INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING

1. INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING

2. CRITICAL THINKING • Definitions • History of Critical Thinking (CT) • Universal Standards • Fallacies

3. DEFINITIONS • Critical Listening:Listening to maximize the accurate understanding of what others say.

4. DEFINITIONS • Critical Reading:An active, intellectually engaged process of reading, interpreting and understanding text.

5. DEFINITIONS • Critical Writing:Arranging our ideas in a logical order to express ourselves in a disciplined manner.

6. DEFINITIONS • Critical Thinking:The art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better.

7. HISTORY • The Beginning: Socrates • Early Years: Plato, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers • Middle Ages: Francis Bacon • Today: Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Harry Houdini and Carl Sagan

8. LOGIC RELEVANCE ACCURACY CLARITY UNIVERSAL STANDARDS Does this really make sense? How does itaffect the issue? How can wecheck that out? Give mean example.

9. FALLACIES • What is it? An argument that appears sound, at first glance, but contains a flaw in reasoning which makes it unsound.

10. FALLACIES • Burden of Proof (a.k.a. Appeal to Ignorance) • Two Wrongs Make a Right

11. FALLACIES • Hasty Generalization • Post Hoc Reasoning

12. FALLACIES • Band Wagon (a.k.a. peer pressure) • Guilt by Association

13. CRITICAL THINKING • Definitions • History of Critical Thinking (CT) • Universal Standards • Fallacies