Category Archives: Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking 6: Fallacies and Cognitive Biases

Critical Thinking, Psychology,

There are a great many different fallacies and a great many different cognitive biases: probably enough to keep me going for years if I was to discuss one each week on this blog series. What I want to do here, though, is just to consider the question of what fallacies and cognitive biases actually are, and how they relate to each other. This is a contentious enough subject in itself.

A fallacy is normally described as a flaw in reasoning, or a type of mistake whereby people draw incorrect conclusions from the reasons they start with. This would be correct when applied to formal fallacies, but I think incorrect when applied to the more interesting and practically relevant informal fallacies. Here’s a simple example of a formal fallacy (one known as affirming the consequent):

Good Catholics attend mass regularly.

Bridget attends mass regularly.

Therefore Bridget is a good Catholic.

You might think this was quite a reasonable conclusion to draw from the reasons given. However, it is not a necessary conclusion. You don’t have to be a good Catholic to attend mass regularly, and it’s quite possible that Bridget is an uncertain enquirer, or a bad Catholic trying to keep up appearances, or a Religious Studies scholar doing field research into Catholicism. A conclusion that is not necessarily true is not valid, and thus a formal fallacy.

However, it may be reassuring to reflect that the vast majority of arguments we actually use in practice are formal fallacies. Many of them are inductive (see Critical Thinking 2), and even those that are not inductive may be deduction (like the example above) of a kind that is formally invalid but actually reasonably enough most of the time. Formal fallacies are thus of little interest from the practical point of view. Informal fallacies, on the other hand, tell us much more about unhelpful thinking, even though they may actually be formally valid in some instances.

Informal fallacies are just unjustified assumptions: for example, the assumption that some objectionable personal attribute in the arguer refutes their argument (ad hominem); or that there are only two choices in a situation where there is actually a spectrum of options (false dichotomy); or the assumption that using your conclusion as a reason provides an informative argument (begging the question). What is objectionable about arguments involving these moves often depends on the circumstances, and it requires thoughtful judgement rather than just applying black-and-white rules. But that’s also the indication that these fallacies actually matter in everyday life.

Informal fallacies are unjustified assumptions identified by philosophers. The only genuine difference between informal fallacies and cognitive biases, as far as I can see, is that cognitive biases are unjustified assumptions identified by psychologists and often tested through experiment. Psychologists may explain our tendency to make these particular kinds of unhelpful assumptions in terms of the physical, social and evolutionary conditions we emerge from, but in the end these kinds of explanations are less central than the identification of the bias itself. Usually cognitive biases can be ‘translated’ into fallacies and vice-versa. For example, the in-group bias (tendency to favour the judgements of your own group) is equivalent to the irrelevant appeal to the authority of the group (or its leaders), irrelevant appeal to popularity within the group, or irrelevant appeal to tradition in the group, all of which are recognised informal fallacies. The outcome bias, whereby we judge a past decision by its outcome rather than its quality at the time, involves an irrelevant appeal to consequences.

Philosophers and psychologists thus both have very useful things to tell us about what sorts of mistakes we are likely to make in our thinking, and insofar as their different contributions are practically useful, they tend to converge. I would also argue that this convergence of useful theory relates closely to the avoidance of metaphysics (see cognitive biases page). Despite the widespread idea that fallacies are faults in reasoning, they really have nothing to do with reasoning in the strict sense of logical validity. They are all about the unhelpful assumptions we often tend to make.

Exercise

See if you can identify  and describe the type of unhelpful assumptions being made in these video clips. You don’t necessarily need to know the formal titles of the fallacies involved to identify why they are a problem.

1.

3.

4.

Critical Thinking 5: Ambiguity

Critical Thinking,

Arguments are, of course, made out of language, and language is always ambiguous to some extent. If you apply the embodied meaning understanding of the meaning of language, there can never be any precise equivalence between the meaning of a word, sentence or other symbol for any two people. Each understands that meaning in relation to their own body. We do manage to communicate, but only on a more-or-less  basis. If your language means something similar enough to you and to your audience, you will communicate to an extent. The same problem applies between you and your past or future self. The words you wrote in your diary ten years ago may not mean the same now.

However, issues of ambiguity are more striking in some cases than others, and where they arise more strongly in argument they are more likely to create misunderstandings and conflicts. There are two types of problematic ambiguity: ambiguity proper, which is multiple meanings for the same word or term, and vagueness, which is the lack of clear boundaries on the application of a term.

Very often, but not always, ambiguities and vagueness are just resolved by contextual judgement. For example, if I say “I’m going to the bank” and I’m carrying a chequebook, you don’t think I’m going to sit by the side of a river; and if I’m carrying a picnic basket, you don’t tend to think I’m going to have a relaxed picnic inside my local branch of HBOS. Vagueness also often does not matter: if I tell you I’m going for “a short walk”, you don’t need to know exactly how many metres I will be walking – and indeed, nor do I.

Ambiguity that affects the justification of an argument is known as equivocation. If you use the same term in a reason and a conclusion, but don’t realise that they have an importantly different meaning in each case, the justification of your conclusion is likely to be seriously undermined. Abstract words are most prone to this: for example, life, civilised, natural, beautiful, meaning, good, art, and (oddly enough) logical. Equivocal arguments often have a baggy abstract term in the middle of them that is in need of a bit of clarification, and if it’s not clarified needless disputes can ensue. Here’s an example of a dispute between Ken and Thelma:

Ken: Wind turbines are a natural way of generating energy without burning fossil fuel, so the government should be investing in them much faster.

Thelma: Natural! You’ve got to be joking! They’re the most artificial monstrosities you ever saw! A blot on the landscape!

Here Ken is using the idea of the “naturalness” of wind turbines as the basis of his argument for them, but “natural” obviously means something quite different to Thelma. They will not be able to make progress in resolving their disagreement until they have resolved what they mean by this deeply ambiguous word. They can do this by defining what each means by the term. Let’s imagine that the conversation continues in a helpful direction.

Ken: So what do you mean by “natural”, there, Josh? Is it to do with what wind turbines look like?

Thelma: Of course! It can’t be natural if it’s a big noisy metal contraption sticking up on a green hill, can it?

Ken: So “natural” means not noisy and metal? What does it mean more positively?

Thelma: In harmony with the landscape. Trees and pastures are natural, but wind turbines aren’t.

Ken: What about buildings? Are they natural?

Thelma: Most of them aren’t, but the more traditional buildings like stone barns are more natural-looking than modern buildings.

Ken: So, by “natural” you mean that it has an appearance that you feel blends harmoniously with the landscape?

Thelma: That’s right.

Ken: Well, that’s not what I meant when I said that wind turbines are a natural way of generating energy. I meant that they are sustainable and don’t cause pollution. They cause much less disruption to the eco-system as a whole when you compare them to a coal-fired power station, for example.

Whether or not Ken and Thelma can now resolve their disagreement about wind turbines, at least now they have clarified what they are arguing about.

Exercise

Identify the ambiguous term or terms in each of these examples, and clarify the likely meanings of it for each person.Fontaine_Duchamp

1. Jake (looking at object pictured on right in an art gallery): How can that be art? This guy has just bought a urinal and stuck it in an art gallery!

Sandip: That’s precisely it. He’s stuck it in an art gallery. That makes it art.

2. Mother: I thought you were going to go to bed early tonight! It’s 11.30 already!

Teenaged son: But I went to bed at 12.30 last night.

3. Unionist: The management’s pay offer is only a 0.8% increase on last year’s pay, when the inflation rate is 2.3%. Some other workers in the same group are getting 2.7% rises. That makes the offer both unfair and unreasonable.

Manager: The pay offer is in line with the going market rate in the industry. That makes it perfectly fair. It is all that the company can afford without threatening its competitiveness. It would not be reasonable to expect the company to go out of business to meet an excessive pay settlement. 

4. Camilla: The Quakers are not really Christians. They don’t believe in the Trinity, or that the Bible is the Word of God.

Billy: But they have an idea of God, and they come from the Christian tradition. They rely on personal experience of God rather than on the Bible or doctrines, that’s all. 

5. Rosie: Your directions were rubbish! You said to go straight ahead by the Dog and Duck Inn, but there isn’t any road straight ahead at the Dog and Duck Inn, just left and right. I didn’t know which way to go! I was wandering around for ages!

Lee: The directions were perfectly clear. You just have to interpret them with common sense, that’s all! There’s a staggered junction by the Dog and Duck Inn, which means you go left and then right, but that’s practically the same as straight ahead. It should have been obvious!

Critical Thinking 4: Joining Arguments

Critical Thinking, Uncategorized

A simple argument consists of a conclusion supported by reasons (see Critical Thinking 1). However, most arguments are actually constructions that join these simple blocks of argument together in more complex ways. Just as a novel consists of various parallel sub-plots coming together into the conclusion, so arguments may bring several strands together in a great variety of possible patterns to support an overall claim. If you read a comment column in a newspaper, or an argumentative blog, for example, there will probably be more than one simple argument.

Simple arguments can be joined together in chains in which the conclusion to one argument becomes a reason for the next. The first conclusion us then called an intermediate conclusion. For example, in the following chain argument, the initial reasons are in green, the intermediate conclusion is in blue, and the final conclusion is in red:

Most cats purr when they are stroked.

Purring is a sign of contentment.

So most cats like being stroked.

Felix doesn’t like being stroked.

So Felix is an unusual cat.

Chains can be as long as you want them to be. Having laid out an argument you might also find one of your assumptions being questioned (or anticipate it being so), so you then go back and offer further justifications for your assumption, thus extending the chain backwards.

Arguments can also work in parallel. For example, a list of reasons can be used to support one conclusion, or several chains of argument can all converge on the final conclusion. Complex arguments can also include counter-arguments, where objections are considered and then refuted. The refutation then serves as a reason to support the conclusion.

To make these kinds of arguments clear, diagrams can be very helpful. Austhink have some very useful argument-mapping tutorials if you want to go more deeply into mapping arguments diagrammatically. They sell software for mapping arguments, but it can also be done using Windows SmartArt (examples below) – or, of course, freehand on a piece of paper!

Here’s an example of a ‘list’ style argument with a diagram to illustrate it:

There are all sorts of reasons why hunting with dogs should be banned. Animals hunted with dogs, such as hares and foxes, undergo terrible stress when they are pursued by dogs. It’s impossible to make sure that the animal dies humanely when it’s torn apart by dogs. Fox-hunters argue that numbers of foxes should be controlled, but they can do this by shooting, which is far more humane. They also claim that it is a country tradition that townies could never understand, but merely appealing to tradition does not give justification for a practice.Hunting argument diagram2

Exercise

1. Analyse the structure of this argument by stating which sections are the conclusion, intermediate conclusion(s) and initial reason(s). If there are counter-arguments state the objection and the counter-argument.

It is often assumed that world religions all involve different ways of worshipping God or gods, but it can be seen that this is not the case when Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism are counted as religions. These Eastern religions are not focused on God or gods, and the gods that do appear are incidental to them. Scholars of religion have been overwhelmingly influenced by Christian ideas of what ‘religion’ means, but if you look at a wide range of religious practice around the world it becomes clear that the model of religion as belief in God is just one amongst many.

2. Make up an argument (about anything you like) that follows this structure:Blank argument diagram

 

 

 

Critical Thinking 3: Assumptions

Critical Thinking, Practice

All arguments, whether inductive or deductive, begin with assumptions (also known as premises). An argument may be deductively valid (that is, if its assumptions are true then its conclusion must be true) but rendered irrelevant or unhelpful in practice by unacceptable assumptions. For example:

The Pope is a secret Hindu.Pope Benedict XVI Agencia Brasil

If the Pope is a secret Hindu, he can’t really be a Catholic.

Therefore, the Pope isn’t really Catholic.

This is all entirely valid: if the assumptions are correct, then the conclusion is too. However, the assumption that the Pope is a secret Hindu is, to say the least, implausible. An argument is only as good as its assumptions, and it’s important not to be seduced by the slickness or the complexity of an argument into taking its assumptions for granted. Unfortunately there are a great many philosophy books, for example, that I’m confident are not worth spending time reading because, although their arguments are rigorous, they are based on unacceptable (and to my mind, insufficiently examined) assumptions.

Assumption-spotting is perhaps the most crucial practical skill in Critical Thinking. The key issue here is whether what you think may be an assumption is actually necessary to the argument. If you assume that someone is making an assumption that they are not making, then obviously this is unfair. If an assumption is present, then it would have to be true for the conclusion to be true. For example:

John is out.

His coat is missing from the peg.

Here, it is being assumed that John must take his coat when he goes out. It is also being assumed that he only has one coat, and that the coat is not missing because someone has stolen it, or for some other reason.

However, if someone were to claim that “John is a man” was an assumption here, this would be incorrect. John does not have to be a man for the conclusion to be correct. John could be an alien or a polar bear and the conclusion would still be  fine.

Assumptions can be classified into explicit, implicit, and background types. An explicit assumption is stated in the argument: in the above example, this is “His coat is missing from the peg”. We assume the accuracy of this information in the argument. Implicit assumptions are not stated, but nevertheless must be true for the conclusion to be true. So, in the above example “John must take his coat when he goes out” is an implicit assumption required to reach the conclusion. “John has only one coat” is also an implicit assumption, but of a kind we would call a background assumption. It has to be correct for the conclusion to be correct, but it doesn’t play a direct role in the reasoning. Rather, it is taken for granted.

The distinction between foreground and background assumptions is not hard and fast – it will vary with the context. Some more sceptical types will be more inclined to question background assumptions than others! However, it is helpful to recognise that some assumptions are more immediately important in the context than others. “The universe exists” is a background assumption in almost all arguments, but not one we need bother discussing most of the time.

Exercise

Identify the assumptions in these arguments. If possible, distinguish between explicit, implicit and background assumptions.

1. The upper decks of double-decker buses are best avoided. I’ve often found them to be full of rude teenagers playing loud music with no concern for the feelings of other passengers.

2. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal because it was motivated only by a desire for oil.

3. Naomi had better watch out! There’s a polar bear behind her!

4. Since there has been no snow in southern England so far this winter and it’s now the middle Of January, we can conclude that it will be a mild winter throughout the UK.

5. Richard III’s body was found under a car park in Leicester, and he fell nearby in Bosworth Field, so it is only right that he should be re-buried in Leicester.

 

Picture: Pope Benedict XVI by Agencia Brasil (Wikimedia Commons)

Critical Thinking 2: Induction and deduction

Critical Thinking, ,

There was a great response to my first post in this series, so thanks to everyone who contributed to that. For my second one I’ve decided to tackle an issue that’s quite crucial to how Critical Thinking relates to the Middle Way.

There are two types of argument, normally known as induction and deduction. Deductive argument is what is classically formulated as argument and abstracted into logic. Deductive argument begins with assumed claims known as premises, and draws a conclusion from those premises. Within the terms of interpretation and the beliefs it assumes, the logical link between the premises and conclusion in deductive argument is absolute. If the premises are correct, then the conclusion must be correct if the reasoning is valid (i.e. follows the laws of logic).

For example:

John is an engineer.Engineer at work Angelsman

All engineers are human beings.

So John must be a human being.

This valid argument must be correct if John is indeed an engineer, and if indeed all engineers are human beings. But I might have false information about John, and robotic engineers may be under development right now in Japanese laboratories. My assumptions may be false, but if they happen to be true then the conclusion must also be true.

That’s what we’re traditionally told about deductive argument. However, if you take into account embodied meaning, then we are all also going to have slightly different meanings for ‘John’, ‘engineer’, ‘human being’ etc. experienced in different bodies. It’s only if we further assume that these meanings are sufficiently shared and stable that a deductive argument can be ‘valid’ in this way.

The other type of argument, however, is far more common and far more useful. Inductive argument is imperfect argument that begins with limited information and draws further conclusions from it. Sometimes such reasoning can sometimes be grossly over-stated and prejudiced. For example:

My neighbour was burgled by a man from Norfolk.

Norfolk people are all criminals.

This is a crude example of prejudiced reasoning. It takes just one example and draws a conclusion about a whole class of people that are extremely varied. It’s obviously not taking into account all the reasons why it might be wrong.

However, inductive reasoning is what we rely upon constantly. If we take into account its limitations it can be a justified way of reasoning. For example:

Tom has failed to fulfil his promises to his mother on ten successive occasions within a month.

His mother should not place any further reliance on Tom’s promises.

It’s still possible that Tom is trustworthy, and has just had ten unfortunate sets of events that stopped him fulfilling his promises, or that he was at fault in the past but has now completely reformed. However, it’s unlikely. We are usually obliged to trust the weight of our experience in cases like this. We could have confidence in the conclusion here as long as we also took into account the possibility that we could be wrong.

So, my argument here is that deductive argument, though perfect in theory, is not really different from inductive in the way we should treat it in practice. Deductive logic, though it may be perfect in the abstract, is in practice dependent both on the assumptions made and on the interpretation of the words of the argument to be applied in our lives. In practice, then deductive reasoning is just as fallible as inductive. If we use inductive reasoning with awareness of its limitations, though, it can provide us with justified beliefs. This kind of reasoning is justified because of its fallibility, not in spite of it.

Exercise

How well justified are the following (inductive or deductive) arguments?

1. The no. 37 bus that I take to work has been more than ten minutes late on three successive days. This is an unacceptable standard of punctuality, and it has made me late for work. I shall write to the bus company to complain.

2. If the UK economy continues to grow at the rate it managed during the last quarter of 2013 (a rate unmatched since the crash of 2008) then we can conclude that economic recovery is well under way.

3. Romanians in the UK are arrested at seven times the rate of Britons (Daily Mail), so if more Romanians come to the UK we can expect an increase in crime.

4. If God exists and God is good, he would not allow people to suffer without making the truth available to them. So he must have sent divinely-inspired prophets to guide people.

5. I’ve been practising this difficult piano piece for two months now, but I seem to be making no progress. I keep making the same mistakes. I should give up this piece and learn something else.

 

Picture: Engineer at work by Angelsman (Wikimedia Commons)