The Power of Critical Thinking 5th Canadian Edition by Chris MacDonald, ISBN-13: 978-0199030439

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The Power of Critical Thinking 5th Canadian Edition by Chris MacDonald, ISBN-13: 978-0199030439

[PDF eBook eTextbook]

• Publisher: ‎ Oxford University Press (January 1, 2019)
• Language: ‎ English
• 545 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 019903043X
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0199030439

When you were born, you were completely without opinions or judgments

or values or viewpoints—and now your head is overflowing

with them. Opinions help you to make your way through the world.

They guide you to success (or failure), understanding (or ignorance), good decisions

(or bad), empowerment (or paralysis). Some of your beliefs truly enable you,

and some blind you. Some are true; some are not. But the question is, which ones

are which? This kind of question—a question about the quality of your beliefs—

is the fundamental concern of critical thinking.

Determining the quality or value of your beliefs requires thought, and the

kind of thinking that does this job best is critical thinking—a skill that a university

or college education seeks to foster. This means that critical thinking is not

directly about what you think but rather how you think.

The quality of beliefs is not about what factors caused you to have the beliefs

that you do. A sociologist might tell you how society has influenced some of your

moral views. A psychologist might describe how your emotions cause you to cling

to certain opinions. Your best friend might claim that you have unconsciously

absorbed most of your beliefs directly from your parents. But none of these speculations

have much to do with the central task of critical thinking.

Critical thinking focuses not on what causes a belief but on whether it is worth

believing. A belief is worth believing, or accepting, if we have good reasons to accept it.

The better the reasons, the more likely the belief is to be true. Critical thinking

offers us a set of standards embodied in techniques, attitudes, and principles that

we can use to assess beliefs and determine if they are supported by good reasons.

After all, we want our beliefs to be true—to be good guides for dealing with the

world—and critical thinking is the best tool we have for achieving this goal.

Here’s one way to wrap up these points in a concise definition:

CRITICAL THINKING: The systematic evaluation or formulation

of beliefs or statements by rational standards.

Critical thinking is systematic because it involves distinct procedures and

methods. It entails evaluation and formulation because it’s used both to assess existing

beliefs (yours or someone else’s) and to arrive at new ones. And it operates

according to rational standards because it involves beliefs that are judged by how

well they are supported by reasons.

Table of Contents:

Boxes xi

From the Publisher xiii

Preface xxi

PART ONE Basics 1

1 The Power of Critical Thinking 2

Why It Matters 5

How It Works 9

Claims and Reasons 9

Reasons and Arguments 12

Arguments in the Rough 17

Summary 19

Field Problems 26

Self-Assessment Quiz 26

Critical Thinking and Writing Exercise 28

Writing Assignments 32

2 The “Environment” of Critical Thinking 33

Category 1: How We Think 34

Am I Really Special? 35

The Power of the Group 41

Category 2: What We Think 45

Subjective Relativism 45

Social Relativism 47

Skepticism 48

Summary 49

Field Problems 56

Self-Assessment Quiz 56

Integrative Exercises 57

Critical Thinking and Writing Exercise 59

Writing Assignments 61

Notes 62

3 Making Sense of Arguments 63

Argument Basics 64

Deductive Arguments 65

Inductive Arguments 67

Good Arguments 67

Judging Arguments 70

Finding Missing Parts 77

Argument Patterns 83

Affirming the Antecedent 84

Denying the Consequent 84

Hypothetical Syllogisms 85

Denying the Antecedent 86

Affirming the Consequent 87

Disjunctive Syllogism 87

Diagramming Arguments 92

Assessing Long Arguments 104

Summary 109

Field Problems 110

Self-Assessment Quiz 110

Integrative Exercises 112

Critical Thinking and Writing Exercise 115

Writing Assignments 118

Notes 119

PART TWO Reasons 121

4 Reasons for Belief and Doubt 122

When Claims Conflict 124

Experts and Evidence 128

Personal Experience 136

Impairment 136

Expectation 138

Innumeracy 140

Fooling Ourselves 142

Resisting Contrary Evidence 142

Looking for Confirming Evidence 144

Preferring Available Evidence 145

Claims in the News 147

Inside the News 148

Sorting out the News 153

Advertising and Persuasion 154

Identification 156

Slogans 156

Misleading Comparisons 156

Weasel Words 157

Summary 158

Field Problems 163

Self-Assessment Quiz 163

Integrative Exercises 165

Critical Thinking and Writing Exercise 167

Writing Assignments 172

Notes 172

5 Faulty Reasoning 174

Irrelevant Premises 176

Genetic Fallacy 176

Appeal to the Person 176

Composition 179

Division 179

Equivocation 180

Appeal to Popularity 181

Appeal to Tradition 183

Appeal to Ignorance 184

Appeal to Emotion 185

Red Herring 187

Straw Man 188

Unacceptable Premises 190

Begging the Question 190

False Dilemma 191

Slippery Slope 194

Hasty Generalization 195

Faulty Analogy 196

Summary 197

Field Problems 202

Self-Assessment Quiz 202

Integrative Exercises 204

Critical Thinking and Writing Exercise 206

Writing Assignments 210

Notes 211

PART THREE Arguments 213

6 Deductive Reasoning: Categorical Logic 214

Statements and Classes 216

Translations and Standard Form 219

Terms 220

Quantifiers 223

Diagramming Categorical Statements 227

Assessing Categorical Syllogisms 232

Summary 242

Field Problems 244

Self-Assessment Quiz 245

Integrative Exercises 246

Writing Assignments 247

7 Deductive Reasoning: Propositional Logic 248

Connectives and Truth Values 250

Conjunction 251

Disjunction 253

Negation 256

Conditional 257

Checking for Validity 263

Simple Arguments 263

Tricky Arguments 267

Streamlined Evaluation 270

Summary 276

Field Problems 279

Self-Assessment Quiz 279

Integrative Exercises 281

Writing Assignments 283

Note 283

8 Inductive Reasoning 284

Enumerative Induction 286

Sample Size 288

Representativeness 289

Opinion Polls 291

Statistical Syllogisms 300

Evaluating Statistical Syllogisms 302

Analogical Induction 304

Relevant Similarities 307

Relevant Dissimilarities 308

The Number of Instances Compared 309

Diversity among Cases 309

Causal Arguments 313

Testing for Causes 314

Causal Confusions 320

Confusing Cause with Temporal Order 323

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions 326

Mixed Arguments 333

Summary 335

Field Problems 336

Self-Assessment Quiz 336

Integrative Exercises 339

Writing Assignments 341

Notes 342

PART FOUR Explanations 343

9 Inference to the Best Explanation 344

Explanations and Inference 346

Abductive Reasoning 357

Theories and Consistency 358

Theories and Criteria 360

Testability 362

Fruitfulness 363

Scope 365

Simplicity 367

Conservatism 369

Telling Good Theories from Bad 374

A Doomed Flight 377

Summary 384

Field Problems 384

Self-Assessment Quiz 385

Integrative Exercises 386

Writing Assignments 388

Notes 389

10 Judging Scientific Theories 390

Science and Not Science 391

The Scientific Method 393

Testing Scientific Theories 396

Judging Scientific Theories 398

Copernicus versus Ptolemy 400

Evolution versus Creationism 402

Science and Weird Theories 412

Making Weird Mistakes 414

Leaping to the Weirdest Theory 414

Mixing What Seems with What Is 415

Misunderstanding the Possibilities 416

Judging Weird Theories 417

Talking with the Dead 418

Summary 423

Field Problems 426

Self-Assessment Quiz 426

Integrative Exercises 428

Writing Assignments 430

Notes 431

11 Contexts of Application: Thinking Critically

about Health, Law, and Ethics 432

Thinking Critically about Health and Health Care 433

Key Skills 433

Evaluating Health Claims in the News 435

Finding and Evaluating Expert Advice 436

Stumbling Blocks 438

Thinking Critically about the Law 440

Key Skills 442

Stumbling Blocks 444

Thinking Critically about Ethics 446

Key Skills 446

Stumbling Blocks 453

Summary 455

Field Problems 457

Self-Assessment Quiz 458

Writing Assignments 459

Notes 459

Appendix A Essays for Evaluation 460

Appendix B Answers to Select Exercises 483

Glossary 512

Index 516

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