I actually had a pretty good time in the lecture, as I learned different ways of reasoning, and it was a lesson where we were not just listening, but also thinking.
The lecture started as Mr. Tomalin explained the different meaning of "reason", like "There is no reason why I should be here", or "I should reason about my behaviour". I think there is a connection in between the two meanings, whereas for me reasoning involves also finding a REASON for your thinking. I also really liked a quote Mr. Tomalin showed us, from Albert Einstein:
“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.” For me that is true reasoning and I think it gives a very hypothetical and realistic point, referring to the people who love God only because of the fear of dying or suffering in life.
As the lecture went on, we started talking about logic and its relation with reasoning. Mr Tomalin mentioned two types of logic, inductive and deductive. He also stated there was a big difference between truth and validity, where validity is more about a possible truth, while truth is a fact.
As the lesson proceeded we then did an exercise, where we had to do a deductive logic reasoning, for example:
-I am a human
- you are a human
-we have something in common.
The next topic covered was inductive reasoning and its issues. Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning, because you don't involve certainty in the same way as deductive logic.
It could be an issue also, because it can cause people to make stereotypes and hasty generalizations.
