Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies

Part IV

Reason and Argument

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In this part . . .

• Discover that logic is at the heart of Critical Thinking but also the less well-known fact that the kind of logic that Critical Thinkers do is firmly rooted in language skills and an appreciation of the general context of debate.
• Learn how to separate facts from values, because Critical Thinking requires a much broader range of skills than any introductory logic class ever will, and this part will put you on the right track to develop those skills.
• Get a solid grounding in informal logic and the all-important principle of logical implication.
• Bring yourself up to speed on Aristotle and those fallacies that everyone else is worrying about.
• Understand that most of the things you hear people saying, or even that you read, are not arguments in any sense. They're things like descriptions, exclamations, or instructions, with scarcely the whiff of a logical argument, but instead more powerful appeals to your hopes, your fears and your emotions.