Brandon’s Commentary

CT Ep. 17a: Introduction to Argumentation

CT Ep. 16: Reason, Reasons, and Reasoning

CT Ep. 15: Open-mindedness as an Intellectual Virtue

CT Ep. 14: Intellectual Virtues

CT Ep. 13: Goals of Critical Thinking: Judgment

We all make judgments about people. It is the most natural thing in the world. It is actually inescapable. The problem is not judging people, the problem is inaccurately judging people. In this episode, I explain a few different ways that we judge people and how critical thinking supports good judgment. 

CT Ep. 12: Goals of Critical Thinking: Interpretation

Another important goal of good critical thinking is to correctly interpret other people. Whether we are reading a book like the Bible, reading a letter or email, watching the news, listening to a teacher in class, or talking face-to-face with someone, we want to make sure we are accurately interpreting the meanings and intentions being expressed by other people. There is a vast literature on the art and science of interpretation, also known as hermeneutics. In this episode, I merely introduce you to the concept of proper interpretation. 

CT Ep. 11: Goals of Critical Thinking: Truth

After several discussions about obstacles in the way of good thinking, this short talk is about the most important goal we have when thinking clearly--TRUTH!

CT Ep. 10b: Four Types of Cognitive Bias

This is the second half of the discussion on cognitive biases. I give four examples of cognitive biases: confirmation bias, anchoring bias, availability bias, and the Dunning-Kruger effect. 

CT Ep. 10a: The Obstacle of Cognitive Biases

CT Ep. 9: The Obstacle of Informal Fallacies

In this episode, I discuss a major obstacle in our logical thinking. These are called informal fallacies. There are dozens of informal fallacies but I only mention three: ad hominem, tu qoque, and the straw man.