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| Preface | |
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| The Benefit of Asking the Right Questions | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Critical Thinking to the Rescue | |
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| The Sponge and Panning for Gold: Alternative Thinking Styles | |
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| An Example of the Panning-for Gold Approach | |
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| Panning for Gold: Asking Critical Question | |
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| The Myth of the "Right Answer" | |
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| The Usefulness of Asking the Question, "Who Cares?" | |
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| Weak-Sense and Strong-Sense Critical Thinking | |
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| The Satisfaction of Panning for Gold | |
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| Effective Communication and Critical Thinking | |
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| The Importance of Practice | |
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| The Right Question | |
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| Critical Thinking As a Social Activity | |
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| Values and Other People | |
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| The Primary Values of a Critical Thinker | |
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| Thinking and Feeling | |
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| Keeping the Conversation Going | |
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| Avoiding the Dangers of Groupthink | |
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| What Are the Issue and the Conclusion? | |
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| Kinds of Issues | |
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| Searching for the Issue | |
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| Searching for the Authors' or Speaker's Conclusion | |
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| Clues to Discovery: How to Find the Conclusion | |
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| Critical Thinking and Your Own Writing and Speaking | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| What Are the Reasons? | |
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| Reasons + Conclusion = Argument | |
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| Initiating the Questioning process | |
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| Words That Identify Reasons | |
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| Kinds of Reasons | |
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| Keeping the reasons and conclusions Straight | |
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| Critical Thinking and Your Own Writing and Speaking | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| What Words or Phrases Are Ambiguous | |
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| The Confusing Flexibility of Words | |
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| Locating Key Terms and Phrases | |
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| Checking for Ambiguity | |
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| Determining Ambiguity | |
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| Context and Ambiguity | |
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| Ambiguity, Definitions, and the Dictionary | |
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| Ambiguity and Loaded Language | |
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| Limits of Your Responsibility to Clarify Ambiguity | |
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| Ambiguity and Your Own Writing and Speaking | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| What Are the Value and Descriptive Assumptions? | |
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| General Guide for Identifying Assumptions | |
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| Value Conflicts and Assumptions | |
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| Typical value Conflicts | |
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| The Communicator's Background as a Clue to Value Assumptions | |
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| Consequences as Clues to Value Assumptions | |
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| More Hints for Finding Value Assumptions | |
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| Finding Value Assumptions on Your Own | |
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| Values and Relativism | |
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| Identifying and Evaluating Descriptive Assumptions | |
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| Illustrating Descriptive Assumptions | |
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| Clues for Locating Assumptions | |
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| Avoiding Analysis of Trivial Assumptions | |
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| Assumptions and Your Own Writing and Speaking | |
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| Practice exercises | |
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| Are There Any Fallacies in the Reasoning? | |
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| A Questioning Approach to Finding Reasoning Fallacies | |
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| Evaluating Assumptions as a Starting Point | |
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| Discovering Other Common Reasoning Fallacies | |
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| Looking for Diversions | |
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| Sleight of Hand: Begging the Question | |
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| Summary of Reasoning Errors | |
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| Expanding Your Knowledge of Fallacies | |
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| Fallacies and Your Own Writing and Speaking | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| How Good Is the Evidence: Intuition, Personal Experience, Testimonials, and Appeals to Authority? | |
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| The Need for Evidence | |
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| Locating Factual Claim | |
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| Sources of Evidence | |
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| Intuition as Evidence | |
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| Dangers of Appealing to Personal Experience and Anecdotes as Evidence | |
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| Appeals to Authority as Evidence | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| How Good Is the Evidence: Personal Observation, Research Studies, Case Examples, and Analogies? | |
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| Personal Observation | |
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| Research Studies as Evidence | |
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| Generalizing from the Research Sample | |
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| Biased Surveys and Questionnaires | |
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| Critical Evaluation of a Research-Based Argument | |
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| Case Examples as Evidence | |
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| Analogies as Evidence | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Are There Rival Causes? | |
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| When to Look for Rival Causes | |
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| The Pervasiveness of Rival Causes | |
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| Detecting Rival Causes | |
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| The Cause or A Cause | |
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| Rival Causes for Differences Between Groups | |
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| Confusing Causation with Association | |
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| Confusing "After this" with "Because of this" | |
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| Explaining Individual Events or Acts | |
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| Evaluating Rival Causes | |
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| Evidence and Your Own Writing and Speaking | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Are the Statistics Deceptive? | |
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| Unknowable and Biased Statistics | |
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| Confusing Averages | |
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| Concluding One Thing, Proving Another | |
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| Deceiving by Omitting Information | |
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| Risk Statistics and Omitted Information | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| What Significant Information Is Omitted? | |
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| The Benefits of Detecting Omitted Information | |
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| The Certainty of Incomplete Reasoning | |
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| Questions That Identify Omitted Information | |
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| The Importance of the Negative View | |
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| Omitted Information That Remains Missing | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| What Reasonable Conclusions Are Possiblee? | |
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| Assumptions and Multiple Conclusions | |
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| Dichotomous Thinking: impediment to Considering Multiple Conclusions | |
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| Two Sides or Many? | |
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| Searching for Multiple Conclusions | |
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| Productivity of If-Clauses | |
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| Alternative Solutions as Conclusions | |
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| The Liberating Effect of Recognizing Alternative Conclusions | |
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| All Conclusion Are Not Created Equal | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Overcoming Obstacles to Critical Thinking | |
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| Reviewing Familiar Obstacles | |
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| Mental Habits That Betray Us | |
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| Wishful Thinking | |
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| Final Word | |
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| Index | |