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How to Think about Weird Things Critical Thinking for a New Age

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ISBN-10: 007287953X

ISBN-13: 9780072879537

Edition: 4th 2005 (Revised)

Authors: Theodore Schick, Lewis Vaughn

List price: $42.50
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Description:

The course is called Critical Thinking and is found in the Philosophy and/or English departments. This text serves well as a supplemental text in critical thinking, logic, introduction to philosophy, philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics, introduction to psychology, anomalistic psychology, perception and cognition, as well as any introductory science course. It has been used in all of the courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry courses. It could also serve as a main text for courses in evaluation of the paranormal, philosophical implications of the paranormal, occult beliefs, and pseudoscience.
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Book details

List price: $42.50
Edition: 4th
Copyright year: 2005
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies, The
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 338
Size: 6.50" wide x 9.12" long x 0.53" tall
Weight: 1.034
Language: English

Dr. David Miller is a Professor of Physical Education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Dr. Miller is published in professional journals, has coauthored one book, and authored two books. He has taught a measurement and evaluation course for 40 years.

Lewis Vaughn is an independent scholar and freelance writer living in Amherst, New York. He is the author of several leading textbooks, including Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues.

Preface
Introduction: Close Encounters with the Strange The Importance of Why
Beyond Weird to The Absurd
A Weirdness Sampler
The Possibility of the Impossible Paradigms and the Paranormal
Logical Possibility versus Physical Impossibility
The Appeal to Ignorance
The Possibility of Esp
Theories and Things
On Knowing the Future
Looking for Truth in Personal Experience Seeming and Being
Perceiving: True or False?
Perceptual Constancies
The Role of Expectation
Looking for Clarity in Vagueness
The Blondlot Case
"Constructing" UFOs
Remembering: Do We Revise the Past?
Judging: The Habit of Unwarranted Assumptions
Against All Odds
Selective Attention
The Limits of Personal Experience
Relativism, Truth, and Reality We Each Create Our Own Reality
Reality is Socially Constructed
Reality is Consituted by Conceptual Schemes
Facing Reality
Knowledge, Belief, and Evidence Babylonian Knowledge-Acquisition Techniques
Propositional Knowledge
Reasons and Evidence
Expert Opinion
Coherence and Justification
Sources of Knowledge
The Appeal to Faith
The Appeal to Intuition
The Appeal to Mystical Experience
Astrology Revisited
Evidence and Inference Denying the Evidence
Confirmation Bias
The Availability Error
The Representativeness Heuristic
A Little Logic
Science and Its Pretenders Science and Dogma
Science and Scientism
Scientific Methodology
Confirming and Confuting Hypotheses
Criteria of Adequacy
Testability
Fruitfulness
Scope
Simplicity
Conservatism
Creationism, Evolution, and Criteria of Adequacy
Parapsychology
How to Assess a ¿Miracle Cure¿ Personal Experience
The Variable Nature of Illness
The Placebo Effect
Overlooked Causes
The Doctor¿s Evidence
The Appeal to Tradition
The Reasons of Science
Medical Research
Types of Studies
Case Studies in the Extraordinary The Search Formula
State the Claim
Examine the Evidence for the Claim
Consider Alternative Hypotheses
Rate, According to the Criteria of Adequacy, Each Hypothesis Dowsing
UFO Abductions
Communicating with the Dead
Near-Death Experiences
Appendix: Informal Fallacies
Unacceptable Premises
Begging the Question
False Dilemma
Irrelevant Premises
Equivocation
Composition
Division
Appeal to the Person
Genetic Fallacy
Appeal to Authority
Appeal to the Masses
Appeal to Tradition
Appeal to Ignorance
Appeal to Fear
Insufficient Premises
Hasty Generalization
Faulty Analogy
False Cause In each chapter: Study Questions
Suggested Readings Notes
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.