Critical Thinking Week 4 - Language

Critical Thinking: Week 4 - Language

• Precision is crucial: Without precision, effective understanding is impossible. Lack of precision (or misunderstanding) hinders discussion, dialogue, and debate, often leading to disagreements.

The Need for Precision (Example)

• Ambiguous statement example: "Bob is guilty." This statement can have two meanings. (1) Bob committed the crime; or (2) Bob has been convicted of the crime. Disagreements arise when parties interpret the statement differently, even while sharing the same factual beliefs.

Ways to be Un-precise

• Vagueness:
  • Unclear meaning, characterized by borderline cases (e.g., "minimal pay," "middle-aged")
• Overgenerality: Too much information given; the answer is not useful in context (e.g., "more than two" as an answer to "seven plus five").
• Ambiguity: A word or phrase having more than one meaning (e.g., "bank"). The context does not clearly indicate the intended meaning.

Vagueness (Examples)

• "middle age": Borderline cases exist; some ages are clearly not middle age (e.g., 20, 80), but others are more ambiguous (e.g., 45, 56).

Overgenerality (Examples)

• "What were you drinking at this keg party?" A generalized response like "a beverage" is not specific.
• "Where are you going?" A one-word answer like "Out" is very vague and provides no useful context.

Ambiguity (Examples)

• Semantic Ambiguity:
  • An example is Joe went to the bank. In what context did this happen?
• Syntactical Ambiguity:
  • A sentence structure example: "Dog for sale. Eats anything and is especially fond of children." This could mean the dog is for sale or is fond of children.

Types of Disputes

• Verbal Dispute: Disagreement over the meaning of words, not the facts. Example: One person believes "guilty" means committed the crime, while another believes it means convicted in court.
• Factual Dispute: Disagreement about factual claims. Example: One person claims "O.J. killed Anna Nicole," while another disagrees.

Precise Definitions

• Importance of defining terms: Precise definitions are necessary to avoid misunderstandings and disagreements during conversations or arguments.
  • There are different types of definitions including stipulative, persuasive, lexical, and precising definitions.
• Quotes (important ideas): "If you wish to converse with me, define your terms" - Voltaire; "He who defines the terms wins the argument" - Chinese proverb.

Types and Strategies for Defining

• Stipulative: Creating a new definition for a word or using an existing word in a new way (e.g., defining "autogoogler").
• Persuasive: A definition used to convince someone of something using emotion (e.g., a definition of capital punishment that focuses on the negative aspects of the practice).
• Lexical: The conventional, dictionary definition (e.g., defining "pastel" or a "rug").
• Precising: Clarifying a vague word or phrase (e.g., defining "class participation," or "heavy smoker")., and strategies:
  • Ostensive: Demonstrating the meaning of a word or term (e.g., showing a door).
  • Enumerative: Listing examples to illustrate the meaning (e.g., what constitutes a “bible-belt state”).
  • Definition by subclass: Using classes to define something (e.g., mammals).
  • Etymological: Analyzing the history and origin of a word (e.g., understanding the word "ambivalent").
  • Synonymous: Giving a synonym to define a term (e.g., "loquacious" is synonymous with "talkative").
  • Definition by Genus and Difference: Identifying a term's class and differentiating it from others in the class (e.g., a "calf" is a young cow).

This Week's Readings

• The assigned reading material is "Critical Thinking: A Student's Introduction" 5th Edition, Chapter 4.