Critical thinking: A student's introduction

This book helps students bridge the gap between everyday culture and critical thinking. Its comprehensiveness allows instructors to tailor the material to their individual teaching styles, resulting in an exceptionally versatile text.

Critical thinking : A student's introduction

Gregory Bassham

McGraw Hill

2010

Abstract

This book is about the power of disciplined thinking. It's about learning tothink for yourself and being your own person. It's about the personal empow-erment and enrichment that result from learning to use your mind to its fullestpotential. In short, it's about critical thinking.Critical thinking is what a college education is all about. In many highschools, the emphasis tends to be on "lower-order thinking." Students are simplyexpected to passively absorb information and then repeat it back on tests. In col-lege, by contrast, the emphasis is on fostering "higher-order thinking": the active,intelligent evaluation of ideas and information. This doesn't mean that factualinformation and rote learning are ignored in college. But it is not the main goalof a college education to teach students what to think. The main goal is to teachstudents how to think—that is, how to become independent, self-directed think-ers and learners.

Contents:

. Chapter 1: Introduction to Critical Thinking

. Chapter 2: Recognizing Arguments

. Chapter 3: Basic Logical Concepts

. Chapter 4: Language

. Chapter 5: Logical Fallacies-I

. Chapter 6: Logical Fallacies – II

. Chapter 7: Analyzing Arguments

. Chapter 8: Evaluating Arguments and Truth Claims

. Chapter 9: A Little Categorical Logic

. Chapter 10: A Little Propositional Logic

. Chapter 11: Inductive Reasoning