
The Intentionality Fallacy
If you lookup “intentionality fallacy” you’d probably find a lot of references to literature and other arts, since that is its usual context. We need to start talking about it in other things too. For example, everything. In brief, the intentionality fallacy happens when you are trying to understand, interpret, or …

Teaching as We’re Taught
The appeal from tradition is one of the logical fallacies that skeptics often reference. So many claims in pseudoscience rely on it, yet it is so easy to refute. People did a lot of really stupid things in the past, the fact that they did them long ago doesn’t mean …

Logical Fallacies
I recently found myself in a position where I needed to directly teach logical fallacies to my students, for the first time. As I spent hours researching, preparing materials, and actually teaching classes, I learned quite a few things. First, they’re difficult. Really difficult. It is easy to present an …

Pop Quiz: Teenage Immortality versus Critical Thinking
Afternoon, Quiz-Poppers. I’m making a bit of a serious cry for help today with this post and I’d really appreciate any input that you might be able to provide. Fair warning: This post is pretty self-indulgent, but it also deals with a potentially dangerous critical thinking failure. In the …