What are you asked to do is to observe your own speech and monitor it. Wacth the words that come out of your mouth. Ask yourself what your words reveal to you about yourself. Are you honest? Do you try to be truthful? Are you kind? Open? Rational?
Throughout my day at school, I tried to closely monitor, watch my speech and see how my interactions with others display how I am reasoning. Many of my realizations about myslef help m to see the five common errors in thiking personified in my own life. As I got back an English quiz, one of the questions that I had gotten wrong, was really because I did not know the answer to the question so instead I just kept repeating the same words over and over again, trying to gain a point here or there. I was beggin the question. I tried to "demonstrate that a certain point is true, but in the process already assumed the point is true."(Reading's book) As the day progressed I found myself arguing a point with my fellow classmate, so I realized that I started to exaggerate my points and turn my argument in to a group of lies. Many red herrings began to find thier way into my arguments, and I say " something inflammatory or besdes the point in order to distract everyone from the real issue" that I was losing the argument.(Reading's book) On the other hand though, I found that on a test, when i knew the facts, defined my terms, and not only looked at things through one perspective, I would receive a much better grade because I used critical thinking and thus acquired a more clare and percise answer.
The result of my words and thoguhts throughout the day, says to me that when confronted with a problem that I had no other escape from, I would result to lying or some other way to save my own skin. I tend to only try and be truthful, when the truth is easy for me. When the truth is not easy to tell and the consequences are not good then I follow the path with the least resistance available. Also I realized that what I think and what i do are not alwasy the same thing. I may dislike a person but I wouldn't openly go and say it to thier face. This presents the problem of am I lying or am i being kind? Or am I being open to this person? I believe it is the right thing to be civil with all people even if you two have had past arguments, etc. And I believe that this reasoning shows that it's better t be kind, and virtuous to people instead of passing on our natural human pessimistic thoughts. Overall, I learned that I am not as intellectually sound as I once thought I was and that I need to revise and reform my processes for reasoning and acquiring knowledge.