Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In addition to being a cognitive bias and a poor way of making decisions, wishful thinking is commonly held to be a specific informal fallacy in an argument when it is assumed that because we wish something to be true or false, it is actually true or false. This fallacy has the form "I wish that P were true/false; therefore, P is true/false."
According to argumentation theory scholar Michael A. Gilbert, before Kahane's 1971 book, North American curricula on critical thinking and fallacies was primarily taught from textbooks (such as Irving Copi's Introduction to Logic) in which "fallacies are presented in a brief fashion using examples that were mostly invented or taken out of context.
Wishful-thinking effects, in which people overestimate the likelihood of an event because of its desirability, are relatively rare. [10] This may be in part because people engage in more defensive pessimism in advance of important outcomes, [ 11 ] in an attempt to reduce the disappointment that follows overly optimistic predictions.
The titles of some books are self-explanatory. Good books on critical thinking commonly contain sections on fallacies, and some may be listed below. DiCarlo, Christopher (2011). How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions. Prometheus Books. ISBN 9781616143978. Engel, S. Morris (1994).
G. I. Joe fallacy, the tendency to think that knowing about cognitive bias is enough to overcome it. [65] Gambler's fallacy, the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've ...
One reason Warburton discusses is that people are prone to wishful thinking. People can believe an assertion and espouse it as truth in the face of overwhelming evidence and facts to the contrary, simply because they wish that things were so. The other one is that people are gullible, and easily misled.
For premium support please call: 800-290-4726 more ways to reach us
List of fallacies with clear examples, infidels.org; Interactive Syllogistic Machine A web based syllogistic machine for exploring fallacies, figures, and modes of syllogisms. Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate, csun.edu; Stephen Downes Guide to the Logical Fallacies, onegoodmove.org; Explain fallacies, what they are and how to avoid them ...