Critical thinking: A concise guide by Bowell & Kemp (4th edition) - a summary
- 3758 reads
Critical thinking
Chapter 2
Language and rhetoric
Once we’ve determined that a text or a speech contains an attempt to persuade by argument, the remainder of argument-reconstruction is largely a matter of interpreting the speech or text as accurately as possible.
Ambiguity
Ambiguity can be used, often deliberately, to obfuscate the content of an argument or rhetorically to obscure the persuaders true point.
A sentence is ambiguous in a given context when there is more than one possible way of interpreting it in that context.
There are two types of ambiguity:
Lexical ambiguity
Lexical ambiguity: a property of individual words and phrases that occurs when the word or phrase has more than one meaning.
Extension: the set or group of things to which an expression applies.
(for example, the extension of the word ‘cow’ are all the cows in the world).
An ambiguous word or phrase has two or more separate and different extensions.
Ambiguous words and phrases can bring their ambiguity into sentences, making those sentences capable of having more than one possible interpretation.
Words that are potentially lexically ambiguous are not necessarily ambiguous in every context.
When interpreting sentences that are lexically ambiguous, we have to focus on the context in which they are written or said and the consequent probability of each of the possible interpretations being the correct one.
Syntactic ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity: when the arrangement of words in a sentence is such that the sentence could be understood in more than one way.
Vagueness
The meaning of a word or expression is vague if it is indefinite or if it is uncertain what is conveyed by the word in the context under consideration.
Sometimes, someone aware of the weakness of their own position will deliberately leave their meaning vague in order to camouflage that weakness and to evoke strong feelings of approval or disapproval in their readers or listeners.
Words can also have a clear meaning, but which have an indefinitely demarcated extension.
(like colors)
Primary and secondary connotation
The rich secondary connotation (bijbetekenis) of some words provides a further source of vagueness.
Primary connotation: a given thing falls within a word’s extension if, and only if, it fist a certain rule associated with the use of that word.
(For example, the rule for the noun ‘ram’ is ‘male sheep’).
This rule will be some set of characteristics which, by definition, everything to which the word applies must have.
All of a term’s primary connotation must apply to an object for that term to apply to it.
If you know the primary connotation of a term, then you at least know the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as part of that term’s extension.
Secondary connotation: the further characteristics of a term.
(like a ram is woolly)
Things that fall under the term will generally exhibit these characteristics, but there is not logical contradiction in supposing there to be a thing that falls under the term but lacks a characteristic included under the secondary connotation.
In the case of vague words, the distinction between primary and secondary connotation tends to break down, or be difficult to draw.
The secondary connotation of many words gives the sentences in which they appear their rhetorical force.
Metaphors often function by bringing only the secondary connotation of a word into play.
In most cases the primary connotation is in fact not true of the object or person in question.
In the course of interpretation, we should take care not to treat metaphors as literal claims and not to confuse a metaphorical use of a word with an ambiguous one.
Rhetorical questions
Rhetorical questions: take the form of a question but indirectly assert a proposition. They are not really used to ask a question, but to make a point in an indirect way.
You should avoid rhetorical questions.
Irony
Irony: a form of language that, taken literally, would convey the opposite of what they wish to convey, or something very different from it.
Implicitly relative sentences
Implicitly relative sentences: sentences that make a comparison with some group of things, but that comparison is not explicitly mentioned.
(for example; it is the best of its kind)
Implicit relativity is often compounded by other sources of vagueness.
Problems with quantifiers
Quantifiers: words and phrases that tell us how many/much of something there are/is, or how often something happens.
Not all quantifiers specify an exact quantity of the thing, rather, they provide a rough guide.
There are three potential problems with quantifiers:
Counterexamples: cases that we use to challenge the truth of a generalising claim.
Quantifiers and generalisations
Generalisation: a statement about a category of things.
There are two types of generalisations:
We use soft generalisations when we want to express the idea that such and such tends to be true of certain things normally, typically, generally, usually, on average, for the most part.
Hard generalisation does intend it to apply without exception.
If someone makes a claim that is intended as a hard generalisation and we can find a counterexample for it, then we have refuted their claim.
Quantifier-free generalisations are not typically intended as hard generalisations.
Soft generalisations are rhetorically dangerous.
Depending on how we use a sentence, it may express aspects of meaning additional to its factual, propositional content.
Rhetorical force
Rhetorical force: the rhetorical aspect of a sentence’s meaning.
It is not part of the propositional content that it expresses. It is the emotive or otherwise suggestive window dressing surrounding the proposition, which may be used to persuade us.
The sentence in question can reasonably be taken to express this rhetorical message given the linguistic connections according to which the words involved are normally used.
Implicature
Implicature: meaning which is not stated but which one can reasonably take to be intended given the context in which the sentence is written or uttered.
Implicature cannot typically be interpreted according to conventions covering our ordinary use of the words in the sentence used.
In order to recognise implicature, we need to know the context in which a statement is made.
Contextual factors include who the speaker is, who she is addressing and the circumstances surrounding the particular use of the sentence.
Implicature can serve as a source of rhetorical power when the unsaid, implied aspect of a sentence’s meaning is employed to stimulate responses motivated by emotion or prejudice.
It is also a way of communicating something without incurring the full responsibility of having explicitly said that.
A statement implicates a given proposition only if a listener who is fully aware of the relevant context would reasonably take that proposition to have been intended.
Something can be implicated even when the speaker does not intend it.
Definitions
Definitions: tell us what it takes for something to qualify as a particular type of thing.
A dictionary definition of a word explains the normal use of a word by providing synonyms for its various uses.
Some definitions tell us the necessary and sufficient conditions for counting that kind of thing.
The necessary conditions for being something or some phenomenon X are the conditions that a thing must satisfy if it is to count as an X.
When devising definitions we start with some plausible candidate(s) for necessary and sufficient conditions. We then test them by seeing if there are any counterexamples to them.
When faced with a counterexample, we either alter the definition to accommodate something we strongly believe should count as a case of the X in question, or accept the definition and admit that the thing in question does not count as a case of X.
Attempts to persuade us in ways that appear to provide motivation for doing or believing something but do not give us good reasons to do or believe that thing fall into two categories:
Neither rhetorical ploys nor fallacies provide us with good reasons to do or believe that of which they attempt to persuade us.
Fallacies are argumentative, they give reasons why their conclusion should be accepted, but they constitute bad reasoning.
Rhetorical ploys are non-argumentative. Some of these persuasive devices may pretend to provide reasons for accepting a claim, but their real persuasive capacity depends on something non-argumentative.
Rhetorical ploys typically make a more or less direct appeal to feeling an emotion rather than to reason, which is the domain of argument.
Appeals to specific feelings
Appeal to novelty
Often this ploy appeals to our desire not to miss out on a new trent, or arouses our fear of appearing outdated in our tastes.
Sometimes it appears to our (vain) sense of ourselves as flexible and willing to try out new experiences.
It may also persuade us that, because the product is new, it must be an improved version of the existing product.
The appeal can be employed to persuade us to adopt new ideas or beliefs.
Appeal to popularity
This ploy appeals to our desire to run with the crowd, not to appear different from the norm and not to miss out on what others have.
Appeal to compassion, pity or guilt
This ploy operates by attempting to move us to do something purely by evoking a feeling of compassion towards the recipients of the suggested act or belief, or a feeling of guilt about their plight.
The feeling alone does not provide a good reason for us to perform the act in question.
Appeal to cuteness
This rhetorical technique supplements its words with images of children, animals, or animated characters to deliver a message. The product that we are urged to buy or the action we are urged to take is made to seem attractive by its association with the cute character that urges us to buy or take it.
The appeal can also work by helping us to remember a product via its association with the cute figure delivering the sales pitch.
Appeal to sexiness
Similar to the appeal to cuteness, but it uses a different image.
It has also a further dimension. To those would desire the sexy person depicted in the advertisement, the product is made to seem desirable by its association with the sexy person. It also seems desirable to those who would like to think of themselves as sexy in the way that the sexy person is.
Appeal to wealth, status, power, hipness, coolness, ect.
By analogy with the appeals to cuteness and sexiness
Appeal to fear (also known as scare tactics)
Trying to elicit fear in one’s readers or listeners in order to influence their behavior and attitudes.
The appeal to fear should be distinguished from genuine warnings. In instances of the fromer, there is not warranted connection between the fear elicited and taking the suggested course of action or accepting the claim.
In the case of a warning, we are given a good reason to act. This is usually because the circumstances of the warning are themselves such as to warrant the belief that the warning is well-founded.
Appeal to ridicule
This ploy occurs when a speaker/writer attacks their opponent’s position or claim by casting it in a light that will make it seem ridiculous to their audience.
The direct attack and hard sell
A direct command.
For example ‘Say no to higher tuition fees’ or ‘drink tea’. We are given no reason to drink tea.
The hard sell is the direct attack repeated persistently.
The belief of those who use the direct attack is that the more we hear or read these commands and internalise them, the more likely we are to do as they advocate, despite having been given no reason to do so.
Scare quotes “”
This tactic is a means of influencing opinion against a view that one opposes.
The speaker/writer takes key words in terms of which their opponent expresses their views and attempts to discredit those views by making them appear ridiculous or suspicious through scare quotes.
No reason is given for rejecting the view, we are simply manipulated into rejecting it because it has been made to appear ridiculous or suspicious.
This tactic can also be used more subtly, but to similar effect. In such cases an opponent’s opinion is made to seem dubious by placing scare quotes around words used to describe what would be perfectly normal, acceptable facts about them.
Trading on an equivocation
This ploy deliberately exploits the ambiguity, and in some cases the vagueness, of a word or phrase in the given context. Although nothing false is claimed, the speaker or writer manages to influence our actions or beliefs by misleading us.
It is generally used when someone attempting to persuade us of the benefits and virtues of their policy or product.
To equivocate is misleadingly to use the same word in more than one sense. The ploy is to get us to interpret a message in a way that favours the product or view being advanced.
The ploy of equivocation also occurs when someone attempts to mislead with statistics by saying something that is true, but which they expect their audience to understand according to an interpretation that is false.
Trading on implicature
Using a statement’s implicature to mislead the audience. Since the proposition implicated is not actually stated by the speaker, the speaker can hope to avoid responsibility for having misled the audience.
Many questions (aka leading question or complex question)
The tactic of posing a question that appears to seek an explanation for some proposition, p, thereby misleadingly implying that p is true.
(For example, why do cats fly?)
Smokescreen (changing the subject)
This is the tactic of avoiding discussion of an issue or acknowledgement of a point through diverting or distracting one’s opponent from the issue at hand by addressing a different (possibly related) issue. The issue is irrelevant to the discussion, thereby acts like a smokescreen by obscuring our view of the real issue.
The more subtle the smokescreen, the more effective at distracting the listener or reader it tends to be.
Buzzwords, jargon and acronyms
Buzzwords
The technique of using fashionable or otherwise currently ‘hot’ words or phrases that are loaded with rhetorical power due to their rich secondary connotation.
Buzzwords can be enormously provocative and therefore had to tame, and this makes them especially problematic for the critical thinker.
If we want to make an objective analysis of a passage or speech act, we should rephrase what is said or written in such a way as to eliminate the buzzwords, and then embark on the analysis.
Jargon
Jargon: an often impenetrable way of speaking or writing that uses words or phrases that are likely to be unfamiliar to most of the audience, or which uses familiar words in unfamiliar ways.
Like buzzwords, jargon tends to develop over time.
Jargon wields strong rhetorical power.
If you use jargon correctly then you appear to be ‘in the know’, one of the in-crowd.
It functions to provide its users with a kind of exclusivity and excludes those who don’t understand or know how to use the insider’s language.
Jargon is also used to obscure the true meaning or implication of what’s being said.
Acronyms
Acronyms are a series of initials used as though they are a word to provide an abbreviation (afkorting) for a name or phrase.
The rhetorical power of use of acronyms lies in their ability to create insiders who are able to decode them and understand what they are being used to convey, and to exclude those who aren’t ‘in the know’.
Acronyms tend to obscure what’s being conveyed.
When we use acronyms we should do so with attention to what is appropriate in the context of our audience.
Spin
The term ‘spin’ is a way of referring to techniques that employ rhetorical ploys to good effect in influencing people’s opinions.
If we don’t really understand the phrase, then the spin will have done the job of obfuscating what is said, thereby making us less likely to understand and to oppose it.
Critical thinking
Chapter 1
Introducing Arguments
To attempt to persuade by giving good reasons is to give an argument.
Not all attempts to persuade (using language) are attempts to persuade by argument.
some are attempts to persuade by means of rhetorical devices
Rhetoric: any verbal or written attempt to persuade someone to believe, desire or do something that does not attempt to give good reasons for the belief, desire or action, but attempts to motivate that belief, desire or action solely through the power of the words used.
An attempt to persuade by argument is an attempt to provide you with reasons for believing a claim, desiring something or doing something.
Arguments appeal to your critical faculties, your reason.
Rhetoric tends to rely on the persuasive power of certain words and verbal techniques to influence your beliefs, desires and actions by appeal to your desires, fears and other feelings.
threats and bribes are arguments (not rhetorics), for they give a reason to do something
Rhetorical techniques can be manipulative and coercive. Their use should generally be avoided by those who aspire to think critically and to persuade by reason.
When analysing attempts to persuade, we have to perform three tasks:
When we put forward an argument we are either advancing an opinion or recommending an action.
In either case we give a number of claims intended to support the claim or the recommendation.
These two types of argument can be collapsed into one.
All arguments can be understood as attempting to provide reasons for thinking that some claim is true (it states how things really are).
To say that a claim is true is to say that what is claimed is how things actually are.
A single claim does not constitute an argument.
An argument needs
Critical thinking
Chapter 2
Language and rhetoric
Once we’ve determined that a text or a speech contains an attempt to persuade by argument, the remainder of argument-reconstruction is largely a matter of interpreting the speech or text as accurately as possible.
Ambiguity
Ambiguity can be used, often deliberately, to obfuscate the content of an argument or rhetorically to obscure the persuaders true point.
A sentence is ambiguous in a given context when there is more than one possible way of interpreting it in that context.
There are two types of ambiguity:
Lexical ambiguity
Lexical ambiguity: a property of individual words and phrases that occurs when the word or phrase has more than one meaning.
Extension: the set or group of things to which an expression applies.
(for example, the extension of the word ‘cow’ are all the cows in the world).
An ambiguous word or phrase has two or more separate and different extensions.
Ambiguous words and phrases can bring their ambiguity into sentences, making those sentences capable of having more than one possible interpretation.
Words that are potentially lexically ambiguous are not necessarily ambiguous in every context.
When interpreting sentences that are lexically ambiguous, we have to focus on the context in which they are written or said and the consequent probability of each of the possible interpretations being the correct one.
Syntactic ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity: when the arrangement of words in a sentence is such that the sentence could be understood in more than one way.
Vagueness
The meaning of a word or expression is vague if it is indefinite or if it is uncertain what is conveyed by the word in the context under consideration.
Sometimes, someone aware of the weakness of their own position will deliberately leave their meaning vague in order to camouflage that weakness and to evoke strong feelings of approval or disapproval in their readers or listeners.
Words can also have a clear meaning, but which have an indefinitely demarcated extension.
(like colors)
Primary and secondary connotation
The rich secondary connotation (bijbetekenis) of some words provides a further source of vagueness.
Primary connotation: a given thing falls within a word’s extension if, and only if, it fist a certain rule associated with the
.....read moreWst-r
Chapter 3
Logic: deductive validity
Argument reconstruction: the representation of arguments in standard form, so as to give us a clear and comprehensive view of them.
Argument assessment: the determination of whether or not arguments provide good reasons for accepting their conclusions.
An argument is a system of propositions.
Propositions: a set of premises advanced in support of a conclusion.
People succeed in expressing the propositions they have in mind in varying degrees of clarity. An argument may depend upon premises that the arguer does not state at all, but which he or she is implicitly assuming.
Since the purpose of argument-reconstruction is to determine exactly what argument has been given, part of the task is to clarify what the arguer actually said, and to supplement what the arguer actually said (to make explicit what was merely implicit in the arguer’s statements).
Argument-reconstruction is essentially a task of interpretation.
The principle of charity.
In such facts pertaining to the context in which the argument is given, together with the specific words used by the person, will constitute the total evidence you have for reconstructing the argument.
If, in the third case, you have to chose what representation of the argument is true, it depends on your purpose.
Critical thinking
Chapter 5
The practice of argument-reconstruction
The first step in reconstructing an argument is to make a list of the argument’s premises and conclusion as concisely and clearly as possible.
Making such a list is only the first step towards a complete reconstruction.
Expressive epithet: terms used to refer to some person, group or other entity but that characterize the entity referred to for rhetorical purposes.
When reconstructing arguments we should strive to display the logical relationships in an argument in the simplest, clearest and most familiar ways possible.
This is not always possible, and doing it will sometimes distract us from other points we are trying to make.
Not only do actual statements of arguments typically include a lot of material that is inessential to the argument, they often exclude some of what is essential to the argument.
Our task is to make the argument fully explicit.
A proposition is implicit: the proposition is part of the argument intended by the arguer but it has not actually been stated by the arguer.
To make a proposition explicit: to state it.
Connecting premise: the premise which you have to make
.....read moreCritical thinking
Chapter 6
Issues in argument assessment
The role of an argument is to give us reasons for accepting its conclusion as true.
The aim is to give an argument by which the intended audience is ought to be persuaded.
We cannot always tell whether or not the argument is sound.
Sound arguments must have true premises.
Since we do not always know which propositions are true and which false, we cannot always tell whether an argument is sound or not.
To say that an inductively forceful argument is defeated for a person: the person reasonably believes the premises, but, nevertheless, reasonably rejects the conclusion.
(They have, for example, extra information).
An inductively forceful argument whose premises you have reason to accept is rationally persuasive only if your total evidence does not defeat the argument for you.
To say that an argument is rationally persuasive for a person:
Rationally unpersuasive argument: an argument that is deductively sound and valid, but gets you no closer to knowing the truth-value of the conclusion.
Rational persuasiveness is doubly relative.
Since people are in different states of information at different times, an argument may be rationally persuasive for one person, but not for another.
Seven points to bear in mind as regards rational persuasiveness:
1 It is not possible for the conclusion of a deductively valid argument to be defeated by a person’s total evidence. This is only possible for inductively forceful arguments.
2 Rational persuasiveness is not part of the definition that the argument be sound (either deductively or inductively).
Critical thinking
Chapter 7
Pseudo-reasoning
Fallacies count as arguments in the sense that they fit our definition of an argument. They consist of a set of propositions, some of which premises, one of which is a conclusion. But, one way or another, they are bad arguments.
A fallacy: a mistake in reasoning.
One commits a fallacy when the reasons advanced or accepted in support of a claim fail to justify its acceptance.
A fallacy can be committed either when one is deciding whether to accept a claim on the basis of a fallacious argument with which one has been presented or when one is presented the fallacious argument oneself.
A fallacious argument or inference: one in which there is an inappropriate connection between premises and conclusion.
Almost all fallacies fall under one of the following two types:
The majority of fallacies that we encounter in everyday texts and speech are substantive fallacies.
A fallacious argument can have true or false premises.
Simply having false premises does not make an argument fallacious.
Nor does having true premises guarantee that an argument is not fallacious.
A proposition accepted on the basis of a fallacious argument may turn out to be true as a matter of actual fact.
The best way to become acquainted with the different types of fallacies is to practise identifying and analysing them.
As they are attempts to persuade by argument, you need to reconstruct them in standard form and then use techniques of argument analyses and assessment to demonstrate the ways in which they are fallacious.
Many types of fallacious argument are effective as rhetorical ploys.
Formal fallacies
Formal fallacies: patterns of argument whose reasoning makes purely logical mistakes.
Each type of fallacy constitutes an invalid argument.
The fallacies will be recognized by the presence of the particular invalid pattern.
Affirming the consequent of a conditional
Affirming the consequent for short.
This occurs when we argue from the conditional premise that if P (the antecedent), then Q (the consequent) together with the premise that Q to the conclusion that P.
P1) If P then Q
P2) Q
---------------------
C) P
Example:
P1) Is someone is a philosopher, then
.....read moreThis magazine contains all the summaries you need for the course WSRt at the second year of psychology at the Uva.
JoHo can really use your help! Check out the various student jobs here that match your studies, improve your competencies, strengthen your CV and contribute to a more tolerant world
JoHo kan jouw hulp goed gebruiken! Check hier de diverse studentenbanen die aansluiten bij je studie, je competenties verbeteren, je cv versterken en een bijdrage leveren aan een tolerantere wereld
There are several ways to navigate the large amount of summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter.
Do you want to share your summaries with JoHo WorldSupporter and its visitors?
Field of study
Add new contribution