Critical thinking

By their very complexity, situational moral decisions demonstrate that there is an absolute good that we seek. Moral principles work together for the absolute good.

The questionable cause fallacy, described by the Latin phrase cum hoc ergo propter hoc, is an error of thought which leads us to believe that one event causes another event simply because the two events occur simultaneously. This error can easily be reinforced if the simultaneity of the two events is often repeated.

From an early age I learned, from the advice of adults or from my own experiences—and sometimes the hard way—the relationship between cause and effect. It's simple: if you touch the hot oven door, you’ll get burned! Subsequently, I discovered that there are a multitude of pressing uncertainties all around us in daily life. To figure out what actually causes the things that...

"Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US President)

Almost a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf noticed people’s tendency to approach books “with clouded and divided minds, asking fiction to be true, poetry to be false, biographies to be flattering and history to chime with prejudices.”

Western societies pride themselves on their access to information. Compared to our predecessors, we seem to be the most informed generation to have ever lived on Earth. However, paradoxically, the more data we have access to, the harder it is to determine what is true and what is false.

We live in a polarised world where conspiracy theories proliferate, but some people are more inclined than others to consume and propagate these theories rather than ignore or demystify them.

Critical thinking is not a cure-all, but it proves very useful in dealing with, clarifying, and solving some decision-making problems, as well as the thought and belief disputes which occupy our minds.

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.

In practice, people often accuse each other of making logical errors, but sometimes the accusation is false. Such an accusation is made by someone who does not understand what logical fallacies are and how they work, or by a manipulative person who takes advantage of the ignorance of those in the first category.

Conspiracy theories and fake news are not the same thing, although the two categories have much in common.

The appeal to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam) is an error in thinking which argues that a conclusion is true because there is no evidence against it, or that a conclusion is false because there is no evidence in its favour.

The ability to imagine alternatives to events that have already occurred distinguishes humans from other creatures and machines—artificial intelligence has not yet succeeded in creating a device that can devise counterfactual scenarios. The fact that we can travel in an imaginary time and rewrite our actions and their outcomes can prove to be an advantage or can lead to dysfunctional emotional and cognitive...

When what someone says can be interpreted in multiple ways, we are in danger of coming to an understanding which is different to their intended message.

In scientific research, sampling is the primary method used when research cannot be conducted on a one-to-one scale. The facts discovered at the level of the sample are presumed to apply in general.