Critical thinking involves deliberating in a purposeful, organized manner to assess the value of information.
The following barriers to critical thinking.
1. Existing beliefs: we are culturally conditioned to resist change and feel that own way is best.
2. Wishful thinking: believing things that we know are not true because we want them to be true.
3. Hasty Moral Judgments: Do you tend to evaluate someone or something as good or bad, right or wrong, and remain fixed in this thinking? Such judgments are often prejudiced, intolerant, emotional, and self-righteous. .
4. Reliance on Authority: Government, doctors, religious leaders, and teachers do thinking for them.
5. Labels: Labels oversimplify, distort the truth, stereotype, and often incite anger and rejection.
Recognize an argument.
An argument is an assertion or set of assertions that supports a conclusion and is intended to persuade.
Four steps in critical thinking:.
1. Identify the issue.
The issue in argument is what the author is trying to convince you to believe .
2. Identify the support for the argument.
_The supports are the reasons or evidence.
_Type of supporting details: Facts, Examples, Analogies, Authority, Causal, Common knowledge, Statistics, Personal experiences.
3. Evaluate the support.
_Valid arguments are logically supported by well reasons or evidence, whereas Fallacious arguments can be supported by the crafty use of reason or evidence.
I. Relevance Fallacies: Testimonial, Transfer, Ad Hominem, Bandwagon, Straw Person, Misleading Analogy or Faulty comparison, Red Herring.
II. Believability Fallacies: Incomplete Facts or Card Stacking, Misinterpreted Statistics, Overgeneralization or Hasty Generalization, Questionable Authority, Hypostatization.
III. Consistency Fallacies: Appeal to Pity, Appeal to Emotion, Oversimplification or Either/Or argument, Begging the Question or Circular Reasoning, Slippery Slope, Non Sequitur, Post Hoc Ergo propter Hoc.
Essay Sexual Harassment What does Sexual Harassment mean? For me, sexual harassment means inducing or pushing someone to do things related to sex. That's my definition but, what's sexual harassment? I see it as the gateway of today's men and women to make money and get whatever they want, suing the harasser or making what happened nationwide news. Where does the sexual harassment take place? ...
