Excerpts

1. What does it mean to think critically?

Why are some people better than others at solving problems and making decisions? The answer seems obvious: some people are smarter than others.

Why are some people better than others at supporting their beliefs and actions with good reasons? Again, the answer seems obvious: some people have more knowledge or are more eloquent than others.

Still, two equally intelligent people can be equally articulate and informed, but not be equally good thinkers. If only one of them is thinking critically, that one will be better at analyzing and evaluating facts and opinions, sources and claims, options and alternatives, etc. The critical thinker will be a better problem-solver and decision-maker.

When we're thinking critically, we're using our knowledge and intelligence effectively to arrive at the most reasonable and justifiable position possible. When we're thinking uncritically, no matter how intelligent or knowledgeable we are, we'll make unreasonable decisions and arrive at unreasonable beliefs or take unjustifiable actions--unless we are lucky and end up making the right choice for the wrong reasons!

Just what do we do when we're thinking critically? To think critically is to think clearly, accurately and fairly while evaluating the reasons for accepting some belief or taking some action. The goal of thinking critically is simple: to guarantee, as far as possible, that one's beliefs and actions are justifiable and can withstand the test of rational analysis. To achieve this goal one must rigorously scrutinize one's own beliefs and actions as well as the beliefs and actions of others. What standards should we use? That is the question we'll begin with: what are the standards of evaluation used by critical thinkers?

2. Doublespeak

In his essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell claimed that the "mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing." People have to think less if they use vague or stale language, he said, and "this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity." According to Orwell, political speech is "largely the defense of the indefensible" and thus "political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." As examples, Orwell cited the following terms and their real meanings: pacification = bombarding defenseless villages and machine-gunning cattle; transfer of population = forcing millions of peasants to take to the roads while their farms are confiscated; elimination of unreliable elements = people are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck.

Orwell reminds us that a critical thinker must be on guard not only against language which intentionally obscures thought by arousing emotions, but also against more subtle abuses of language: using euphemisms , jargon, and obscure language to deceive and mislead. Such language is called doublespeak. It is described by William Lutz, author of the book Doublespeak, as language which "makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable . . . .It is language that conceals or prevents thought. . . ." Lutz identifies several kinds of doublespeak according to whether euphemisms are used to mislead or deceive about an ugly reality or embarrassing situation, or whether pretentious, inflated, obscure or esoteric jargon is used to give an air of prestige, profundity or authority to one's speech or to hide ugly realities or embarrassing matters.

Another kind of doublespeak which Lutz does not label but which ought to be mentioned is language which is clear and accurate but implies something which is false. For example, the expression "no cholesterol" on the front of a potato chip package whose ingredients (clearly listed on the back of the package) include saturated fats (which are converted to cholesterol when eaten).

3. Fake news

In 1985 the syndicated columnist Richard Reeves claimed that "The people taking over television are blithely going about the business--the very profitable business--of screwing up America's heads so bad that by the time they're finished we won't know up from down, truth from fiction." Reeves feared that a new generation of television journalists, "trained in sales conferences and dressing rooms," would significantly affect our perception of reality with its penchant for "fiction news." Today it's not called "fiction news" but docudrama or news re-enactment. Reeves was concerned that programs such as NBC's mini-series "Fatal Vision" would be just the beginning of presenting fictionalized accounts as if they were documentaries. Fatal Vision was about the murders of the wife and children of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, who was found guilty of the crimes. A poll done in MacDonald's hometown by Newsday found that before the film was shown 20 percent thought MacDonald was guilty; after the film was shown 50 percent thought he was guilty. Many people, said Reeves, "believe that the camera doesn't lie."

I think Reeves was ahead of his time. Re-enactments present fiction as if fact and they do so in a medium which uses images to give the illusion of reality. Re-creations of events can be misleading and deceptive, making the viewer think an alleged event actually occurred. The opportunity for abuse of journalistic power has rarely been as great. ABC's "World News Tonight" aired a dramatization of alleged spy Felix Bloch passing a briefcase to a Soviet agent. The scene looked like the real thing and it was not even labeled a simulation. It made an alleged event look like it was a recorded fact.

Presenting re-enactments of crimes, as in the programs "America's Most Wanted" and "Unsolved Mysteries," has become very popular. These programs worry some people other than wanted criminals. According to Edward Felsenthal, civil-liberties lawyers and media-ethics experts "have become increasingly uneasy" about such programs. "They argue that the shows present a one-sided version of how a crime took place, often pinning blame on suspects before they've even been indicted. And they worry that suspects won't get a fair trial if potential jurors form opinions on the basis of the television show, even though judges often disqualify jurors who have been exposed to pretrial publicity." Not only are the crimes presented from the point of view of the police, but concern for ratings may have the shows turning petty crimes into major ones and minor offenders into major criminals. More important, though, than the potential for distortion and prejudicing a criminal case, is the fact that such shows require an intimate rapport between the police and journalists. According to Felsenthal, law-enforcement officials praise programs which turn millions of viewers into "the largest posse in the history of police work." But at least one viewer, Tom Goldstein, is concerned. "One of the roles of the media is to be a watchdog on law enforcement," says Goldstein, dean of U.C. Berkeley school of journalism. "When the two become partners, it leads to mischief."

It should be added that, it is not just fiction news that concerns lawyers and media-ethics experts. The way the news media covers ongoing criminal investigations, preliminary hearings and trials in high profile cases can be just as one-sided and manipulative as faked news. Advertising executive Jim Morrissey said: "The facts are never enough....Imagery lives on." Unfortunately, sometimes the desire for vivid imagery compromises the presentation of the facts not only in advertising but in news reporting, leading some television news programs to serious violations of even the most lenient media-ethics. I'm referring to the practice of not just re-creating the news but of faking the news entirely.

Probably the most publicized example of fake news in recent times is the case of NBC's faking a crash test in a story about trucks made by General Motors. The story, labeled "Waiting to Explode?," first appeared on "Dateline" which was then cited as the source for the "news" story on NBC and other networks. In explicit video, NBC "proved" that GM trucks with gasoline tanks mounted outside the trucks' underframe are prone to explosion when hit from the side. In the NBC demonstration video, a GM truck burst into flames after being hit from the side. A man identified as Byron Bloch, safety consultant, went on the air and described the fire as a "holocaust." NBC reporter Michele Gillen claimed that the crash had punctured a hole in the gasoline tank. No mention was made of the fact that NBC had attached toy-rocket engines to the truck's fuel tank and then detonated the rockets by remote control at the moment of impact. Nevertheless, even when this fact became known, Michael Gartner, president of NBC at the time, said: "The segment that was broadcast on 'Dateline' NBC was fair and accurate." Harold Pearce, GM's executive vice-president and general counsel, didn't think so. He called the NBC program "outrageous misrepresentation and conscious deception."

The truth about the fake news came about due to the investigative journalism of Pete W. Pesterre, editor of Popular Hot Rodding magazine, and GM itself. For reasons unrelated to the faking of the story, Pesterre had criticized the "Dateline" show in an editorial. A reader called him and told him of a firefighter, fire chief Glen R. Bailey Jr., who was at the scene and thought the test was rigged. GM hired its own investigators who asked NBC to let them look at the trucks used in the tests. NBC refused. The investigators checked 22 junkyards before they found the trucks, but the fuel tanks were missing. Bruce Enz, who calls himself a "news gatherer," was president of the consulting firm hired by NBC to do the crash tests. He had given the tanks to a neighbor. GM got the tanks but Mr. Enz wouldn't answer any questions about the faked test, claiming he had First Amendment protection from interrogation. So, with little or no help from NBC, GM discovered that the fire that was described as a "holocaust" was a small, 15-second flame; that a non-standard gas cap was used and it blew off at impact, releasing gasoline that caught fire; and that X-rays showed no puncture in the gas tank. It cost General Motors nearly $2 million to investigate a piece of faked news. Who knows what it cost NBC to fake the story. But the visuals were captivating!

The question that must be asked is: Was this just a singular lapse of judgment of one TV news network or was it symptomatic of more widespread dishonesty, or at least incompetency, in the media? Needless to say, expert opinions are divided on this issue. 4.3.1 Ad hominem

One of the most common ways of trying to cast doubt on a claim or position which has been argued for by another is to criticize the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. An ad hominem is an irrelevant assertion about a person who has taken a position or made an argument with which one disagrees. The assertion about the arguer is made in the belief or hope that it will be taken as relevant evidence against the position one opposes. Rather than criticize a person's premises or reasoning, an ad hominem asserts something about the person's character, associations, occupation, hobbies, motives, mental health, likes or dislikes, etc.

The fallacy in the ad hominem is on the irrelevant nature of the appeal made, not its falsity. If what is said about the person is false, in addition to being irrelevant, two fallacies are committed, false premise and irrelevant premise. Not only do many people make ad hominem attacks, many more are seduced by them. The appeal of the ad hominem is that it puts bad doctrines (i.e., those you disagree with) into the mouths of bad people. So, one can feel that one's opponents are evil as well as stupid. Attacking a person, rather than the person's position or argument, is usually easier as well as more psychologically satisfying to the simple-minded who divide the world into two classes of people--those who agree with them and are therefore good and right, and those who disagree with them and are therefore evil and wrong.

The ad hominem is also attractive to the lazy who would rather ridicule or belittle a person than seriously examine an opposing viewpoint. The ad hominem is also a tactic of the clever manipulator of crowds, the experienced demagogue who knows how to play on the emotions of people and seduce them into transferring their attitude of disapproval for a person to a belief in disagreement with that person's position. Examples of ad hominem appeals

--"Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity are completely false; after all, he was insane!"

--"You shouldn't believe a word my opponent says about me since he is just bitter because I'm ahead in the polls."

--"Of course the American Dental Association advises us to have our teeth checked twice a year. Their members stand to profit quite a bit from this bit of advice. Don't listen to them."

--"Reagan's economic policies are absurd; but what should we expect from an actor."

--"We know communism is an erroneous doctrine, since the only people who adhere to it are wicked and evil."

--"Samson's views on strategic air command are wrong; what would a former employee of Disneyworld know about such matters?"

--"Why should we listen to an ignorant fool like you?"

....The testing of causal hypotheses in science is based, in part, on the same principle as polling. Each is based on the principle that we need only study a part of a class to gain knowledge about that class in general. A scientist does not have to study every virus of a certain type in order to draw justifiable conclusions about that type of virus. Since the number of individual viruses of any given type might be extremely large, it is possible that in some cases the percentage of individuals of a class actually observed might be close to zero. The same would be true for an astronomer studying any particular type of star. No matter how many stars astronomers actually observe, that number will be an infinitesimally small fraction of all stars. The same would be true for a chemist studying human DNA. And the same is true for a pollster studying the opinions or behavior patterns (beliefs and actions) of human populations. For example, there are about 30,000,000 Californians. The poll which concluded that 78% of all Californians are "extremely concerned" about crime was based on a sample of 1,003 adults, or 0.0033 percent of the total population were in the sample. That is, each person polled represented about 30,000 others. The sample may seem like a small percentage of the population, but it is immensely larger than any percentage of the "population" a chemist, biologist or physicist is likely to study in a lifetime of scientific investigation of molecules, cells, or atomic particles. However, the samples studied by the chemist, the biologist and the physicist are generally homogenous. Once the type of item to be studied is identified, selecting which items to study is not a major problem since "one water molecule is pretty much like any other water molecule," etc. What matters is not what percentage of the total target population is in the sample. What matters is how likely it is that the sample is a good cross section of the target population. What matters is how likely it is that the items in the sample are typical of the target population.

More problematic than the typical size of polling samples is that opinions are treated as if they were observable, measurable and fixed qualities. The "technique of polling promotes the assumption that an opinion is a thing inside people that can be exactly located and extracted by the pollster's questions." Furthermore, it promotes the assumption that we ought to have an opinion on the issue being polled. Maybe what we ought to have is information that would help us make a reasonable judgment about the issue. Maybe questions ought to stimulate thought and discussion about an issue rather than end it by gathering and announcing some statistic. In other words, we probably ought to be more concerned with the encouragement of thoughtless opinionizing than with whether a sample of 1,000 is sufficient to warrant valid generalizations. Nevertheless, let's return to the issue of valid generalization.

The basic justification for empirical generalizations, whether by a pollster or by a scientist, is that the sample (the items observed and studied) be representative of the target population (all of the items of the class being considered). Insofar as we are justified in believing that a sample of a population is representative, we are justified in believing that we have knowledge about that population in general. Such knowledge can be used to do what the prophets of old allegedly did: predict the future and guide us in our actions.

Justified empirical generalizations can provide us with a useful means of facing the future because they are predictive. They tell us not only about the items we've observed and measured; they tell us about items we haven't observed or measured. Therein lies their beauty. Of course, all depends on their being justified.

4. Analogical arguments in law

One field where analogical arguments abound is law. Judges and lawyers are fond of defending their positions by appealing to precedents analogous to the case at hand. For example, In Stanley v. Georgia the court wrote, "If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch." Several years later a lawyer cited Stanley as being analogous to the case he was arguing, viz., a case in which the defendant had been charged with violating the Georgia sodomy statute by committing that act with another adult male in the privacy of his own bedroom. The attorney argued that since the Court recognizes that States have no business in telling a person what to read in the privacy of his own home, they have no business in telling a person what sex acts he can perform in the privacy of his own home. However, Justice Byron White noted some significant differences in the two cases. White argued that just because the two cases involve acts done in private isn't sufficient to make them so analogous that a State has no business in telling a person what sex acts they can perform in privacy. Reading books is a First Amendment issue (freedom of speech, freedom of the press); having sex is not. White also pointed out that there are many other acts which, though done in the privacy of one's own home, doesn't protect them from State legislation: "...the possession and use of illegal drugs do not escape the law where they are committed at home." In other words, there is a strong disanalogy between the two cases.

An even more telling example is the analogical reasoning used by the court to decide People v. Duglash, 41 N.Y.2d 725 (1977). The court cited United States v. Thomas, 13 U.S.C.M.A. 278 (1962). Duglash was charged with attempted murder. The person Duglash shot, however, was already dead when Duglash fired his pistol. Since it is not logically possible to murder a dead person, it seemed plausible that Duglash could not have attempted to murder that person. To do so would be to attempt to commit a crime which is factually impossible to commit. The court ruled that the Duglash case was like the Thomas case. Thomas has been charged with attempted rape but it was established that his victim had died before he had sex with her. The court ruled that since the defendant believed his victim was alive, he could be charged with attempted rape. Thus, the court ruled, since Duglash believed his victim was alive, he could be charged with attempted murder. Thus, it had been established in the Thomas case that all that is necessary to attempt to commit a crime is the belief that you are doing so. If your actions demonstrate that you intended to hurt the victim, you can be said to have attempted to commit a crime, even if the victim is dead before your action, thereby making it factually impossible to commit the crime you intend.

What is most interesting to one outside the legal profession is the fact that all this analogical reasoning by precedent ultimately is based upon non-analogical reasoning. For example, the Thomas case was decided without precedent. How was it decided? By analysis of the concepts of `attempted act', `belief,' `intent', etc. It seems reasonable to think that even if Thomas had never existed, the same reasoning that was deemed valid in that case would be valid in the Duglash case. Thus, it seems that argument by precedent, that is by analogy, which plays such an immense role in legal reasoning, is ultimately a search for authoritative support of one's position. One can see it as either bypassing the need for fresh reasoning in new cases or as the search for other's reasoning to support your position or to aid you in forming your arguments. In either case, its importance in legal reasoning would seem more as a way to give the appearance of consistency and authoritativeness than to be truly useful in advancing thought.

7. Evaluating theories

Obviously, it is very important to be aware of the kind of theory one is confronted with--scientific or non-scientific--before one sets out to try to defend or refute the theory. If the theory is non-scientific, it would generally be useless to try to defend or refute it by empirical data. If a non-scientific theory is not self-contradictory and is consistent with the evidence of experience, it cannot be shown to be false. Of course, unlike scientific theories, non-scientific theories cannot be empirically confirmed either.This does not mean that non-scientific theories can't be checked against observation and experience. Any theory, to be reasonable, must be consistent with what is observed and experienced. But since empirical predictions are not meaningful tests of non-empirical theories, the fact that a non-scientific theory is consistent with experience is hardly a confirmation of the theory. But, since a self-consistent non-scientific theory cannot be refuted, it cannot be empirically tested; metaphysical theories cannot be empirically confirmed to any degree, as scientific theories can.

Are scientific theories therefore superior to non-scientific theories? Or, to put it another way, is science superior to religion, art, ethics, metaphysics, etc.? Such a question is absurd. Asking whether science is superior to religion or philosophy is like asking is `intelligence is superior to love?' or `is justice superior to good health?' Not all questions or values which human beings find worth pursuing and committing themselves to can be approached scientifically. There can be no doubt that scientific theories fulfil a vital human need. But so do non-scientific theories, whether they be in the field of cosmology or religion, art, morality, knowledge or even science.

Good scientific theories share in common with good non-scientific theories the quality of being free from self-contradictions, consistent with experience, and free of ad hoc hypotheses to patch up holes or weaknesses. Also, all scientific and some non-scientific theories attempt to make sense out of the phenomena they are put forth to explain. Some metaphysical theories attempt to make sense out of all things which exist. Other non-scientific theories are less ambitious and attempt to make sense out of a single area of human experience, e.g., aesthetic or moral experience.

A good theory, regardless of whether it is scientific or not, must be sensible. But just how sensible a theory is depends upon the field in which it is offered and upon current knowledge, beliefs and values of those studying the subject. Generally, the best scientific theories are very rich: they explain and unify a great deal of experience and provide a picture of things as a whole. Generally, the best non-scientific theories provide a sense of value and significant meaning to the phenomena they explain or prescribe for.

To some extent, all theories are personal. Yet, that does not mean that all theories are epistemologically equal. Some theories are richer, more sensible, more useful, more elegant, more powerful and more reasonable than others. It would be presumptuous, and probably not very useful, to try to establish a complete set of a priori conditions which a theory must meet before any reasonable person should accept it. It may well be that theorizing, whether scientific, philosophical or pseudoscientific, issues from the same human motive to unify and give order to experience, to make sense out of the many different aspects of existence, and to find significance and richness in human experience.