Tools for a Skeptical Life

What are we doing differently when being a skeptic than at other times in our lives? Are we inherently closed minded to new ideas or are we skeptics simply more cautious than other people?

What I wish to argue with this piece is that rather than acting as a belief system or philosophy skepticism is simply a process. As such the skills involved in the process can be learned and acquired by anybody who is minded to learn them. Whether we choose to apply those skills to all or only some areas of our life is a decision we have to make on a case by case basis.

Religion is a case in point. It may be argued that faith by its nature is a sub rational voluntary surrender to the unknowable. A scientist who is exactingly rational in their professional life may be be supported and sustained by their faith personally and may feel that using the tools of critical thinking in this area is entirely missing the point of the endeavor. Falling in love or selecting which football team to support may also be acts resistant to close analysis.

Rather than closing our minds to new ideas the gaining of critical thinking skills can be a wonderful journey towards new, interesting and original perspectives on our lives. Although we are all capable of making an assessment of information placed before us I would suggest that the quality of our assessment can be enhanced through the acquisition of new tools of analysis. The result of this may be that we are taken in less often by dubious claims, and less inclined to collude in fooling ourselves which as you will see we do all too often.

There are three main skill sets we need to examine

• Logical Fallacy
• Cognitive Bias
• The Scientific Method

Rather than attempting my own inexpert summaries of these I intend to point the reader to some excellent resources that have helped, and are still helping me to become a better critical thinker.

Logical Fallacy

This wonderful father and son team walk us through a myriad of different fallacies both in their podcast and free Skeptics Field Guide pdf
 
http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/


Cognitive Bias

This is an excellent visual and written guide to pretty much the full range of cognitive biases our human nature makes us vulnerable to

http://www.scribd.com/documents/30548590/Cognitive-Biases-A-Visual-Study-Guide-by-the-Royal-Society-of-Account-Planning

A great hummable cognitive bias song that I use at the end of my talk on CAM Treatments for Tinnitus with the artists kind permission

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RsbmjNLQkc&feature=player_embedded

The Scientific Method

Very clear description with good examples. Lots of Skeptical FAQ's to enjoy too! Looks very web 0.1 though...

http://skepticx.myweb.uga.edu/skepticism.html

The Skeptics Dictionary is an invaluable tool for any aspiring rationalist as this entry on the scientific method clearly demonstrates.

http://www.skepdic.com/science.html


Hopefully if you have followed some of these links you will see that the skeptical process is closer to an opening rather than a closing of our minds. This is not to the exclusion of excitement and wonder in our existence, quite the reverse. Our universe is sufficiently complex to allow us to be continually amazed whether we choose to engage our critical thinking skills or not. As an example of how even the most rational among us can be selective in our engagement with critical thinking I offer you the illustrious Crispian Jago Esquire...

http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/05/science-reason-critical-thinking-and.html

Go veggie, you know it makes sense...