Seminars : Documents

On critical thinking and cognitive pitfalls
Johan Braeckman (UGent)

In this lecture we investigate why people are so vulnerable to mental infections with totally irrational believes. Insights developed in social psychology, informal logic or neuroscience, make clear how quick human reasoning can go wrong, how easy one makes wrong connections, wrong statistical estimations and all to quick generalizations. Scientists doing research are often better armed against the danger of infection by irrational and pseudoscientific views. However, they are very good in rationalizing wrong views, picked up along the way, which often makes them stick to bad ideas much longer. Nobody is immune! Pseudoscientific theories will be discussed together with historical and current examples of apparent scientific and objective views that turned out to be infected by fallacies or wrong assumptions. The differences between science and pseudoscience and between rational and irrational thinking will be clarified. A pure rational way of thinking is most probably never to be reached, and may even be something we should not wish for, but we can get a better insight in how our brain processes information and creates false realities.