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The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them Kindle Edition
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- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateNovember 8, 2013
- File size1083 KB
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Product details
- ASIN : B00GNR0KT0
- Publication date : November 8, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 1083 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 349 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,157,206 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #108 in Social Science Reference
- #404 in Social Sciences Reference
- #543 in Dictionaries & Thesauruses (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Robert Todd Carroll (b. 1945) has always been interested in weird things, mysteries, stories of miracles and psychics and how beliefs in strange things conflict with logic and science. His favorite pasttime is thinking about why people believe in psychics, alien abductions, astrology, and hundreds of other things that conflict with what the science tells us. He taught Critical Thinking for more than thirty years and still enjoys investigating the biases, fallacies, and illusions that make being rational difficult. Since 1994, he's been posting articles on weird things and critical thinking at www.skepdic.com. The website is called The Skeptic's Dictionary and has more than 700 entries, plus essays, book reviews, and more.
He taught philosophy for many years at a northern California community college. His first book (1975) was about the philosophy of an Anglican bishop who challenged the new empiricism as expressed by John Locke. Later, he wrote the text book "Becoming a Critical Thinker" (2003, 2nd ed. 2005) and a book named after his website: "The Skeptic's Dictionary" (Wiley, 2003).
In 2011, the James Randi Educational Foundation published his e-book "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Science, and Skepticism Exposed!" In 2012, the paperback of "Unnatural Acts" came out. "Mysteries and Science" came about at the urging of his wife and grandchildren for a critical thinking/science book about weird things aimed at a younger audience. In 2013, he published "The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and what you can do about them."
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The book is set up as a chatty dictionary naming and defining the various defective means of reasoning in alphabetical order and providing a two to six or so page dissertation on each - expanding on the description of the defect and giving examples of its use.
These are often most illuminating. Some make hay of the arguments of prominent proponents of questionable fields such as spiritualism and "natural" medicine and will allow most readers to feel comfortable and superior. Others turn on the reader herself (in this sexually correct book) and kick the props out from what most of us would consider as perfectly justifiable attitudes and/or conclusions but are revealed to be founded on intellectual quicksand.
Taken to its limits, the logical conclusion is that no facts unproven by complex double blind experimental evidence should be accepted as such (a touch of the straw man here). Even the author eventually backs off from this impracticable requirement in the appendices where us mere mental mortals are advised that, in spite of the foregoing, not to think ourselves into a flat spin.
I was pleased to see that having such a depth of knowledge about defective thinking does not protect one from it. I believe I caught the author on quite a few occasions indulging in one or other of his listed logical sins. Funnily enough, these falls from grace gave me a warm feeling towards him - he's down here amongst it with the rest of us.
Having studied logic in the late 1960s, I was aware of many of the fallacies listed in this book, but certainly not all of them. This book was a pleasant “refresher course” for me. The chapter on the “backfire effect” is especially interesting to me, having recently read WHEN PROPHECY FAILS, as well as having discussions with an acquaintance who claims to be psychic. It seems that no evidence is strong enough to cause some folks to reconsider their beliefs, that, in fact, contrary evidence only strengthens those chosen beliefs.
The recent presidential campaign was rampant with faulty arguments and accusations, many of them apparently accepted at face value, without any degree of critical thinking.
Although not directly stated, Carol's book is a refreshing reminder that “common sense” should be reexamined, that perhaps we would be better citizens through recognizing fallacies and developing critical thinking, that we might even make better investment decisions, etc. Hopefully, this book might remedy some of the fallacies which abound in this Internet age; the mindless circulation of urban legends, pseudoscience, and the like. Thank you Robert Carroll!
We have often to make decisions in the absence of evidence. It is just how life works, and it is not foolishness.
Finally, no matter how much we wish that "chance" is a motive force that causes things to happen, it is not. "Chance" always means we do not know what the cause is. It may or may not be a random occurrence -- we simply do not know.
There are other fallacies but I gave up by this time and removed the book.
Though I felt that in some of the examples the author didn't apply the full rigour of critical thinking in his analysis.
I've read over 10 books in the last 40 days and this stands out.
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Clear definitions, examples and source lists for further research or to allow your view to be challenged and defended.

