Critical Thinking : A Concise Guide

Critical thinking: a concise guide is a much-needed guide to argument analysis and a clear introduction to thinking clearly and rationally for oneself. Through precise and accessible discussion this book equips students with the essential skills required to tell a good argument from a bad one. This third edition has been revised and updated throughout, with new exercises, and up-to-date topical examples, including: "real-world" arguments; practical reasoning; understanding quantitative data, statistics, and the rhetoric used about them; scientific reasoning; and expanded discussion of conditionals, ambiguity, vagueness, slippery slope arguments, and arguments by analogy. Read more... Abstract: A guide to argument analysis. It presents an introduction to thinking clearly and rationally for oneself. It tells how to avoid common confusions surrounding words such as 'truth', 'knowledge' and 'opinion'; how to identify and evaluate the most common types of argument; and, how to spot fallacies in arguments and tell good reasoning from bad. Read more...

Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide is a much-needed guide to argument analysis and a clear introduction to thinking clearly and rationally for oneself. Through precise and accessible discussion this book equips students with the essential skills required to tell a good argument from a bad one.

Key features of the book are:

• clear, jargon-free discussion of key concepts in argumentation
• how to avoid common confusions surrounding words such as ‘truth’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘opinion’
• how to identify and evaluate the most common types of argument
• how to spot fallacies in arguments and tell good reasoning from bad
• chapter summaries, glossaries and useful exercises.

This third edition has been revised and updated throughout, with new exercises, and up-to-date topical examples, including: ‘real-world’ arguments; practical reasoning; understanding quantitative data, statistics, and the rhetoric used about them; scientific reasoning; and expanded discussion of conditionals, ambiguity, vagueness, slippery slope arguments, and arguments by analogy.

The Routledge Critical Thinking companion website, features a wealth of further resources, including examples and case studies, sample questions, practice questions and answers, and student activities.

Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide is essential reading for anyone, student or professional, at work or in the classroom, seeking to improve their reasoning and arguing skills.

Attempts to persuade us - to believe something, to do something, to buy something - are everywhere. What is less clear is how to think critically about such attempts and how to distinguish those that are sound arguments. Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide is a much needed guide to argument analysis and a clear introduction to thinking clearly and rationally for oneself. Accessibly written, this book equips readers with the essential skills required to discuss a good argument from a bad one.

Key features of the book include:
* Clear, jargon-free discussion of key concepts in argumentation
* How to avoid common confusions surrounding words such as truth, knowledge and opinion
* How to identify and evaluate the most common types of argument
* How to spot fallacies and tell good reasoning from bad
* Chapter summaries, exercises, examples, and a glossary

The second edition has been updated to include topical new examples from politics, sport, medicine and music, as well as new exercises throughout.

Content: Preface to the first edition -- Preface to the second edition -- Preface to the third edition -- Introduction and preview -- Introducing arguments -- Linguistic phenomena and rhetorical ploys -- Logic: deductive validity -- Logic: inductive force -- The practice of argument-reconstruction -- Issues in argument assessment -- Pseudo-reasoning -- Truth knowledge and belief.

A much-needed guide to thinking critically for oneself and how to tell a good argument from a bad one. Includes topical examples from politics, sport, medicine, music, chapter summaries, glossary and exercises.