1.3: Improving Reasoning

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Critical reasoning is a skill, and like all skills it requires active involvement. As you read this book, you will learn how to use various conceptual tools (e.g., logical and probability rules, various rules of thumb, and diagrams) that will help you reason better. But as with all skills, you can only learn by practice. If you just passively read the chapters or absorb lectures you might learn some vocabulary words, but you won’t actually develop critical reasoning skills. You can only master these tools by using them in a variety of contexts (including outside the classroom). There are no foolproof rules that will always lead to good reasoning, but there are three things that will help improve your thinking:

Be aware of the most common ways in which reasoning can go wrong; this will help you guard against them in your own thinking and spot them in the thinking of others.
Use rules of thumb, called heuristics (discussed later in the textbook); this will make it easier for you to reason well.
Try to apply the tools you learn in the textbook outside the classroom.

The third step is the hardest, but it is vital. Many of our actions result from habit, and our habits of relying on past views and acting without really thinking are a chief cause of defective reasoning. Even once we master the material in this textbook, it is easy to lapse back into auto pilot once we leave the classroom. This is why it is imperative to develop good heuristics. If we consistently and consciously apply our safeguards outside of the classroom, many of them will become rote, and this will improve our auto pilot. Even so, in the midst of our busy lives we will be prone to error, and this can only be avoided if stop and think things through. This will not be easy, but that is what we must do if we are going to think more carefully about the things that matter to us most.