W5 – Peyton Davis

This week’s readings from Verified inspired me to think a lot about believing information in general. While the medium that information is delivered on calls for different approaches in the process of verifying information, the methods and mistakes Verified points out seem analogous to mistakes made in other areas like general conversation, speeches, or television. Many people seem to be convinced by pure logical validity, or apparent validity, and begin to accept things that are merely logically true rather than actually true.

I don’t think that paying attention to the logical structure of information is bad. If I’m honest, I think everyone should have the skills to do so. Where I believe it helps is in the process of gauging information before investigation. As an example, we could imagine a scenario in which you’re hearing information from any given source. This information could be recirculated by the source or the original maker of a claim. If you see logical fallacies or gigantic assumptions littered throughout the thesis of the information, you can infer that the source isn’t interested in being trustworthy and good faith, either because of incompetence and oversight, or ulterior motivations.

Where this gets a bit tricky is when you consider that logic isn’t so concerned with conclusions. Any conclusion is on the table so long as the premises of the argument support it. So, we can reject arguments left and right, but that doesn’t immediately tell us that the conclusion is wrong. What I’m getting at here is that, for every person who accepts something purely because it makes sense assuming that the premises are true, there is another who will completely reject conclusions because the premises do not logically lead to a conclusion.

In other words, I think focusing on logic is extremely helpful in quickly deciding whether an argument is worth investigating further or throwing out. But we can’t use logic alone to find certain or near-certain truth. For that, the SIFT method comes into its role as it provides a pragmatic way to investigate sources, premises, and context. Most importantly, stopping and practicing self-awareness regarding your initial knowledge level really helps move us from relying on logic alone to relying on logic and effective verification of premises.