Tim van Gelder

A few months back I discussed Benjamin Franklin’s “moral algebra,” his simple prescription for good deliberative decision making.  We know of Franklin’s moral algebra only because he succinctly summarized it in a now-famous short letter to his longtime scientific colleague and friend, Joseph Priestley.  In that letter Franklin seemed to suggest that the moral algebra [...]

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Victoria has been hit this week by the highest temperatures and most intense bushfires in the state’s recorded history.  Around 200 dead, 1800 houses destroyed – and it is far from over.   As shown in this video, Jim Baruta was caught in the middle of it and managed to survive  in a purpose-built bunker. [...]

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A third chunk of the work-in-progress paper. Draft only. As always, comments welcome. 3.3 Semiformality A third theme in explaining how using an argument mapping package such as Rationale can improve reasoning centres on the notion of semiformality. In a nutshell, the idea is this: human thinking is typically informal. In certain areas, such as [...]

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With the recent release of Rationale 1.3, we also created a wiki for the Rationale community to create and share resources. I’ve just uploaded a case study displaying some reasoning quite typical of the sort of argumentation conducted in small law firms.  In this case, the issue is whether tax is payable by the purchasors [...]

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How old are people when they first start being able to reason? I vaguely recall reading somewhere in the psychological literature on the development of reasoning skills that kids are able to reason as early as 4.  However even that may underestimate how early these skills emerge. Our daughter is 3 years and one month [...]

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It turns out that my recent post Critical Thinking – Where to start?, with its list of 10 or so good books on critical thinking, has generated far more hits than any other entry on this humble blog. Many of those came from Gary Curtis’ blog on his excellent Fallacy Files site, where the list [...]

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Tonight was my talk at the Melbourne branch of the Skeptics, Are Philosophers Any Good?  The audience, about 50 or so, seemed engaged and entertained.  Most people had had a few drinks and were in a mood for a bit of fun and hyperbole at the expense of the philosophical profession. At the end, I [...]

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