Critical Thinking: An Introduction To The Basic Skills Book

William Hughes's Critical Thinking, recently revised and updated by Jonathan Lavery, is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the essential skills required to make strong arguments. Hughes and Lavery give a thorough treatment of such traditional topics as deductive and inductive reasoning, logical fallacies and how to spot them, the importance of inference, how to recognise and avoid ambiguity, and how to assess what is or is not relevant to an argument. But they also cover a variety of topics not always treated in books of this sort--special concerns to keep in mind when reasoning about ethical matters, and how the nature of a language can affect the structure of an argument. The book gives a lucid treatment of the differences between descriptive and evaluative meaning: one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. Last but not least, Critical Thinking includes a selection of logical paradoxes and puzzles that are as entertaining as they are enlightening.Read More