Flawed Thinking

Write 400 to 500 words discussing any logical fallacies or flawed thinking that you think are common today. What obstacles to clear thinking did you see in the last election year? What logical mistakes are many people making regarding political issues? It may help to read over the handout on Obstacles to Clear Thinking. Write in correct sentences and unified paragraphs. Be specific and don’t try to cover everything. It is a short essay. Focus on one problem with thinking. I have attached the file for Obstacles to Clear Thinking.

A Quick Guide to
Overcoming Obstacles to Clear Thinking

1.
Avoid confusing personal taste with critical judgment. Critical judgment is based on a clear set of criteria
that we can articulate. Personal taste is simply what strikes our fancy—what we
enjoy. Education and experience can refine and enrich our taste so that we
begin to enjoy what our critical judgment says is excellent, but we can often
enjoy things for reasons other than their excellence. Time spend persuading others
to have your taste is wasted.

2. Avoid
defensive reasoning. The temptation
to defend or champion something just because it is ours is sometimes
overwhelming. But no idea is right just because we have always thought it.
Rationalizing seeks to justify things we suspect are wrong or in error.
Sometimes we take a side just because we dislike the people on the other side,
not because we actually believe it to be true.

3. Avoid
arguing that something is right just because it is old or new. Traditionalists say something is right because we have
always done it or believed it. Rebels say something is right because it is new
and change is always good. Critical thinkers say let’s judge this idea on the
evidence. Traditions can be foolish, even evil, and change can be disastrous,
and also evil. The revolutionary change that Marxism brought to China, Russia,
Cambodia, and North Korea resulted in humanitarian disasters. The desire of the
south to hold onto the tradition of slavery tore the nation apart. The desire
for change or tradition for its own sake is stupid.

4. Avoid
conformity, conscious and unconscious. As parents are fond of pointing out, everyone
doing something does not make it right. We also need to acknowledge the
unprecedented power of media to saturate our lives with advertising that steers
us into a culture of consumerism. It is, however, tempting to deceive ourselves
into thinking we are nonconformists just because we conformed to the standards
and values of a subculture. When Goths and bikers wear white, they can claim to
be nonconformists—unless they all do it.

5. Avoid
mistaking style, for substance. In a
consumer culture style can become everything. We can easily believe ideas or
accept values that are presented with great flare, moving images, or an aura of
glamour. We can think some ideas right just because a celebrity we admire holds
them. Advertisers, musicians, or clever comedians can get us to accept ideas
that would look idiotic written on a 3×5 card.

6. Carefully
examine the hidden assumptions of yourself and others. Often the real source of disagreement is rooted in
fundamental differences in basic assumptions. If, for instance, someone assumes
the only source of knowledge is empirical science, it will be hard discuss the
nature of shamanism. If we assume people are basically good and will choose
good one they know it, every social problem can best be solved by education.
But what if that assumption is wrong, and people choose what is wrong even when
they know what is right?

7. Make the
discovery of truth the goal of all education and argument. It isn’t about us. It’s not about us defending our
turf or winning an argument. It is about discovering, presenting, and weighing
the evidence to identify what is true and what is good.

8. Reject the
silly claim that everything is relative, we all have our own truth, that truth
is constantly changing. If we all
have our own truth, then no person’s truth is better than another’s. We may as
get our medical opinions from the plumber. Although our perception and
knowledge of the truth is always changing, what is true, by definition, isn’t
changing. The earth didn’t begin orbiting around the sun when Copernicus
proposed the idea. The truth is out there. These common sentiments would
actually make all education and research pointless.

Last Completed Projects