Critical Thinking: Identifying Fallacies, Essay Example

Identifying fallacies is one of the most important critical thinking skills for an individual in his or her educational, professional, and personal life. Most academic writing requires students and teachers alike to formulate an argument by presenting reasons for a certain interpretation or claim postulated. Arguments must be logical in order to retain any currency, especially in the world of academia, which insinuates that a solid argument is based on rational and coherent premises. Many professions require public speaking, and professional speakers must remain cognizant and vigilant regard what weakens or strengthens an argument or business plan. Fallacies and persuasion are not mutually exclusive entities, as fallacious arguments time and again persuade people who prove unable to identify the flaws within the reasoning or argument. The presence of a fallacy within an argument reflects poor preparation or ignorance and one being uninformed. At the outset of this course, I considered myself quite poor at identifying fallacies, but engaging in various scenarios and exercises in identifying fallacies over a protracted period of time helped me internalize the various types of fallacies and be able to more easily recognize them. I am somewhat better at identifying fallacies due to repetition of exposure and deconstructing arguments and really cogitating about the validity and logic of the premises therein. Bering cognizant of various types of reasoning and fallacies render myself a more critical consumer of rhetoric and persuasive messages, which resulted from examining and assessing persuasive speaking and that impacts the political, professional, educational, and personal facets of everyday life.  Outside of the classroom, fallacies are deployed in advertising, which are often ignored or overlooked if students lack the tools necessary to critically examine them. Deconstructing fallacious messages and images that students are inundated with on a quotidian basis facilitates the enhancement of students identifying and understanding fallacies outside the confines of the classroom.