SSH 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Critical Thinking, Cultural Bias, Blind Experiment

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Social Sciences and Humanities
• Course: SSH 105
• Professor: David Hunter

Document Summary

Critical thinking is reasonable thinking (in part) because it requires us to have good reasons for our conclusions: reasons are good only when they support our conclusions and they are acceptable. Evidence is acceptable when (i) it comes from a reliable source and (ii) it is neither undermined nor overridden by other evidence that we have. A source of evidence is reliable when it provides accurate information most of the time: (i)reliability is a matter of degree, (ii)reliability depends on optimal conditions, (iii)reliability is topic-relative. 2 bits of evidence are direct conflicts when one indicates that something is true and the other indicates that it is false: if one piece is stronger than the other, then the first overrides the second. Evidence is overridden when: it conflicts with evidence from a known reliable source, it conflicts with expert consensus, it conflicts with what we already have good reason to believe.