Welcome to E4's project page on Critical Thinking in Ethics.
Below E4 provides resources about its project on critical thinking. There's a FAQ about critical thinking, a link to E4's mini-blog for the project, and marketing materials.
E4 has prepared a one-page PDF marketing brochure describing the products and services in this area as well as a brief white paper based on the workshop conducted at the 2010 American Society for Bioethics + Humanities annual meeting in San Diego, California. Please see the attachments section at the bottom of this page.
Please click here to see demos and examples of E4 and its collaborators' work in critical thinking in ethics.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
What's the rationale behind focusing on critical thinking in ethics?
Reasoning about ethical decisions requires the same skills as reasoning in other areas. Some concepts from the practice of informal logic are thus naturally useful. Indeed, as shown by the success of cognitive behavioral therapy in psychology, applying the tools of critical thinking can help individuals and organizations to find solutions to many of life’s difficulties. E4's approach to critical thinking focuses on analysis of the substance and structure of arguments.
What's an argument?
An argument is a set of reasons and the conclusion they purport to support. It is important to give reasons for positions and to ask for reasons from others. Giving reasons allows us and others to consider whether our positions are well-founded. E4's approach to argument assessment uses what we term "loopholes."
What are loopholes?
The reasoning of arguments can be weaker or stronger. The logic of an argument is strong when the reasons (premises) give us good reasons for believing the conclusion. A loophole is a possible situation in which the premises are all true but the conclusion is false. Arguments are strongest when there are no loopholes.
Examining an argument for loopholes is the only way to test the reasoning of a non-circular argument. To look for loopholes we must use our imagination to think about all of the possibilities. Through this process we can identify assumptions that we may not have been aware of when we first set out our argument. Part of assessing arguments includes determining whether claims are values-based or not - whether the claims are normative or not.
What's the difference between a normative and non-normative claim?
To determine the right thing to do in a medical setting we must consider both facts and values. Value claims are called normative; claims that do not express a value claim (do not offer an evaluation) are called non-normative.
What's the upshot of all of this business with loopholes and normativity?
We can agree on all of the facts and still disagree about the morally right way to act in response to them. For this reason, an argument that has only non-normative premises and a normative conclusion always has at least one loophole. Because this weak way of reasoning is very common, logicians have given it a name: the naturalistic fallacy.
We should demand that arguments about how to respond to real-life ethical issues make clear factual claims and clear value claims. This helps to identify where we need to examine our ideas more. It also helps to focus our deliberations on the precise areas on which parties might disagree.