Overview

“Think Again IV: How to Avoid Fallacies” is the fourth in a series of four short courses that teach simple but vital rules to follow in thinking about any topic at all and common and tempting mistakes to avoid in reasoning. The courses discuss how to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments by other people (including politicians, used car salesmen, and teachers) and how to construct arguments in order to help you decide what to believe or what to do.

In this course, you will learn about fallacies. Fallacies are arguments that suffer from one or more common but avoidable defects: equivocation, circularity, vagueness, etc. It’s important to learn about fallacies so that you can recognize them when you see them, and not be fooled by them. It’s also important to learn about fallacies so that you avoid making fallacious arguments yourself.

We encounter fallacies almost everywhere we look. Politicians, salespeople, and children commonly use fallacies in order to get us to think what they want us to think. Think Again: Fallacies will show how to identify and avoid many of the fallacies that people use to get us to think the way they want us to think.