Do you want to know how to avoid fallacious reasoning and evaluate arguments? Check out Stephen’s Guide to the Logical Fallacies created by Stephen Downes. It is an impressive collection of fallacies with the names, definitions, examples and ways to prove that the fallacy is committed.
What are the mechanisms of abstract reasoning? Those of you who are fans of linguistics, cognitive science or neuroscience may enjoy the interview that George Lakoff gave to Edge. The interview starts off with the following observations from his new book “Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought” co-authored with Mark Johnson:
"The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical."
He goes on to explore the role of the body and brain in human reasoning:
“Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical, based on metaphors that make use of our sensory-motor capacities to perform abstract inferences. Thus, abstract reason, on a large scale, appears to arise from the body.”
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