Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking Summary

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Hanson’s op-ed piece “Heavy Price Of Defense Spending Cuts: nations that choose butter over guns atrophy and die” contains significant thinking shortcomings. Using Gerras’ paper, “Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: A Fundamental Guide for Strategic Leaders,” one gains insights to analyze these shortcomings. Gerras contends that a person will offer evidence during an argument to support their perspective. He also defines a worthy argument as meeting several conditions. It must have an acceptable premise, the premise must be relevant to the conclusion, and missing components are considered and congruent with the conclusion. If an argument does not include these conditions, it is fallacious. Although there are many types of logical fallacies, Gerras describes two styles that apply to the Hanson op-ed: “appealing to fear” and “slippery slope”. …show more content…

The listener’s fear can impair their ability to recognize the fallacies of an argument. Hanson supports the concept that peace is maintained by possessing superior fire power. Our history clearly documents how we reduced our military at the conclusion of WW I, WW II, and Viet Nam. History also points out how we have hastily mobilized to react to unforeseen conflicts after these dramatic reductions. Hanson’s conclusion about the price of defense spending cuts fails to consider missing components of our agile forces that are inconsistent with the conclusion. He appeals to the common fear of being attacked to falsely lead to a conclusion that a strong military is required to keep the

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