Final Exam

Just a reminder that the final exam is Wednesday, May 13th in our normal classroom (Madison 311) at our normal class time (noon). You will only have 50 minutes to take the test, so be sure to show up on time.

After A Word From These Sponsors...

Here are some links on advertising and reasoning.

• The first is about the underlying intellectual dishonesty in even the most honest of ad campaigns.
  
• By the way, if you're into advertising, that entire blog is great. I'm a bit biased, though, since I used to work with the guy who writes it.
• Here's a radio interview with the director of FactCheck.org, a great website devoted to debunking claims in political ads.
• I also used to work with the guy who interviewed FactCheck's director. Yup, I'm a pretty big deal.
• I wish those fact checking websites made a difference. Actually, I just wish they didn't hurt their own cause. Silly humans and your naturally biased minds!
  

Now for some news stuff.

• Here's the dirty secret on how news is made.
  
• Lots of people worry about conservative or liberal news media bias. But there are several interesting biases that are much less talked about. Here's a discussion of the bias toward anything that's dangerous or newsworthy.
  
• Here's an interview with a scientist who claims that similar biases exist in scienctific research journals.
  
• What's so important about news, anyway? Here's an interesting argument against caring so much about current events.

Finally, here's a recent Saturday Night Live skit on the distortions of political ads:

Stubborn = Intellectually Dishonest

Here's a little rant on a favorite topic of mine: intellectual honesty. A simple goal of this class is to get us all to recognize what counts as good evidence and what counts as bad evidence for a claim. I think we're getting better at that. But it's not clear that we're caring about the difference once we figure it out.

Getting us to care is the real goal of this class. We should care about good evidence. We should care about it because it's what gets us closer to the truth. When we judge an argument to be overall good, THE POWER OF LOGIC COMPELS US to believe the conclusion. If we like an arg, but still stubbornly disagree with its conclusion, we are just being irrational.

This means we should be open-minded. We should be willing to let new evidence change our current beliefs. We should be open to the possibility that we might be wrong. This is how Todd Glass puts it:


Here are the first two paragraphs of a great article I read in the Fall on this:

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. "Absolutely not," he said. "No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct."

I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It's clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man's mind.

Ironically, having extreme confidence in oneself is often a sign of ignorance. Remember, in many cases, such stubborn certainty is unwarranted.

Homework #3

Homework #3 is due at the beginning of class on Friday, May 1st. Your assignment is to choose an ad (on TV or from a magazine or wherever) and evaluate it from a logic & reasoning perspective.

• First, briefly explain the ad. If you don't want to summarize it yourself, you can attach it if it's from a newspaper or magazine, or transcribe it if it's a commercial on TV.
  
• Then, explain the argument that the ad offers to sell its product.
• Finally, list and explain the mistakes in reasoning that the ad commits.

Impeding Us Since Birth

So, I love research on psychological impediments. Here are some links:

• Here's an article about a cool study on the relationship between risk and provincialism.
• Here's a summary of two recent studies which suggest that partisan mindset stems from a feeling of moral superiority.
• Here is a bunch of insightful videos of Daniel Kahneman, one of the pioneers of research into psychological impediments.
• Here's a review of a well-written book on the natural ways we're all irrational.
  
• Wikipedia's great, complete list of cognitive biases is available here.
  

Finally, I know some of us are still pining for the WHY BAD? glory days of fallacies. Here's something for you:

• Julian Baggini runs through some really great fallacies, many of which we didn't discuss in class. He turned this series into a book: The Duck That Won the Lottery.
  

Group Presentations

Here are the group assignments for our presentations. If you're not in a group yet, let me know as soon as possible so we can get you in one.

Team Weed (Wednesday, 5/6/09)
Harry, Jim, Lil, Nathaniel, Rishawn

Team Wal-Mart (1st on Friday, 5/8/09)
Chris, Jeremy, Kirsten, Michael, Sharai, Terry

Team Vegetarian (2nd on Friday, 5/8/09)
Blake, David, Nicole C., Nicole W., Will

Also, I mentioned this in class, but just in case...

Attendance is mandatory for the group presentations on Wednesday (5/6/09), and Friday (5/8/09). It's the only time I'll be a stickler for it. Basically, I want you to show respect for the other groups presenting.

If you don't attend on either the days your group isn't presenting (and your absence isn't excused), your own personal presentation grade will drop. Each day you don't attend will lower your grade by a full letter grade.

One last thing: be sure to keep the presentations under 15 minutes. A 10-minute presentation is ideal, so we can have time for a short question-and-answer session afterward.

Fallacies, Fallacies, Everywhere

My best friend the inter-net has some nice examples of the fallacy of equivocation. Here are two good ones:

A feather is light.

What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

Margarine is better than nothing.

Nothing is better than butter.

Therefore, margarine is better than butter.

Also, speaking of non sequiturs, here's a cute cat picture:

Wait, we weren't just speaking of non sequit--Oh. I see what you did there.

Clever.

Homework #2

Homework #2 is due at the beginning of class on Monday, April 6th. The assignment is to answer Problems 1-18 (except DON'T do #6, #7, #9 or #12) in Exercise 4-1 on pages 86-88 of our textbook. Don't worry about explaining why the argument commits the fallacy. Also, these arguments don't just commit fallacies from chapter 4. Some commit fallacies from chapter 3.

(If you read this, write "Why is anything anything?" at the bottom of your homework to receive some extra points on the assignment.)

That's an Ad Hominem, You Jerk

Here's a cartoon on the ad hominem fallacy and hypocrisy. (Click on the comics to enlarge them.)

Get to studying, you ignorant sluts.

Midterm Reminder

Just a reminder: The midterm is this Friday (March 27th). It's worth 15% of your overall grade, and will cover everything we've done in class so far. We'll be reviewing for the midterm in class on Wednesday, so I'll be giving you details about the test then.

BE THERE.

Satan's Fingers? The Hospital Bombers?

OK, before we start rocking all night, perhaps we should come up with a name for our logic band. What's a good name for us? The Why Bads?

Hmmm... hopefully, you can come up with better names than that. Post some names in the comments to this post.

(Extra credit to anyone who knows what the title of this post refers to.)

Midterm & Paper Rescheduled

We decided in class to move the due date of the paper back to Friday, March 13th.

Also, we're pushing the midterm back to Friday, March 27th.

Finally, here are some tips (one and two) on writing philosophy papers.)

Begging the Dinosaur

Here is a comic and a video about the fallacy of begging the question. The first is one of Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics on the fallacy. (Click on the comic to enlarge it)

And here's a special video for Mims's logically delicious song "This is Why I'm Hot":

Let's Be Diplomatic: Straw Person

Here's a dinosaur comic on the straw man fallacy (click on the comic to enlarge it):

Penguin Digestion Experts? You Bet!

So you didn't believe me when I said that there are experts on the subject of penguin digestion? Oh, you did? Fine, well, I'll prove it to you, anyway. Here are some academic articles on the topic:

• Adjustments of gastric pH, motility and temperature during long-term preservation of stomach contents in free-ranging incubating king penguins from a 2004 issue of Journal of Experimental Biology
  
• Feeding Behavior of Free-Ranging King Penguins (Aptenodytes Patagonicus) from a 1994 issue of Ecology

Of course, no list would be complete without the often-cited, groundbreaking 1985 Ornis Scandinavica article:

• Differential Digestion of Fish and Squid in Jackass Penguins Spheniscus demersus

Perhaps my favorite, though, is the following:

• Pressures produced when penguins pooh—calculations on avian defaecation from a 2003 issue of Polar Biology
  

If any of these articles are above your head (I think they're all above mine!), you might like this, uh, simpler video demonstration of penguin digestion.

Consistent as a Contradiction

Here are two videos related to the fallacy of inconsistency:



Let's be charitable, though: is there any way to defend what these seemingly inconsistent people said?

An Expert for Every Cause

Looking for links on fallacies and appealing to authority? This is your post! First, there's a nice series of short articles on a bunch of different fallacies, including many that aren't in our book.

Next, here's an interesting article on a great question: How are non-specialists supposed to figure out the truth about stuff that requires expertise?

Not all alleged experts are actual experts. Here's a method to tell which experts are phonies.

Here's a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Christopher Walken completely flunks the competence test.

Finally, here's that article on the 9/11 conspiracy physicist that we talked about in class. I've quoted an excerpt of the relevant section on the lone-wolf semi-expert (physicist) versus the overwhelming consensus of more relevant experts (structural engineers):

While there are a handful of Web sites that seek to debunk the claims of Mr. Jones and others in the movement, most mainstream scientists, in fact, have not seen fit to engage them.

"There's nothing to debunk," says Zdenek P. Bazant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University and the author of the first peer-reviewed paper on the World Trade Center collapses.

"It's a non-issue," says Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, a lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's study of the collapses.

Ross B. Corotis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a member of the editorial board at the journal Structural Safety, says that most engineers are pretty settled on what happened at the World Trade Center. "There's not really disagreement as to what happened for 99 percent of the details," he says.

And one more excerpt on reasons to be skeptical of conspiracy theories in general:

One of the most common intuitive problems people have with conspiracy theories is that they require positing such complicated webs of secret actions. If the twin towers fell in a carefully orchestrated demolition shortly after being hit by planes, who set the charges? Who did the planning? And how could hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the murder of their own countrymen keep quiet? Usually, Occam's razor intervenes.

Another common problem with conspiracy theories is that they tend to impute cartoonish motives to "them" — the elites who operate in the shadows. The end result often feels like a heavily plotted movie whose characters do not ring true.

Then there are other cognitive Do Not Enter signs: When history ceases to resemble a train of conflicts and ambiguities and becomes instead a series of disinformation campaigns, you sense that a basic self-correcting mechanism of thought has been disabled. A bridge is out, and paranoia yawns below.

Inductive & Abductive Args

Here are the answers to the handout on inductive arguments and abductive arguments (inferences to the best explanation) that we did as group work in class.

Inductive Args
1) The three people I talked to at The Roots concert told me they hated the opening act Talib Kweli. Therefore, nobody at the concert liked the opening act.

This argument is overall bad because of the small sample size. We don't know exactly how many people went to the concert. Still, given what we know about concerts and the popularity of The Roots, we can probably safely conclude that the crowd was at least in the hundreds. A sample of 3 given this probable overall population is too small.

2) Every time I’ve seen a rolling billiard ball hit a stationary billiard ball, the stationary ball starts moving. So the next time I roll one billiard ball into another, the stationary one will move when hit.

This argument is overall good. Again, we don't know the exact numbers on this. We don't even know who the person making the argument is. Still, if we start with the assumption that the person making this argument is typical, we can probably safely conclude that she or he has watched or played pool a decent amount. So our sample is probably hundreds or thousands of billiard ball collisions.

Also, each billiard ball collision is fairly representative of pool ball collisions in general. This seems to be a good example of the principle of "You've seen it once, you've seen them all."

3) Brandon Rush averaged around 13 points a game the past three years playing college basketball for Kansas. So I expect him to average 13 points a game when he plays in the NBA this year.

This argument is overall bad. The sample is actually large enough: Rush played close to 40 games each season in college. However, the sample of college game performance is not representative of NBA performance. Since there are better players and tougher competition in the NBA than there are in college, most players do not perform as well statistically in the pros as they did in college.

Abductive Args
1) In a recent study, 100% of those who took a new birth control pill didn’t get pregnant. Only males participated in the study. Thus, the birth control pill must be very effective.

This argument is overall bad. Concluding ing that this pill effectively prevents pregnancy is not the best explanation of the evidence we have. One big background assumption we have is that males do not get pregnant. Hypothesizing that the participants didn't get pregnant because they are male is a much better explanation of the evidence, since it matches our expectations more.

(Scientists are actually developing a male birth control pill. But this, of course, prevents men from getting their female sexual partners pregnant. There isn't a need for something that prevents the men themselves from getting pregnant... or is there?)

Possible Paper Articles

Here are some links to good articles you could use for your paper on explaining and evaluating an article's argument:

Bad Stereotyping
race & gender = insufficient info

The Idle Life is Worth Living
in praise of laziness

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower
are some people just not meant for college?

The Financial Crisis Killed Libertarianism
if it wasn't dead to begin with

Consider the Lobster
David Foster Wallace ponders animal ethics

Who Would Make an Effective Teacher?
we're using the wrong predictors

Loyalty is Overrated
adaptability & autonomy matter more

FBI Profiling
it's a scam, like cold reading

Singer: How Much Should We Give?
just try to think up a more important topic

The Dark Art of Interrogation
Bowden says torture is necessary

Can Foreign Aid Work?
Kristof says it has problems, but we should use it

Against Free Speech
but it's free, so it must be good

You Don't Deserve Your Salary
no one does

What pro-lifers miss in the stem-cell debate
love embryos? then hate fertility clinics

Is Worrying About the Ethics of Your Diet Elitist?
since you asked, no

Is Selling Organs Repugnant?
freakonomicists for a free-market for organs

Should I Become a Professional Philosopher?
hell 2 da naw

Blackburn Defends Philosophy
it beats being employed

Paper Guidelines

New Due Date: Wednesday, March 11th Friday, March 13th, 2009

Worth: 5% of final grade

Length/Format: Papers must be typed, and must be between 300-600 words long. Provide a word count on the first page of the paper. (Most programs like Microsoft Word & WordPerfect have automatic word counts.)

Assignment:
1) Pick an article from a newspaper, magazine, or journal in which an author presents an argument for a particular position. I will also provide some links to potential articles at the course website. You are also free to choose any article on any topic you want, but you must show Sean your article by Friday, March 6th, for approval. The main requirement is that the author of the article must be presenting an argument. One place to look for such articles is the Opinion page of a newspaper. Here’s a short list of some other good sources online:

• The New Yorker
• Slate
• New York Review of Books
• London Review of Books
• Times Literary Supplement
• Boston Review
• Atlantic Monthly
• The New Republic
• The Weekly Standard
• The Nation
• Reason
• Dissent
• First Things
• Mother Jones
• National Journal
• The New Criterion

(for even more sources, check out the left-hand column of Arts & Letters Daily)

2) In the essay, first briefly explain the article’s argument in your own words. What is the position that the author is arguing for? What are the reasons the author offers as evidence for her or his conclusion? What type of argument does the author provide? In other words, provide a brief summary of the argument.
NOTE: This part of your paper shouldn’t be very long. I recommend making this about one paragraph of your paper.

3) In the essay, then evaluate the article’s argument. Overall, is this a good or a bad argument? Why or why not? Check each premise: is each premise true? Or is it false? Questionable? (Do research if you have to in order to determine whether the author’s claims are true.) Then check the structure of the argument. Do the premises provide enough rational support for the conclusion? If you are criticizing the article’s argument, be sure to consider potential responses that the author might offer, and explain why these responses don’t work. If you are defending the article’s argument, be sure to consider and respond to objections.
NOTE: This should be the main part of your paper. Focus most of your paper on evaluating the argument.

4) Attach a copy of the article to your paper when you hand it in. (Save trees! Print it on few pages!)

TIP: It’s easier to write this paper on an article with a BAD argument. Try finding a poorly-reasoned article!