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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 Questions | |
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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 Using the Panning-for-Gold Approach | |
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| Effective Communication and Critical Thinking | |
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| The Importance of Practice | |
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| The Right Questions | |
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| Critical Thinking Is 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 Feelings | |
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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 Author's or Speaker's Conclusion | |
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| Using This Critical Question | |
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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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| Fred von Lohmann, "Copyright Silliness on Campus" | |
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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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| David Horowitz, "College Professors Should Be Made to Teach, Not Preach" | |
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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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| Using This Critical Question | |
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| Determining Ambiguity | |
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| Context and Ambiguity | |
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| Using This Critical Question | |
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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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| New York Times editoriall, "Juvenile Injustice" | |
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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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| From Values to Value 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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| Avoiding a Typical Difficulty When Identifying Value Assumptions | |
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| Finding Value Assumptions on Your Own | |
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| Using This Critical Question | |
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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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| Using this Critical Question | |
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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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| Religion News Blog, "Should We Legalize Marijuana?" | |
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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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| Using This Critical 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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| Jacob Sullum, "Gun Control Non Sequiturs" | |
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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 Claims | |
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| Sources of Evidence | |
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| Intuition as Evidence | |
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| Dangers of Appealing to Personal Experience as Evidence | |
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| Testimonials as Evidence | |
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| Appeals to Authority as Evidence | |
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| Problems with Citers Citing Other Citers | |
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| Using This Critical Question | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Isabel Lyman, "Homeschooling Comes of Age" | |
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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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| Identifying and Comprehending Analogies | |
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| Evaluation Analogies | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Neela Banerjee, "Americans Change Faiths as Rising Rate, Report Finds" | |
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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 and Scientific Research | |
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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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| Using This Critical Question | |
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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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| Cathy Arnst, "The World According to Disney" | |
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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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| Buddy T, About.com Guide, "College Drinking, Drug Use Grows More Extreme" | |
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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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| Using This Critical Question | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Radley Balko, "Back to 18?" | |
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| What Reasonable Conclusions Are Possible? | |
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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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| The 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 Conclusions Are Not Created Equal | |
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| Summary | |
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| Practice Exercises | |
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| Maryann Bird, "Should We Stop Eating Meat to Help the Planet?" | |
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| Overcoming Obstacles to Critical thinkingOvercoming Obstacles to Critical Thinking | |
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| Reviewing Famnilair Obstacles | |
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| Mental Habits That Betray Us | |
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| The Seductive Quality of Personal Experience | |
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| Belief in a Just World | |
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| Stereotypes | |
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| The Urge to Simplify | |
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| Belief Perseverance | |
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| Availability Heuristic | |
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| Wishful Thinking | |
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| Should We Protect Children from Advertising? | |
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| Rebecca A. Clay, "Advertising to Children: Is It Ethical?" | |
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| Dale Kunkel and Brian Wilcox, "Television Advertising Leads to Unhealthy Habits in Children; Say APA Task Force" | |
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| Cam Beck, "Taking Responsibility for Our McActions" | |
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| Lisa Tiffin, "How to Inoculate Your Children Against Advertising" | |
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| Susan E. Linn, "Food Marketing to Children in the Context of a Marketing Maelstrom" | |
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| Essay Questions | |
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| What Is the Proper Role of Government in Improving the Quality of Families in Our Culture? | |
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| Stephanie Coontz, "Taking Marriage Private" | |
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| "Swedish Top Lawyer Wants to Legalize Polygamy ." | |
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| Peg Tittle, "We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?" | |
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| Lizette Alvarez, "Jens and Vita, but Molli? Danes Favor Common Names" | |
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| Malcolm Potts, "China's One Child Policy: the Policy That Changed the World" | |
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| RIchard Posner, "The Regulation of the Market in Adoption" | |
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| Essay Questions | |
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| What is the Secret to Happiness? | |
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| Arthur Max and Toby Sterling, "Researchers: Choices Spawn Happiness" | |
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| Matthew Herper, "Money Won't Buy You Happiness" | |
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| Steve Ross and Olivia Rosewood, "How to Find True Happiness" | |
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| Jonathon Clements, "Down the Tube: the Sad Stats on Happiness, Money and TV" | |
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| William R. Mattox, Jr., "Does Faith Promote Happiness?" | |
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| John Lanchester, "Pursuing Happiness: Two Scholars Explore the Fragility of Contentment" | |
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| Essay Questions | |
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| In What Ways Can the Media Influence Society and What Can We Do About It? | |
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| Carrie McLaren, "The Media Doesn't Influence Us .Except When It Does" | |
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| Geena Davis, "Children's Media Skew Gender" | |
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| Katie Strickland, "Media Isn't Feeding Social Ills" | |
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| Ross Gelbspan, "Snowed: Why Is the US News Media Silent on Global Warming?" | |
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| Dan Gainor and Amy Menefee, "CNN's Global Warming Special Typifies Liberal Bias of Climate Coverage" | |
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| Elmar Etzersdorfer and Gernot Sonneck, "Preventing Suicide by Influencing Mass-Media Reporting: the Viennese Experience 1980-1996" | |
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| Essay Questions | |
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| What role does physical appearance play in our lives? | |
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| Keith Morrison, "Face Value Hidden Camera Investigation: Do Looks Really Matter?" | |
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| Daniel Schweimler, "Argentina: Ugly People Strike Back" | |
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| Maggie Stehr, "Study Credits Attractive People with Longer Life" | |
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| Susan Kane, "Preparing Children for Plastic Surgery" | |
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| Scott Reeves, "Good Looks, Good Pay?" | |
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| Henry Wijsbek, "The Pursuit of Beauty" | |
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| Essay Questions | |
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| Credits | |
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| Index | |