About Thinking

Concerned with problems and matters basic to critical thinking, this volume provides examples and exercises that stress the application of logic to situations expressed in ordinary language. It offers rules for improving the quality of thinking and touches upon topics like evidence and statistics.

Appropriate for courses in Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, and Introduction to Logic. Concerned with practical problems and matters basic to critical thinking, this volume provides many examples and "doable" exercises that stress the application of logic to situations expressed in ordinary language. It offers rules for improving the quality of thinking--explaining basic concepts such as induction and deduction in clear and simple terms--and briefly touches upon topics like evidence, statistics, and language.

I. FALLACIES.
1. The Nature of Fallacies.
2. Psychological Fallacies.
3. Material Fallacies.
II. DEDUCTION.
4. Classes, Propositions, and Quantifiers.
5. Class Relationships.
6. The Categorical Syllogism.
7. Immediate Inference.
8. The Hypothetical Syllogism.
9. Disjunctive and Alternative Syllogisms.
10. Enthymemes.
11. Standard Form.
12. Argument in Ordinary Language.
III. INDUCTION.
13. Generalization.
14. Causal Relationship.
15. Hypothesis.
16. Analogy.
IV. LANGUAGE.
17. The Nature and Uses of Language.
18. Definition and Interpretation of Meaning.
V. EVIDENCE.
19. Observation and Inference.
20. Witnesses and Circumstantial Evidence.
21. Judging Statistics.
22. Logic and the Scientific Method.
APPENDIX: Checklist of Fallacies.
Index.