Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life [Paperback]

Richard Paul (Author), Linda Elder (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0130869724 | ISBN-13: 978-0130869722 | Publication Date: July 27, 2000 | Edition: 1

Appropriate for one or two semester courses in Critical Thinking or Student Success. This text approaches critical thinking as a process by which one takes charge of, and responsibility for, one's thinking. It provides both a holistic theme that runs through-out and practical analytic and evaluative tools that can be used to target and improve specific dimensions of thinking. It is designed to foster the development of critical thinking skills and abilities as well as intellectual dispositions such as fair-mindedness, intellectual humility, and intellectual integrity. Based on 20 years of teaching and research with the Center For Critical Thinking, the approach is an eminently practical one. It is filled with Think-For-Yourself activities and examples from everyday life. It shows the reader how to use critical thinking to achieve deep and significant learning in all disciplines and subjects.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"What sets this book apart from the others are the examples and exercises that force students to personally understand the relevance of the topic under discussion.  That the reader must learn to 'know thyself.'" 

    -- Brian J. Shelley, York Technical Institute

 

"Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life provides a fresh insight regarding this seemingly ominous subject of Critical Thinking.  The subject was so intriguing that, at times, I found the text much like a long awaited novel, hard to put down." 

    -- Jill Simons, Arkansas State University

 

"The material is written to arouse a student's curiousity by posing controversial and provocative 'think for yourself' questions..." 

    -- Becky Goodman, University of Hawaii

 

"This text is unique in that certain core values and capabilities ('virtues') are requisite..." 

    -- Michael Craven, Clark College

 

"Critical Thinking...is superior to the usual 'shortcut/toolkit' type texts..." 

    -- Gary Greer, University of Houston, Downtown

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

PREFACE

You are what you think. That's right. Whatever you are doing right now, whatever you feel, whatever you want—all are determined by the quality of your thinking. If your thinking is unrealistic, it will lead you to many disappointments. If your thinking is overly pessimistic, it will deny you due recognition of the many things in which you should properly rejoice.

Test this idea for yourself. Identify some examples of your strongest feelings or emotions. Then identify the thinking that is correlated with those examples. For example, if you feel excited about college, it is because you think that good things will happen to you in college. If you dread going to class, it is probably because you think it will be boring or too difficult.

In a similar way, if the quality of your life is not what you would wish it to be, it is most likely because it is tied to the way you think about your life. If you think about it positively, you will feel positive about it. If you think about it negatively, you will feel negative about it.

For example, suppose you came to college with the view that college was going to be a lot of fun and you were going to form good friendships with fellow students who would respect and like you and, what is more, that your romantic relationships would become interesting and exciting. And let's suppose that hasn't happened. If this were the thrust of your thinking, you now would feel disappointed and maybe even frustrated (depending on how negative your experience has been interpreted by your thinking).

For most people, thinking is subconscious, never explicitly put into words. For example, most people who think negatively would not say of themselves, "I have chosen to think about myself and my experience in largely negative terms. I prefer to be as unhappy as I can be."

The problem is that when you are not aware of your thinking, you have no chance of correcting poor thinking. When thinking is subconscious, you are in no position to see any problems in it. And, if you don't see any problems in it, you won't be motivated to change it.

The truth is that since few people realize the powerful role that thinking plays in our lives, few gain significant command of it. Therefore, most people are in many ways victims of their own thinking, that is, harmed rather than helped by it. Most people are their own worst enemy. Their thinking is a continual source of problems, preventing them from recognizing opportunities, keeping them from exerting energy where it will do the most good, poisoning relationships, and leading them down blind alleys.

In this book we are concerned with helping you take charge of what you do, what you learn, and how you feel by taking command of how and what you think. We hope that you will discover the power of your thinking and will choose to develop it in ways that serve your interests, as well as the well-being of others.

The single most significant variable in determining the quality of what you learn in college is your thinking. Certainly your, teachers will play a role in your learning. Some of them will do a better job than others of helping you learn. But even the best teachers can help you very little if you lack the intellectual skills necessary for thinking well through course content.

This book introduces you to the tools of mind you need to reason well through the problems and issues you face, whether in the classroom, in your personal life, or in your professional life. If you take these ideas seriously, you can do something for yourself of lifelong value.

If all goes as we plan it, you gradually will become more and more aware of the thinking that causes you problems. And you will be able to change that thinking so you can experience a more satisfying life. You will find that learning, both inside and outside of class, will become more and more rewarding. You will increasingly be able to take the ideas you are learning in class and apply them to your life in a useful way.

The choice is yours, and the quality of your choice can only be as good as the thinking you use to come to that choice. If you think that taking command of your thinking is not important (perhaps you assume that you already have that command), this book won't help you learn to think any better than you do now. If, however, you sense that you have not yet achieved the personal control over your thinking we are speaking of, and you recognize its potential value, you will read on, and progressively take the steps to create personal control and power.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 428 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (July 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130869724
• ISBN-13: 978-0130869722
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,216,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Physician, heal thyself!, November 30, 2006

By 

A Critical Thinking Instructor - See all my reviews

This review is from: Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

This book is woefully inadequate as a text for a critical thinking course. What are we to make of a critical thinking text that says almost nothing about objective truth, the central role of argument in critical thinking, the distinction between inductive and deductive arguments, the distinction between truth and validity, or which does not even mention any of the standard deductive forms of argument?

Furthermore, the authors do not seem to know how their "Standards for Thinking" apply to their own work. Just a few examples should suffice: (i) One of their standards is fairness. Yet in the chapter entitled "Develop as an Ethical Reasoner," the authors spend three pages laying out the arguments of PETA against the use of animals in medical experimentation, but barely a paragraph presenting the argument in favor of such experimentation. This hardly seems fair-minded to me. It would seem that, for them, being "fair-minded" involves closely arguing one's own position, but ignoring the arguments of your opponent. (One wonders if they themselves are members of PETA. But, if they are, shouldn't they admit this for the sake of honesty and complete disclosure? Or is it only bias when someone else does it?) (ii) Another of their standards is that of depth. The problem here is that they do not seem to have read the individuals whom they quote so approvingly with any depth. They repeatedly quote William Graham Sumner as an advocate of critical thinking, but seem oblivious to the fact that he is best known for his ethical relativism---a position that they themselves seem to repudiate in their chapter on ethical reasoning. Perhaps they would have discovered this for themselves had they read beyond the first 20 pages in Sumner's book, Folkways. (iii) The authors present contradictory positions in the space of a few pages, and do not seem to even notice. On the one hand, they embrace the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as morally binding because "every nation on earth has signed the declaration." However, four pages later they condemn such practices as slavery since they were justified solely in virtue of "social convention." What they do not seem to realize is that their justification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is itself based solely on social convention. Simply because it was signed by every nation on the face of the earth (itself a questionable claim)does not make it morally right or morally binding.

As a critical thinking instructor, I would be loath to recommend this book to anyone as anything other than an instructive failure. As a useful alternative, I would suggest Moore and Parker's Critical Thinking. It is much more comprehensive and more in keeping with representative views in the field.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Poverty of Philosophy, April 25, 2009

By 

Another Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

Unlike some of the other reviewers on this site, I believe that Paul and Elder's book contains some insights. However, as a professor of philosophy who teaches both critical thinking and ethics, I would not use it in my courses.

I find the chapter "Developing as an Ethical Reasoner" to be particularly disappointing. The authors do not seem to have thought about the nature of moral disagreements or the nature of moral arguments with any "depth" or "breadth"--two of the standards they champion.

The authors maintain that "All people are obligated to respect clear-cut ethical concepts and principles." This is all well and good, but just which ethical concepts and principles are we "obligated to respect?" The authors have chosen the principles listed in the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." But, why should we accept the principles in the Declaration rather than some others? The authors' answer is because they "are universally accepted." First of all, most of the people in the history of the world have NOT agreed with these principles. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Slobidan Milosivitch and the governments they led did not agree with them. Secondly, what the authors fail to understand is that, even if most people DID agree, this would not make these principles morally right. If tomorrow there were universal agreement that Jews should be put in concentration camps and gassed this would not make that morally right. What is morally right and morally wrong (at a practical or abstract level) cannot be decided by a simple show of hands, and yet, this is the only justification the authors provide.

What is more, the authors reduce virtually all moral problems to a failure of will. People know what the morally correct thing to do is, but ignore it, and do whatever is in their own selfish interest. They then try to portray themselves as having acted from the best of motives. What the authors fail entirely to see is that most of the really difficult moral problems we face involve cases in which ethical principles themselves come into conflict. In the issue of abortion, for example, the principle of respect for human life (that of the fetus) comes into conflict with the principle of freedom (a woman's freedom to direct her own life as she sees fit). In this case, it is not that people want to do the wrong thing out of their own selfish interest, people want to do the right thing, but because these two principles (both of which they likely accept) come into conflict, they are unsure what the morally right thing is. Paul and Elder are completely silent on this important type of moral problem--one wonders if they even see it.

In summary, the authors display only the most superficial understanding of ethical theory. They should really have done more of their homework in ethics before electing to write about ethical reasoning.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lifetime learning approach, not a course in "critical thinking", March 8, 2011

By 

Todd I. Stark "Cellular Wetware plus Books" (Philadelphia, Pa USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Critical Thinking: Learn the Tools the Best Thinkers Use, Concise Edition (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book and got a lot out of it. For such a high level book it isn't easy reading because it requires you to think about your own thinking while you are reading it in order to get full value out of it. If you skip that exercise, in my opinion, you will not appreciate the value of this book. So if you want to grow from what the authors are offering, be prepared to take a long term vision of your own abilities and to do a lot of work. In spite of the somewhat misleading title of this book, it is not really about what most people would call "critical thinking," it is a much deeper and more useful view of thinking abilities in general.

This book presents a relatively accurate (in my opinion) and very usable model of how human reasoning works in practice and how we get better at it. In addition it offers many simple but practical drills for identifying how well you are thinking and what sorts of things would be good to work on. So I do recommend this book.

Having gotten that positive impression from my reading, I also noticed the many very negative reviews here and that made me pause and think a bit. It may be helpful to expand on what I think it good about this book and what the negative reviewers are seeing.

The authors in my opinion do two critical things very clearly (although very informally): (1) they usefully identify the intellectual virtues or ideals that underlie good thinking and how they relate to each other, and (2) they outline a loosely expertise-based practical model for going from being unaware of being a weak thinker to actively and consistently developing the skills of good thinking.

Where this book falls down a little in my own view is that it doesn't adequately address the relationship of the intellectual virtues with the *attitudes* that underlie them, indicate the stability of our attituds about thinking, or discuss in any depth the way improvement critically can rely on attitude change as well as cultivated abilities.

The authors do recognize the importance of attitude but I think they fail to persuade the reader that we have to adopt a particular set of attitudes in order to consistently embody the virtues. They mention, but do not give a realistic narrative sense of, the work involved in changing our attitudes toward thinking as well as developing the associated skills.

Perhaps worst of all, the authors make many points that I think are valid and supportable about the nature of thinking, but they provide no explicit support of their ideas in terms of available research. They rely too heavily on authority and intuitive plausibility in a field where what constitutes a solid principle is often very counter-intuitive.

I'm not saying the authors should have given us a book full of citations that no one is actually going to follow up just to impress people, I'm just saying that some of the most critical points could have been referenced in established empirical work here and there to give readers some grounding in psychological science that I think this topic needs and deserves in places.

As a result of these small gaps, I think many readers are probably going to see this book as simplistic and not very useful because they don't recognize that the authors are providing a very good high level map of a very big territory that takes a very long time and individual exploration to map in detail.

People complaining that this book doesn't offer details of logical fallacies or technical principles of reasoning are entirely right, but also somewhat missing the point of the book. Perhaps calling it "Critical Thinking" sets the expectations too specifically on the subset of skills that people associate with that topic. In my mind the authors are not really talking about "critical thinking" as most of us probably imagine it, that subset of thinking that involves examining arguments and questioning assumptions, they are talking about *reflective* thinking in general and what it takes to be good at it.

There are also people who complain because the authors disagree with them on specific topics or don't address arguments in the way they expect. I see a number of negative reviews complaining that the authors of this book did not seem to apply their own principles in the book. That's possible, but I feel as if they're looking at the proverbial finger pointing at the moon rather than seeing the beauty of the moon.

This book is pointing toward a big picture of how intellectual virtues and supporting attitudes optimally should guide thinking and the path to growth toward that ideal. Given that grand, perhaps even grandiose vision, it has some surprisingly detailed and specific ideas for improving our thinking in particular areas. So yes it perhaps does fail in some places in providing the richness of detail and explication that some of its arguments really deserve. And perhaps sometimes the authors themselves do fail to live up to the vision in their own presentation. Still, I think this book serves a useful and unique place among books on thinking because of the grandness of its vision and so I personally forgive it what I see as the minor issues that many others seem to have found so annoying that they couldn't even finish the book.

I think this book deserves and repays a deep reading and hard work but that it has to be distinguished from the typical course material on "critical thinking" both because its scope and vision are greater than that and because it lacks the immediate short term payback that people tend to expect from typical courses. This is a lifetime learning approach, not a course.