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.