Critical Thinking: Step by Step

This book is a comprehensive introduction to critical thinking skills and the philosophical and factual bases of critical thinking. Contents: ^I ANALYSIS OF REASONING. Short Simple Reasoning; Longer More Complex Discourse. EVALUATION OF REASONING. Basic Concepts of Evaluation; Degrees of Support Reasons Give to Conclusions; Critical Life Decisions: Complete Evaluation of Reasoning; Syllogistic Logic; Reasoning with Statements; Moderate to Fallacious Arguments. EVALUATING UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS. Justification, Paradigms, and Reasoning; Seeing, Reasoning and Scientific Justification; Justification in Law; Philosophical Dialectic and High Justification; Religion and Science; Pseudoscience as Unjustified Statements; The United States and the Global Corporate Economy. Appendices; Index; Bibliography; Exercises.