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== Logical fallacy and the educational establishment ==
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Today, logic is offered as an elective in [[college]], not as a requirement. Various graduate-school admissions councils (among them the [http://www.mba.com/ Graduate Management Admissions Council] and the [http://www.lsac.org/ Law School Admissions Council]) have long recognized this fact and today test specifically for an appplicant's ability to [[Critical thinking|think critically]] and apply logic.
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Thus the major admissions tests (Graduate Management Admission Test and Law School Admissions Test) feature questions on logical reasoning. A typical question would present an argument and ask either:
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# What the argument assumes,
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# What sort of evidence, if established, would significantly strengthen (or weaken) the argument, or
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# Why the argument, as presented, is flawed.
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Still other questions present arguments and then ask the test-taker what reasonable conclusions one might draw from them. Occasionally they present sets of two facts that might seem to contradict one another and ask the test-taker to explain how both facts can be true at once.
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Many of the arguments presented (the ''stimuli'') and the wrong answer choices offered illustrate classic logical fallacies, often strikingly. Examples of ''argumentum ad hominem'' and the closely related fallacy of ''non sequitur'', to name two key errors, abound in these questions.
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Yet for all this effort in trying to identify weaknesses in critical thinking, colleges tend to discourage critical thinking in other ways, mainly in that [[professor]]s often commit the very sort of logical fallacies that these tests, for example, challenge their test-takers with.
      
== Related References ==
 
== Related References ==
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