L2 - Rationality, Bias and Language

Critical Thinking Ch2, Willingham ch 11, Lecture (TBA)

What is ambiguity?

A property of a sentence in a given context where there is more than one possible proposition it could plausibly be taken to express.

What is lexical ambiguity?

Ambiguity that is a property of an individual word or phrase, which occurs when that word or phrase has more than one meaning (extension).

What is the extension of a word or phrase?

The set or group of things to which the word or phrase applies.

What is syntactic ambiguity?

Ambiguity that occurs when the arrangement of words in a sentence allows it to be understood in more than one way (expressing more than one proposition), based on the sentence's grammatical structure rather than word meaning.

What is a homonym?

Words that sound the same when spoken but have different meanings and often different spellings (e.g. "mussel" and "muscle").

What is vagueness?

A property of a word or expression whose meaning is indefinite or uncertain in the context under consideration; distinct from ambiguity, though often confused with it.

What is the primary connotation of a term?

The set of characteristics that, by definition, everything to which the word applies must have — the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to fall under that term.

What is the secondary connotation of a term?

Additional characteristics commonly associated with a term that are not part of its strict definition, and which things falling under the term generally but not necessarily exhibit.

What is a rhetorical question?

A sentence that takes the grammatical form of a question but is used to indirectly assert a proposition rather than to genuinely ask something.

What is irony (in critical thinking terms)?

Language that, taken literally, conveys the opposite of what the speaker or writer actually wishes to convey, or something very different from it.

What are implicitly relative sentences?

Sentences that make an unstated comparison with some group of things (e.g. "She earns an above-average salary") without explicitly identifying the comparison class, leaving the claim's truth value unclear.

What are quantifiers?

Words and phrases that indicate how many or how much of something there is, or how often something happens (e.g. "all," "most," "few," "never").

What is a counterexample (used to challenge a generalisation)?

A specific case or instance that shows a generalising claim to be false or in need of qualification.

What is a soft generalisation?

A generalisation intended to express that something is typically, usually, or generally true, allowing for exceptions (signaled by words like "most," "usually," "typically").

What is a hard generalisation?

A generalisation intended to apply without exception, rightly conveyed by quantifiers such as "all," "every," "no," "always," or "never."

What is rhetorical force?

The emotive or suggestive aspect of a sentence's meaning that is not part of its propositional content, used to persuade by manipulating feelings rather than by giving reasons.

What is implicature?

Meaning that is not explicitly stated in a sentence but which a listener, given the context, could reasonably take to have been intended by the speaker or writer.

What is a definition (in the critical thinking sense)?

A statement of the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as an instance of a particular type of thing.

What are necessary conditions (for being X)?

Conditions that a thing must satisfy if it is to count as an X.

What are sufficient conditions (for being X)?

Conditions such that, if something meets them, that is enough for it to count as an X.

What is the difference between rhetorical ploys and fallacies?

Fallacies are argumentative — they give bad reasons for a conclusion; rhetorical ploys are non-argumentative — their persuasive power depends on something other than reasons, such as emotional appeal.

What is the appeal to novelty?

A rhetorical ploy that persuades by suggesting something is better simply because it is new or different, playing on fear of appearing outdated or a desire to try new things.

What is the appeal to popularity?

A rhetorical ploy that persuades by appealing to the desire to have what others have or not miss out, implying that something's popularity makes it good or correct.

What is the appeal to compassion, pity, or guilt?

A rhetorical ploy that attempts to move an audience to act by evoking feelings of compassion, pity, or guilt, rather than by giving good reasons.

What is the appeal to cuteness?

A rhetorical technique that uses images of children, animals, or animated characters to make a product or message seem attractive through association.

What is the appeal to sexiness?

A rhetorical ploy similar to the appeal to cuteness that uses images of sexually attractive people to make a product seem desirable, and to flatter the audience into imagining themselves as similarly desirable.

What is the appeal to fear (scare tactics)?

A rhetorical ploy that attempts to elicit fear in an audience in order to influence their beliefs or behavior, without giving a warranted connection between the fear and the suggested action.

What is the appeal to ridicule?

A rhetorical ploy where a speaker or writer casts an opponent's position or claim in a light that makes it seem absurd or laughable to the audience.

What is the direct attack (in rhetoric)?

The simplest rhetorical ploy, consisting of a simple slogan or command (e.g. "Drink tea!") given with no supporting reason.

What is the hard sell?

The direct attack repeated persistently until the audience gives in, without ever providing reasons for the persuader's position.

What are scare quotes?

A rhetorical tactic of placing quotation marks around a term to cast doubt on or ridicule the legitimacy of the concept or claim it names, without giving any argument against it.

What is trading on an equivocation?

A rhetorical ploy that deliberately exploits the ambiguity or vagueness of a word or phrase to mislead an audience while avoiding stating anything literally false.

What is trading on implicature?

A rhetorical ploy that uses a statement's implicature (rather than its explicit content) to mislead an audience, allowing the speaker to avoid responsibility for the misleading impression created.

What is the "many questions" ploy (leading/complex question)?

A tactic of posing a question that presupposes and thereby implies the truth of some proposition, misleading the audience into accepting that proposition without argument.

What is push polling?

A form of opinion polling that uses leading (many-questions style) questions to sway respondents' opinions or poll results in a particular direction.

What is a smokescreen (changing the subject)?

A rhetorical tactic of avoiding discussion of an issue by deflecting attention onto a different, often less relevant, issue.

What is whataboutism (whataboutery)?

A form of smokescreen in which a person deflects criticism by pointing to an unrelated wrongdoing by someone else, rather than addressing the original point.

What is a buzzword?

A fashionable or currently popular word or phrase that carries strong rhetorical power due to its rich secondary connotation, often used to persuade without conveying precise meaning.

What is jargon?

An often impenetrable way of speaking or writing that uses words unfamiliar to most of the audience, or familiar words in unfamiliar ways, which can function rhetorically to exclude outsiders or obscure meaning.

What is spin?

The use of rhetorical ploys, especially favorable or misleading language, to influence public or political opinion about an event or policy.

What is gas-lighting?

Using language rhetorically to cast doubt on someone's claims or perceptions, manipulating them into doubting their own memory, judgment, or sanity.

What is the difference between a fallacy and a rhetorical ploy in terms of how each should be dealt with?

Fallacies can be addressed using techniques of argument analysis and assessment (since they are bad arguments); rhetorical ploys must instead be recognized and resisted psychologically, since they are non-argumentative attempts to persuade.

What is decision making (Willingham)?

Selecting one path of action from among two or more explicit courses of action offered.

What does it mean for a choice to be rational?

The choice is internally consistent — the same relative preferences hold across comparisons, such as showing transitivity (if you prefer A to B and B to C, you should prefer A to C).

What is transitivity (in decision making)?

The property that if a relationship holds between the first and second of three elements, and between the second and third, it should also hold between the first and third.

What is a normative (or rational) model of decision making?

A prescriptive theory stating which choice is the "best" or optimal one among the possibilities, according to some specified criterion.

What is expected value?

A normative theory in which the optimal choice is the one offering the largest financial payoff, calculated as the probability of an outcome multiplied by the value of that outcome.

What is expected utility?

The idea that people maximize the personal (subjective) value they attach to outcomes, rather than the outcomes' absolute monetary value; utility can differ from expected value when psychological factors (like need or risk) matter.

What is description invariance?

The principle that a rational person will consistently make the same choice regardless of how the problem is described to them, as long as the underlying choice structure is the same.

What is procedure invariance?

The principle that a rational person will consistently make the same choice regardless of how their preference for that choice is measured or elicited.

What is the problem frame?

The particular way a decision problem is described (e.g., in terms of gains vs. losses), which can affect people's choices even when the underlying outcomes are formally identical.

What are psychic budgets?

The mental categories (e.g., "luxury" vs. "gift") people use to categorize money they have spent or are considering spending, which can affect their willingness to spend on the same item depending on its category.

What is a sunk cost?

An investment (of money, time, or emotion) that is irretrievably spent and therefore, rationally, should not affect present decision making — though it often does.

What is loss aversion?

The tendency for the unpleasantness of a loss to be felt more strongly than the pleasure of an equivalent gain, which can make people more motivated to make risky choices to avoid a loss.

What is optimizing (in decision making)?

Picking the best solution out of all those available, which requires evaluating all possible options or using a formula that guarantees the best solution.

What is satisficing?

Selecting the first choice that meets some threshold of being satisfactory, rather than searching exhaustively for the single best (optimal) option.

What is a heuristic?

A simple cognitive rule or shortcut that requires little calculation and usually yields an acceptable (but not necessarily optimal) decision.

What is an algorithm (in decision making)?

A formula that produces consistent outcomes and, if correctly selected, can produce optimal outcomes; contrasted with a heuristic.

What is representativeness (heuristic)?

A heuristic in which people judge the probability that something belongs to a category based on how much it resembles (has features associated with) that category.

What is the conjunction fallacy (illustrated by the "Linda problem")?

The mistaken belief that the probability of two events occurring together (a conjunction) can be higher than the probability of one of the events alone.

What is the gambler's fallacy?

The mistaken belief that, in a random process, an outcome that hasn't occurred for a while is "due" to happen soon.

What is availability (heuristic)?

A heuristic in which people judge the probability of an event based on how easily examples of that event come to mind — the easier examples are to recall, the more probable the event seems.

What is anchoring and adjustment (heuristic)?

A heuristic in which people estimate a probability or value by starting from an initial value (the anchor) and then adjusting insufficiently up or down based on new information.

What is sample size, and why do people neglect it?

Sample size is the number of observations in a group being evaluated; people tend not to be naturally sensitive to the fact that smaller samples are more likely to deviate from the true population value than larger samples.

What is base rate neglect?

The tendency to ignore the underlying frequency (base rate) of an event in the population when judging the probability that a specific case belongs to that category, relying instead on vivid or specific information.

What is the base rate?

The frequency of an event (e.g., the proportion of blue cabs, or the prevalence of a disease) within a larger reference population of events.

According to Gigerenzer and Hoffrage, why do people perform better with frequency formats than probability formats?

They argue humans evolved to track frequencies (how often something occurs) rather than probabilities, so problems phrased as natural frequencies make relevant subset relationships explicit and are easier to reason about correctly.

What is deductive reasoning?

A type of reasoning in which, if the premises are true, the conclusion must necessarily be true; it allows for conclusions with certainty.

What is inductive reasoning?

A type of reasoning in which the premises make the conclusion more (or less) probable but do not guarantee its truth.

What does it mean for a deductive argument to be valid?

The conclusion must be true if the premises are true, based on the logical form of the argument, regardless of whether the premises are actually true in reality.

What is a conditional statement (in logic)?

A statement of the form "If P, then Q," where P is a condition and Q is the consequence that follows if P is met.

What is modus ponens?

A valid conditional logical form

What is modus tollens?

A valid conditional logical form

What is affirming the consequent?

An invalid conditional logical form

What is denying the antecedent?

An invalid conditional logical form

What is a syllogism?

A logical argument form with three parts — two premises followed by a conclusion — in which all three statements are statements of fact (unlike conditionals, which include an "if-then" statement).

What is the best way to evaluate the truth of a syllogism?

Using a Venn diagram; a syllogism must be true under all possible circumstances to be considered valid/true.

What is the Wason card selection problem?

A classic reasoning task in which participants must decide which cards to turn over to test a conditional rule; most people fail to correctly identify that they need to check the "P" card and the "not-Q" card.

What did the Wason card problem reveal about human reasoning?

That most people (around 15% correct) do not reason well with abstract conditional logic problems, even though minor changes in wording (like making the rule concrete or familiar) can dramatically improve performance.

What is a pragmatic reasoning schema (Cheng & Holyoak)?

A generalized, abstract mental structure that helps people reason about a category of real-world situations (like permissions, obligations, or causations) rather than pure abstract logic.

What is the permission schema?

A pragmatic reasoning schema describing situations in which a precondition must be satisfied before some action can be taken (e.g., "If you want to drink beer, you must be at least 21 years old").

What is the evolutionary perspective on reasoning (Cosmides & Tooby, Gigerenzer)?

The view that humans evolved cognitive systems especially good at detecting "cheaters" — people violating social contracts — because of the importance of cooperation and reciprocity in early human social groups.

What is a conversion error (in syllogistic reasoning)?

A reasoning mistake in which a person incorrectly reverses the terms of a statement that should not be reversible (e.g., treating "All As are Bs" as equivalent to "All Bs are As").

What is conversational implicature (in syllogistic reasoning errors)?

An error arising because syllogisms use logical language (e.g., "some" meaning "at least one, possibly all") differently from how people use the same words in everyday conversation (where "some" often implies "not all").

What is the atmosphere effect (in syllogistic reasoning)?

A bias in which people are more likely to accept a conclusion that matches the overall "feel" of the premises (e.g., both negative, or both using the same quantifier), regardless of whether the conclusion is actually valid.

What is the effect of prior beliefs on syllogistic reasoning?

People are more likely to accept a syllogism's conclusion as valid if the conclusion is already believed to be true, and to reject it if it's believed false, independent of the argument's actual logical validity.