On the weekend, my wife and I were talking about whether or not certain forms of contraception, one of them being abortion, were unethical. When speaking specifically about abortion, it occurred to us that we cannot even really call abortion a contraceptive!
Contraceptive is defined (by dictionary.com) as tending or serving to prevent conception or impregnation.
Abortion can do a lot of things to people but it sure can't do that! No wonder abortion appears as a jumbo jet in bay #1 of the bus depot that is contraceptive ethics - it has no business being there!
Upon noticing this discrepancy I realized that I had overlooked a cardinal principle of critical thinking: examine definitions of terms. This made me think that I should review my principles of critical thinking, as they're rather essential in so many of these discussions you see before you on your screen. Alas! Monday's class yielded a most pointed review of the principles of critical thinking! Isn't that something?!
Still yet did the cogs in my brain rotate as I tied critical thinking to my writer's block concerning our most fruitful topic of masturbation. Why, I would constantly ask myself, can I not think of a decent approach to a blog about masturbation? Such a massive, hard, throbbing, myotonic, vasocongested bombshell of a topic! And I've got nothing! Where do I start? Where do I end?
But when I considered how heartily masturbation fits into all of the principles of critical thinking, such as how so many points of view are assumed, fuzzily defined, oversimplified, overgeneralized or not-so-carefully considered, it became clear to me what a critical issue I was dealing with!
Perhaps masturbation was one of those ideas ... one of those ideas which is not so unlike a roommate: sometimes you need to move away from it before it drives you crazy.
So remember: always examine the definition of terms, or you'll end up debating the wrong topic altogether.
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