Ch.4 Flashcards
When claims conflict
The most basic critical thinking principal for assessing unsupported claims:
•If a claim conflicts with other claims do we have a good reason to accept it, we have a good grounds for doubting it?
-Claims can conflict with background information: large collection of well-supported beliefs that we rely on to inform our actions and choices.
• if a claim conflicts with background information we have a good reason to doubt.
-For claims that we can either except no reject out right:
•should proportion are beliefs to the evidence.
-Implicit in the previous principles is the following: 
•It’s not reasonable to believe the claim when there’s no good reasons for doing so. 
Experts and fallacious appeal to authority
Experts: Someone more knowledgable in a particular subject area or field than most others are.
•They have mastered particular skills or bodies acknowledge.
•They practice the skills or use that knowledge in the main occupation in life.
•Provide us with reasons for believing a claim because, in their specialty areas they are more likely to be right then we are. 
When a claim runs counter to an expert consensus, the following principal holds: if a claim conflicts with expert opinion, we have a good reason to doubt it. 
If a claim is in dispute among experts, following principal holds: when experts disagree about a claim, we have a good reason to doubt it.
Fallacious Appeal to Authority: Relying on bogus expert opinion. We forget that just because someone is an expert in one field they aren’t necessarily an expert in another. We regard and a nonexpert as an expert. 
Indicators of expertise
1) Education and training from reputable institutions or programs in relative field.
2)Experience in the field
3)Reputation among peers
4)Professional accomplishments
Reasons for doubting expert opinion
•Bias
•Blatant violations of critical thinking principles
•Simple factual or formal errors
•Lack of adequate support for assertions
•Writing contains logical contradictions or inconsistencies
•Unfair treatment of opposing views
•Reliance on dated information
•Cherry picking data to support claims
•Most other experts disagree 
Personal experience
We except many claims based on personal experience, our senses, memory, and judgement involved in these faculties.
• it’s reasonable to accept evidence provided by personal experiences only if there’s no good reason to doubt it.
When our senses, memory, or judgement can’t be trusted there’s a reason to doubt personal experience.
Impairment: When our senses or memory is impaired by illness, injury exhaustion, and stress, excitement, intoxication, distraction, disorientation, etc.
Expectation: When expectations Distort our perceptions allowing us to see things that are not really there.
Innumeracy: Judgements about chances of something happening are often unrealistic because humans have trouble figuring out probabilities. 
Gamblers fallacy- Thinking that previous events affect probabilities of the random event at hand. 
Believe in the supernatural or paranormal
•Critical thinkers always have an explanation for seemingly mysteries events based on statistics or expert opinion.
•Is this unfair to supernatural/paranormal events?
•Does it make it impossible to ever believe in them by the standards of critical thinking?
•maybe three supernatural/paranormal events have occurred in the world, but we can’t believe in them because the standards of critical thinking won’t allow it?
•Is it better to miss out unbelieving a truth then risk believing a lie?
Facts and opinions
Fact- Either a state of affairs or true statement.
-“Find out the facts”
-“John smash the dinnerware-that’s a fact”
Opinion- A belief.
-Some opinions are true so they’re also facts
-Some are false so they’re not facts.
•”That’s a matter of opinion” Can mean that there’s a disagreement about something or that it is entirely subjective, just a matter of individual taste.
Following your gut
•Is it ever OK to follow your gut or your non-rational intuition?
•Maybe if the stakes are low.
•If your gut tells you not to go with treatment recommended by a top cancer specialist for your loved one, probably ignore it.
• if your gut tells you to fill up at one gas station rather another one when they have identical fuel quality, price, and are equally convenient to get to is it OK to follow it?
• could this kind of thinking lead one to be continually tortured by inner superstitious thinking? Or is it okay?
