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Many of our ideas about the world are based more on feelings than facts, sensibilities than science, and rage than reality. We gravitate toward ideas that make us feel comfortable in areas such as religion, politics, philosophy, social justice, love and sex, humanity, and morality. We avoid ideas that make us feel uncomfortable. This avoidance is a largely unconscious process that affects our judgment and gets in the way of our ability to reach rational and reasonable conclusions. By understanding how our mind works in this area, we can start embracing uncomfortable ideas and be better informed, be more understanding of others, and make better decisions in all areas of life.
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Let's take your questions/points one at a time:
1) I see this all the time where people attempt to find fallacies in arguments in order to convince others (and perhaps themselves) that the conclusions are wrong. They also often get the fallacies wrong in that virtually all informal fallacies have exceptions. If you just try to memorize the fallacies without understanding them, you will fall into this trap and your reasoning list likely to be worse as a result. Your appeal to science is a good example of this. Neophytes in the land of fallacies don't see a difference between the scientific consensus, expert opinion, and "it's true because X said so." 2) Stereotyping is the best example of this. We all do it all the time, and could not function (reasonably) without doing it. This is what Tversky and Kahneman refer to as system 1 vs system 2 thinking. In most cases, the fast, automatic thinking (system 1) is fine and gets us through life efficiently and reliably (reliable enough). However, when it comes to argumentation, we need to use system 2, the slow, deliberate thinking and do away with as many fallacies as possible. So in short, fallacies might also be good heuristics, but there is no place for this in argumentation. 3) Henrichs is referring to the idea coined by Aristotle: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos (see pathosethoslogos.com/ for a short and sweet explanation). I often encourage us Spock like rationalists to use a little emotion in debates and win hearts, not just minds. Humans are NOT purely rational creatures. As long as the emotion SUPPORTS the logic and does not contradict it, it is fine to use. Logic is only one tool in the persuasion tool kit, and certainly NOT the greatest. But it is the greatest in the critical thinking tool kit. Persuasion is a different game that goes by different rules. |
answered on Thursday, Aug 16, 2018 06:12:53 PM by Bo Bennett, PhD |
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