by Daniel Troit

Created on: February 09, 2009

You're sitting down with a friend, having a magnificent conversation and enjoying each other's company. The discussion has gone wonderfully thus far when suddenly, your friend makes a claim so divorced from your own worldview that you immediately recoil. Based upon what you have been taught and learned, what your friend is saying deserves very little consideration. You think to yourself that they are of course incorrect, for if they are not, how could all you know to be true maintain its validity? You may still wonder, however, how to accurately discern what is true, independent of it's relation to what you already hold to be fact. How do we know if we are right, or just want to be right?

In regard to facts, it is somewhat simple to ascertain what is right and wrong. The trueness of a claimed fact can be confirmed with it application and relation to other known truths. A fact is testable, repeatable and observable. If a person makes a factual claim, little more than research and confirmation are needed to confirm its truth. In claims of a moral or philosophical flavor, a greater introspection and attention to nuance is needed to determine their legitimacy. It is necessary to tease these two classes of declaration apart from each other when seeking to establish the reality of a specific statement. Although the confirmation of facts may seem simple enough, for many it is almost impossible to differentiate between an objective and subjective claim.

Our own values and beliefs can influence our fact-finding in a number of ways. The most common fallacy is called Post-Hoc Reasoning. When an individual employs a post-hoc approach, they begin with the conclusion they favor most and then set about gathering only evidence that supports their claim. Instead of gathering as much information relating to the subject as possible, for and against, they chose to only acknowledge data that confirms the principle they already held. This leads to an artificial certitude upon which a person may recklessly place their confidence. Such confidence is easily shattered and may lead to disillusionment and depression. Another fallacy is "Reductio ad Absurdum" where a claim is entertained for the sake of argument only to be followed to a purposely ridiculous conclusion. A False Dilemma, where two options are assumed to exist when there are actually more, and many other obstacles to critical thinking help our preconceptions overwhelm our logic.

While personal values are important to a psyche,

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