Class Humanities 101 : Critical Reasoning

Module 6: Assessment

I have always considered myself a well-rounded and logical thinker; that is until I started the class Humanities 101 – Critical Reasoning. Since I was young, I have always attempted to use truth and facts in arguments that I have been involved in. I was a successful arguer, or what I thought was a successful arguer. On numerous occasions, I have reasoned my case well enough for my counterpart to turn their viewpoint around and agree with me. However, I now see that I used flawed logic during many of these arguments. While I was not completely egocentric in my rationale, I used many nonegocentric attributes to further my cases. For example, using the egocentric thinking flowchart, I would try to protect myself whenever I could and fight for my point of view. This would sometimes appear to come across as inflexible in my thinking; however, I did not feel I was getting all the relevant information to diverge from my original stance. With that, if my flawed logic were highlighted with reasonable justification, I would sway my position, if it made logical sense to me. After taking the course, I am now aware of what logical fallacies I was using and how egocentric my rational was.

Journey

One of the techniques that I would use the majority of time was the ad-hominem fallacy. I would use claims of similar circumstances that the other person previously did to justify my actions. This allowed me to appear to have a moral high ground for my arguments. While I did have facts to back up these claims to a moral high ground, they did not contribute anything to the discussion (Paul & Elder, 2012). It only put the other person on the defensive and opened a gateway for more intense arguments. This intensity, on ...

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...gocentric in my processes. I would utilize many logical fallacies, including attacking my partner (although not always directly) and twisting their argument in a way to allow me a stronger case. While these are by no means the only fallacies I have employed during arguments, they are the ones that stand out most prominent in my mind. I also realize that a confusion of the topic created many problems during an argument. These confusions would lead me to misinterpret valid topics and argue items that did not have any relevance. What the course has taught me was my critical reasoning skills were lacking logic. I was not a well-rounded thinker; I was an egocentric thinker and used logical fallacies as a crutch to support my claims. While I cannot guarantee I will not use these fallacies in the future, I have better tools to utilize for logically arguing my stance.