L2

Critical thinking, rules of thumb, some fallacies and biases

What is Critical and scientific thinking?

rational, justified thinking
independent thinking
reflective

Rules of thumb for critical thinking?

External support for belief
Occam’s razor
“Cognitive illusions”

External support for belief

support is proportional to plausability

Hume’s maxim (External support for belief)

don’t accept a belief by testimony if it’s more likely that the testifier is incorrect, as opposed to the testimony being true

Occam’s razor

a heuristic to decide between competing beliefs, when the evidence available does not favor anyone

“Cognitive illusions”

cognitive errors are like some perceptual illusions

Conjunction fallacy

believing a conjunction is more probable than one of its conjuncts

the representativeness heuristic

judging the probability of an event by comparing its similarity to a stereotypical case

Base rate fallacy

ignoring the base rate when estimating probabilities

Exponential reasoning error

we underestimate exponential growth because we are used to linear growth

reliabilism

a belief is justified if it was produced by a process that is generally reliable in getting the truth

goal of Critical and Scientific thinking?

hold justified beliefs, avoid unjustified beliefs

stereotyping

expecting an individual of a particular group to have certain charachteristics without having information about that person