Customer Reviews

Critical Thinking

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a college textbook that I purchased because I was searching for a book that would review all the rhetorical tricks being used by politicians and special interest groups. For the past six years I've been simultaneously impressed and distressed with the increased sophistication being used to dodge discussing core issues and deceiving people. I believed I needed to further develop my awareness of when someone was using a rhetorical trick to avoid an issue or deceive the public, including myself. Once again excellent reader reviews helped me navigate to and choose this book and I was not disappointed! This book confronted many of the tricks being used by those in the media and using the media to get their message across while avoiding the truth.

First off, this book mostly focuses on only one aspect critical thinkers require, and that is identifying and rejecting rhetorical arguments. This book does not have any chapters that would help business people to filter out extraneous information and focus on critical factors even though in fast moving industries, this is a critical skill coming under the umbrella necessary to be labeled a critical thinker in the business world. A better title for this book would have been "Rhetorical Fallacies".

So don't buy this book to help you hone your skill in deciding what issues to focus on at work and how to drill-down to essential issues necessary to make good decisions. I highly recommend this book if you are looking to minimize the ability of ever-increasingly sophisticated rhetoric to mislead you. I also now enjoy the fact that I can name most of the rhetorical tricks being used in an attempt to deceive us. This book is a fast read, with many examples that help clarify the principles; many of these examples are humorous. I'll definitely keep this book as a reference to name the ploy being attempted.

Because the book is a textbook, the new price is ridiculous. I bought this used through Amazon and had an excellent experience; easily getting a barely marked-up book from a student at a very fair price - ya gotta love Amazon!

A very good "textbook" on critical thinking, written with humor. It covers the main aspects of every-day logic, teaching us to think for ourselves and to avoid being manipulated by politicians, religious proselytes and/or the media (people who want our ballot, our money, our "head"). I recommend it to everyone concerned with free thinking. I use it even in my lectures on Chemistry, occasionally. I only regret that the support material (The Logical Accessory and the Instructor's Manual), as usually, is not available for the common reader: could be the availability of these teaching and learning aids the only difference between lecturers and students?

I'm using Critical Thinking for a introductory course in logic. The authors' use of language is precise and easy to read. However, I do have one complaint. Virtually all of the political examples in this book point out the logical fallicies in figures that are either Republican or Conservative. I would have liked the book more if the authors had exposed the fallicies on both sides of the political arena.

Much of what we read, hear and see in today's media reflects the assumption that, since everyone is entitled to express their opinion, all opinions are equally ready for prime time. This book grants the first premise but challenges us to consider whether all opinions are actually created equal. I strongly recommend this text for students, teachers and even talk show hosts who'd like to sharpen their opinion-expressing skills and to understand why they might need some tuning up.
For the most part, the philospher/authors use conversational but not patronizing (and frequently witty) language, sharp examples of effective as well as falacious reasoning drawn from contemporary debates and rants, and provide exercises useful for classroom and self-study.
It doesn't matter where you stand on the ideological spectrum-- radial anarchist,neo-facist racist or any point between, frequent use of this book will help you to persuade others of your beliefs or convince you to re-examine yours.

That's what Critical Thinking (and critical thinking) does.

Like Andrew Hallock, it did not escape my notice that all the political references were Republicans or conservatives, and I've grown weary of that bent in academia and would have preferred a more balanced look at politics.

Nonetheless, this book was hugely enjoyable for me. While I bought it for a class, I would have read it just for a fun. But then, I'm kind of stickler for critical thinking anyway. Fellow students hated the class and had a hard time with it.

IMO, critical thinking skills are woefully lacking in today's world and if I were king, this book would be required reading for everyone.

What an awesome textbook! As a critical reasoning, reading, and writing instructor for twelve years, I have used this textbook, off and on, and I always return to it. There is no other textbook like it, but there are a lot of imitators. It infuses humor, pertinent political events, and very clear critical thinking concepts (like claims, fallacies, credibility, etc.)and presents those ideas in ways that make it a pleasure to read and learn from this book.

Yeah my title sounds crazy, but when I bought this book for a college course years ago, it totally changed the way I looked at the world and how my mind processes things.

Of course, this has probably come out with 2 new editions since I had it, and this review may never even be seen by anyone to be of help. Amazon had it listed to review and I couldn't pass it up.

I am now logical and analytical with all the information that comes to me and has opened up all sorts of areas of growth for me. I understand people better and have a much greater insight into the motivations of man. I am much better at problem solving and it impacts my life from grocery shopping to ... cutting through the crap in a Black Friday advertisement. I have increased confidence and authority on many subjects because I can see deeper into them than other people.

Would have never bought this if I wasn't in school, but if you go through it with the intent to improve yourself as a person, it will change your life.

This is a genial chatty book that stretches a few dozen points that we all should know into 600 endless pages.

My first thought is that anyone smart enough to grasp all this commentary does not need this book. The people who do need this book first need a 40-page summary of the main points. (This book practices what Reform Math calls "spiraling," a vicious little idea that says if you cover something 18 times from different directions, at the end you will finally have mastered it. No, often you're just more confused than ever.)

My second thought is that I want to know what this book is displacing--what course, what foreign language, what body of knowledge. I have grown to distrust the motives behind so-called "critical thinking." In lower grades, kids are told to think deeply about things they know nothing about. In college, a scatter-shot course like this steers students away from learning some more solid subject, such as history, philosophy, science, or anthropology. The smartest thing in the book is on page 11: "having a reservoir of information in your head helps to avoid being misled." Well, that's my big theme. Isn't it obvious that spending time on this course will guarantee that no such reservoir is ever accumulated?

The funniest thing in the book is the assertion that the best way to learn critical thinking is to read the New York Times carefully from start to finish each day for a year. My own guess is that doing this will damage your mind. So you see that professors can devote a life to critical thinking and end up no more sophisticated than the guy in a bar who settles every argument by declaring, "Bush lies."

I worry that "critical thinking" is a gimmick to make sure people don't become genuinely educated. Indeed, I suspect this bait-and-switch is the book's underlying sophistry. And guess what? This book's vast Index does not contain the word "sophistry." I can hardly tell you how weird (and sophistical) this is. A book about critical thinking does not explain the number-one obstacle to critical thinking!

Educators today are in love with the phrase "critical thinking" (mainly because it sounds highfalutin). However, they everywhere create an educational system that mitigates against thinking, critical or otherwise. Content, facts, and foundational knowledge are sneered at; memorization is belittled; exactitude has been sent into exile. Our elite educators love fuzziness, imprecision, vagueness, softness, guessing, invented spelling, inflamed self-esteem, close-is-correct, and everybody-gets-an-A. Instead of knowledge, they like feelings, portfolios and failure.

Let's say people did learn to think critically. I'm guessing their first impulse would be to throw all these goofy ideas out of the schools. The phrase "critical thinking" would no longer be admissible in polite society, being replaced by "clear thinking," which is what we actually need.

This book offers a simple, thorough, and explicit introduction to deduction in critical thinking. I recommend this introduction to deduction to ALL professors of philosophy of critical thinking.

The Book arrived within the promised time frame, in excellent packaging and in overall excellent condition. I was suprised with the added bonus of the CD being included. Traditionally with used text books and CDs or DVDs are missing. The book is an excellent textbook, well written and very well put together.