CRITICAL THINKING QUIZ

Question 1

Appeal to Authority

Answer 1

• The authority (person, book, document, or an agency)

- Watch for statements such as “studies show”, “The american medical association supports”

Question 2

Appeal to Fear

Answer 2

• X causes fear. Y has some relationship to X. Therefore Y is true
• “banks are too big to fail” example

Question 3

Appeal to ignorance

Answer 3

• Something is not true because it has not been proven or something is true because it has not been disproven
• Remember that an “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”

Question 4

Appeal to Pity/Emotion

Answer 4

-Substitute pity for thought without demonstrating the appropriateness

Question 5

Appeal to Natural Order

Answer 5

• What is “natural” is inherently good or right; What is “unnatural” is inherently bad or wrong
• “its as American as grandma and apple pie” example

Question 6

Appeal to Casual Relationship

Answer 6

-Event A precedes Event B. Therefore A must have caused B

Question 7

Appeal to Composite Grouping

Answer 7

-The (false) notion that what is true of parts will be true of the whole

Question 8

Appeal to a Missing Conclusion

Answer 8

-A statement is described in such a way that the “unstated conclusion” should be inferred

Question 9

Appeal to Confidence

Answer 9

-Proposing the proposition with such confidence that it seems right to the uninitiated

Question 10

Appeal to Generalizability

Answer 10

-Drawing a broad conclusion from a small number of perhaps unrepresentative cases

Question 11

Appeal to Denial of the Antecedent

Answer 11

• An argument based on “Jabberwock” thinking

- If A then B. Not A, therefore not B

Question 12

Appeal to Denial of the Consequent

Answer 12

• If X is true then Y is true

- Y is false therefore X is false

Question 13

Appeal to Primacy over Recency

Answer 13

-The opposite effect is termed the primacy effect (remembering or focusing on the first things heard or learned)

Question 14

Appeal to Domino Effect

Answer 14

-Refers to a supposedly linked sequence of events where the time between successive events is relatively small

Question 15

Appeal to the edge of the wedge, slippery slope, camel’s nose in the tent

Answer 15

-Essentially the suggestion that one step in a particular direction means the inevitable continuation of steps in that direction

Question 16

Appeal to the Rhetorical Question

Answer 16

• Using a question to express a statement

- “Do you want the government controlling what you do in your uterus” example

Question 17

Appeal to the reduction to the absurd

Answer 17

-A method of refuting an opponent’s claim by extending the logic of the opponent’s argument to a point of absurdity

Question 18

Appeal to Selected Information

Answer 18

-Selective use of the facts in which you do not lie, just do not disclose important aspects of the truth

Question 19

Appeal to setting up a strawman

Answer 19

-Distorting our opponent’s point of view so that it becomes easier to attack; thus we attack a point of view that does not really exist

Question 20

Appeal to terminological clouding or obfuscation

Answer 20

• Hiding of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, willfully ambiguous, and harder to interpret
• Adding in big words etc

Question 21

Appeal to the “you too” phenomenon

Answer 21

-A charge of wrongdoing is answered by a rationalization that others have sinned, or might have sinned

Question 22

Appeal to loaded words or phrases

Answer 22

-Loaded with words and phrases have strong emotional implications and involve strongly positive or negative reactions beyond their literal meaning

Question 23

Appeal to weasel word

Answer 23

• Instead of building bombs we were building “devices”

- Instead of killing, “capital punishment”