Critical Thinking

by Richard L. Epstein, Michael Rooney, Alex Raffi (Illustrator)

This fifth edition of Critical Thinking by the noted logician Richard L. Epstein is practical, engaging, and easy to teach. Students enjoy and understand it because it is clear and has hundreds of examples using a cast of characters who reason as we do every day. More than 1,000 exercises lead students to be able to reason well in their courses and their lives. Essay writing lessons and visual writing lessons, using the cast of characters, teach students that first comes clear thinking and then comes clear writing. A complete and comprehensive Instructor's Manual makes the text easy to teach and grade. New to this edition: chapters on explanations and reasoning in the sciences.
Also from the Advanced Reasoning Forum: An Introduction to Formal Logic and The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking.

Genres: Philosophy

524 pages, Paperback

First published July 20, 1998

Reviews

[Crim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was disappointed early on, then skimmed through a later chapter, and gave up. While logic is not dependent on the content of the premises, this is not a book about reasoning itself; it is about critical thinking in, I presume, daily life, so it really undermines itself when it uses examples that ring false, that go against psychologically adaptative cognitive processes. To make its point, it ignores adult emotional intelligence, and in that it reads like the creepy opposite of books that, for better or for worse, talk about all that shit we should do to better understand and interact with other people. I think critical thinking is essential and often overlooked in education, but this is not how to teach it. The book reads like it was written by aliens, and not in a good, objective perspective way.

[Abdul]

A must read if you don't want mumbo-jumbo ruling your thinking

[Cleo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is probably the worst textbook I have ever read. Initially, I assumed I was the only person who was having issues with it. However, throughout the course (on critical thinking), it became clear that almost the entire class was struggling to understand the concepts in this book. When students began sharing other resources that explained the same subject matter, it was so much easier to digest and process! This book is terrible for teaching this type of critical thinking. Terribly frustrating!

[Alex Raffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the cartoons!