Site-Wide Activity – Bellevue College Commons

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 8 months ago

I’m not a cop. I hate having to deal with this issue. But we are seeing AI generated writing turned in by students and this thwarts our efforts as educators trying to help our students learn. So, we’d better have […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 8 months ago

We use words to express ideas. In principle, we could use any word to mean anything we like. Meaning is usage. If all the English speakers agreed to use the word “cat” to refer to goldfish, goldfish would be what […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 8 months ago

Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism | VPRO Documentary – YouTube

We should think some about free will here. Lots of people suppose that they are exercising free will if they get to make a choice, […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 8 months ago

Opinion | Iraq Veterans, 20 Years Later: George W. Bush ‘Owes Me a Beer, at the Least’ – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Twenty years ago, I had students at BC who were signing up to fight in Iraq. A few of […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 9 months ago

General Education refers to the program of study aimed at instilling the knowledge, skills and abilities that will benefit students as persons, regardless of their career skills. Much of what we teach as General […]

dcowan@bellevuecollege.edu replied 1 year, 7 months ago

Hi,
This is great! I especially the critical thinking sections.
The second area of the description and rubric condense too many points, from my perspective.

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 9 months ago

Imagine a world devoid of conscious experience. Not even at the level of mollusks or moths. This is a world where nothing matters. Nothing has meaning or value. Now let’s admit some mollusks and moths. And l […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 2 years, 1 month ago

Hannah Arendt on the Human Condition

Hannah Arendt would certainly not claim that our politics is dignified. To the contrary, she would be among the voices warning of the current risks to our democracy in its […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 2 years, 2 months ago

Early on in the exploration of reasonableness we made a point of acknowledging basic human fallibility. Inquiry is not a linear path from absolute truth to absolute truth. Inquiry is a more typically a meandering […]

Cara Diaconoff replied 2 years, 2 months ago

I wanted to respond to your request for feedback! I enjoyed reading this post and think it’s clear. I mostly wondered if you might want to add examples under the climate and race discussions so as to acknowledge a still broader range of typical objections or questions raised by members of the general public.

Under climate, for example, we often hear about the problem of despair–the idea that since individual actions, like recycling or eating a more plant-based diet, aren’t likely to make much difference, that there’s little point in any one individual trying to make a difference (unless that individual happens to be a chief executive of one of the large polluting corporations).

With regard to race, a common argument would be against any movement toward affirmative action or toward reparations–the argument being that it’s “reverse racism” and that it penalizes today’s white people for injustices their ancestors perpetrated. Over the years, of course, conservatives have also argued that affirmative action is unfair to Black people because it appears not to reward merit.

Are there fallacies that would apply to the above positions?
- William Payne replied 2 years, 2 months ago
  
  Thanks Cara. There are some good ideas for future posts here. In this last chapter of my Critical Thinking primer I’m mainly out to illustrate a few commonplace fallacies. The climate and race issues you raise here are much broader discussions. But I’ll take a quick pass at these here in comments.
  
  I think too many people think individual action on climate is pointless for the wrong reasons. People too quickly assume that individual action is pointless if it doesn’t make a difference to solving the global climate problem. Granted, a single individual’s decision to take a European vacation or buy a new gas burning car vanishes into insignificance when it come to global CO2 levels and warming. But it does make a difference concerning the degree to which that individual is contributing to the problem. Personally, this does matter to me. And I’m not worried about praise or blame, signaling virtue or social standing. It’s just a matter of personal autonomy. Preparing a meal out of the garden or running errands by bike instead of car are ways I can exercise my own power over whether I’m going to participate in the destruction of our environment. I think we should feel empowered by making the sustainable choices. At least I feel empowered when I do. I doubt any of us are in a position to make the sustainable choice all the time. But even when we don’t, I think we should grapple with the consequences of our action. Despair is the easy path of dismissing and forsaking what power we have.
  
  Talk of “reverse racism” is a problem. But it doesn’t illustrate a fallacy, a mistake in reasoning, so much as just misleading rhetoric. Talk of “reverse racism” is a dysphemism, a disparaging term for policies aimed at correcting for the ongoing legacy of racism at a systemic level. Statistically being white still comes with big advantages in terms of getting into good schools, landing good jobs, etc. As long as these structural advantages remain, there is no such thing as reverse racism at the system or structural level. Of course any individual can be prejudiced and any individual can be unfairly treated as a result of prejudice in specific situations. But policy, like affirmative action, is not about specific situations, its about social structures and systems. So we need to be cautious about drawing broad conclusions from anecdotes.
Cara Diaconoff replied 2 years, 1 month ago

Thanks for explaining! Yes, I wasn’t sure if they were fallacies per se.

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 2 years, 6 months ago

Normative claims aim to tell us how things ought to be or what we ought to do. This, as opposed to claims that just aim to describe how things are. Philosophy may be the only discipline that inquires into the […]

Mohamed Dawoud wrote a new post on the site Education Blog 2 years, 6 months ago

A Journey Through Time: My Enchanting Nile River CruiseEmbarking on a Nile River cruise was a journey of a lifetime, one that whisked me away into the heart of ancient civilizations and […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 2 years, 6 months ago

The idea that liberal elites are trying to change the electoral dynamics of America in favor of Democrats by racially diversifying the country has wide currency on the political right. We should note at the […]

md Ryan created the site bloglab 2 years, 10 months ago

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 2 years, 11 months ago

As a child, Amartya Sen, Nobel prize winning economist and philosopher of social justice, witnessed the Hindu-Muslim riots that accompanied Pakistan’s partition from India. His analysis of identity and violence […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 3 years ago

Locke wrote at a time when it would have been easy to miss the role of social systems and how unfair these can be. But aside from issues of fairness in our social systems, it’s worth noting how big a job it is to […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 3 years, 2 months ago

Sounds like an interesting family life. First off, the issue of whether there is or isn’t a God is not a subjective issue. Either God exists or God doesn’t exist, but either way, it doesn’t depend on how anyone […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 3 years, 2 months ago

When someone else offers you reasons to change your mind, you should be convinced by those reasons if they are good reasons. That’s not exactly the same thing is being convinced by the person. Nobody likes to be […]

William Payne wrote a new post on the site W. Russ Payne 3 years, 2 months ago

Imagine a college that claimed to teach biology as a general education outcome. A very large number of course across campus taught by a a great many faculty claim to teach this gen ed outcome. And yet only a tiny […]

Mohamed Dawoud wrote a new post on the site Education Blog 3 years, 3 months ago

Basics of Effective Branding Effective branding can make all the difference in the world for a new business. In fact, it can be one of the key differentiators between a […]