Wright L. Critical Thinking - An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning

2nd Edition, Improved and Enhanced. — New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. — VI, 410 p."Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning", Second Edition, provides a nontechnical vocabulary and analytic apparatus that guide students in identifying and articulating the central patterns found in reasoning and in expository writing more generally. Understanding these patterns of reasoning helps students to better analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments and to more easily comprehend the full range of everyday arguments found in ordinary journalism.Critical Thinking, Second Edition, distinguishes itself from other texts in the field by emphasizing analytical reading as an essential skill. It also provides detailed coverage of argument analysis, diagnostic arguments, diagnostic patterns, and fallacies.Opening with two chapters on analytical reading that help students recognize what makes reasoning explicitly different from other expository activities, the text then presents an interrogative model of argument to guide them in the analysis and evaluation of reasoning. This model allows a detailed articulation of "inference to the best explanation" and gives students a view of the pervasiveness of this form of reasoning. The author demonstrates how many common argument types--from correlations to sampling--can be analyzed using this articulated form. He then extends the model to deal with several predictive and normative arguments and to display the value of the fallacy vocabulary.Ideal for introductory courses in critical thinking, critical reasoning, informal logic, and inductive reasoning, Critical Thinking, Second Edition, features hundreds of exercises throughout and includes worked-out solutions and additional exercises (without solutions) at the end of each chapter."This is the best critical-thinking book on the market. Its strengths are its originality, thoughtfulness, attention to scholarship in informal logic/critical thinking, focus on the importance of critical-reading skills, and practical application to the kinds of reasoning we do every day through a remarkably careful discussion of inference to the best explanation.""I have seen students understand what they are reading and evaluate arguments in a meaningful way in classes where this text is being used. This in itself motivates me to use it.""Critical Thinking constitutes a unified approach to a whole trajectory of intellectual development; that is, it can take someone from 'able to read' all the way to 'able to think analytically and creatively about reasoning.'""This book will guide your attention to the words on the pages like no other I have seen. The guides to paraphrasing and thought processes, and analysis is challenging. Get out your dictionary!""Wonderful book to learn how to analyze written exposition and argument. Does wonders for aspiring writers and serious students of all sorts of argument-related areas (law, philosophy, history, you name it). Get this book if you want to take your analytical skills to the next level."Best Sellers Rank: #133 in Philosophy of Logic & Language
#206 in Philosophy History & Survey
#329 in Consciousness & Thought PhilosophyParaphrasing
The Bare-Bones Paraphrase
Reading for Structure: Dependency and Subordination
Reading for Reasoning: Paraphrasing ArgumentsAnalyzing Reasoning
Argument Analysis: Answering Questions
Diagnostic Arguments: Reasoning by Explaining
Diagnostic Patterns
Further Applications: Prediction and Recommendation
FallaciesAppendix - DeductionGlossary of Important Terms