of the in-group and another for
people not in the in-group
 The tendency to not appreciate that others’ behavior is as much constrained by events
and circumstances as our own would be if we were in their position
 Obedience to authority (we tend to not argue with those who we think have authority over
us)
 Overconfidence effect
 People tend to overestimate themselves
 A lot of people tend to be overconfident. It is good to be uncertain
 Better-than-average illusion
 Most people will describe themselves as better than average, which is impossible
 The best defense against these biases is to make it a habit to think critically and to be
especially critical of arguments and evidence that seem to accord with what we already
believe

Exercise: Biases
Fundamental attribution
Confirmation
Obedience to authority
Belief bias (the reason is not so strong but you like the conclusion)
Better-than-average illusion
Negativity bias (others are wrong, doesn’t mention you are right)
In-group bias
Over-confidence

Inference to the best explanation (IBE)

 The principle that we choose the most plausible explanation for a set of facts
 It is an inductive argument
 E.g., Billy isn’t home. He has a math exam next week. He tends to study with Harry at
the library.
Billy must be studying at the library
Not Billy was abducted by mutant aliens from Neptune

Three aspects that we care for

 Ethos: person’s background, position of authority (ethics)
 Paths: appeal to emotions, tone of voice
 Logos: reason, actual arguments
The parts of an argument
 An argument presents a consideration for accepting a claim
 Premise (part the provides the reason): claim put forth in support of a conclusion
 Conclusion (what the premise supports): claim meant to be supported by reasons offered in
the argument
 Always think of a conclusion as a stance on an issue (belief, opinion)
 Inference: process of moving from a set of premises to a conclusion
E.g., she is armed and very angry. She must be dangerous

Premise and conclusion indicators

 2 complications with premises and conclusions
 Conclusions used as premises
 Unstated premises and conclusions
 Premise indicators: as, as shown by, as we can see from, because, for, considering that,
since, for the reason that, as implied by, on account of the fact that, etc.
 Conclusion indicators: as a consequence, as a result, thus, for these reasons, it follows that,
so, therefore, we may conclude, this entails that, this shows that, this suggests that,
consequently, accordingly, this implies that, this proves that, etc.

Implicit premises and conclusions

 Implicit: when a premise or conclusion is not openly or explicitly stated
 Arguments that have implicit premises or conclusions are called enthymemes
 Example
The bigger the burger the better the burger
The burgers are bigger at Burger King
Unstated conclusion = the burgers are better at Burger King

Two types of argument (inductive and deductive)

 Deductive (premise change to the opposite or eliminate the primes, the conclusion will fail)
(Super logic) (a bit like math) (100% or 0%)
 The premises of a good deductive argument, if true, proves its conclusion
 The fundamental concept of deductive logic is validity
 An argument is valid when its premises are logically constructed, leading to a
reasonable conclusion
 An argument is sound when premises are true leading to a logical, true conclusion, thus
making the argument valid
 Inductive (the premise can be eliminated and the argument is still OK) (90% to 10%)
(premises are independent) (not mathematical) (probabilistic)
 The premise of a good inductive argument doesn’t demonstrate its conclusion; it
supports it
 The more support a premise provides for the conclusion, the stronger the argument
becomes and vice versa; these are arguments that are relatively strong or weak
Vagueness and ambiguity
 Vagueness and ambiguity are two related fallacies
 Vagueness
 Sorties paradox （看似矛盾 但富有深意）More haste, less speed.
 A word of phrase is vague if we cannot say it with certainty what it includes and what it
excludes
 Vagueness if often intentional and politicians will often resort to vague statements if
they don’t want their audience to know exactly where the stand
 When a claim is not too vague to convey appropriately useful information, its level of
vagueness is acceptable
 Ambiguity
 A word or phrase is said to be ambiguous when I has more than one meaning
 Semantic ambiguity (word with 2 meanings; depends on the context)
 Syntactic ambiguity (complement can refer to 2 different parts of the sentence;
ambiguity that arises from a lack of proper punctuation or grammar)
 Grouping ambiguity (failing to be clear about whether we mean a group or an
individual)
 Ambiguous pronoun references: when it is not clear to what or whom a pronoun is
supposed to refer

Purposes of definitions
 Lexical definition: the definition that tells us what the word originally means (Dictionary
definition)
 Stipulative (规定的) definition: making a definition before the case. You cannot decide for
yourself what words mean. Everybody must be behind your definition in order for it to be
accepted. Précising definitions: when we try to reduce vagueness and ambiguity. These can
be stipulative as well. Example: the word ‘minor’ has different meanings (alcohol age)
(voting age)
 Persuasive or rhetorical definitions: used to persuade or slant some one’s attitude or point
of view toward whatever the ‘defined’ term refers to
 Emotive meaning consists of the positive and negative associations of words

Types of definitions
 Definition by example: giving examples or pointing at something
 Definition by synonym: giving another word or phrase that means the same as the term
being defined
 Analytical definition: specify the features that a thing must possess in order for the term
being defined to apply it (almost all dictionary definitions are analytic)

Credibility
 Consists primarily of attitudes and basic questions to ask yourself in order to help you
become a better critical thinker
 Credibility: when someone makes a claim, we begin to consider how true the claim is.
 Should we take this claim with a grain of salt or should we just believe what you are told?
 Questions about the source
 Questions about the content
 Credibility always comes in degrees. Just because we are suspicious about the claim or the
source of the claim doesn’t mean we get to say it is false

Assessing claims
 Background info and observation
 Do the claims contradict information I know on the subject?
 Is the claim DISPROVED by personal experience (does it go against previous experience)
 Credibility of source
 Interested parties (a person who stands to gain from our belief in a claim is known as
an interested party, and interested parties must be viewed with much more suspicion
than disinterested parties, who have no stake in our belief one way or another)
 Irrelevant aspects (confidence, age, gender, etc.) (will not affect the assessing claims)
 Expertise (education and experience are often the most important factors, followed by
accomplishments, reputation, and position, in no particular order)
 Is the person making the claim going to profit from you believing the claim? We get
extra skeptical if we think that the person will profit whether it is monetary or simply in
terms of power. Example: advertisements, politicians
 It doesn’t mean they are lying, we are simply trying to be better judges and we should
be careful of how we interpret the claim
 Ramping up our level of skepticism is what credibility is all about
 Media
 Different sources have different inherent advantages and disadvantages
 Content of the claim
 We do it by comparing it to our background knowledge (how different or similar is this
claim to what I previously knew)
 The more knowledge you have in an area, the more credibility you have
 How can we be more perceptive?
What hurts us from being more perceptive?
-If we are dogmatic (being sure you know everything)
-Biases, pride
-Willful ignorance
-Emotions
What helps us be more perceptive?
-Double checking
-Caring about people
-Being interested in other human beings

Rhetorical devices
 Euphemism and dysphemism 委婉
 A neutral or positive expression used in place of one that carries negative associations
 He kicked the can, he is a junkie
  Dysphemism: opposite of a euphemism (‘eating animal flesh’ sounds worse than eating
meat
 Weaselers (vague)
 A considerable sector of the population disagrees with this policy
 They are often inserted into claims in order to try and protect the claim from criticism
by watering it down somewhat
 E.g., ‘up to’ is a common weaseler
 List of common weasel words
-helps, supports, is useful (friendly, but no real value added)
-better, improved, gains (does not say how much)
-acts, works, effective, efficient (action, but no quantitative value)
-seems, appears, looks, is like (gives impression, not real change)
-many, most, virtually, almost all ('lots' but no real quantity)
-up to, from, at least, as many as (talk about the best case)
 Down player
 Downplayers attempt to make someone or something look less important or less
significant
 Of course a first-year student would defend left-wing policies
 Trying to discredit the people
 Stereotypes
 A cultural belief or idea about a social group’s attributes usually simplified or
exaggerated. It can be positive or negative
 Of course my Nona’s pasta tastes than this Canadian crap
 Innuendo 暗讽 含沙射影
 Uses the power of suggestion to disparage (say something bad about) someone or
something. Innuendos rely on neutral (even positive) phrasing to insinuate something
derogatory
 I am so happy that you are dating again. Bob is… nice and nobody expects you to find
prince charming right away. What matters is that you are putting yourself out there
 Loaded questions (question is already assume something)
 Loaded questions can be a form of an innuendo if they are implying something negative
 The question contains a statement in it: ‘why do you think contemporary music is so
bad?’
 Ridicule/Sarcasm
 Using humor to undermine someone’s position: ‘start a war in Azerbaijan? Why don’t
we stick to wars in countries you can spell?
 Widely used to put something in bad light
 Hyperbole (exaggeration) 夸张
 Overdone exaggeration often used to sway a person in a certain direction. Make them
feel some type of way
 The Ottawa police is basically the Stasi
 Proof surrogate
 There is no doubt that, it is well known, studies show…
 Suggesting there is evidence or authority for a claim without actually citing the
 authority or evidence
 Repetition 叠言
 Propaganda, advertisements
 Rhetorical definitions, explanations and analogies
 Loaded definitions, explanations or analogies
 Rhetorical definitions: employ rhetorically charged language to express or elicit an
attitude about something. Example: “Defining abortion as the murder of an unborn
child”
 Rhetorical analogy: likens two or more things to make one of them appear better or
worse than another; make sure the same standard of measurement is used when
comparing the items and make sure the items are comparable
 Demagogues fan the flames of the fanaticism and use extreme rhetoric to propagate false
ideas and preposterous theories
4 rhetoric techniques used by demagogues are:
 Otherizing: Divides people into two groups - us and them.
 Demonizing: Trying to induce loathing of someone or something by portraying the
person or thing as evil.
 Xenophobia: The fear or dislike of what is foreign or strange.
 Hate mongering: Try to stimulate an audience's fear, resentment and hatred.

Exercise: Rhetorical devices

Ridicule 奚落
Repetition
Hyperbole
Loaded question
Rhetorical definitions, explanations and analogies
Innuendo
Euphemism
Ridicule