Critical Thinking The Basics

Questions: 1.What is a fact? Define it and offer two statements that are factual and two that are not (for a total of four statements). 2. How can feelings be facts? For some, this is debatable. Write up two of your own questions and reactions to the authors treatment of this subject in this chapter. 3. Define inference and provide three examples. 4. Why is it important to distinguish inferences from facts? Give an example from your own experience. 5. What are generalizations? Through what mental process do we arrive at them? Give an example. Answers: 1. The word Fact means a deed which has been done and is derived from a Latin word factum. A fact needs verification through experiences or observations (Hanscomb, 2016). The factual statements: There are four types of human blood groups The Roman Catholicism is Mexicos major religion. The non- factual statements: The cafeteria food is awful The keys are forgotten by him on the table. 2. Feelings can be facts as they could give important information based on the situations (Hanscomb, 2016). Are feelings a source of vital information? Yes because they help people to gain many data needed in their life (Mayfield, 2014). Are feelings a shared reality? Yes, because publically different people react differently to the same reaction like cry, laugh. 3. Inference is reasoning of making any judgment or conclusion deduced from the evidences of circumstances rather than observation (Mayfield, 2014). Three examples of inferences are: All the humans are mortal. All the Greeks are humans. All the Greeks are mortal. 4. The reason to distinguish them is that inferences are used to examine the facts and sometimes these inferences may be misleading as they might not be reliable and thus they need to be verified and facts are themselves verified ones. The facts can be analyzed by making inferences (Otero et al., 2014). 5. In psychology, generalization occurs when any organism makes the same response to a same stimuli or its type. This response mainly depends upon the similarity. Generalization could be achieved by the invariant as an assortment of the objects and their properties (Tinoco-Gonzlez et al., 2015). References: Hanscomb, S. (2016). Critical Thinking: The Basics. Mayfield, M. (2014).Thinking for yourself. Cengage Learning.. Otero, J., Lecentsn, J., Graesser, A. C. (Eds.). (2014).The psychology of science text comprehension. Routledge. Tinoco-Gonzlez, D., Fullana, M. A., Torrents-Rodas, D., Bonillo, A., Vervliet, B., Blasco, M. J., ... Torrubia, R. (2015). Conditioned fear acquisition and generalization in generalized anxiety disorder.Behavior therapy,46(5), 627-639.