Critical Thinking
Chapter 1
Your Instructor
John Provost
831-402-7374
jprovost@mpc.edu
Agenda
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Introduction and Story
Syllabus and Texts
Homework
Start Lecture 1
Introduction: Why Study
Critical Thinking?
“You can fool all of the people all
of the time if the advertising
budget is big enough.” Ed Rollins,
Republican campaign adviser
What is Critical Thinking?
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Critical thinking is about helping
ourselves and others. Why?
What is Critical Thinking?
“Critical thinking includes a variety of
deliberative processes aimed at making
wise decisions about what to believe
and do, processes that center on
evaluation of arguments but include
much more.”
Two primary skills required:
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Read carefully
Listen closely
Mistakes: Ambiguity
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Secretaries make more money than
physicians. What does this mean?
She saw the farmer with binoculars.
Who had the binoculars?
I know a little Greek. The language or a
person?
Mistakes: Fallacies
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Fallacy of composition: “We don’t spend
that much on military salaries. After all,
who ever heard of anyone getting rich in
the Army?” In other words, we don’t
spend that much on service personnel
individually; therefore we don’t spend
much on them as a group.
Mistakes: Fallacies
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Fallacy of division: “Congress is
incompetent. Therefore, Congressman
Benton is incompetent.” What holds true
of a group does not necessarily hold
true for all the individuals in that group.
Mistakes: Vague Claims
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“He is old.” Compared to what? Old is a
matter of context. Old for first grade?
Old in general? The vagueness of a
claim is a matter of degree.
Mistakes: A Red Herring
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When a person brings a topic into a
conversation that distracts from the
original point, especially if the new topic
is introduced in order to distract, the
person is said to have introduced a red
herring (see pages 168-169).
Mistakes: Ad Hominem
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We commit the ad hominem fallacy
when we think that considerations about
a person “refute” his or her assertions.
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Example: A proposal made by an
oddball is an oddball’s proposal, but it
does not follow that it is an oddball
proposal! See?
Mistakes: Straw Man
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The straw man fallacy happens when you
“refute” a position or claim by distorting or
oversimplifying or misrepresenting it. Let’s
say Mrs. Herrington announces it is time to
clean the attic. Mr. Herrington groans and
says, “What, again? Do we have to clean it
out everyday?” She responds: “Just because
you think we should keep every last piece of
junk forever doesn’t mean I do.”
Basic Critical Thinking Skills
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When we take a position on an issue,
we assert or claim something. The claim
and thinking on which it is based are
subject to rational evaluation. When we
do that evaluating, we are thinking
critically. To think critically, then, we
need to know five things:
To think critically, then, we
need to know:
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1. When someone (including ourselves)
is taking a position on an issue, what
that issue is, and what the person is
claiming their position is on that issue.
To think critically, then, we
need to know:
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2. What considerations are relevant to
that issue
3. Whether the reasoning underlying the
person’s claim is good reasoning
4. And whether, everything considered,
we should accept, reject, or suspend
judgment on what the person has
claimed
To think critically, then, we
need to know:
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Finally, 5. Doing all this requires us to
be levelheaded and objective and not
influenced by extraneous factors.
Issues: What is an issue?
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It is something we have a question
about.
A key word is “whether.”
An issue is what is raised when you
consider whether a claim is true.
Arguments: What is an
argument?
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Let us define an argument as an
attempt to support a claim or assertion
by providing a reason or reasons for
accepting it.
What is a claim?
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A claim is a statement that is either true
or false. The claim that is supported is
called the conclusion of the argument,
and the claim or claims that provide
support are called the premises.
Arguments and Explanations
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An argument attempts to prove that
some claim is true, while an explanation
attempts to specify how something
works or what caused it or brought it
about. Arguing that a dog has fleas is
quite different from explaining how it
came to have fleas. Explanations and
arguments are different things.
Recognizing Arguments
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An argument always has a conclusion.
Always. Without a conclusion, a bunch
of words isn’t an argument. But an
argument also needs at least one
premise. Without a premise you have
no support for the conclusion and so
you don’t have an argument.
An Explanation
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An explanation is a claim or set of
claims intended to make another claim,
object, event, or state of affairs
intelligible (but not true or false).
A premise
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A premise is the claim or claims in an
argument that provide the reasons for
believing the conclusion.
Identifying Issues
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Before you can really recognize an
argument you have to know what the
issues are.
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An important clue to what the issue is
will be to look for the conclusions. The
conclusion that is presented refers to
the issue being addressed.
Factual Issues Versus
Nonfactual Issues
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Is your dad or uncle older? That is a
factual issue.
Asking whether it is better to be your
dad’s age or your uncle’s age is a
nonfactual issue.
Factual Claims
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A factual claim is simply a claim,
whether true or false, that states a
position on a factual issue. But this is
where it can be confusing.
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Saying a claim is factual is not
equivalent to saying it is true!
Factual Claims
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An issue is factual if there are
established methods for settling it.
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Factual claims can be determined, while
opinions cannot be determined.
Facts and Factual Matters
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A fact is a true claim. A factual issue is
an issue concerning a fact. The right
answer about a factual issue will be a
fact, whether we know that fact yet or
not.
Subjectivism and Relativism
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Subjectivism is the idea that, just as two
people can disagree and yet both be “correct”
on a nonfactual issue, they can both be
correct in their differing opinions on the same
factual issues.
Relativism is the parallel idea that two
different cultures can be correct in their
differing opinions on the same factual issues.
Opinion and Pure Opinion
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An opinion is someone’s belief on an issue, or
someone’s belief about a specific claim. That issue
may well be a matter of fact. For the issue to be a
matter of pure opinion, there must be no factual
matter involved in it. For example, someone’s age is
a factual issue. It can be determined. But you can still
have an opinion on whether it is a good age or not.
But you can’t have a pure opinion about it as if they
were any age you decide they should be.
Relevance, Rhetoric, and
Keeping a Clear Head
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One of the most serious and difficult
obstacles to clear thinking is the tendency to
confuse extraneous and irrelevant
considerations with the merits of a claim.
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Another obstacle to clear thinking is paying
more attention to the psychological force of
an argument than its logical force.
Relevance, Rhetoric, and
Keeping a Clear Head
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Some politicians, for example, rely on
the emotional associations of words to
scare us, flatter us, and amuse us; to
arose jealousy, desire, and disgust; to
make good things sound bad and bad
things sound good; and to confuse,
mislead, and misinform us.
Relevance, Rhetoric, and
Keeping a Clear Head
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Critical thinking involves recognizing the
rhetorical force of language and trying
not to be influenced by it.
Conclusion
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Critical thinking helps you to know when
someone is taking a position on an
issue
What that issue is
And what the person is claiming relative
to that issue-that is, what the person’s
position is.
Conclusion
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It helps you know what considerations
are relevant to that issue
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And whether the reasoning underlying
the person’s claim is good reasoning.
Conclusion
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It helps you know what considerations
are relevant to that issue
And whether the reasoning underlying
the person’s claim is good reasoning.
It helps you determine whether,
everything considered, you should
accept, reject, or suspend judgment on
what the person claims.
Conclusion
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These skills require you to be levelheaded
and objective and uninfluenced by
extraneous factors.
Exercises
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For each of the following claims, decide
whether it states a subjective or a nonsubjective (i.e. objective) claim. In cases
where it may be difficult to decide, try to
identify the source of the problem.
Exercises
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1. Meat grilled over hickory coals tastes
better than meat grilled over mesquite.
Exercises
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Meat grilled over hickory coals tastes better
than meat grilled over mesquite.
Subjective. Notice that the claim passes the
“contradiction test,” i.e. someone with an
opposing viewpoint would not be wrong just
because it contradicted the original claim.
There is no ‘fact of the matter’ about how
something tastes.
Exercises
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2.
I read in the newspaper that meat
grilled over hickory coals tastes better than
meat grilled over mesquite.
Exercises
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2. I read in the newspaper that meat grilled
over hickory coals tastes better than meat
grilled over mesquite.
Non-subjective. The fact, of course,
is only that the person read it in the
newspaper.
Exercises
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3. The air in Cleveland smells better than it
did five years ago.
Exercises
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3. The air in Cleveland smells better than it
did five years ago.
Subjective. The qualitative sensation of
how something smells to someone is a private,
first-person, subjective experience.
Exercises
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4. There are fewer hydrocarbons in the air in
Cleveland than there were five years ago.
Exercises
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4. There are fewer hydrocarbons in the air in
Cleveland than there were five years ago.
Non-subjective. There is an objective fact
of the matter that can be checked.
Exercises
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5. The air in Cleveland is lower in
hydrocarbons because there is less automobile
emission than there was five years ago.
Exercises
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5. The air in Cleveland is lower in
hydrocarbons because there is less automobile
emission than there was five years ago.
Non-subjective. This is an argument
based on fact.
Exercises
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6. There is less automobile emission in
Cleveland than there was five years ago
because of the Clean Air Bill passed several
years ago.
Exercises
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6.
There is less automobile emission in Cleveland
than there was five years ago because of the Clean Air
Bill passed several years ago.
Non-subjective. Some will argue about this because
of the difficulty of identifying the cause of lowered
emissions. Nevertheless, either the change resulted from
the Clean Air Bill, or it didn’t. Intelligent opinions on this
issue may differ, but that doesn’t make it any less factual.
Exercises
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Determine whether each of the following
passages is (or contains) an argument.
Exercises
1. Will a beverage begin to cool more quickly
in the freezer or in the regular part of the
refrigerator? Well, of course it’ll cool faster in
the freezer! There are lots of people who
don’t understand anything at all about physics
and who think things may begin to cool faster
in the fridge. But they’re sadly mistaken.
Exercises
1. Will a beverage begin to cool more quickly in the
freezer or in the regular part of the refrigerator? Well,
of course it’ll cool faster in the freezer! There are lots
of people who don’t understand anything at all about
physics and who think things may begin to cool faster
in the fridge. But they’re sadly mistaken.
Clearly, our speaker has an opinion on then
subject, but no argument is given.
Exercises
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2.
It’s true that you can use your television
set to tell when a tornado is approaching. The
reason is that tornadoes make an electrical
disturbance in the 55 megahertz range, which is
close to the band assigned to channel 2. If you
know how to do it, you can get your set to pick
up the current given off by the twister. So your
television set can be your warning device that
tells you when to dive for the cellar.
—Adapted from Cecil Adams, The
Straight Dope
Exercises
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2.
It’s true that you can use your television
set to tell when a tornado is approaching. The
reason is that tornadoes make an electrical
disturbance in the 55 megahertz range, which is
close to the band assigned to channel 2. If you
know how to do it, you can get your set to pick
up the current given off by the twister. So your
television set can be your warning device that
tells you when to dive for the cellar.
This passage might be taken as
an explanation, but it is also an argument, since
it is clearly designed to convince us that its main
point is correct.
Exercises
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3.
Some of these guys who do Elvis
Presley imitations actually pay more for their
outfits than Elvis paid for his! Anybody who
would spend thousands just so he can spend a
few minutes not fooling anybody into thinking
he’s Elvis is nuts.
Exercises
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3.
Some of these guys who do Elvis
Presley imitations actually pay more for their
outfits than Elvis paid for his! Anybody who
would spend thousands just so he can spend a
few minutes not fooling anybody into thinking
he’s Elvis is nuts.
No argument. No connection is
made between the cost of the outfits and the
psychological deficiencies of Elvis
impersonators.
Exercises
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4.
You’d better not pet that dog. She
looks friendly, but she’s been known to bite.
Exercises
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4.
You’d better not pet that dog. She
looks friendly, but she’s been known to bite.
Argument
Exercises
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Which speakers give arguments for
their positions?
Exercises
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larry: Before we go to Hawaii, let’s go to a
tanning salon and get a tan. Then we won’t look
like we just got off the plane, plus we won’t get
sunburned while we’re over there.
laurie: I don’t know . . . I read that
those places can be dangerous. And did you
ever check out how much they cost? Let’s let it
go.
Exercises
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larry: Before we go to Hawaii, let’s go to a
tanning salon and get a tan. Then we won’t look
like we just got off the plane, plus we won’t get
sunburned while we’re over there.
laurie: I don’t know . . . I read that
those places can be dangerous. And did you
ever check out how much they cost? Let’s let it
go.
Larry and Laurie are both giving
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arguments.
Exercises
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2. she: When you think about it, there’s every
reason why women soldiers shouldn’t serve in
combat.
he: Well, I don’t think anyone should have to serve
in combat. I wouldn’t make anyone serve who
doesn’t want to.
Exercises
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2. she: When you think about it, there’s every
reason why women soldiers shouldn’t serve in
combat.
he: Well, I don’t think anyone should have to serve
in combat. I wouldn’t make anyone serve who
doesn’t want to.
Neither speaker is giving an argument.
Exercises
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3. student a: My family is very conservative. I
don’t think they’d like it if they found out that I was
sharing an apartment with two males.
student b: But sooner or later you have to start living
your own life.
Exercises
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3. student a: My family is very conservative. I
don’t think they’d like it if they found out that I was
sharing an apartment with two males.
student b: But sooner or later you have to start living
your own life.
Both A and B are giving arguments. B is
arguing for an unstated claim: You should
share the apartment with the two males despite
what your family would like.
Exercises
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4. insurance exec: Insurance costs so much
because accident victims hire you lawyers to take us
insurers to court and soak us for all we’re worth.
There should be limits on the amounts insurance
companies may be required to pay out on claims.
attorney: Limits? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to
me. What if someone’s medical expenses exceed
those limits? Do we just say, “Sorry, Charlie”?
Exercises
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4.
insurance exec: Insurance costs so much because
accident victims hire you lawyers to take us insurers to court
and soak us for all we’re worth. There should be limits on the
amounts insurance companies may be required to pay out on
claims.
attorney: Limits? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. What
if someone’s medical expenses exceed those limits? Do we just
say, “Sorry, Charlie”?
Only Attorney is giving an argument.
Exercises
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Determine which of the following passages
contain an argument, and, for any that do,
identify the argument’s final conclusion.
Exercises
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1. “Your jacket looks a
little tattered, there, Houston.
Time to get a new one, I’d say.”
Exercises
1.
“Your jacket looks a little
tattered, there, Houston. Time to get a
new one, I’d say.”
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Argument. Conclusion:
Time to get a new jacket.
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Exercises
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2.
“I seriously doubt many people want
to connect up their TV to the Internet. For one thing,
when people watch TV they don’t want more
information. For another thing, even if they did, they
wouldn’t be interested in having to do something to
get it. They just want to sit back and let the TV tell
them what’s happening.”
Exercises
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2.
“I seriously doubt many people want
to connect up their TV to the Internet. For one thing,
when people watch TV they don’t want more
information. For another thing, even if they did, they
wouldn’t be interested in having to do something to
get it. They just want to sit back and let the TV tell
them what’s happening.”
Argument. Conclusion: It is
doubtful many people want to connect their TV to
the Internet.
Exercises
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3.
“Here’s how you make chocolate
milk. Warm up a cup of milk in the microwave for
two minutes, then add two tablespoons of the
chocolate. Stir it up, then stick it back in the
microwave for another 30 seconds. Then enjoy it.”
Exercises
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3.
“Here’s how you make chocolate
milk. Warm up a cup of milk in the microwave for
two minutes, then add two tablespoons of the
chocolate. Stir it up, then stick it back in the
microwave for another 30 seconds. Then enjoy it.”
No argument
Exercises
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4. “Pretzels are pretty
good for a snack food. But it’s
wise to keep in mind that they are
high in sodium, at least if you eat
the salted kind.”
Exercises
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4.
“Pretzels are pretty good for a
snack food. But it’s wise to keep in mind that
they are high in sodium, at least if you eat
the salted kind.”
No argument
Exercises
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Identify the passages that contain
arguments; in those that do, identify the
main issue.
Exercises
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1.
It’s wise to let states deny AFDC (Aid
to Families with Dependent Children) benefits to
unmarried kids under eighteen who live away from
their parents. This would discourage thousands of
these kids from having children of their own in order
to get state-subsidized apartments.
Exercises
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1.
It’s wise to let states deny AFDC (Aid
to Families with Dependent Children) benefits to
unmarried kids under eighteen who live away from
their parents. This would discourage thousands of
these kids from having children of their own in order
to get state-subsidized apartments.
Argument. Issue: whether states
should be allowed to deny AFDC benefits to
youths under eighteen.
Exercises
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5.
“Those who accept evolution contend
that creation is not scientific; but can it be fairly said
that the theory of evolution itself is truly scientific?”
—Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution
or by Creation?
Exercises
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2.
“Those who accept evolution
contend that creation is not scientific; but
can it be fairly said that the theory of
evolution itself is truly scientific?”
—Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution
or by Creation?
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No argument.
Exercises
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3.
“It is indeed said that the Japanese
work more than 2,000 hours a year, but this is not so.
At Sony—and at Sanyo or Matsushita—the total is
somewhere between 1,800 and 1,900 hours.”
—Akio Morita, chairman of Sony
Exercises
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3.
“It is indeed said that the Japanese
work more than 2,000 hours a year, but this is not so.
At Sony—and at Sanyo or Matsushita—the total is
somewhere between 1,800 and 1,900 hours.”
—Akio Morita, chairman of Sony
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Argument. Issue: whether the
Japanese work more than 2,000 hours a year