Thinking Socratically: Critical Thinking About Everyday Issues (2nd Edition)

This unique book is an exploration of critical thinking, rather than a text of informal logic. It emphasizes a philosophical reflection on real issues from everyday life, in order to teach readers the skills of critical thinking in a common-place context that is easy to understand and certain to be remembered. Critical thinking topics are assembled in readings taken from sources including newspapers, literature, magazines, and philosophy. These readings compliment the important concepts of critical thinking, and provide information on background knowledge, the web of belief, the limits of evidence, the nature of proof, and dogmatism and relativism. For critical thinkers who need something to think critically about, and are willing to see more than just two sides to every argument.

Thinking Socratically: Critical Thinking About Everyday Issues, Second Edition encourages students in a user-friendly way to improve their own natural reasoning skills. An enjoyable collection of readings presents students with real-life situations that raise questions about the basic assumptions of rationality, naturally engaging them in open dialogue—the hallmark of the rational person. The situations range from the problem of evidence at a trial to the absence of an explanation of why two children died in the same day-care center on the same day.

The text is distinctively different, both conceptually and pedagogically in its approach and critical thinking.

• Teaches critical thinking in contexts of ordinary life issues
• Shows how to be a critical thinker using Socrates as a model
• Emphasizes open rational dialogue, especially among friends, but even among enemies
• Is organized in short packets for ease of assignment and retention
• Includes puzzles of rationality as well as standard items

Second edition includes:

• Ten new readings
• Expanded coverage of deduction, including Venn diagrams
• More informal fallacies
• Fully integrated readings and text