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If
you are confused by claims about stuff like:
 UFO reports
Big Foot sightings
ESP
Plant awareness
Conspiracies
Table-top fusion
Then...
 Use the Centroid Café Bunk Debunker
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"
I
really think we are all creating our own reality. I think I’m
creating you right here. Therefore, I created the medium,
therefore I created the entity, because I’m creating
everything.
– Shirley MacLaine
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"One
can’t believe impossible things."
–
Alice,
Through the Looking Glass
"Why,
sometimes before breakfast, I’ve believed as many as six
impossible things."
–The
White Queen,
Through the Looking Glass
"I
can’t believe that," said Alice. "Can’t you?"
the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long
breath and shut your eyes."
–Lewis
Carroll |
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"
I
have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest
caution.
–Werner
von Braun |
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"
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing
possibility.
–Aristotle |
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"
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
–Francis
Bacon |
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"
It is likely that unlikely things should happen.
–Aristotle |
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"
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of
the demand.
–Josh
Billings |
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"
Most men live like raisins in a cake of custom.
–Brand
Blanshard |
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"
A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
–Thomas
Mann |
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"
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
–Aldous
Huxley |
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"
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
–Niels
Bohr |
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"
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally
convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of
reflection.
–Jules
Henri Poincaré |
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"
Doubt grows with knowledge.
–Goethe |
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"
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that
can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
–Werner
Heisenberg |
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You can only predict things after they’ve happened.
–Eugene
Ionesco |
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Centroid Café Bunk Debunker
Critical Thinking Principles
Critical Thinking Web Log
So, What Is Philosophy Anyway?
Discussion Groups
General Philosophy Web Log
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Skeptical
habits of thought are essential for nothing less than our
survival—because baloney, bamboozles, bunk, careless thinking,
flimflam and wishes disguised as facts are not restricted to
parlor magic and ambiguous advice on matters of the heart. – Carl Sagan
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CENTROID Online Learning Modules
If you like hiking, you might want to take a "cyber hike" and study some basic ideas in Philosophy. Each "hike" is an online learning module that will guide you along a path of discovery and intellectual adventure.
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A Hike on the Beach | Introduction to the Design Argument. You will encounter Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, and David Hume. About one hour of study.
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| A Hike in the Jungle | Introduction to the theory of Natural Selection You will encounter Charles Darwin and Deism. Take the Hike on the Beach first! About one hour of study. |
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Centroid
Café Bunk Debunker |
How
to draw the line between
sense and nonsense
As
the world continues to become more complex and interconnected,
and as messages and media proliferate, we can expect to
encounter an increasing number of unusual and extraordinary
claims.
To
evaluate all these claims fairly, the Centroid Café proposes
the FAIR Assessment Engine, a stratagem for
debunking any bunk that you might encounter. You will find that
using this "engine"—together
with the development of a habit of quiet reflection—will
very effectively assist you in separating sense from nonsense
and in guiding your thinking and decisions toward more
prudential actions.
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The
FAIR Assessment Engine
The
FAIR Assessment Engine is a general method for rigorously
evaluating unusual or weird claims that you might encounter.
This "engine" has four cycles or steps—similar to a
four-cycle internal combustion engine. Of course, you must still
do the thinking! This engine is just a tool. |
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FAIR Cycles |
General Description |
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Formulate
the unusual claim. |
This is the "intake"
cycle. Because some claims may be stated in vague or incomplete
ways, the first step is to formulate it so that it is as clear and
specific as possible. Note: Although
not all claims are hypotheses, any unusual claim can be considered
a hypothesis—a provisional explanation for a particular
phenomenon. |
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Analyze
the evidence for the claim. |
This is the "compression"
cycle. At this point you put the claim under the pressure of your
analysis of the evidence or reasons that are put forward to
support it. You will use the critical thinking principles
outlined in the CTP List. |
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Identify
alternative hypotheses. |
This is the "combustion"
cycle. Now, you let your creative imagination and critical
intelligence explode into other possible ways to explain the
phenomenon in question. |
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Rate
each hypothesis |
This is the "exhaust"
cycle. You will eliminate all hypotheses that fail the criteria of
adequacy. Only the most robust hypothesis remains—generating new
or more refined understanding. |
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FORMULATE
THE UNUSUAL CLAIM. [CYCLE 1]
Note that although not all claims are hypotheses, any unusual claim can
be considered a hypothesis--a provisional explanation for a particular
phenomenon. So in the following discussion, we will use the terms claim
and hypothesis interchangeably.
Before you examine any unusual claim, you must first be sure that it is
stated clearly, with specific rather than general, vague, or ambiguous
terms. For example, the claim "Astrology is true" is vague.
This claim could be taken to mean that a field of "study"
called astrology exists. To avoid these kinds of ambiguities, you would
need to recast this claim into something like: "Astrologers can
correctly identify someone's personality traits and predict personal
future events by using sun signs." Although this is an improvement
on the original claim, an even more exact formulation will be more
specific about what it means to "correctly identify someone's
personality traits" and "predict personal future events."
ANALYZE
THE EVIDENCE FOR THE CLAIM. [CYCLE 2]
What are the reasons-empirical evidence and/or logical arguments-for
accepting the claim? More specifically, use the Critical Thinking
Principles (CTP List) and follow the 3-D approach:
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3-D
Approach |
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Determine the
exact nature and limitations of the empirical evidence. |
Assess the evidence and determine
whether there are or could be any reasonable doubts about the
"evidence." Use CTP 1-15.
For
example, Clive Backster, one of the FBI’s most respected lie
detector experts, claimed that when he attached his lie detector
to a philodendron in his office, he was able to detect that the
plant was aware of his thoughts. Subsequent experiments by
biologists, botanists, and other scientists could not reproduce
the results that Backster reported. So, a theory of plant
sentience that cites Backster’s experiments as
"evidence" should be disqualified according to CTP #15 (Backster not an expert in botany),
and
CTP #19 (the scientific method requires repeatable results). |
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Discover if
any of these reasons (pieces of evidence) should be disqualified. |
Sometimes people offer
"evidence" for a claim that actually provides no support
for the claim. Use Critical Thinking Principles 1-15. For example,
any argument in the form of "There are many people who say
they have seen, heard, felt, or otherwise experienced X",
should be disqualified according to CTP
#8. |
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Decide whether
the hypothesis (claim) in question explains (accounts for) all the
evidence. |
If a hypothesis does not account
for all the phenomena it is intended to explain, it is inadequate
and should be disqualified according to CTP
#20. |
| . |
Identify
alternative hypotheses. [Cycle
3]
The
quest for truth requires an open mind. Whether or not you have
disqualified a particular claim in cycles 1 and
2 above, it is always
prudent to consider if there are other ways (hypotheses) to account for
the phenomena in question.. So, in this cycle, you must use your
creativity to compose alternative explanations and then apply the standard
procedures in cycles 1 and 2. You should continue looping through cycles 1
- 3 until you have identified all plausible alternatives.
Rate
each hypothesis [Cycle
4]
Finally,
after exploring credible, alternative hypotheses, you must evaluate each
according to the criteria of adequacy (CTP #22 –
26). By applying these
criteria to all candidate hypotheses, you should be able to quickly
eliminate some and reduce the field to only one or two or three
possibilities—depending on how many alternatives you identified in cycle
3. Following CTP #14, the more evidence we have for a proposition, the
more credence we should give it. Accordingly, the more that a particular
hypothesis meets all the criteria of adequacy better than any other
alternative, more it deserves to be considered the best explanation so
far.
|
Critical
Thinking Principles (CTP) |
|
Click this button
or a Principle #
to open the CTP List |
The
26 critical thinking principles that we have compiled is not
exhaustive. It is only a strong starting list. The
principles in our list are organized into nine, general topic
areas:
|
TOPIC
AREAS |
PRINCIPLE
#s |
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Logical
possibility |
1 - 2 |
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Physical
possibility |
3 - 4 |
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Personal
experience |
5 - 6 |
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Belief
vs. knowledge |
7 - 9 |
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Background
information |
10 - 11 |
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Evidence
/ experts for claims |
12 - 15 |
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Objective
reality |
16 - 18 |
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Scientific
method / hypotheses |
19 - 21 |
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Criteria
of adequacy for hypotheses |
22 - 26 |
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Critical
Thinking
Web Log |
|
Site |
Notes |
|
The
Foundation for Critical Thinking |
Promotes
essential change in education and society through the cultivation of
fair-minded critical thinking. |
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Mission
Critical |
An interactive
tutorial for critical thinking, in which you will be introduced to
basic concepts through sets of instructions and exercises. Formal
instructional materials have been kept to a minimum |
|
Critical
Thinking: What It Is
and Why It Counts |
Cogent report by
Peter A. Facione,
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Santa Clara
University--available for PDF download via Insight
Assessment. |
|
Skeptic magazine |
Michael Shermer,
the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and the author of How We Believe
and The Borderlands of Science, also offers a great Baloney Detector. |
|
Insight
Assesment |
A
business site for critical thinking assessment and evaluation
services. |
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The
Delphi Report Executive Summary
|
The
landmark 1990 report describing findings of the two year project to
articulate an international expert consensus definition of critical
thinking, including its core cognitive skills. The experts identify
the characteristics of an ideal critical thinker, and present specific
recommendations relating to critical thinking instruction and
assessment. |
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The
Reason! Project |
The
Reason! project is developing a new method for improving reasoning
skills. The method is centred on the Reason! software learning
environment. The Reason! method is under development in the Department
of Philosophy, with support from ArtsIT, the University of Melbourne (TLMET)
(1998-2000), and the Australian Research Council (2001-3). |
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So,
What Is Philosophy Anyway? |
Thanks for your question about philosophy. To start, the word
"philosophy" is derived from two Greek words: philia (love)
and sophia (wisdom)--literally: the love of wisdom. In the Western wisdom
tradition, philosophical inquiry is considered to have started with some
early Greek thinkers who came before Socrates. At that time, philosophy
was taken to mean almost every kind of intellectual inquiry.
Today, philosophy has been more clearly distinguished from the
sciences. But now, the nature of modern philosophy has become a
philosophical problem of its own! For example, Bertrand Russell held
that philosophy is the forerunner of science--a field of study that
focuses on vaguely formulated problems which current science cannot
handle. For existentialists, philosophy studies the "human
condition". Still other philosophers argue that philosophy is the
analysis of language.
One way to understand philosophy is to consider the types of
questions that philosophers ask. For example, the the branch of
philosophy known as epistemology or theory of knowledge, some typical
questions are: "What is the basis for being able to know
anything?", "How certain can we be about what we claim to
know?", and "Are there limits to what can be known?" In
the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics focuses on questions
relating to being: For example, the great modern philosopher, Martin
Heidegger, claims that the fundamental question is "Why is there
anything rather than nothing?" In the branch known as ethics,
philosophers tackle questions about what constitutes human happiness and
what is the relationship between human happiness and right conduct.
Aristotle, the pupil of Plato (who was the pupil of Socrates), held
that philosophy begins in wonder--some even call philosophy the art of
wondering. Some philosophers are called critical philosophers because
their methods of inquiry revolve mostly around attempts to clarify
questions and detect logical inconsistencies (Socrates is perhaps the
best known philosopher in this group). Critical thinking is certainly a
major part of being a credible philosopher, and no one who has not
mastered the basic skills of logic could be considered a true
philosopher.
But other philosophers, like William James, fall into a camp of
thinkers called speculative philosophers because they want to focus on
the human experience and the world shaped by human actions. This group
attempts to construct conceptual frameworks that explain and bring order
to the abundant diversity of beings that we perceive. In general, both
critical and speculative philosophers tackle questions that are more
basic or fundamental than the questions asked by scientists.
In short, there is no single, accurate answer to the question
"What is Philosophy." What philosophy is today is probably
best answered by considering what people who call themselves
philosophers actually do. And the fact is, there are many philosophers
who ask many different types of questions and who use many different
methods for attempting to answer them.
Advanced
Discussion Groups
.
 General
Philosophy
Web Log |
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Interesting
Sites |
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |
The purpose of the IEP is to provide detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. The Encyclopedia is free of charge and available to all users of the Internet world-wide. |
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |
The SEP is designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are made public. |
Dictionary of Philosophy |
This is a concise guide to technical terms and personal names often encountered in the study of philosophy. This is a reliable source of information on Western philosophy for a broad audience. |
The Center for Critical Thinking |
The Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique and the Foundation For Critical Thinking, two sister educational non-profit organizations, work closely together to promote essential change in education and society through the cultivation of fair-minded critical thinking. |
| Fallacy Files |
Includes an index to fallacies--useful if you know the name of a fallacy that you want to look up. The Taxonomysection is a classification of the logical fallacies listed in the Index by types--good for studying fallacies systematically. |
Philosophy News |
The goal of Philosophy News is to provide general updates on recent happenings in philosophy and provide commentary on philosophy events, positions, books, and ideas. |
Philosophy News Forums |
A Philosophy discussion board |
Yahoo Philosophy Directory |
A useful directory with many article links. |
Philosophy Now |
An online magazine covering current topics and developments in Philosophy. |
The Philosophers’ Magazine |
An independent quarterly, devoted to presenting top-class philosophy in an accessible and entertaining format. It regularly includes interviews with leading philosophers. The magazine also includes news, essays, reviews, features and regular columnists. |
TPM Online |
The Philosophers’ Magazine blog. |
ephilosopher |
A web community dedicated to philosophical thinking—blog format. |
Philosophy on the EServer |
The EServer is an e-publishing co-op based at Iowa State University where hundreds of writers, editors and scholars gather to publish over 35,000 works free of charge. The collection of philosophy manuscripts includes multiple works by Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Plato, and others. Also includes links to scholarly philosophic organizations. |
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References
Some
of the material in the Philosophers' Loft is based on or adapted
from material originally published elsewhere. Direct quotes are noted in
quotation marks.
(1)
Howard Kahane, Logic and Philosophy, Wadsworth Publishing Company,
Belmont, CA, 1969.
(2)
David A. Conway and Ronald Munson, The Elements of Reasoning,
Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, Belmont, CA, 2000, Third edition.
(3)
Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker, Critical Thinking, Mayfield
Publishing Company, Mountain View , CA, 1995, Fourth edition.
(4)
Theodore Schick, Jr. and Lewis Vaughn,
How to Think About Weird Things (Critical
Thinking for a New Age), Mayfield
Publishing Company, Mountain View, CA, 1995.
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