What is the point of studying Critical Thinking?

• Fundamentally, Critical Thinking or Informal Logic deals with the use of reason in the pursuit of truth. While there is serious doubt about the power of reason to discover any "new" truth, the "rules" of logic concern the ways truth can be preserved as we make inferences -- one or more statements to support or justify another statement. Taken this way, there is no great "mystery" to the concepts of Logic. At the very core of logic is the idea that certain "patterns of inference" - i.e. models for combining statements that support with those which are supposedly supported ­ will, if the supporting statements are true, guarantee the truth of the statement supported by them. In studying logic, we identify, study, and apply these patterns or principles of logical reasoning and express them in some general way - a way which is independent of the subject being reasoned about.

 

 
 
 
 
 

So, if we are interested in knowing the truth, then the answer is obvious: logical reasoning extends our grasp of the truth, from the information we have to what can be inferred from that information.

But why should we be interested in the truth? On the one hand, much of who we are, of the people we have become (and are yet to become) is due to our ideas and beliefs. And what we do and how we react to any situation is also determined by the background of beliefs and ideas we bring to it. Without getting too philosophical here, what sort of life would you consider more worthwhile-- one based on truth, or one based on lies and groundless illusions?

If we believed only what popped into our heads, perhaps we could count on its being true. [Could we? And what should we do when then the opposite idea pops into our head-- give up the earlier one, or keep 'em both?]. But often the source of our beliefs is other people - parents, pals, preachers, pundits, politicians, and others. Who we are, and how we spend our life's energies, is based to a large extent on the what we picked up from others. But (in case you never noticed) they don't all give us the same message-- so who are we to believe? Could a liar ever blunder onto the truth? Could a decent person ever make a mistake? Which statement is it more rational to accept-- one unsupported by any reasons, one supported by bad reasons, or one supported by good reasons?

If we are to be in control of our own beliefs, and to somehow gain an understanding of the truth, then we must know what good reasoning is, and be aware of the ways in which our reasoning (and that of others) can go astray.

The main areas which are covered in our own Critical Thinking course are:

1. The vocabulary of logic and arguments - the basic concepts
2. The logical form (structure) of good and bad arguments
3. The types of (informal) incorrect reasoning (fallacies)
4. New ways to look at language as proposing new theories of how words are to be used.
5. The usual sources of our information and the most common ways we are led astray by them.

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Inquiries to: michael.connelly@mcckc.edu
Last modified: 03/02/04