Sources Of Illogical Thinking

Skepticism

To a certain point, skepticism can be used in reasoning. There is a clear difference between having a permanent skeptic attitude and just feeling skeptic towards certain information in a situation. Being skeptic in certain situations, like when you are told something that is not backed up by good logical reasoning, is healthy. Having a permanent skeptic attitude is very dangerous because it gets rid of the reasoning process. There are two types of skeptic attitude. The extreme skeptic says there is no truth, which in itself is contradictory because the skeptic is claiming their statement to be true. The moderate skeptic says that there is truth, but humans can't reach it. For all intents and purposes though, this is the same argument as the extreme skeptic because truth we can't reach might as well not exist.


Evasive Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the belief that there is not enough knowledge on an issue to make a definite judgement on it. For example there are people who say that global warming doesn't exist, but an agnostic would say that they don't know whether there is or isn't because they don't have enough knowledge to prove either side of the argument. Agnostics, unlike skeptics, don't challenge whether there is truth or whether we as humans can reach it. Similarly to skepticism, there is a time and place for agnosticism. If we truly don't have enough knowledge on a topic, that is a time to be agnostic. However evasive agnosticism is when a person uses ignorance instead of logical reasoning. This attitude is claiming they can't decide on a topic either way, when really they know very little about the topic and the arguments on every side and claim agnosticism as a way to avoid that necessary logic for sound reasoning.


Example: Students in a class are asked to write an essay on whether they believe the culture in the United States or Mexico is more diverse. One student, who saved the essay for the last minute and didn't use the in class time given to research argues that both are equally as diverse. Although this argument would have been okay if it was backed up with knowledge, the student's laziness showed through obviously because there wasn't any sound logic or reasoning in the student's argument. The student didn't do any sort of researching to prove their argument, and instead of researching to make a well informed decision about what they believed, they tried to agnostic, but ended up being evasively agnostic because their decision that the cultures were equally diverse was just a way to try and avoid too much effort.

Narrow-Mindedness

A narrow-minded person refuses to consider alternatives to their own views only because they do not meet his prejudiced assumptions about what is and isn't worth pursuing. This is very different than a person who may purposely limit how much they question and research alternative views, this is a practical method and a way to avoid wasting time. However, the opposite of narrow-mindedness, open mindedness, can be just as much a problem if a person accepts everything they hear without questioning the logic behind them and all the information will just overwhelm them in the end.