Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12031
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Journal Article
Hahn U, Oaksford M.
The rationality of informal argumentation: a Bayesian approach to reasoning fallacies.
Psychol Rev 2007 Jul; 114:(3):704-32
http://content.apa.org/journals/rev/114/3/704
Abstract:
Classical informal reasoning “fallacies,” for example, begging the question or arguing from ignorance, while ubiquitous in everyday argumentation, have been subject to little systematic investigation in cognitive psychology. In this article it is argued that these “fallacies” provide a rich taxonomy of argument forms that can be differentially strong, dependent on their content. A Bayesian theory of content-dependent argument strength is presented. Possible psychological mechanisms are identified. Experiments are presented investigating whether people’s judgments of the strength of 3 fallacies—the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the circular argument or petitio principii, and the slippery slope argument—are affected by the factors a Bayesian account predicts. This research suggests that Bayesian accounts of reasoning can be extended to the more general human activity of argumentation.
Keywords:
MeSH Terms:
Bayes Theorem*
Culture
Dissent and Disputes*
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Judgment*
Logic*
Persuasive Communication*
Probability Learning*
Semantics
