Slide 1

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 2

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 3

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 4

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 5

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 6

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 7

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 8

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 9

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 10

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 11

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 12

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 13

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 14

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 15

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 16

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 17

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 18

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 19

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 20

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 21

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 22

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 23

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 24

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 25

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 26

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 27

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 28

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 29

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 30

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 31

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 32

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 33

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 34

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 35

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 36

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 37

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!


Slide 38

Feedback on Paper One
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike

Grading
•
•
•
•

Page length
Focused topic
Paragraph on assumptions
Multiple paragraphs for objections and
replies
• (Correct use of MLA format)

The Point Is…
• Grades are inflated, even for process
assignments.
• But if you got a 3/5 or 3.5/5, your work is
seriously deficient, and you should sign up
for a conference.

Comment Sheets
• Check marks indicate that you have
achieved the minimum level of proficiency.
• They do not mean that no revision is
necessary in a checked category.

Paper’s First Sentence
• Do not boldface the paper’s first sentence.
• The introduction and conclusion do not
have topic sentences.
• Only body paragraphs have topic
sentences.

Focus
• The most important element.
• Area of inquiry: Paranormal phenomena
• Topic: Remote viewing
• Focus: One guy’s particular viewing of
one target

Thesis
• A thesis is not a question.
• A thesis answers a question.
• A thesis is one sentence only.
• Example: “The question is, then, who is responsible for
the formation of these amazing phenomena?”
• Despite tantalizing theories of aliens as the origin of crop
circles, I will argue that there is a simple terrestrial
explanation because the human perpetrators have been
caught in the act.

Background
• Use a signal phrase at the start of the
borrowed information, not merely a citation
at the end of the borrowed information.
• You must use a signal phrase to mark the
start of the borrowed information.
• In other words, you have to tell the reader
where your ideas stop and the borrowed
information begins.

Works Cited
• The WC list is not sufficient in itself.
• You must use signal phrases and
parenthetical citations.
• If your background paragraph does not
have these, it is not satisfactory.

Plagiarism
• I do not think that there was any
intentional plagiarism in your papers.
• But turnitin.com did detect minor instances
of unconscious plagiarism.
• I underlined these in red.

Background Paragraph
• Do not start the background paragraph
with a fact about an event.
• Start it with a strong topic sentence that
echoes the thesis statement.

Assumptions
• Make sure that your assumptions are really
assumptions.
• Example: Your story says that Dr. Fike had
granola for breakfast. You then say that the
reader has to assume that Dr. Fike had granola
for breakfast.
• Can you see that this is too literal?
• A real assumption: Dr. Fike is concerned with
the health of his colon.
• POINT: An assumption is what is BEHIND a
fact, not the fact itself.

A Common Error
• Cutting directly from assumptions to
objections.
• In such a case, you consider your
assumptions to be your arguments, but
this cannot be so.
• Assumption is not = argument.

Another Error Re. Assumptions
• Some of you mistook your religious assumptions for
arguments.
• This approach participates in various fallacies that we
went over last week:
– Covering Oneself in the Cross: “This argument asserts that a
certain political or denominational stance is true or correct
because it is somehow ‘Christian,’ and that anyone who
disagrees is behaving in an ‘un-Christian’ or ‘godless’ manner.
(It is similar to the patriotic approach except it substitutes a gloss
of piety instead of patriotism.)”
– Appeal to Improper Authority
– Appeal to Biased Authority
– Appeal to Tradition
– Appeal to Lack of Evidence
– Begging the Question

Nosich, page 142
• “Inertia. It is more comfortable to keep the
beliefs we have than to change them,
even when we get evidence that our
beliefs are not accurate.”
• Nosich identifies inertia as an impediment
to critical thinking.
• My term for this is “belief perseverance.”

Other Impediments
• Page 145: “having an agenda that gets in the
way of what you hear and read”
• Page 148: “sticking with pre-established views
that seem sufficient because we have not
examined alternatives”
• Page 157: “religious, spiritual”: an example of a
non-critical-thinking standard
• Pages 164-65: “the problem is the tendency we
all have to see our own views as automatically
‘right,’ and those of people whose interests
conflict with ours as automatically wrong.”

Do you find any fallacies here?
• According to the Bible, when a person dies
his soul goes either to Heaven or to Hell;
therefore, there can be no ghosts. If the
Bible does not mention the possibility that
a soul could hang around as a ghost, then
it must not be possible because the Bible
is the ultimate authority on all things, and I
know that it is because my church says so.

Understand It This Way
• The point of CRTW is not to give you tools
(N’s elements) so that you can defend
your preconceptions more tenaciously.
• The point of CRTW is to give you tools so
that you can examine your preconceptions
in a way that makes deeper insight
(transformation) possible.

An Actual Comment
• “Since this is critical thinking class, you are
required to think about why you consider
the Bible to be the ultimate authority—and
to explore the possibility that there might
be more going on than you presently
believe. The point is not to run a topic
through your preconceptions but to use a
topic as an occasion to question those
preconceptions.”

Even the Bible Itself Validates
Critical Thinking
• Jesus in John 14.12: “’Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do,
because I go to the Father.’”
• Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

The Point
• Both Bible passages imply the importance
of being open about truths that may come
to light in the future.
– Given the kind of things that Jesus reportedly
did, his statement suggests that paranormal
phenomena are possible.
– Paul encourages us to be open to things that
do not fit into our preformed intellectual
boxes.

Furthermore…
• The two Bible passages are important
because they both endorse the possibility
that the absence of something from the
Bible does not necessarily mean that it is
untrue or nonexistent or bad.

Are you mad?
• If so, good!
• Anger means that I got through to you.
• It also means that you have identified a
place where your assumptions,
preconceptions, and background stories
may be interfering with your critical
thinking.

Bottom Line:
• It is not going to suffice in this class to
insist that something is wrong or false or
nonexistent because your religion does
not validate or include it.
• That sort of thinking is a fallacy.
• Run your preconceptions through the
elements rather than the elements through
your preconceptions.

Final Point on This
• In critical thinking class, something cannot
be your background story, assumption,
argument, and conclusion.
• If you assign such importance to one
Bible-based point, you are not doing
critical thinking.

Another Common Error
• Omitting opposition.
• Remember: After you argue, you must
object to arguments and reply to
objections.

Opposition
• Argument, objection, and reply paragraphs
must talk about the focused topic.
• It is a huge error to argue about the
focused topic and then to object about the
general topic.
• The focused topic (the paper’s main
illustration or example) must appear in
every single paragraph.

Reply Paragraph
• Concession: Give a little ground
• Rebuttal: Overturn the objections to your
argument(s).

Conclusion
• This is where you must address
implications—where you must push
beyond the bounds of your thesis
statement.

Example
• “Whether or not the entity that William S. and his friends
encountered was the spirit of Martin Gurule, it was able
to communicate in a way that I cannot attribute simply to
natural laws. And even if we are able to communicate
with beings outside of our reach of understanding, where
is the boundary between helpful and dangerous? If
entities truly can see things beyond our sight and know
things beyond our time frame, how do we distinguish
between what we should and should not ask to know?
More importantly, if a being beyond our realm of reality
does communicate with us can it be trusted, or are we
opening a very dangerous doorway that we may not be
able to close?”

“See me”
• If you have this written in your margins, we
should discuss a lower-order problem at
our conference.

Conferences
• I will pass around a sign-up sheet. You
will need to have a conference with me on
Paper One or Paper Two.
• It is your choice.
• Another conference is required in the
second half of the semester.

Rubric for Conferences
• Conferences require that you bring two copies of the
paper that you want to discuss and that you ask
questions, make comments, float solutions, etc. If you
do these things, you will receive 5/5. If you omit any of
them, you will receive 4/5. There will be no credit for
missed conferences. If I let you make up a conference
(and that is a big "if"), you will not receive credit. Be sure
when you sign up that you are actually free at the
specified time, mark it down on your calendar, and be
sure to show up on time. Conferences should last
approximately 15 minutes.

Suggestions
• Photocopy the copy of your paper with my
comments on it.
• Construct a list of questions to discuss.
• Remember that my memory of your paper
may be dim.

Revision of Paper One
• Submit your new draft with the following:
– A blank comment sheet (double-sided printing)
– Your original graded draft
– Your original comment sheet with my comments on it

• Put a paper clip around all of this material.
• Keep ALL of this these documents because you
may need them for your portfolio.

Revision
• It must be substantive or substantial.
• Fixing your lower-order errors is important:
please fix them. (I get ornery if you don’t
fix things I clearly marked as incorrect.)
• But the key will be to address higher-order
matters:
– Rethink your argument.
– Develop it.
– Reorganize.

What NOT To Do
• Do not turn in a clean copy of the same
paper.
• I will read them side by side and will check
to see if you have made substantial
changes.
• If you have not done so, I will take a point
off.
• Likewise, I will take a point off if your
Works Cited list is not 100% correct.

Was that too harsh?


Smile,
everybody!