Philosophy 1100
Title:
Critical Reasoning
Instructor:
Paul Dickey
E-mail Address: pdickey2@mccneb.edu
Website: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/dickey.htm
Reading Assignment for Monday.
Chapter Two of your text.
Homework: Submit online - 2 Chap Two Quizzes
(the Multiple Choice & Fill in the Blank ones)
Publisher's Website
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Class Participation
Answer Questions
from Exercise 1-1
Review Syllabus Quiz
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“Critical thinking is the ability
to engage in reasoned
discourse with intellectual
standards such as clarity,
accuracy, precision, and logic,
and to use analytic skills with
a fundamental value
orientation that emphasizes
intellectual humility,
intellectual integrity, and fairmindedness.”
Definition of "critical thinking" from a California State
Senate bill to update the State's Education code
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What is Critical Thinking?
• Critical thinking is the process of
assessing opinions.
•
We all might be entitled to our opinions, but
some opinions are more reasonable than
others.
•
Critical thinking consists of examining the
views that you and others hold and the
reasons to believe them.
•
The purpose of critical thinking is not to make
you either more persuasive or a better
contestant against others, but to improve your
ability to understand and evaluate what you
yourself believe.
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Critical Thinking Involves . . .
•
Identifying the issue
•
Recognizing what positions are being taking on
the issue
•
Understanding the arguments for and against
those positions
•
Pursuing aggressively the most reasonable
course of thought or action based on evidence
and facts
•
Not being influenced by rhetoric or fallacies.
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Critical Thinking
All these steps can be fairly easily suggested in a
vague way, but are much harder to understand
clearly and practice effectively.
The ultimate goal of the entire process is a decision:
What are the best reasons to accept a claim,
reject it, or suspend judgment?
Or, as Rod Stewart sings, analyzing the reason
to believe.
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The Critical Thinker’s “Attitude” is to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Think logically
Find the best “reasons to believe”
Discover the best action for yourself,
Reject "intuiting" the truth & all forms of selfdeception
Be fair and open-minded even with people you
disagree with,
Give everyone a fair hearing,
Not be a hypercritical thinker and find fault where
there is no fault or “make mountains out of
molehills” by overstating small problems.
Look for common ground.
The goal is never to confirm what you already
believe. (If what you believe really, actually, is true,
you will show that by discovering and clarifying your
reasons to believe. Ironically, often the best way to
do that is to challenge your own initial view.)
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For the Most Part, the
Principles of Critical
Thinking are Universal !!!
(although often ignored and not
universally applied)
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Examples of Critical Thinking
Principles in Judaism & Christianity
• “A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man
gives thought to his steps.” –Proverbs 14:15
• “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor be
hasty and miss the way.” –Proverbs 19:2
• “The Bereans were of more noble character than the
Thessalonians for they received the message with
great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every
day to see if what Paul said was true.” –Acts of the
Apostles 17:11
• “Test everything. Hold to the good.” –1 Thessalonians
5:21
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Critical Thinking
Principles in Islam
“One should develop critical thinking
ability in one's studies first: in
science, mathematics, computers,
and economics, whatever subject
one has chosen. If you cannot
develop this ability most probably
you would not understand the
Quran.”
Dr. Mansoor Alam
“A Message to Muslim Youth”
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Our mission is to utilize Hip-Hop culture as
a tool to facilitate critical thinking, foster
social change and unity, by empowering
communities through the use of media,
technology, education, and leadership
development; while preserving Hip-Hop
culture for future generations.
Hip-Hop Association
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Will Critical Thinking Help Me On My Job?
“Learning to think, really think,
beneath the surface of what you
see, hear or read is one of the
hallmarks of the most successful
people in the world of work.”
Carol Carter
“Critical Thinking:
One of the Most Valued Job Skills”
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An Argument is . . .
• An attempt to support a claim (or
conclusion) by giving reasons (or
premises) for believing it.
• Not to be confused with the
confrontational act of attempting
to persuade.
• To understand this, we need to
differentiate between topics,
issues, and claims.
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What is a TOPIC?
• A topic is a category for discussion, but you
cannot have an argument about a topic.
A person can say pretty much anything
reasonably ABOUT a topic that they want – say,
baseball, abortion, the 2nd amendment to the
constitution.
If the discussion we are having about baseball
allows you to talk about the Yankees whom you
love for fifteen minutes, and then I say, “yeah,
that reminds me of when I went to the college
world series” and then I go on for ten minutes
about the South Carolina Gamecocks, note we
are having a discussion on the topic of
baseball. But of course, we are not necessarily
having a logical argument.
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What is an ISSUE?
• Consider the following:
Honda Accords are good cars to buy. They are
cheap to fix. Their parts are easily found.
• What is the ISSUE?
• Thus, an ISSUE is the Question we are asking.
That is, we need to determine what claim we
are asking about whether or not it is true.
• Then, we must identify the ARGUMENT “in
support of” the issue. Once the claim though is
identified, we can also see that we are giving
an ARGUMENT “for” that claim being true or
false.
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What is a CLAIM?
• A claim is sometimes called an assertion,
an opinion, a belief, a “view”, a thought, a
conviction, or perhaps, an idea.
• A claim must be expressed as a statement
or a complete, declarative sentence. It
cannot be a question.
• In its clearest form, a claim asserts that
something is true or false. That is, it
asserts a fact. This kind of claim is
known as a “factual claim” or a
“descriptive claim.”
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What is a CLAIM?
• Value statements can also be claims
though. In such claims, a fact is not
asserted in the same sense that it was in
factual claims.
• For example, the claim “You should come to
class” is not clearly true or false in the same
way that the claim “P1100 class is held in
Room 102” is.
• Thus, some claims are “normative claims”
or “prescriptive claims.” They express
values and how one should act based on
values. A value statement is a claim that
asserts something is good or bad.
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Now, Critical Thinking is Absolutely
Relevant to Both Sets of Claims
• As we shall see in this class, it is necessary
that we identify very clearly which kind of a
claim we have before we can properly evaluate
any argument for it!
• That is, in this class, we always follow THE
FAMOUS PRINCIPLE: Know What You Are
Talking About!!!
• Thus, please note we are taking a position
against the subjectivist and saying that even
moral judgments can be analyzed by the
principles of critical thinking. We CAN know
what we are talking about when we make a
normative claim.
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The Fundamental Principle of Critical
Thinking is The Nature of an Argument
•
Making a claim is stating a belief or opinion
-- the conclusion
•
An argument is presented when you give a
reason or reasons that the claim is true. -the premise(s)
•
Thus, an argument consists of two parts,
and one part (the premise or premises)
is/are the reason(s) for thinking that the
conclusion is true.
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The Fundamental Principle of Critical Thinking
•
A claim or conclusion states a proposition -a sentence that is either true or false, or a
sentence that asserts or denies a fact or a
prescription.
•
Thus, an argument consists of two parts:
1) the claim or the conclusion, and
2) the premise is the reason for
thinking that the claim is true.
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Is an Argument an Explanation?
•
Actually, they are typically very different.
•
An argument supports or proves a
conclusion. It does not necessary try to
understand why the conclusion is true.
•
An explanation generally proposes a cause
for an event, how something is composed, or
how it works.
•
Example: Amy likes to play the piano. My
premise is that she told me that she does
which is a good “reason to believe.” I am not
suggesting an explanation. I have no idea
why Amy likes to play the piano.
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Arguments & Persuasion
Sometimes we are influenced by
considerations that are not logical
arguments.
We may be influenced by the style or
music of a presentation, propaganda,
flattery, images, or many other effects
that appeal to our emotions and what we
want to believe or what we already
believe.
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Arguments & Persuasion
In particular, we are often influenced by
rhetorical devices. Rhetoric is language that is
psychologically persuasive but does not have
any relevant logical strength.
For example: “Our brave, young soldiers in
Iraq have sacrificed greatly in their valiant
efforts.” But is this really a premise for a claim
that we we should stay in Iraq? Or leave Iraq?
Notice of course that most of us would agree
that the above statement is true, but that being
true does not necessary assure us that the
statement is not being used rhetorically.
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Class Discussion:
Your Claims &
Premises:
What is the Issue?
Did you give a relevant
Reason to Believe for
your claim?
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