英语思辨连线题汇总(1)

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英语思辨连线题汇总

•Claim: When a belief (judgment, opinion) is asserted in a declarative sentence, the result is a

claim, statement, or assertion.

•Objective claim vs. subjective claim: An objective claim is true or false regardless of whether

people think it is true or false. Claims that lack this property are said to be subjective.

•“Fact vs. opinion”: People sometimes refer to true objective claims as “facts,” and use the word

“opinion” to designate any claim that is subjective.

•“Factual claim”: An objective claim. Saying that a claim is “factual” is not the same as saying it is

true. A factual claim is simply a claim whose truth does not depend on our thinking it is true.

•Moral subjectivism: Moral subjectivism is the idea that moral judgments are subjective. “There is

nothing either good or bad but that thinking makes it so.”

•Issue: A question.

•Argument: An argument consists of two parts—one part of which (the premise or premises) is

intended to provide a reason for accepting the other part (the conclusion).

•“Argument”: People sometimes use this word to refer just to an argument's premise.

•Arguments and issues: The conclusion of an argument states a position on the issue under

consideration.

•Cognitive bias: A feature of human psychology that skews belief formation. The ones discussed

in this chapter include the following:

◇Belief bias: Evaluating reasoning by how believable its conclusion is.

◇Confirmation bias: A tendency to attach more weight to considerations that support our views.

◇Availability heuristic: Assigning a probability to an event based on how easily or frequently it

is thought of.

◇False consensus effect: Assuming our opinions and those held by people around us are

shared by society at large.

◇Bandwagon effect: The tendency to align our beliefs with those of other people.

◇Negativity bias: Attaching more weight to negative information than to positive information.

◇Loss aversion: Being more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than to accrue a gain.

◇In-group bias: A set of cognitive biases that make us view people who belong to our group

differently from people who don't.

◇Fundamental attribution error: Having one understanding of the behavior of people in the

in-group and another for people not in the in-group.

◇Obedience to authority: A tendency to comply with instructions from an authority.

◇Overconfidence effect: A cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate what percentage of our

answers on a subject are correct.

◇Better-than-average illusion: A self-deception cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate our

own abilities relative to those of others.

•Truth: A claim is true if it is free from error.

•Knowledge: If you believe something, have an argument beyond a reasonable doubt that it is so,

and have no reason to think you are mistaken, you can claim you know it.

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Arguments always have two parts, a premise (or premises) and a conclusion.

The same statement can be a premise in one argument and a conclusion in a second

argument.

The two fundamental types of reasoning are deductive demonstration and inductive

support.

A deductive argument is used to demonstrate or prove a conclusion, which it does if it is

sound.

An argument is sound if it is valid and its premise (or premises) is true.

An argument is valid if it isn't possible for its premise or premises to be true and its

conclusion to be false.

An inductive argument is used to support rather than to demonstrate a conclusion.

An argument supports a conclusion if it increases the likelihood that the conclusion is true.

Support is a matter of degrees: An argument supports a conclusion to the extent its

premise (or premises) makes the conclusion likely.

An argument that offers more support for a conclusion is said to be stronger than one that

offers less support; the latter is said to be weaker than the former.

Some instructors use the word “strong” in an absolute sense to denote inductive

arguments whose premise (or premises) makes the conclusion more likely than not.

If it doesn't make sense to think of an argument as providing evidence or support for a

contention, it is probably because it is a deductive argument.

Inductive arguments and deductive arguments can have unstated premises.

Whether an argument is deductive or inductive may depend on what the unstated premise

is said to be.

If an argument is written, diagramming it may help you understand it.

Balance of considerations reasoning often involves deductive and inductive elements.

Inference to best explanation is a common type of inductive reasoning in which the

conclusion explains the cause of something.

This list summarizes the topics covered in this chapter:

• Clarity of language is extremely important to the ability to think critically.

• Clarity of language can often be lost as a result of multiple causes, including, importantly,

vagueness, ambiguity, and generality.

• Vagueness is a matter of degree; what matters is not being too vague for the purposes at hand.

• A statement is ambiguous when it is subject to more than one interpretation and it isn't clear which

interpretation is the correct one.

• Some main types of ambiguity are semantic ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, grouping ambiguity,

and ambiguous pronoun reference.

• A claim is overly general when it lacks sufficient detail to restrict its application to the immediate

subject.

• To reduce vagueness or eliminate ambiguity, or when new or unfamiliar words are brought into

play, or familiar words are used in an unusual way, definitions are our best tool.

• The most common types of definitions are definition by synonym, definition by example, and

analytical definition.

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• Some “definitions” are used not to clarify meaning but to express or influence attitude. This is

known as the rhetorical use of definition.

• The rhetorical use of definitions accomplishes its ends by means of the rhetorical force (emotive

meaning) of terms.

• Critical thinking done on paper is known as an argumentative essay, a type of writing worth

mastering, perhaps by following our suggestions.

This list summarizes the topics covered in this chapter.

• Claims lack credibility to the extent they conflict with our observations, experience, or background

information, or come from sources that lack credibility.

• The less initial plausibility a claim has, the more extraordinary it seems; and the less it fits with our

background information, the more suspicious we should be.

• Interested parties should always be viewed with more suspicion than disinterested parties.

• Doubts about sources generally fall into two categories: doubts about the source's knowledge or

expertise and doubts about the source's veracity, objectivity, and accuracy.

• We can form reasonably reliable judgments about a person's knowledge by considering his or her

education, experience, accomplishments, reputation, and position.

• Claims made by experts, those with special knowledge in a subject, are the most reliable, but the

claims must pertain to the area of expertise and must not conflict with claims made by other experts

in the same area.

• Major metropolitan newspapers, national newsmagazines, and network news shows are generally

credible sources of news, but it is necessary to keep an open mind about what we learn from them.

• Governments have been known to influence and even to manipulate the news.

• Sources like Wikipedia, institutional websites, and news organizations can be helpful, but

skepticism is the order of the day when we obtain information from unknown Internet sources or

advocacy TV/.

• Advertising assaults us at every turn, attempting to sell us goods, services, beliefs, and attitudes.

Because substantial talent and resources are employed in this effort, we need to ask ourselves

constantly whether the products in question will really make the differences in our lives that their

advertising claims or hints they will make. Advertisers are always more concerned with selling you

something than with improving your life. They are concerned with improving their own lives.

• What goes for advocacy television also goes for talk radio.

Things to remember from this chapter:

• Persuasion attempts to win someone to one's own point of view.

• Rhetoric seeks to persuade through the rhetorical force of language and other devices.

• Although it can exert a profound psychological influence, rhetoric has no logical force or probative

value.

• There are a multitude of rhetorical devices in common use; they include:

— Euphemisms: seek to mute the disagreeable aspects of something or to emphasize its

agreeable aspects

— Dysphemisms: seek to emphasize the disagreeable aspects of something

— Weaselers: seek to protect a claim by weakening it

— Downplayers: seek to tone down the importance of something

— Stereotypes: a cultural belief about a social group's attributes, usually simplified or exaggerated

— Innuendo: using the power of suggestion to disparage someone or something

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— Loaded questions: questions that depend on unwarranted assumptions

— Ridicule and sarcasm: widely used to put something in a bad light

— Hyperbole: overdone exaggeration

— Rhetorical definitions and explanations: definitions and explanations used to express or

influence attitudes or affect behavior by invoking images with emotional associations.

— Rhetorical analogies: Analogies used to express or influence attitudes or affect behavior by

invoking images with emotional associations.

— Proof surrogates suggest there is evidence or authority for a claim without actually saying what

the evidence or authority is

— Repetition: hearing or reading a claim over and over can sometimes mistakenly encourage the

belief that it is true

• These devices can affect our thinking in subtle ways, even when we believe we are being

objective.

• Although photographs and other images are not claims or arguments, they can enter into critical

thinking by offering information bearing on an issue. They can also affect us psychologically in the

same way that emotional language affects us, and often even more powerfully.

• Demagogues use extreme rhetoric to spread false ideas and to gain power over people. Four

rhetorical techniques persistently used by demagogues are otherizing, demonizing, fostering

xenophobia, and fear and hate mongering. One of the most important tasks of critical thinking is to

recognize these techniques for what they are.

• Argumentum ad hominem—attempting to dismiss a source's position by discussing the source

rather than the position

• Straw man—attempting to dismiss a source's position by misrepresenting it

• False dilemma—attempting to establish a point by pretending it is the only alternative to

something we will find unacceptable, unattainable, or implausible.

• Misplacing the burden of proof—attempting to place the burden of proof on the wrong side of an

issue

• Begging the question—attempting to “support” a contention by offering as “evidence” what

amounts to a repackaging of the very contention in question

• Appeal to emotion—attempting to “support” a contention by playing on our emotions rather than

by producing a real argument

• Irrelevant conclusion—relevance fallacies that do not fit into the previous categories