Quiz #4 Flashcards
___ is information or experience we believe to be the true and for which we have justification or evidence.
Knowledge
What is essential in critical thinking?
Understanding how knowledge is acquired, as well as having an awareness of the limits of human understanding.
Which are the three theorists?
Rationalists
Empiricists
Immanuel Kant
What do rationalists claim?
Like the Greek philosopher Plato, they claim that human knowledge and truth comes from reason. They believe that we can always have a prior knowledge.
Empiricists believe that…
Truth and knowledge are derived through empirical evidence collected by our five senses.
Who is Immanuel Kant?
Kant was a German philosopher who rejected both rationalism and empiricism. He argued that our experience of reality is not a matter of reasoning or empirical evidence exclusively, but is dependent on the structure of our minds.
In other words: he believed that we do not see reality “as it is”; rather, as our brain interprets it by structuring and processing incoming information
What is evidence?
Something that can prove or disprove a claim. It can come from a variety of sources.
What can interfere with genuine knowledge?
False memory syndrome
Hearsay evidence
Anecdotal evidence
False memory syndrome consists of…
Creating events that never happened
Hearsay evidence is…
Evidence that is heard by one person, then repeated to one or more other persons
Example: “Telephone” game
What is anecdotal evidence?
Evidence based on personal testimony
Perceptual errors
Our senses often deceive us
Mis-perception of random data
Our brains “loathe absence of meaning”. We often create patterns and “see” things that don’t exist
For example: Jesus on a slice of bread
Memorable-events error
We remember things that are out of the ordinary, and tend to place more importance on those events.
What is self-serving bias?
The belief that we are in control of events that are actually out of our control
Examples: Believing in “The Secret”; superstitions; overestimating ourselves in comparison with others; exaggerating our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses
