Sunday 9 October 2016

How Our Inner Critics are Faulty: A Logical Exercise

For those of you who don't know, I am studying for a philosophy degree at the moment. This year I'm taking a logic module, which involves picking arguments apart. It's quite complicated sometimes, but useful, and on Friday I had a little break-through in analysing my own thoughts.


So in my logic seminar on Friday we were looking at the structure of arguments. I'll give an easy example:
  • If I work at Tesco I park in the Tesco car park sometimes.
  • I park in the Tesco car park sometimes.
  • Therefore, I work at Tesco.
Just looking at this argument, it's clear that there's something wrong with it. There could be loads of reasons why I park in the Tesco car park sometimes - it might just be to do my shopping - it doesn't have to mean that I work there! 

But it's not always so obvious. This particular argument example can be separated into algebraic parts. Bear with me if you hate maths!

So I'm going to take the argument apart now and assign each part a letter:
  • A - I work at tesco
  • B - I park in the Tesco car park sometimes
So the argument above can be restructured like this (look back at the original argument to work it out):
  • If I work at Tesco I park in the Tesco car park sometimes (if A, then B).
  • I park in the Tesco car park sometimes (B). 
  • Therefore, I work at Tesco (therefore A). 
The academic part will shortly be over and I will relate this to thinking! But basically, the letters can be replaced with other sentences, for example:
  • If it is raining then it is cloudy (if A then B)
  • It is cloudy (B)
  • Therefore it is raining (therefore A)
This argument (the raining/cloudy argument) is said to have the same logical form as the Tesco argument, because the letters are the same. This lettering order is said to be invalid because you can replace the letters with any sentence and the argument still won't 'work'. If you understand this, you'll understand the next bit!

So in last week's seminar, a nice girl sat next to me and we chatted quite a lot. This week I walked in and sat down. She came in after me and took a seat at the front away from me. At that moment I had a negative automatic thought (types of thoughts I'll look at in another blog post):
  • If she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week she wouldn't sit next to me this week. 
  • She didn't sit next to me this week.
  • Therefore, she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week.
You might notice, this argument has the same lettering structure as both the Tesco and the clouds argument:
  • If she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week she wouldn't sit next to me this week. (if A then B)
  • She didn't sit next to me this week. (B)
  • Therefore, she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week. (A)
Of course the argument came out from my inner critic in a rather convoluted way, like most arguments, but the basic structure is invalid. Even though thoughts from our inner critic are usually quite believable, when looked at closely like in CBT, they are often completely invalid. 

There could've been a different reason she chose not to sit next to me. And as it turned out, there was - she had to be at the front to do her presentation this week! 

The take away message from what I'm saying is that being aware of your negative thoughts means you can unpick them, analyse them and usually discover that they're complete rubbish! 

Image from here

No comments:

Post a Comment