The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation. Only slightly. Should be called 'the art of being a blatant. The Thinker’s Guide To. Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation By Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder The Foundation for Critical Thinking. The Thinker’s Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation © 2004 Foundation for Critical Thinking www.criticalthinking.org To understand the human mind, understand self-deception. Anon The word ‘fallacy’ derives from two Latin words, fallax (“deceptive”) and fallere (“to deceive”).
Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery Author: Richard Paul and Linda Elder Publisher: Foundation for Critical Thinking Copyright: 2012 Pages: 56 Dimensions: 51/4' x 8' ISBN (10Digit):0-944583-27-X ISBN (13Digit): 978-0-944583-27-2 Also available through these e-book retailers: Educational institutions can license this publication electronically. Faculty and administrators - to learn more or to purchase licensing rights. Limited desk copies available for educators in paper format. Please email cct@criticalthinking to inquire. An original approach to the identification of fallacies focusing on their relationship to human self-deception, mental trickery, and manipulation. Introduces the concept of fallacies and details 44 foul ways to win an argument.
For orders of 500 or more copies, please email us at for special pricing. Retail Price: $19.99 $14.99 SKU: Title - Item Detail Price Add Items 533M The Thinker’s Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery 1 - 24 for $14.99 each 25 - 499 for $12.29 each Qty. Additional Information About: Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery The study of fallacies can be pursued in at least two different ways. It can be approached traditionally: in which case one defines, explains, and exemplifies ways in which unsound arguments can be made to appear sound. Or it can be approached deeply, in which case one relates the construction of fallacies to the pursuit of human interests and irrational desires. Using the first approach, students gain little by memorizing the names and definitions of fallacies. They soon forget them.
Their minds are left largely untouched and therefore unmoved. On the other hand, the second approach makes possible the acquisition of lifelong insights into how the mind – every mind – uses unsound arguments and intellectual “tricks” to further its ends. Students need seminal insights and intellectual tools that enable them to protect themselves from becoming intellectual victims in a world of swarming media piranhas, or, just as bad, from joining the swarm as a junior piranha in training. Insights and tools, grounded in intellectual integrity, should be the ultimate aim of the study of “fallacies.” The cultivation of intellectual virtues is crucial to human development. Without a long-term transformation of the mind, little can be done to produce deeply honest thought. Dsdt clover. When challenged, the human mind operates from its most primitive intellectual instincts.
Fallacies The Art Of Mental Trickery
This can be verified in the history of politics, economics, religion, and war — indeed in any history that deeply plumbs the human mind in action. Consequently, it is important to learn to recognize the most common tricks of persuasion, that we might better understand ourselves and others. Used on others, fallacies are intellectually indefensible tricks of persuasion and manipulation; used on ourselves, they are instruments of self-deception. In this guide, we concentrate on the most common and flagrant intellectual tricks and snares.
Sometimes these tricks are “counterfeits” of good thinking. For example, a false dilemma is the counterfeit of a true dilemma. We shall see this most obviously in dealing with errors of generalization and comparison.
Probably a book I should read once a year - a very insightful and short read that lists (and explains) all the ways one can be deceived via fallacies. After reading the book I found myself critiquing the nightly newscast as I listened to the lines they were reading as part of the broadcast. The last section of the book, and perhaps the best part, has several speeches. The practical exercise is to read the speech and identify the fallacies being employed. Very interesting and a bit disturbing. Ke Probably a book I should read once a year - a very insightful and short read that lists (and explains) all the ways one can be deceived via fallacies. After reading the book I found myself critiquing the nightly newscast as I listened to the lines they were reading as part of the broadcast.
The last section of the book, and perhaps the best part, has several speeches. The practical exercise is to read the speech and identify the fallacies being employed. Very interesting and a bit disturbing.
Key passages are below: - Every culture and society sees itself as special and as justified in all of its basic beliefs and practices. Nations often fail to act successfully because their leaders are caught up in their own unrealistic descriptions of the world (and of their enemies). We must be willing to question our own generalizations as well as the generalizations of others. Fallacies are therefore stratagems for gaining influence, advantage, and power (over the sheep of society). People are often ready to accept a false dilemma because few feel comfortable with complexity and nuanced distinctions. They like sweeping absolutes. They want clear and simple choices.
The Art Of Mental Toughness
Most people are not sophisticated. People are always receptive to flattery. “The over-whelming preponderance of people have not freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs. They are unreflective thinkers. Their minds are products of social and personal forces they neither understand, control, nor concern themselves with. Their personal beliefs are often based in prejudices.
Their thinking is largely comprised of stereotypes, caricatures, oversimplifications, sweeping generalizations, illusions, delusions, rationalizations, false dilemmas, and begged questions. Their motivations are often traceable to irrational fears and attachments, personal vanity and envy, intellectual arrogance and simple-mindedness. These constructs have become a part of their identity.” —.