by Sally Morem

Created on: July 21, 2009   Last Updated: July 25, 2009

We humans are very limited beings. We have only so much time to learn about the world and there is so much to know. Philosophers have found numerous obstacles to our ability to break through our preconceptions and discover what is really going on.

Our mental models of the world are extraordinarily powerful and seductive. Those same models that give our view of the world coherence and help us to survive and thrive can also get in our way when we are trying to learn something new or think a difficult problem through to its resolution.

So, we make projections about what is really out there based on the little we know. We attempt to make shortcuts to hard-won truths. And by doing so, we usually make mistakes.

There are time-honored techniques of logic and analysis that have helped generations of humans to at least partially compensate for such limits. These are called critical thinking skills. Critical thinking helps us break through our mental blocks.

For instance, philosophers have identified almost 50 separate categories of poor use of logic people regularly engage in. Lists of them can by found in any number of philosophy sites online. Philosophers have given many of them Latin names over the centuries. Here are a few examples accompanied by remedies:

1. Argumentum ad hominem (attack against the person). Merely claiming your debate opponent is a bad guy or has other questionable characteristics cannot disprove your opponent's argument. The person and the true or false nature of an argument are almost certainly not connected. Remedy: Focus on the argument itself, not the maker of the argument.

2. Argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority). This can be considered the opposite of the above argument. An argument cannot be proven by claiming that a famous person or even a noted authority on the subject believes it. Remedy: Only if the authority figure in question gives us specific facts and pieces of evidence that can be verified can we reasonably assume that that person's conclusions are worth taking into account when we make an argument.

3. Bifurcation (black and white alternatives). Situations with only two alternatives very rarely exist in the world. Remedy: Question the underlying assumptions implied in the bifurcation argument. Explore a middle path, or "think outside the box" presumed by the argument. Perhaps there is a third, a fourth, or even a fifth way to read the situation. Find them and think them through.

4. Argumentum

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