The Brain's Adaptive Ability to Plan Ahead

• Critical thinking is set of skills, habits, and attitudes that promote reflective, clear reasoning.
• From a biological perspective, we have been shaped by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, which have primed our brains to become extremely effective inference machines
• An inference is the mental process that allows us to draw conclusions from evidence.
• Think of inference as a deliberative and conscious process, we infer all kinds of things unconsciously, effortlessly, and immediately
• Our brains facilitate our survival and promote our ability to find a partner and reproduce

Philosophical Caveats about "Brain Talk"

• the relationship between mind and brain is one of the central problems of metaphysics, known as the “mind-body problem,” which might just as well be called the “mind-brain problem.
• the mind-body problem is the problem of understanding the relationship between the organic gray and white matter in our skulls (the brain) and the range of conscious awareness (the mind)
• become more aware of some of the pitfalls of everyday thinking
• understand how and why you are prone to making mistakes in thinking
• use the resources of psychology and cognitive science (the study of the brain’s processes) to help us understand how to become better thinkers

Representation as Projection

• representation to describe the basic elements of thinking
• we think about things, whether through perception, imagination, memory, or desire, we represent those things.
• We represent the world outside as a stable picture that is completely filled in, in full focus, and uniformly colored.
• The front page is a representation of the world’s events for a given day.
• You unconsciously adjust the images you perceive to give you the impression that they are far away, nearby, moving, and so forth

Emotions and Reason: Homeostasis and Allostasis

• emotions serve to maintain homeostasis in the brain through the chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters
• The process of regulation that prepares the body to anticipate future needs before they arise is called allostasis

The Evolutionary Advantage of Shortcuts

• engaging conscious awareness only when necessary
• highly susceptible to error, bias, and stereotyping, critical thinkers should be careful not to jump to the first, most obvious solution.

Energy Demands on Deliberate Thinking

• a biological tendency to avoid effortful thinking.
• it is evolutionarily wise to be lazy.
• these mental shortcuts heuristics

Heuristics and Learning

• Flow states are possible only for someone who has achieved some level of proficiency at a task
• suspicious of your gut reactions to and intuitions
• Being open to new ideas and allowing yourself to admit some degree of ignorance are important first steps in becoming a better thinker.

Heuristics and Substitution in Decision-Making

Critical Reflection and Metacognition

• reflective thought can be a valuable tool in correcting cognitive biases.
• This process of critical reflection is often called metacognition
• stay skeptical, analytic, and assess the facts
• engage in the kind of rational, abstract thought that will be required for philosophy.
• Stress and lack of time also discourage critical reflection because they rob your brain of the resources necessary to engage in rational, attention-filled though; when you relax and give yourself time to think through problems, you will be clearer, more thoughtful, and less likely to rush to the first conclusion that leaps to mind
• (1) Ask yourself how well you understand the concepts; (2) Check your weaknesses, (3) Assess whether you are following the arguments and claims you are working on.

Cognitive Biases

• A cognitive bias is a pattern of “quick” thinking based on the “rule of thumb.”
• cognitive biases are the result of the natural and, ordinarily, efficient operation of the brain

Confirmation Bias

• confirmation bias, which is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms or supports your prior beliefs.*
• When searching for information on the internet about an event or topic, most people look for information that confirms their prior beliefs rather than what undercuts them
• the computer algorithms used by social media platforms steer people toward content that reinforces their current beliefs and predisposition

Anchoring Bias

• Anchoring bias refers to our tendency to rely on initial values, prices, or quantities when estimating the actual value, price, or quantity of something
• Resist the urge to latch on to the first thought that jumps into your head, and try to think the problem through with all the cognitive resources at your disposal.

Availability Heuristic

• availability heuristic refers to the tendency to evaluate new information based on the most recent or most easily recalled examples.

Tribalism

• tribalism is the tendency for human beings to align themselves with groups with whom they share values and practices. it is an evolutionary advantage for social creatures like human beings.

Bandwagon fallacy

• The bandwagon fallacy can lead you to conclude that you ought to do something or believe something because many other people do or believe the same thing

Sunk Cost Fallacy

• Sunk costs refer to the time, energy, money, or other costs that have been paid in the past. These costs are “sunk” because they cannot be recovered. The sunk cost fallacy is thinking that attaches a value to things in which you have already invested resources that is greater than the value those things have today
• gambler’s fallacy, in which a person reasons that future chance events will be more likely if they have not happened recently.
• a commitment to sunk costs encourages us to engage in long-term projects

Strive for Objectivity

• actively engage in strategies that remove us from our naturally subjective mindset

Abstract from Specific Circumstances

• If your view of morality, consciousness, or free will is tied to notions that come from a specific time or location, then your view is not likely to be objective.
• To arrive at more general and representative notions, use your imagination to separate the specific properties of your experience from your worldview

Promote Alternative Points of View

• Actively considering points of view contrary to your own is most useful in political or ethical areas of philosophy
• ometimes this strategy is called steelmanning the opposing argument. When you steelman an argument, you make the strongest possible case in favor of it. This is the opposite of strawmanning an argument, in which you construct a weaker version of the argument to easily defeat it.

Identify Counterexamples

• Generating counterexamples is an effective way to test your own or others’ claims
• the only legitimate way to know something is to have direct experience of it

Maintain Skepticism of Strong Emotions

Emotions can guide us, but they may threaten our ability to objectively consider the arguments being made.

Adopt Epistemic Humility

• We should recognize that the knowledge we do possess is fragile, historical, and conditioned by a number of social and biological processes
• The principle of epistemic humility calls upon us to recognize that the knowledge we possess is fragile, fallible, and colored by our own experiences.

Question Yourself: Do I Really Know What I Think I Know?

• Often, however, we forget the source of our beliefs and claim to “know” something simply because we have believed it for a long time

Be Aware of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

• Dunning-Kruger effect. David Dunning and Justin Kruger demonstrated a widespread illusion in which incompetent people or novices rate their own knowledge of a subject more highly than they ought to, while highly competent people or experts rate their knowledge slightly lower than they ought to
• be extremely wary when assessing your expertise about anything, , but especially about something that is a new area of learning for you

Start with a Strong Foundation

• The IEP is a traditional encyclopedia, and its articles are written for new students without a lot of prior knowledge.
• The articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are well written, but they typically go into greater depth and sometimes include technical terms or information you will have to look up.
• read articles and books written by philosophers on the topics you are interested in
• be discriminating when selecting material.
• engage only with the assigned texts in the class.

The SIFT Method (Four Moves for Student Fact Checkers)

Stop

• to become a better critical thinker, slow down the quick and efficient thinking that leads to errors and engage in critical reflection and metacognition

Investigate the Source

• search reviews or critiques of the website and the authors on the site.

Find Better Coverage

• Is there other coverage on the same topic?

Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to the Original Context

• claims made on the internet are divorced from their original context
• race those claims back to the original source.
• if it is hard to verify a claim or quote, that should be a red flag to not trust the source making those claim

Prepare to Read

• to be successful in a philosophy course, you must be able to read primary and secondary sources in philosophy
• Preparing your reading space will help you focus and improve the chances of retaining the reading material. Read at a table with a comfortable chair instead of on a couch or in a bed.

Engaging with Philosophical Texts

• Track the key claims and arguments in your reading
• choose an annotation tool
• write notes, underline, and flag portions of the reading
• The purpose of annotation is to create a visual trail you can come back to for easy tracking of an argument.
• engage the reader in a sequence of thoughts that either present a problem to be considered
• prompt reflection on previous ideas and works
• see if it leads to some insight or enlightenment
• Your goal is to engage with those ideas and arguments to arrive at your own understanding of the issues

Philosophical Methods at Work

• Look for philosophical methods at work in your readings: conceptual analysis, logic, and the consideration of trade-offs.
• Look for a variety of sources of evidence, including history, intuition, common sense, or empirical results from other disciplines or from experimental philosophy

The Principle of Charity

• The principle of charity is an interpretative principle that advises the reader to interpret the author’s statements in the most rational and best way possible
• the reader should start from the assumption that the author is putting forward a rational, thoughtful view
• understand that view in the best light possible
• look for an interpretation that makes the most sense of what the author is saying.

Working with the Dialectic

• Dialectic, a method for discovering truth through dialogue, involves an exchange of ideas with the goal of arriving at a position that more accurately reflects the truth
• to present alternative perspectives—in addition to their own—to demonstrate the range of perspectives on the problem

Pre-reading

• by reviewing the surrounding features of the article, book, or chapter.
• reviewing these elements to grasp the context for what you are about to read

Title, Author, and Publication

• Where does this work fit into the author’s broader body of work?

Table of Contents and Bibliography

• Develop a mental outline for the work by looking carefully at the table of contents
• as you become more familiar with your subject, you will get a sense from titles and authors in the bibliography about the perspective that informs this author’s writing

First Read

• During the first read, you should identify the key claims in the text.

Identify Key Claims

• During the first read, you should identify the key claims in the text.

Identify Sources of Evidence and Methods of Argument

• Look for the evidence the author is providing to support the key claims
• What methods does the author use to generate this evidence?

Flag for Follow-Up

• Use annotation flags to chart the course of the argument and claims being made.
• flagging things like thesis, definition, claim, evidence, argument, question, counterargument, objection, response, and so forth
• identify words or ideas you do not understand.

Close Read

• read for thoughtful engagement with the ideas and arguments
• you critically reflect on, evaluate, and understand the author’s writing. you should understand it well enough to think about it
• The use of an argumentative structure in writing.

Identify Claims

• The key element in any argumentative paper is the claim you wish to make or the position you want to defend. Therefore, take your time identifying claims, which is also called the thesis statement.

Collect Evidence and Build Your Case

• Once you have identified your thesis statement or primary claim, collect evidence (by returning to your readings) to compose the best possible argument.

Consider Counterarguments

• stay open to modifying your claim if it does not fit the evidence.
• philosophy students must spend more time and effort anticipating and responding to counterarguments when constructing their own argument
• read the arguments using the principle of charity

Accurately Represent Source Material

Organize Your Paper

Introduce Your Thesis

• The purpose of your introduction is to provide context for your thesis.*

Make a Logical and Compelling Case Using the Evidence

• The paragraphs that follow the introduction lay out your argument

Summarize Your Argument in the Conclusion

• Conclude your paper with a short summary that recapitulates the argument.

Ch 2 — Review Questions

2.1 The Brain Is an Inference Machine

1. Distinguish homeostasis from allostasis, and describe the relationship of both to the emotions and rational thought.

Homeostasis is the idea of keeping things in balance, and allostasis is the tendency to return to this equilbrium. I forgot what 'things' are. Is it about emotions and rational thought? Or the conscious and unconscious part of the brain in terms of energy usage? Conscious thinking costs more than unconscious thinking. Emotions work against rational thinking. Emotions may lead to thinking that are not rational.

Note: homeostasis is bringing the physical state back in balance after it's out of balance. Allostasis is the anticipation of future events that may keep this out of balance. Both homeostasis and Allostasis require emotions. Homeostasis is reactive (e.g. anger), and allostatis is predictve (anxiety). The relationship of emotions and rational thought are that both are needed; it's not simply one or the other (Descartes' mistake which suggest separation of body and soul).

2. What are heuristics?

Heuristics are shortcuts that help the brain make decisions by solving a 'simpler' problem to save energy,

3. What is the role of emotion in rational thought?

Emotions can interfere with rational thought because emotions will introduce cognitive bias.

Note: Emotions are needed for rational thought. For example, suppose you're rational and can do logic. But if you have a lack of emotion (say fear and you're getting killed), you will end up in a worse situation (death). So emotions are as important as being able to reason.

4. Describe some of the reasons for effortless thinking and gut intuitions. Explain why these are sometimes faulty.

effortless thinking and gut intuitions are useful when you need to make a quick decision. Being in the 'flow' state is useful because it saves energy while allowing you to be 'in the moment'. However, if you don't master (and even if you do) you may miss the unconscious thinking.

2.2 Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Engaging in Critical Reflection

5. What are some of the conditions that make critical thinking possible?

Not sure what you mean by conditions. But being calm (?). Not sure what the question is. Can you clarify this a bit more without giving away the answer.

Note: time (not rushing), calm environment (no distraction), and metacognition (actively thinking)

6. Define three of the common cognitive biases identified in this chapter.

• recency bias: you are more likely to be biased by recent information
• confirmation bias: you'd like to look up information that you confirm your preconceptions.
• availability bias: referring to what's available now, rather than considering all facts
• sunk cost fallacy (extra): what you've invested, you can't win it back. think of gambling or war (it be beneficial to stop a war; but you want to continue because you've lost XYZ people)

7. Describe critical thinking strategies that can be applied to two of the cognitive biases identified in the chapter.

slow down a lot and question things and be skeptical. Sorry, I forgot if we discussed a list of critical thinking strategies.

2.3 Developing Good Habits of Mind

8. What is epistemic humility, and how does it relate to the Dunning-Kruger effect?

Downplay and also question what you know. Dunning-Kruger effect is that expert underestimate their ability but novice tend to overestimate.

Note: expert don't underestimate but are more accurate.

9. How can you apply the strategies for thinking objectively to your philosophy class?

Assume that you know less because you're a novice in philosophy

10. How can you manage your emotions when reading and thinking about philosophy?

be aware of cognitive bias. Not sure what else i should say here.

Note: step back, reflect on source of emotion, and steelman the argument that triggered emotion

2.4 Gathering Information, Evaluating Sources, and Understanding Evidence

11. What are the four moves of fact-checking, and how do they work? Forgot the 4 letters, and since I cannot go back to the material, I am doing pure recall. STOP: slow down and question things SOURCE: Check for the source COVERAGE: check for coverage of the material or claim ???:

Note: trace claims to context (original context!)

2.5 Reading Philosophy

12. What is the three-part method for philosophical reading?

Pre-read: check the title, author, content, references to understand the framing of the story First-read: find the claim and the argument and annotate things yo udon't know or need deep dive Second-read: here you deepdive the annotations and revise it

Note: it's close read, meaning you will engage actively (Ask questions; find arguments both evidence and counterargument)

13. What are some differences between reading philosophical texts and other kinds of texts?

Other kidns of texts is linear. You start from the beginning and end. Philosophical texts require multipl reads and slow reading.

2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers

14. What is a thesis statement, and how should you go about developing a thesis statement for your papers?

A thesis statement is the central claim. To develop it, you would first need to find arguments, sources that you can cite form, and then build out the argumentative framework. You end by summarizing it.