Synopses & Reviews
Thinking Socratically: Critical Thinking About Everyday Issues, Second Edition encourages students in a user-friendly way to improve their own natural reasoning skills. An enjoyable collection of readings presents students with real-life situations that raise questions about the basic assumptions of rationality, naturally engaging them in open dialoguethe hallmark of the rational person. The situations range from the problem of evidence at a trial to the absence of an explanation of why two children died in the same day-care center on the same day.
The text is distinctively different, both conceptually and pedagogically in its approach and critical thinking.
- Teaches critical thinking in contexts of ordinary life issues
- Shows how to be a critical thinker using Socrates as a model
- Emphasizes open rational dialogue, especially among friends, but even among enemies
- Is organized in short packets for ease of assignment and retention
- Includes puzzles of rationality as well as standard items
Second edition includes:
- Ten new readings
- Expanded coverage of deduction, including Venn diagrams
- More informal fallacies
- Fully integrated readings and text
Synopsis
Thinking Socratically: Critical Thinking About Everyday Issues, Second Edition encourages students in a user-friendly way to improve their own natural reasoning skills. An enjoyable collection of readings presents students with real-life situations that raise questions about the basic assumptions of rationality, naturally engaging them in open dialoguethe hallmark of the rational person. The situations range from the problem of evidence at a trial to the absence of an explanation of why two children died in the same day-care center on the same day.
The text is distinctively different, both conceptually and pedagogically in its approach and critical thinking.
- Teaches critical thinking in contexts of ordinary life issues
- Shows how to be a critical thinker using Socrates as a model
- Emphasizes open rational dialogue, especially among friends, but even among enemies
- Is organized in short packets for ease of assignment and retention
- Includes puzzles of rationality as well as standard items
Second edition includes:
- Ten new readings
- Expanded coverage of deduction, including Venn diagrams
- More informal fallacies
- Fully integrated readings and text
Synopsis
This unique book is an exploration of critical thinking, rather than a text of informal logic. It emphasizes a philosophical reflection on real issues from everyday life, in order to teach readers the skills of critical thinking in a common-place context that is easy to understand and certain to be remembered. Critical thinking topics are assembled in readings taken from sources including newspapers, literature, magazines, and philosophy. These readings compliment the important concepts of critical thinking, and provide information on background knowledge, the web of belief, the limits of evidence, the nature of proof, and dogmatism and relativism. For critical thinkers who need something to think critically about, and are willing to see more than just two sides to every argument.
Table of Contents
I. CONNECTIONS. 1. Why Be Rational?
READINGS: Plato, Euthyphro. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Why the Geese Shrieked. Alan Riding, The Shaman and the Dying Scientist: A Brazilian Tale. 2. Language.
READINGS: Lewis Thomas, The Corner of the Eye. Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies. Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans. 3. Knowledge and Certainty.
READINGS: René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. Michael Dobbs, Double Identity. 4. Arguments and Explanations.
READINGS: Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron: Michele Scalza, The Decameron: Melchizedek. Linda Herskowitz, The Day-Care Deaths: A Mystery.
II. DEDUCTIVE REASONING. 5. Deductive Links.
READINGS: Thurgood Marshall, Dissenting Opinion in Gregg v. Georgia. 6. Deductive Standards.
READINGS: Norman Malcolm, Anselm's Ontological Argument.
III. INDUCTIVE REASONING. 7. Supporting Our Claims.
READINGS: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier. Mike Mallowe, Murder on the Main Line. Emilie Lounsberry and Henry Goldman, The Jury: Convinced or Confused? Emilie Lounsberry, Bradfield, on Stand, Denies Any Role. Henry Goldman, Bradfield and Women. David W. Belin, The Warren Commission: Why We Still Don't Believe It. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Conclusion to “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier”. 8. Standards of Inductive Reasoning.
READINGS: Cynthia Clendenon, Doctors as Detectives. The Literary Digest Predicts Victory by Landon, 1936. Mark K. Anderson, Thy Countenance Shakes Spears. Denise Grady, So Smoking Causes Cancer: This Is News? Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy. 9. Fallacies.
Russell Baker, Lost Genius. Max Shulman, Love Is a Fallacy. The Sleaze Merchants Attack, (an editorial). 10. Scientific Reasoning.
READINGS: Morris Kline, The Heliocentric Theory of Copernicus and Kepler. 11. Pseudoscience.
READINGS: Martin Gardner, Fliess, Freud, and Biorhythm.
IV. REASONING ABOUT VALUES. 12. The Nature of Morality.
READINGS: Feodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. 13. Reasoning About Good and Bad.
READINGS: Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism. 14. Moral Dialogue.
READINGS: Plato, Euthyphro (excerpt). 15. Reason and Commitment.
READINGS: Jane Smiley, Keynote Speech May 18 at Simpson College's 1996 Commencement. Index.