Lecture 2 Flashcards
What is Critical thinking? Why is it important?
You might say that critical thinking involves thinking about thinking. We engage in it when we consider whether our thinking (or someone else’s) abides by the criteria of good sense and logic.
A general life skill that is applicable to nearly all corners of life.
Requires evaluating arguments that support the claims we are considering, and weighing them against those that support alternative or contrary views.
Look at
- statistics and data
- should be based on logic not emotion
Beliefs and claims
The purpose of thinking critically is to come to correct conclusions
A belief is propositional, it can be true or false
When we express a belief (or judgement or opinion) in a declarative sentence, the result is a statement or claim or assertion, and for our purposes these are the same thing
For the purpose of our course: “statement”, “judgement”, “assertion”, “claim” all mean the same thing
We can argue about claims
Our “hypothesis”
Start with a conclusion statement
Objective and subjective claims
An objective claim has this characteristic: whether it is true or false is independent of whether people think it is true or false
- backed up by data and stats
Subjective claims are relative, e.g. (pizza is a the best meal, etc.)
- focusing on the claims
- more personal, more like opinions
- how effective their writing is
- need to have expertise to evaluate a specific claim
- objective evidence can help support subjective claims
- need logic
Relativism
There are no universal truths
Truth is relative to a standard that is set by a given culture
What is wrong with that claim?
- can’t prove anything 100% (without reasonable doubt in court but you have some doubt still)
Moral relativism (subjectivism)
- it is the idea expressed by Hamlet in the famous passage, “there is nothing either good or bad, but that thinking makes it so”.
- do you agree with this claim?
- nemesis of logic
Issue
Whenever a claim is called into question, or its truth or falsity becomes the subject of consideration or judgement, an issue or question has been raised
In this context, “issue” and “context” are used interchangeably
When you think critically about a claim, you call it into question - thus making it an issue
Argument
An argument is a conclusion/claim/statement/belief that is backed by reasoning - Premise’s followed by conclusion
Sometimes use this word to refer just to an argument’s premise
“Smoking is bad” … what are the premises?
Can we make and argument for smoking being good?
Is there are right and a wrong argument? Illogical? Weak and strong?
Conflicting views
Using certain techniques to support conclusion
There will be a counter argument
Biases
- common reasons for bad reasoning and conclusions
- biases are usually a result of external influence (culture, family, group, believes, etc.) and internal influences or, i.e. phycological (emotions, experiences, etc.)
- there are many types and forms of biases
- logic vs emotions (Spock vs. Captain Kirk)
- unconscious biases
- brain can convince body of stuff
- cognitive fallacy
- anchoring method
Cognitive biases
Belief bias: equating reasoning by how believable its conclusion is.
Confirmation bias: a tendency to attach more weight to considerations that support our views.
Availability heuristic: assigning a probability to an event based on how easily or frequently it is thought of.
False consensus effect: assuming our opinions and those held by people around us are shared by society at large.
Bandwagon effect: the tendency to align our beliefs with those of other people.
Negativity bias: attaching more weight to negative information than to positive information.
Loss aversion: being more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than to accrue a gain.
In-group bias: a set of cognitive biases that make us view people who belong to our group differently from people who don’t.
Fundamental attribution error: having one understanding of the behaviour of people in the in-group and another for people not in the in-group.
Obedience to authority: a tendency to comply with instructions from an authority.
Overconfidence effect: A cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate what percentage of our answers on a subject are correct.
Better-than-average illusion: a self-deception cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate our own abilities relative to those of others.
Facts vs Knowledge
What are objective facts? Water is H2O?
What is water is H2O only under certain perimeters? In our perceived 4 dimensional model?
Can facts change as we gain more knowledge?
Truth: the question, what is truth, has no universally accepted answer, and we don’t try to answer it here. A claim is true if it is free from error.
- no one can change truth
- use logic
- free from biases
Knowledge: for our purposes, if you believe something is so, have an argument that is beyond a reasonable doubt that it is so, and have no reason to think you are mistaken, you can claim you know it is so.
- someone can always say you’re wrong
Knowledge try’s to seek truth
Can be argued that nothing is fact
Difference between knowledge and fact
Ethics
Ethics - from the Greek this, originally, means character — concerns questions of good, right, duty, obligation, virtue
It as the question of how life should be, and not what it really is
- not what life is but what it should be
How we should live our lives
- whenever one hears a moral statement
- one should do (refrain from doing)…x
- one is entitled to ask WHY?
- to look for good reasons
- a moral or ethical decision is justified (defensible) if it is supported by the best available reasons impartially applied.
One shall not kill, lets not steal
Moral judgement changes over time
- shouldn’t lie, steal, kill (universal)
- these never change
At the individual level
- typically, discussions of moral problems in the sport setting are concerned with personal ethics at individual level and group level with issues of policy,
- doping, cheating, biased referring, bullying, racism, etc.
- at the policy/institutional level
- discrimination, segregation, harmful, violence, etc.
Character vs. Policy
Messy morality
- inevitable conflict
- conflict between principles
- conflict between people
- uncertainty of application
- requirement of judgement
