Current Issues and Enduring Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking and Argument, with Readings

by Barnet; Bedau

• ISBN13: 9780312459864
• ISBN10: 0312459866
• Edition: 8th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-09
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

The unique collaborative effort of a distinguished interdisciplinary team a professor of English and a professor of philosophy Current Issues and Enduring Questionsis a balanced and flexible book that provides the benefit of the authors' dual expertise in effective persuasive writingandrigorous critical thinking. Its comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument includes Aristotle, Toulmin, and a range of alternative views, making it an extraordinarily versatile text. Readings on contemporary controversies (including the purpose of a college education, immigration, a peacetime draft, and obesity) and classic philosophical questions (such as, "How free is the will of the individual?") are sure to spark student interest and lively discussion and writing. Refined through seven widely adopted previous editions, it has been revised to address current student interests and trends in argument, research, and writing, and has been updated with compelling new topics and readings and more on analyzing visuals and presenting oral arguments. No other text and reader offers such an extensive resource for teaching argument.

Author Biography

Sylvan Barnet, professor of English and former director of writing at Tufts University, is the most prolific and consistently successful college English textbook author of the past 30 years. His several texts on writing and his numerous anthologies for introductory composition and literature courses have remained leaders in their field through many editions.

Hugo Bedau, professor of philosophy at Tufts University, has served as chair of the philosophy department and chair of the university’s committee on College Writing. An internationally respected expert on the death penalty, and on moral, legal, and political philosophy, he has written or edited a number of books on these topics. He is the author of Thinking and Writing about Philosophy, Second Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s).

Table of Contents

 

PART I. CRITICAL THINKING AND READING

1. Critical Thinking

Thinking About Drivers’ Licenses and Photographic Identification

Thinking About Another Issue Concerning Drivers’ Licenses: Imagination, Analysis, Evaluation

Writing as a Way of Thinking

A CHECKLIST FOR CRITICAL THINKING

A Short Essay Illustrating Critical Thinking

Alan Dershowitz, Why Fear National ID Cards?

Examining Assumptions

A CHECKLIST FOR EXAMINING ASSUMPTIONS


]Thinking about Wild Horses


]Deanne Stillman, Last Roundup for Wild Horses

A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING LETTERS OF RESPONSE


Letters of Response By Holly Williams and Tom Burke


]Luke Saginaw (Student Essay), Why Flag-Burning Should Not Be Permitted

Five Exercises in Critical Thinking



2. Critical Reading: Getting Started

Active Reading


Previewing


Skimming: Finding the Thesis


Reading With A Pencil: Underlining, Highlighting, Annotating


ÒThis; Therefore, ThatÓ


First, Second, and Third Thoughts

Summarizing and Paraphrasing


]A Note About Paraphrase and Plagiarism


]Last Words (Almost) About Summarizing

Susan Jacoby, A First Amendment Junkie

Summarizing Jacoby, Paragraph by Paragraph

A CHECKLIST FOR GETTING STARTED

]Gwen Wilde (Student Essay), Why the Pledge of Allegiance Should Be Revised

A Casebook for Critical Reading: Should Some Kinds of Speech Be Censored?


Susan Brownmiller, Let’s Put Pornography Back In the Closet


Charles R. Lawrence III, On Racist Speech


Derek Bok, Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus


]Stanley Fish, Conspiracy Theories


]Letters of Response By Jonah Seligman, Richard DiMatteo, Miriam Cherkes-Julkowski, Joseph Kyle, and Patrick Ward


Jean Kilbourne, "Own This Child"

Exercise: Letter to the Editor

3. Critical Reading: Getting Deeper Into Arguments

Persuasion, Argument, Dispute

Reason Versus Rationalization

Some Procedures in Argument


Definition


Assumptions


Premises and Syllogisms


Deduction


Sound Arguments

Induction


Evidence


Examples


Authoritative Testimony


Statistics

A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING STATISTICAL EVIDENCE

Nonrational Appeals

Satire


Irony


Sarcasm


Humor


Emotional Appeals

Does All Writing Contain Arguments?

A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING AN ARGUMENT


An Example: An Argument and a Look at the Writer’s Strategies


George F. Will, Being Green at Ben and Jerry’s


George F. Wills’s Strategies

Arguments for Analysis


Gloria Jiminez (Student Essay), Against the Odds, and Against the Common Good


Anna Lisa Raya (Student Essay), It’s Hard Enough Being Me


Ronald Takaki, The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority


James Q. Wilson, Just Take Away Their Guns


]Nadya Labi, Classrooms for Sale


]Nadine Strossen, Everyone Is Watching You


]E-Mail Responses to Nadine Strossen


]Sally Satel, Death’s Waiting List


]Letters of Response By Dorothy H. Hayes, Charles B. Fruit, and Michelle Goodwin


]Paul Kane, A Peaceful Call to Arms


]Letters of Response By Julie E. Dinnerstein, Murray Polner, Joan Z. Greiner, and Joshua Zimmerman

4. Visual Rhetoric: Images As Arguments

Some Uses of Images

Appeals to the Eye

Are Some Images Not Fit to Be Shown?

Exercises: Thinking About Images

Reading Advertisements

A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING IMAGES (ESPECIALLY ADVERTISEMENTS)

]Writing About a Political Cartoon

]A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING POLITICAL CARTOONS

]Jackson Smith (Student Essay), Pledging Nothing?

Visuals as Aids to Clarity: Maps, Graphs, Tables, and Pie Charts

]A CHECKLIST FOR CHARTS AND GRAPHS

A Note on Using Visuals in Your Own Paper

A Note on Formatting Your Paper: Document Design

Additional Images for Analysis

Nora Ephron, The Boston Photographs

PART II. CRITICAL WRITING

5. Writing An Analysis of An Argument

Analyzing An Argument


Examining The Author’s Thesis


Examining The Author’s Purpose


Examining The Author’s Methods


Examining The Author’s Persona


Summary

]A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING A TEXT

]An Argument, Its Elements, and a Student’s Analysis of the Argument

]Nicholas D. Kristof, For Environmental Balance, Pick Up a Rifle

]Betsy Swinton (Student Essay), Tracking Kristof

]An Analysis of the Student’s Analysis

A CHECKLIST FOR WRITING AN ANALYSIS OF AN ARGUMENT

Arguments for Analysis


Jeff Jacoby, Bring Back Flogging


John Irving, Wrestling with Title IX


Peter Singer, Animal Liberation


Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

6. Developing an Argument of Your Own

Planning, Drafting, and Revising an Argument

]A CHECKLIST FOR A THESIS STATEMENT

Getting Ideas


The Thesis

Imagining an Audience


The Audience as Collaborator

]A CHECKLIST FOR IMAGINING AN AUDIENCE


The Title


The Opening Paragraphs


Organizing and Revising the Body of the Essay


The Ending


Two Uses of an Outline


Tone and the Writer’s Persona


We, One, or I?


Avoiding Sexist Language

A CHECKLIST FOR ATTENDING TO THE NEEDS OF THE AUDIENCE


Peer Review

A PEER REVIEW CHECKLIST FOR A DRAFT OF AN ARGUMENT

A Student’s Essay, from Rough Notes to Final Version


Emily Andrews, Why I Don’t Spare "Spare Change"


The Essay Analyzed

Exercise

7. Using Sources

Why Use Sources?

Choosing a Topic

Finding Material

A Word about Wikipedia

Interviewing Peers and Local Authorities

Finding Quality Information on the Web

Finding Articles Using Library Databases

]Locating Books

Evaluating Your Sources

A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING PRINT SOURCES

Taking Notes

A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING ELECTRONIC SOURCES

A Note on Plagiarizing, Paraphrasing, and Using Common Knowledge

A CHECKLIST FOR AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

Compiling an Annotated Bibliography

Writing the Paper


Organizing Your Notes


The First Draft

Later Drafts


Choosing a Tentative Title


The Final Draft


Quoting from Sources


The Use and Abuse of Quotations

 

How to Quote

]A CHECKLIST FOR USING QUOTATIONS RATHER THAN SUMMARIES


Documentation


A Note on Footnotes (and Endnotes)


MLA Format: Citations Within the Text


MLA Format: the List of Works Cited


APA Format: Citations Within the Text


APA Format: the List of References

A CHECKLIST FOR PAPERS USING SOURCES

An Annotated Student Research Paper In MLA Format


Theresa Washington, Why Trials Should Not Be Televised

An Annotated Student Research Paper in APA Format


Laura Deveau, The Role of Spirituality and Religion in Mental Health

PART III. FURTHER VIEWS ON ARGUMENT

8. A Philosopher’s View: The Toulmin Model

The Claim

Grounds

Warrants

Backing

Modal Qualifiers

Rebuttals

A Model Analysis Using the Toulmin Method

A CHECKLIST FOR USING THE TOULMIN METHOD

]Putting the Toulmin Method to Work: Responding to an Argument

]Michael S. Dukakis and Daniel J. B. Mitchell, Raise Wages, Not Walls

]Thinking with Toulmin’s Method

9. A Logician’s View: Deduction, Induction, Fallacies

Deduction

Induction



Observation and Inference


Probability


Mill’s Methods


Confirmation, Mechanism, and Theory

Fallacies


]Fallacies of Ambiguity


]Fallacies of Presumption


]Fallacies of Relevance

A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING AN ARGUMENT FROM A LOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

Exercise: Fallacies -- or Not?

Max Shulman, Love Is a Fallacy

10. A Moralist’s View: Ways Of Thinking Ethically

Amoral Reasoning

Immoral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning: a Closer Look

Criteria for Moral Rules

A CHECKLIST FOR MORAL REASONING

Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Garrett Hardin, Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor

Randy Cohen, Three Letters (to an Ethicist)

11. A Lawyer’s View: Steps Toward Civic Literacy

Civil and Criminal Cases

Trial and Appeal

Decision and Opinion

Majority, Concurring, and Dissenting Opinions

Facts and Law

Balancing Interests

A Word of Caution

A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING LEGAL ARGUMENTS

A Casebook on the Law and Society: What Rights Do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights Protect?


William J. Brennan Jr. and William H. Rehnquist, Texas v. Johnson


Byron R. White and John Paul Stevens, New Jersey v. T.L.O.


Harry Blackmun and William H. Rehnquist, Roe v. Wade

12. A Psychologist’s View: Rogerian Argument

Rogerian Argument: an Introduction


Carl R. Rogers, Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation

A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING ROGERIAN ARGUMENT


]Jane Willy (Student Essay), Is the College Use of American Indian Mascots Racist?

13. A Literary Critic’s View: Arguing About Literature

Interpreting

Judging (or Evaluating)

Theorizing

A CHECKLIST FOR AN ARGUMENT ABOUT LITERATURE



Examples: Two Students Interpret Robert Frost’s "Mending Wall"


Robert Frost, Mending Wall


Jonathan Deutsch, The Deluded Speaker in Frost’s "Mending Wall"

Felicia Alonso, The Debate in Robert Frost’s "Mending Wall"

Exercises: Reading a Poem and a Story

Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Thinking About the Effects of Literature

Plato, "The Greater Part of the Stories Current Today We Shall Have to Reject"

Thinking About Government Funding for the Arts

14. A Forensic View: Oral Presentation and Debate

Standard Debate Format

The Audience

Delivery

The Talk

A CHECKLIST FOR PREPARING FOR A DEBATE

PART IV. CURRENT ISSUES: OCCASIONS FOR DEBATE

Debates as an Aid to Thinking

A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING A DEBATE

15. Abortion: Whose Right to Life Is It Anyway?

Ellen Willis, Putting Women Back Into the Abortion Debate

Analyzing A Visual: Abortion

Randall A. Terry, The Abortion Clinic Shootings: Why?

16. Affirmative Action: Is It Fair?

Terry Eastland, Ending Affirmative Action

Analyzing a Visual: Affirmative Action

Burke Marshall and Nicholas Deb. Katzenbach, Not Color Blind: Just Blind

17. Gun Control: Would It Really Help?

Sarah Thompson, Concealed Carry Prevents Violent Crimes

Analyzing a Visual: Gun Control

Nan Desuka, Why Handguns Must Be Outlawed

]18. Laptops In the Classroom: May Professors Ban Them?

]Robert McClellan, No Laptops, Please

]Analyzing a Visual: Laptops In the Classroom

]Tina Rosovsky, Why Ban Laptops From the Classroom?

]19. Obesity: Who Is Responsible for Our Weight?

]Radley Balko, Are You Responsible for Your Own Weight? Pro

]Analyzing a Visual: Obesity



]Kelly Brownell and Marion Nestle, Are You Responsible for Your Own Weight? Con

]20. Sex Education: Should Condoms Be Distributed In Schools?

Rush H. Limbaugh. III, Condoms: the New Diploma

]Analyzing a Visual: Sex Education

]Anna Quindlen, A Pyrrhic Victory

PART V. CURRENT ISSUES: CASEBOOKS

]21. A College Education: What Is Its Purpose?

]Stanley Fish, Why We Built the Ivory Tower

]Dave Eggers, Serve or Fail

]Letters of Response By Dixie Dillon, Sharon S. Epstein, and Patricia R. King

]David Brooks, "Moral Suicide," A La Wolfe

]Letters of Response By Scott Bradley, Barry Oshry, Paul Cutrone, and Rebecca Chopp

]Patrick Allitt, Should Undergraduates Specialize?

]Letters of Response By Carol Geary Schneider and Ellis M. West

]Louis Menand, Re-Imagining Liberal Education

22. The Death Penalty: Is It Ever Justified?

Edward I. Koch, Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life

David Bruck, The Death Penalty

]George Ryan, Speech Announcing Commutation of All Illinois Prisoners' Death Sentences

]Gary Wills, The Dramaturgy of Death

Potter Stewart, Gregg v. Georgia

Harry Blackmun, Dissenting Opinion In Callins v. Collins

Helen Prejean, Executions Are Too Costly — Morally

Alex Kozinski and Sean Gallagher, For An Honest Death Penalty

23. Drugs: Should Their Sale and Use Be Legalized?

William J. Bennett, Drug Policy and The Intellectuals

James Q. Wilson, Against the Legalization of Drugs

Milton Friedman, There’s No Justice In the War on Drugs

Elliott Currie, Toward a Policy on Drugs

]24. Immigration: What Is to Be Done?

David Cole, Five Myths About Immigration

]Barry R. Chiswick, The Worker Next Door

]John Tierney, çngels in America

]Victor David Hanson, Our Brave New World of Immigration

]Roger Cardinal Mahony, Called By God To Help

]25. Intelligent Design: Is It Science?

]William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design

]Michael J. Behe, Design for Living

]Letters of Response By Al Grand, Melissa Henriksen, Karen Rosenberg, Jon Sanders, and Bruce Alberts

]Harold Morowitz, Robert Hazen, and James Trefil, Intelligent Design Has No Place In the Science Curriculum

]Letters of Response By L. Russ Bush III, Michael Friedlander, Walter Collins, Michael Blanco, and Judith Shapiro

]Editorial, The New York Times, Intelligent Design Derailed

]Letters of Response By Susan Israel, Robert L. Crowther II, and John Scott

]26. Marriage: What Is Its Future?

Thomas B. Stoddard, Gay Marriages: Make Them Legal

Lisa Schiffren, Gay Marriage, an Oxymoron

]Julie Matthaei, Political Economy and Family Policy

]Ellen Goodman, Backward Logic In the Courts

]Marriage: A Portfolio Of Cartoons

]Diana Medved, The Case Against Divorce

]Elizabeth Joseph, My Husband’s Nine Wives

B. Aisha Lemu, In Defense of Polygamy

27. Sexual Harassment: Is There Any Doubt About What It Is?

Tufts University, What Is Sexual Harassment?

Ellen Goodman, The Reasonable Woman Standard

Ellen Frankel Paul, Bared Buttocks and Federal Cases

Sarah J. McCarthy, Cultural Fascism

28. Testing: What Value Do Tests Have?

Paul Goodman, A Proposal to Abolish Grading

Howard Gardner, Test for Aptitude, Not for Speed

Letters of Response By Thomas M. Johnson Jr., Garver Moore, Arnie Lichten, and Janet Rudolph

Diane Ravitch, In Defense of Testing

]Joy Alonso, Two Cheers for Examinations

]29. Torture: Is It Ever Justifiable?

Philip B. Heymann, Torture Should Not Be Authorized

Alan M. Dershowitz, Yes, It Should Be "On The Books"

Michael Levin, The Case for Torture

]Charles Krauthammer, The Truth About Torture

]Andrew Sullivan, The Abolition of Torture

PART VI. ENDURING QUESTIONS: ESSAYS, A STORY, POEMS, AND A PLAY

30. What Is The Ideal Society?

Thomas More, From Utopia

Niccol˜ Machiavelli, From The Prince

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions

Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen

Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

31. How Free Is The Will Of The Individual Within Society?

Thoughts About Free Will

Plato, Crito

George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

Walter T. Stace, Is Determinism Inconsistent With Free Will?

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Stanley Milgram, The Perils of Obedience

Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Mitsuye Yamada, To the Lady

32. What Is Happiness?

Thoughts About Happiness, Ancient and Modern

]Darrin M. Mcmahon, In Pursuit of Unhappiness

Epictetus, From The Handbook

Bertrand Russell, The Happy Life

The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, Inner Contentment

C. S. Lewis, We Have No "Right to Happiness"

Danielle Crittenden, About Love

Judy Brady, I Want a Wife

Index of Authors and Titles

Index of Terms

    

 

] new to this edition