Critical Thinking and Informal Logic: Neuropsychological Perspectives

Paul Thagard

doi:10.22329/il.v31i3.3398

Abstract

This article challenges the common view that improvements in critical thinking are best pursued by investigations in informal logic. From the perspective of research in psychology and neuroscience, hu-man inference is a process that is multimodal, parallel, and often emo-tional, which makes it unlike the linguistic, serial, and narrowly cog-nitive structure of arguments. At-tempts to improve inferential prac-tice need to consider psychological error tendencies, which are patterns of thinking that are natural for peo-ple but frequently lead to mistakes in judgment. This article discusses two important but neglected error ten-dencies: motivated inference and fear-driven inference.

Highlights

The investigation of critical thinking includes the systematic attempt to improve people’s ability to form beliefs and make decisions
Because human inference is very different from linguistic argument, we can get a better understanding of the failures of thinking by attending to psychological processes than by analyzing logical fallacies, only a few of which are relevant to the kinds of thinking errors that people make
This article will concentrate on two error tendencies that have been largely neglected in informal logic: motivated inference and fear-driven inference

Summary

Introduction

The investigation of critical thinking includes the systematic attempt to improve people’s ability to form beliefs and make decisions. It is widely taken for granted among philosophers that such improvement is best accomplished by the study of argument as pursued within the fields of formal and informal logic. This article will concentrate on two error tendencies that have been largely neglected in informal logic: motivated inference and fear-driven inference. The second of these has been ignored in psychological discussions of inferential errors, even though it is common in many domains such as interpersonal relationships, health, politics, and economics. After an assessment of the relevance of psychology to the enhancement of scientific literacy, I conclude with a brief discussion of how the study of argument can be socially useful

Inference and argument

Motivated Inference

Fear-Driven Inference

Cognitive-Affective Maps

Scientific Literacy

Conclusion