Critical Thinking and Skepticism in Anthropology

Catalog description

How many people believe most everything they are told, or everything that they read? How can we tell the difference between statements that are based on fact, and those based only on opinion, ideology, error, or falsehood? Why should we care in the first place? This class will help you answer these questions, and hopefully raise many more. We will cover the ways in which your own brain and senses can trick you. We will cover the common mistakes made in reasoning, "logical fallacies" that can lead even the most critical of thinkers to false conclusions. We will cover several of the most common types of false information that people encounter today, such as psychics, astrology, or complementary and alternative medicine, and will explore why these are problematic. Our focus throughout will be on identifying current, real world examples of "uncritical thinking" in popular and news media. Hopefully at the end of the course, we will all be better consumers of knowledge.