Nate Harris
PHI 111
Summary 1

Summary 1: Stephen F. Barker’s “Improving Your Thinking”

This summary will touch on what the author says about logic, and how we can apply it to our cognitive source with the attempt of improving our thinking. When discussing logic, the author breaks his introductory topics into two categories; fallacies and definitions. Each of these also has three or more sub-categories. We will be able to take these fallacies and definitions and apply them to recognizing good logic, and poor logic.
The first one I will bring up is the term Fallacy. The author defines a fallacy as, “a logical mistake in reasoning, especially one that it is tempting to make.” He tells us that what most of us define as fallacy is incorrect, at least for logical purposes. When it does not apply to logic, folks tend to think of a mistake, unbelief, or a sentence that just isn’t true all as being fallacy. He does not stop there. There are 4+ categories of fallacies in logic. The 1st one is called a petition principii which simply means, “to beg the question.” One can clearly see certain illogical statements as being fallacy when the premise is just the same, or has the same definition as the conclusion. Some even frame questions as such to answer any direct answer would be stating the premise to be true. (In response to your question in the essay, Mr. Slinker, I would have to answer with a question, “why do you think I’ve been beating my wife, and what proof do you have?”) The 2nd type of fallacy given is called ad hominem which reasonably states that instead of directing the argument toward the conclusion, directing an argument toward the person. This will hide away as an attack in a personal manner. When we take a celebrity, be it an actor/actress, author, singer, who may look good to the eye, and try to hold their status as having knowledge of other matter