Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Writing, With Readings

This book uses logos, pathos, and ethos in critical thinking, active reading, and persuasive writing. Accessible and stimulating, the versatile manual can be used as a rhetoric, a reader, a guide on research writing, and a guide on style. Through its chapters, users learn to excel at what they say; through our style interchapters users earn to excel at how they say it. Cheating, conservation, race, politics, male/female communication styles, gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research - many diverse and mature readings on these subjects engage readers and writers in analytical thinking and stimulate them to react with thoughtful discussions and compositions. For individuals who want to communicate clearly, argue persuasively, and analyze and evaluate what they read.

Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Writing; with Readings encourages you to discover the critical powers of your mind. By "thinking" we mean not only analyzing a text but also extending from the text, using it as a springboard for your own interpretation, imagination, and insight. At the end of the year 2000, the media were full of interviews, articles, and talking heads discussing the candidates, then Governor George Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore, and the issues of the presidential election: vouchers for private schools, prescription drugs for the elderly, the future role of the military, gun control, stem-cell research, and so on. Most viewers had simple responses to the arguments: "I agree" or "I disagree." Many responded with analytical statements: "it will never work . . . it will cost too much . . . it benefits only the rich." Some people had more detailed responses: "Why don't we try that program for the medical use of marijuana in a few states to see how well it works?" To argue well, you need to know some history of an issue, but you don't have to be a genius to recognize strategies of argument and persuasion (recognizing similarities and differences for example). Most college students can learn them. Discovering Arguments will help you do this. We use the terms argue and persuade in their several meanings. One common meaning is "to fight or dispute with words," as in a heated argument on whether same-sex marriages should be legal. Another is "to offer reasons or evidence," as does a lawyer who argues that eyewitnesses can identify an accused. Also, an argument can mean a theory, a philosophy, or hypothesis, as in the argument that "all life is based on self-interest." In composition classes, argument often means writing a paper in which you construct an argument for or against, or both forandagainst, a thesis by giving reasons, examples, facts, and other evidence. Discovering Arguments is a book about using your mind, making thoughtful applications of reading, writing, and persuasion. One of the significant differences between Discovering Arguments and other books is our emphasis on audience and persuasive appeals: logos (using reasons), pathos (using emotions), and ethos (using ethics). These appeals offer powerful tools that form the center of thinking, reading, and writing activities in the book. Classroom experience shows that students find this approach useful, and it quickly influences the quality of their thinking and writing. Except for our collection of logical fallacies (which we call "problems in reasoning"), we have made little use of the premises and conclusions of formal logic; instead, you will discover that there are ample resources for argumentation using informal reasoning. Among these we have included a simplified presentation of philosopher Stephen Toulmin's general theory: most arguments are similar; they make some claim that must be supported by credible evidence. Writing awakens the mind. It causes you to search for ideas, to construct and analyze thoughts that connect with your audience. Overall, this book values reading and writing for their relationships with thinking. You can view essays, books, newspapers, magazines--any text--as the thoughts of other men sand women reaching out to their readers. Reading and writing are like a conversation between you and your readers: a conversation that awakens your mental powers as you work through details, facts, library materials, probable arguments, contradictions, paradoxes, and the search for truth. Discovering Arguments incorporates both product and process approaches to learning. As a reader analyzing an essay, poem, or story, you may see a selection as a product--a fusion of thought and form. Or, as a writer working on a report or an argument, you may see your task as a process of planning, composing