ABSTRACT
To defend against our daily exposure to sales pitches, propaganda, political spin, and con games, we should expect and seek good reasons before making decisions or adopting beliefs. Determining a reason is often problem enough, but then we must determine whether an offered reason is good and sufficient reason to make decisions or adopt beliefs. In the previous chapter, we made note of deceptive techniques that rely on lying, exaggerating, and selectively withholding information. We also alluded to a few other techniques of deception: exaggeration, telling only half the truth, and using loaded language. We considered how we could be manipulated even when all the relevant information is available to us; the problem in this case is in how that information is presented. Here we will discuss how we can use “reason” (logical reasoning) to make inferences and use these inferences to make decisions and adopt new beliefs. We will also examine how fallacies are errors in reasoning that can be used to deceive or distort logical inferences and conclusions.
