Of course it is not right to assume that one rude tourist represents an entire nation’s attitude shouldn’t we know that? Weshould, but we often don’t: in practice people often fall victim to the hasty generalization fallacy. Many fallacious arguments might seem trivial at first glance. Nonetheless, ad hominem arguments are widely used in all kinds of situations – for instance in political campaigns, where disproportionate, irrelevant or downright dishonest personal attacks are often used to overshadow an opponent’s actual arguments. This is a bad way of arguing because what is usually important is not the messenger but the message. For instance, an ad hominem (Latin for ‘to the man’) is a type of fallacy where you counteract the force of someone’s argument by attacking their character instead of their argument. These now go by widely-recognized and sometimes colourful names. To counteract these psychological tendencies, we need to make better use of the thinking tools that have been developed since Aristotle’s invention of logic.Ī particular step forward has been the identification and labelling of various different types of bad argument, collectively known as informal fallacies. However, in the last hundred years, cognitive science has made it increasingly evident that we largely see the world through biases, and do not reliably think either rationally or objectively when left to our own devices, including in our economic choices. Classical economic theory, for instance, is based on the assumption that we tend to make rational decisions.
It didn’t used to be thought that we require tools for thinking better. Whenever a useful new word is invented, a new thinking tool is made available. Language, for instance, is a thinking tool, because it enables us to think better, through internal dialogue and by the sharing of ideas with others. In the same way that there are tools for building, there are what philosopher Daniel Dennett calls ‘thinking tools’. In fact, by the time you finish reading this article you will have become smarter, because you will see the flaws in your own and others’ arguments more clearly. Have you ever heard of the Straw Man fallacy, or the Red Herring fallacy? If not, perhaps you will be interested to know that these form parts of a set of concepts that have the potential to enhance your thinking power.
SUBSCRIBE NOW Articles Bad Arguments That Make You Smarter Henrik Schoeneberg gets smart about fallacious reasoning.
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