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Impediments to Making Good Arguments
It is important to understand the ways in which you can go astray when constructing arguments. The word impediment means 'something that can get in your way when you are trying to accomplish a task'. Two types of impediments are (a) personal dispositions, and (b) logical fallacies.
The word disposition refers to a person's normal way of feeling or behaving. All of us have personal dispositions that can interfere with critical thinking. An example of such dispositions is group bias. (Bassham, et al. 2019) This is the tendency to see one's own group (tribe) as being inherently better than others. We tend to believe that our own society has better values, institutions, and beliefs than those of other societies.
Another type of impediment are the logical fallacies. Bassham. et al. devote two chapters to this topic. Logical fallacies contain a mistake in reasoning. An example of a logical fallacy is the ad hominem argument. This happens when you attack the person making a particular claim rather than the criticizing the claim itself. Bassham, et. al. give the following example:
"Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, argued against censorship of pornography. But Hefner was an immature, self-indulgent millionaire, who never outgrew the adolescent fantasies of his youth. His argument therefore, is worthless." (p. 127)
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You can listen to a good explanations of many different types of logical fallacies here and here.