Hard Thinking: The Reintroduction of Logic to Everyday Life

Too many college students lack the power to reason and argue effectively. Hard Thinking allows students to rebuild their confidence in the possibility of objective reasoning, by challenging contemporary cliches about the limits of objectivity and the relativity of value judgements. An entertaining, clearly written text for courses in logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, and English composition, Hard Thinking presents dialogues that reproduce commonly used 'argument stoppers' (Who are you to think that you know the truth? Isn't it all relative? Isn't it all subjective?), and subjects them to scrutiny. The text teaches students how to avoid the pitfalls of 'soft' or sloppy thinking, enabling them to be better readers, better arguers, and more critical consumers of quantitative data.

John D. Mullen is professor of philosophy at Dowling College in Oakdale, New York. He is the co-author, with Byron Roth, of Decision Making: Its Logic and Practice (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992).