Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I: Getting Started with Critical Thinking Skills 7

Chapter 1: Entering the Exciting World of Critical Thinking 9

Chapter 2: Peering into the Mind: How People Think 21

Chapter 3: Planting Ideas in Your Head: The Sociology of Thinking 41

Chapter 4: Assessing Your Thinking Skills 65

Part II: Developing Your Critical Thinking Skills 91

Chapter 5: Critical Thinking Is Like Solving Puzzles: Reasoning by Analogy 93

Chapter 6: Thinking in Circles: The Power of Recursion 113

Chapter 7: Drawing on Graphical (and Other) Tools for Thinking 133

Chapter 8: Constructing Knowledge: Information Hierarchies 159

Part III: Applying Critical Thinking in Practice 175

Chapter 9: Getting to the Heart of the (Reading) Matter 177

Chapter 10: Cultivating Your Critical Writing Skills 199

Chapter 11: Speaking and Listening Critically: Effective Learning 217

Part IV: Reason and Argument 235

Chapter 12: Unlocking the Logic of Real Arguments 237

Chapter 13: Behaving Like a Rational Animal 259

Chapter 14: Using Words to Persuade: The Art of Rhetoric 275

Chapter 15: Presenting Evidence and Justifying Opinions 293

Part V: The Part of Tens 317

Chapter 16: Ten Logical Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them 319

Chapter 17: Ten Arguments that Changed the World 327

Index 339

About the Author

Martin Cohen is a philosopher, editor and reviewer. His first book, 101 Philosophy Problems, has been published in a dozen languages and is now in its fourth edition.