Critical Thinking for Students: Learn the Skills of Analysing, Evaluating and Producing Arguments Updated Edition

Critical Thinking is a core skill needed to make all your studies more effective, no matter what subject you are studying.

They enable you to assess what’s been said or written by asking the right questions: ‘What does this mean?’ ‘What else could it mean?’ ‘What other evidence do I need?’ With your answers, you can suggest other explanations or scenarios: ‘Perhaps it’s this rather than that’. As a creative, enquiring thinker, you can then move on to produce well-argued material of your own.

This totally revised and updated book is a must if you want to find out how to develop your own arguments and evaluate other people’s. Specifically, you will need to look at others’ assumptions and their use of evidence. Learn too how to spot, and rectify, weaknesses of your own. An indispensable book, especially for students following the OCR AS-level course in Critical Thinking.

Contents: Preface to 4th Edition; 1. Giving Claims a Significance; 2. Explanations; 3. Inferences; 4. Assumptions; 5. More Building Up of Arguments; 6. Evaluation of Arguments: Looking at Evidence; 7. Evaluation of Arguments: Weaknesses in Reasoning; 8. Analogies, Hypotheses; Definations and Principles; 9. Credibility of Evidence; 10. Producing Arguments; Resources for further study; Additional information for the exercises; Index.