Full Description
For all level Critical Thinking, Argumentative Writing, and Informal Logic courses.This highly popular text helps students bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysis and synthesis. It teaches them to respond to alternative points of view and develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.
Contents
1. The Benefit of Asking the Right Questions. 2. What Are the Issue and the Conclusion? 3. What Are the Reasons? 4. What Words or Phrases Are Ambiguous? 5. What Are the Value Conflicts and Assumptions? 6. What Are the Descriptive Assumptions? 7. Are There Any Fallacies in the Reasoning? 8. How Good Is the Evidence: Intuition, Personal Experience, Testimonials, and Appeals to Authority? 9. How Good Is the Evidence: Personal Observation, Research Studies, Case Examples, and Analogies? 10. Are There Rival Causes? 11. Are the Statistics Deceptive? 12. What Significant Information Is Omitted? 13. What Reasonable Conclusions Are Possible? 14. Practice and Review. Final Word. Index.
