All entries for Saturday 10 May 2014

Update to Action Point 2 of Intro to Critical Thinking

Follow-up to First entry on Introduction to critical thinking from David's blog

My Second Action Point was to complete the practice paper on logical fallacies and try to identify them in political or academic debates.

Having practiced and completed the exercise sheet on logical fallacies, given to us in the workshop, I have found that now I can outline and detect inconsistencies in my research and in general political debates I see on television (such as Question Time).

I have learned of the wide variety of common pitfalls of thinking. From over-generalisations and bad analogies to naturalistic fallacies and euqivocations, I have learned that there are numerous logical fallacies that people use. This in turn has taught me that people's arguments can be considered weak for many different reasons, some of which can combine two or more logical fallacies together at one time.

Not only can I now identify the pitfalls in weak arguments, this outline of logical fallacies has also helped me avoid slipping into them when writing or simply discussing topics with a fellow MA student.

An outline of logical fallacies has given me a kind of diagnostic tool to help identify what makes an argument weak by showing what holes in falls into.

David Walker : 10 May 2014 17:11 |  Tags: A5 Portfolio Actions Wspa |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem