Critical Thinking An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning

by Wright, Larry

• ISBN13: 9780199796229
• ISBN10: 019979622X
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Now in its second edition, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning provides a nontechnical vocabulary and analytic apparatus that guide students in identifying and articulating the central patterns found in reasoning and in expository writing more generally.Understanding these patterns of reasoning helps students to better analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments and to more easily comprehend the full range of everyday arguments found in ordinary journalism.Critical Thinking, Second Edition, distinguishes itself from other texts in the field by emphasizing analytical reading as an essential skill. It also provides detailed coverage of argument analysis, diagnostic arguments, diagnostic patterns, and fallacies.Opening with two chapters on analytical reading that help students recognize what makes reasoning explicitly different from other expository activities, the text then presents an interrogative model of argument to guide them in the analysis and evaluation of reasoning. This model allows a detailedarticulation of "inference to the best explanation" and gives students a view of the pervasiveness of this form of reasoning. The author demonstrates how many common argument types - from correlations to sampling - can be analyzed using this articulated form. He then extends the model to deal withseveral predictive and normative arguments and to display the value of the fallacy vocabulary.Ideal for introductory courses in critical thinking, critical reasoning, informal logic, and inductive reasoning, Critical Thinking, Second Edition, features hundreds of exercises throughout and includes worked-out solutions and additional exercises (without solutions) at the end of each chapter. AnInstructor's Manual - offering solutions to the text's unanswered exercises and featuring other pedagogical aids - is available on the book's Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/wright.

Author Biography

Larry Wright is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, where he has taught since 1970. He is the author of Practical Reasoning (1989), Better Reasoning: Techniques for Handling Argument, Evidence & Abstraction (1982), and Teleological Explanations: An Etiological Analysis of Goals and Functions (1976).

Table of Contents

Chapters 1 and 4-8 open with an Introduction

Each chapter ends with Supplemental Exercises and Answers

Preface

Paraphrasing

The Bare Bones Paraphrase

The Concept of Paraphrase

Reading and Paraphrase

Technique and Vocabulary

Human Understanding

Subtler Issues

Two Principles of Paraphrasing

Things to Keep in Mind

Reading for Structure: Dependency and Subordination

Complexity

Technique and Vocabulary

Useful Patterns

Tricks for Tough Cases

Systematic Features

Trial and Error Exercise

Reading for Reasoning: Paraphrasing Arguments

Reading for a Particular Purpose

Reading for Reasoning

A Shortcut: Schematizing Directly from a Passage

Charitable Schematizing

Analyzing Reasoning

Argument Analysis: Answering Questions

The Purpose of Analysis

The Fundamental Concepts: Questions and Answers

Refining the Apparatus and Exercising Our Skills

Evaluating Arguments: How Good Are the Reasons?

Interim Summary: What We Have Learned So Far

Dealing with Disagreement

Diagnostic Arguments: Reasoning by Explaining

Diagnostic Questions

Diagnostic Concepts

Objects and Resources

Refinements

Diagnostic Investigation

Diagnostic Patterns

Cause and Correlation

Testimony

Sampling

Counting Cases: Induction by Enumeration

Circumstantial Evidence

Further Applications: Prediction and Recommendation

Prediction

Recommendation

Fallacies

Fallacies of Construction

Critical Fallacies

Appendix

Deduction

Introduction

Semantic Conflict

Semantic Evaluation

Deductive Arguments

Structure

Tests and Criteria

Relative Strength

Summary

Glossary of Important Terms

Index

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