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The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them by [Robert Carroll]

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Robert Todd Carroll

The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them Kindle Edition

by Robert Carroll (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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'Know Thyself' advised the ancient Greek sages at a time when philosophers defined us as rational animals. Rationality was thought of as an ideal largely achievable by controlling the emotions and avoiding logical fallacies. Today, we know better. Biology and neuroscience have exposed the brain as a great deceiver. Unconscious biases drive us to believe and do things that the conscious mind explains in self-serving stories, making us appear more rational to ourselves than we really are. Modern science has taught us that rationality involves much more than just controlling the emotions and avoiding fallacies. Today’s rational animal—what we call the critical thinker—must understand the unconscious biases that are directing many of our most important judgments and decisions. The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary explores the insights of ancient and modern philosophers along with the latest findings in such fields as neuroscience and behavioral economics to lay out the many obstacles and snares that await anyone committed to a rational life. The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary isn’t a collection of dry definitions, but a colorful, three-dimensional portrait of the major obstacles to critical thinking and what we can do to overcome them.

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November 8, 2013
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Robert Carroll
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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)

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38 ratings

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Robert Todd Carroll

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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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John McCowan

Startling Realisation

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 20, 2014

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This listing of the extraordinary number of ways of tangled thinking we all employ leaves one startled at just what a fantasy world we live in and wondering what we can believe - either of our own convictions or what is told to us by others.

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.

4 people found this helpful

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Reed Maxson

Please read this book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 31, 2014

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One might not consider reading a dictionary for entertainment, but this book is both informative, entertaining and perhaps somewhat frightening. For example, a trial by jury appears to be a fair manner in which to determine guilt or innocence, but how many jurors are aware of the many biases of their fellow jurors, as well as their own?

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!

12 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Healer, heal thyself.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 8, 2014

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I had high hopes for this book, and did in fact enjoy some of the early sections. However in his rambling, the author frequently commits the great mistake of presuming that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It is not evidence at all, it is ignorance. Simply because at some point of time no evidence for some thing exists, is no proof that it does not exist, and folks who presume it may exist are not wrong-headed, any more than those who believe it does not exist are wrong-headed. We simply do not know.

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.

6 people found this helpful

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Richard

Bigotry is a feature, not a bug

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 1, 2014

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This helpful little tome is a useful resource to have with you at all times on your smart phone or tablet. Once you dive deeply into the brain's illusions, you are apt to be more forgiving of bigotry. We just cannot help being wedded strongly to our cherished convictions because they are indelibly etched in our neurons. We have scant control over the vital modules in our brain that carry out our thought processes. But it is critical to understand that what you focus on can repetitively can be indelibly recorded and control you insidiously. Eschew the supernatural all costs.

3 people found this helpful

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M. M.

Good

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 25, 2015

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This is a good work to help keep us on the right track and not dip too far into woo woo land (presuming woo woo is unhelpful for one) :-)

One person found this helpful

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Mex

Very solid guide to critical thinking

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 17, 2014

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Very enlightening read. The book switched on a light bulb in my head.

Though I felt that in some of the examples the author didn't apply the full rigour of critical thinking in his analysis.

3 people found this helpful

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APublicProfileName

Solid book for investigating the problems in our day to day thinking.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 12, 2014

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This is an excellent guide on how errors creep up in our thought processes and how to possibly avoid them. It is packed full of real world examples and Robert Carroll does an excellent job at pointing out why the problems are illogical and should be avoided. Highly recommended.

2 people found this helpful

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Evans

It's a timeless piece!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 10, 2014

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This book and it's approach is, and I guess will always remain, relevant for all those seek the truth and are able to read, at whatever age.

I've read over 10 books in the last 40 days and this stands out.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

psiloiordinary

a nice reference source

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 26, 2014

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A collection of weekly blog posts fleshing out the main kinds of thinking errors we are all guilty of.

Clear definitions, examples and source lists for further research or to allow your view to be challenged and defended.

Terry Woodhouse

The Dictionary provides a handy guide to the traps and ...

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on May 11, 2015

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The Dictionary provides a handy guide to the traps and pitfalls of discussion or debate, but doesn't entirely convince me that "critical" thinkers would be any more successful in opening up or broadening the closed minds of the "intuitive" believers and the anti-intellectuals; irrationality seems to be hard-wired into many individuals, and the only hope for society in general seems to be that through natural selection they will eventually die out or disappear up their own fundament.

One person found this helpful

Utterly Distracted

The Joint

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on December 4, 2015

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As original hippie and avowed freie denker this is a great introduction for someone like me who hasn't had a critical thought in decades. After years with my guru this is exactly the tome that will help me break away.

Alexander Rudkevich

Condensed but full encyclopedia of argumentation patterns

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

Is it a dictionary? - Yes and No. The principal advantage: the book is interesting. You can read it page by page. The author analyzes typical rhetoric and logical patterns and typical delusions and mistakes of disputes. A lot of examples.

One person found this helpful

Don Fox

Clear thinking for. Troubled world.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

This is a very personal yet objective discussion of the kinds of errors in thinking that are common. It deserves to be widely read in this time of faulty analysis of events, which can lead to more violence.

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