1-3 chapters Flashcards
Confirmation Bias
This is favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.
Availability Heuristic
This is placing greater value on information that comes to your mind quickly. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.
Halo Effect
Your overall impression of a person influences how you feel and think about his or her character. This especially applies to physical attractiveness influencing how you rate their other qualities.
Self-serving bias
This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and give yourself credit when good things happen. When you win a poker hand it is due to your skill at reading the other players and knowing the odds, while when you lose it is due to getting dealt a poor hand.
Attentional bias
This is the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others. When making a decision on which car to buy, you may pay attention to the look and feel of the exterior and interior, but ignore the safety record and gas mileage.
Actor-Observer Bias
This is the tendency to attribute your own actions to external causes while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes. You attribute your high cholesterol level to genetics while you consider others to have a high level due to poor diet and lack of exercise.
Functional Fixedness
This is the tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. If you don’t have a hammer, you never consider that a big wrench can also be used to drive a nail into the wall. You may think you don’t need thumbtacks because you have no corkboard on which to tack things, but not consider their other uses. This could extend to people’s functions, such as not realizing a personal assistant has skills to be in a leadership role.
Anchoring Bias
This is the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information you learn. If you learn the average price for a car is a certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal, perhaps not searching for better deals. You can use this bias to set the expectations of others by putting the first information on the table for consideration.
Misinformation Effect
This is the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event. It is easy to have your memory influenced by what you hear about the event from others. Knowledge of this effect has led to a mistrust of eyewitness information.
False Consensus Effect
This is the tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with you.
Optimism Bias
This bias leads you to believe that you are less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than your peers.
List 11 of the cognitive bias’
- Confirmation bias
- Availability Heuristic
- Halo Effect
- Self-Serving Bias
- Attentional Bias
- Actor-Observer Bias
- Functional Fixedness
- Anchoring Bias
- Misinformation Effect
- Optimism Bias
- false consensus bias
Correspondance Theory of Knowledge
States that when the contents of your mind coincide with the real object outside, then you have knowledge.
Denotation
is the limited (and hopefully clearly defined meaning) of a term.
de means from; denotation means to distinguish “from”.
Connotation
Meanings which are not clearly part of the definition of a term.
Con means “with”
Definiendum
The term to be defined (endum–singular) or enda (plural) means “to be”
Definiens
means the definition
Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
¬ There’s a difference between what we call prescriptive vs. descriptive. Philosophy tends to be very prescriptive. Prescriptive has the idea of “should” (it’s an idea) and descriptive has the idea of “in fact” (involves thinking) and there is a gap between the two sometimes.
Premises
¬ Premises: A series of claims that consist of reasons. These ideally establish a belief, position, or judgement also known as your conclusion.
conclusion
the point of view, evaluation, judgement, or belief that the argument is attempting to demonstrate. Conclusion requires reasons, evidence, foundations, or supporting claims which make up the premises. Premises and conclusions are statements (propositions) that are true or false.
Unsupported Claim
a statement that is offered without any supporting argumentation or evidence. They are extremely common and can be useful. Tells us what a person likes and believes.
Conclusion indicator and premise indicator
provide direction and will guide you through arguments.
Ex, “therefore” commonly used to indicate the conclusion
How to find conclusion
Finding the main pint is key to finding a conclusion
Rhetorical questions
Sometimes people phrases statements as if they were questions, which is called rhetorical questions. It is used when the person believes the answer is already known and is perceived as obvious.
Are commands statements
Commands are not statements because they are not capable of being true or false.
Are emotive expressions statements
show a state of being positive or negative, but these communications are not evaluated as being correct or incorrect, true or false
Descriptions
are declarations concerning how the world was, is, or will be which can either be true or false. Descriptions of events are not arguments.
Explanations
trying to show why something is the way it is. An explanation identifies factors or causes
Vague
meanings unclear
Obscure
difficult to understand
Reportive definitions
¬ definitions of the type that you find in an ordinary dictionary. Reportive definitions identify or report how a word is generally used.
Multi-vocal
words having more than one meaning
Stipulative defintion
Explaining what you personally mean by the word
Ambiguity
occurs when the words being used have more than one meaning and it is not known which meaning is intended. Ambiguity is different from vagueness because each of the possible meanings is clear, the part unclear is which meaning is the right one intended.
Neutral language
avoiding connotations so the focus is on what your words denote, not their associations
Things to avoid using in arguments
Emotionally charged language
Euphemisms
Prejudicial language
Scope
¬ the number of members of a group being referred to. A statement with the broadest scope is a universal statement. The scope needs to be consistently maintained throughout the argument.
Unqualified vs. qualified statement
Unqualified: are statements that convey certainty about what is true. To be unqualified, a statement need not be true, all that matters is the strength of conviction of the person making the statement.
Qualified: backs down from an apparent guarantee of knowledge. It is quite common to combine limitations on scope and conviction in your arguments
Standardization
allows you to have a visual representation of the argument such that each premise and conclusion is clearly demarcated.
The S-Test
Satisfactory, sufficient, and support are the keys to the s-test. An argument is successful if these exist
Rules for s-test
- Consider each and every premise separately and then draw a conclusion about each one. Determine whether each is satisfactory (good reason to be true) and then defend answer. Whether satisfactory is usually hidden and needs further investigation
- Examine the connection between the premises and the conclusion. Do the premises, if true, provide any reason to believe the conclusion is also true?
- If the premises do support the conclusion, you then need to determine if the premises, when taken together as a whole, offer sufficient support to establish the conclusion
Dependent premises
work together to support the conclusion. Want to examine these all together to assess their ability to offer support.
What makes an argument complex
Having sub-arguments
Historical generalizations
We talked about the idea that in the 18th century Enlightenment period, thinkers represented the mind as transparent. There was a great deal of optimism about human reason.
In the 19th century this optimism was undermined by a sense that we don’t always seem to really be acting according to reason but there is something hidden which – at least in part – determines our choices and behaviours.
