Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning / Edition 2

by Larry Wright

Overview

Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning, Second Edition, 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 detailed articulation 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 with several 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. An Instructor'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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199796229
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/29/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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., PrefacePART ONE. PARAPHRASING1. THE BARE-BONES PARAPHRASEThe Concept of ParaphraseReading and ParaphraseTechnique and VocabularyHuman UnderstandingSubtler IssuesTwo Principles of ParaphrasingThings to Keep in Mind2. READING FOR STRUCTURE: DEPENDENCY AND SUBORDINATIONComplexityTechnique and VocabularyUseful PatternsTricks for Tough CasesSystematic FeaturesTrial and Error Exercise3. READING FOR REASONING: PARAPHRASING ARGUMENTSReading for a Particular PurposeReading for ReasoningA Shortcut: Schematizing Directly from a PassageCharitable SchematizingPART TWO. ANALYZING REASONING4. ARGUMENT ANALYSIS: ANSWERING QUESTIONSThe Purpose of AnalysisThe Fundamental Concepts: Questions and AnswersRefining the Apparatus and Exercising Our SkillsEvaluating Arguments: How Good Are the Reasons? Interim Summary: What We Have Learned So FarDealing with Disagreement5. DIAGNOSTIC ARGUMENTS: REASONING BY EXPLAININGDiagnostic QuestionsDiagnostic ConceptsObjects and Resources: Different Kinds of SupportRefinementsDiagnostic Investigation6. DIAGNOSTIC PATTERNSCause and CorrelationTestimonySamplingCounting Cases: Induction by EnumerationCircumstantial Evidence7. FURTHER APPLICATIONS: PREDICTION AND RECOMMENDATIONPredictionRecommendation8. FALLACIESFallacies of ConstructionCritical FallaciesAPPENDIX. DEDUCTIONIntroductionSemantic ConflictSemantic EvaluationDeductive ArgumentsStructureTests and CriteriaRelative StrengthSummary, Glossary of Important Terms, Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is the best critical-thinking book on the market. Its strengths are its originality, thoughtfulness, attention to scholarship in informal logic/critical thinking, focus on the importance of critical-reading skills, and practical application to the kinds of reasoning we do every day through a remarkably careful discussion of inference to the best explanation."—Dale Turner, Cal Poly Pomona

"I have seen students understand what they are reading and evaluate arguments in a meaningful way in classes where this text is being used. This in itself motivates me to use it."—Sharon Crasnow, Norco College, Riverside Community College District

"Critical Thinking constitutes a unified approach to a whole trajectory of intellectual development; that is, it can take someone from 'able to read' all the way to 'able to think analytically and creatively about reasoning.'"—Chris Campolo, Hendrix College

From the Publisher