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Table of Contents

*= new to this edition

Preface

PART ONE From Critical Thinking to Argument and Research
1   Critical Thinking  
Thinking about Thinking         
Thinking as a Citizen   
Obstacles to Critical Thinking             
An Essay on Types of Thinking (and Rethinking)      
*Adam Grant, A Preacher, a Prosecutor, a Politician, and a Scientist
Thinking through an Issue
Evaluating a Proposal
Survey, Analyze, and Evaluate the Issue
VISUAL GUIDE: EVALUATING A PROPOSAL
Anticipating Counterarguments
Critical Thinking at Work: From a Cluster to a Short Essay
Alexa Cabrera, Stirred and Strained: Pastafarians Should Be Allowed to Practice in Prison (student essay)
Generating Ideas: Writing as a Way of Thinking     
Confronting Unfamiliar Issues
Using Clustering to Discover Ideas
Approaching an Issue (or an Assignment)
Prompting Yourself: Classical Topics and Invention
An Essay for Generating Ideas
*Asao B. Inoue, Do Grades Help Students Learn in Classrooms?
THINKING CRITICALLY: Generating Ideas
Generating Ideas from Multiple Perspectives
A Checklist for Critical Thinking
A Short Essay Calling for Critical Thinking
*Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, The Inclusion Problem in Critical Thinking: The Case of Indian Philosophy

2   Critical Reading: Getting Started
Framing Arguments
Active Reading
Previewing
A Checklist for Previewing and Skimming
A Short Essay for Previewing Practice
Thinking Critically: Previewing
Charles R. Lawrence III, On Racist Speech
Reading With a Careful Eye: Underlining, Highlighting, Annotating
Reading Fast and Slow
Summarizing and Paraphrasing  
A Checklist for a Paraphrase  
Patchwriting and Plagiarism  
Strategies for Summarizing  
Critical Summary  
A Short Essay for Summarizing Practice   
VISUAL GUIDE: WRITING A CRITICAL SUMMARY  
Susan Jacoby, A First Amendment Junkie  
A Checklist for a Summary  
Essays for Analysis
Gwen Wilde, Why the Pledge of Allegiance Should Be Revised (student essay)  
*Sohrab Ahmari, Porn Isn’t Free Speech — on the Web or Anywhere     
 
*3   Understanding Rhetorical Appeals  
Argument and Persuasion  
Persuasive Appeals      
THINKING CRITICALLY: Identifying Ethos  
VISUAL GUIDE: EVALUATING PERSUASIVE APPEALS  
Seeing the Appeals in Real-World Events  
Unethical Uses of Rhetorical Appeals 
Are Such Appeals Always Unethical? 
Nonrational Appeals: Satire, Irony, Sarcasm  
Does All Communication Contain Arguments?
Arguments for Analysis
Afrika Afeni Mills, A Letter to White Teachers of My Children
Dodai Stewart, The Case for a National One-Week Vacation

*4       Identifying Procedures of Argument  
The Power and Perils of Reason
Rationalization 
Confirmation Bias        
Types of Reasoning  
Induction  
Deduction  
Premises and Syllogisms  
Testing Truth and Validity   
A Checklist for Evaluating a Syllogism
Thinking Critically: Inductive and Deductive Reasoning
Some Procedures in Argument  
Definitions  
Thinking Critically: Analyzing Definitions
Evidence   
THINKING CRITICALLY: Authoritative Testimony  
A Checklist For Evaluating Statistical Evidence  
Assumptions
A Checklist for Examining Assumptions    
An Essay for Examining Assumptions        
A Checklist For Examining Assumptions
An Example Argument and a Look at the Writer’s Strategies 
John Tierney, The Reign of Recycling  

5    Visual Rhetoric: Thinking about Images as Arguments  
Uses of Visual Images  
Seeing versus Looking
Reading Advertisements  
A Checklist for Analyzing Images
Detecting Emotional Appeals in Visual Culture     
Reading Photographs
Do Photographs Always Tell the Truth?
A Checklist for Inspecting Digital Photographs  
Are Some Images Not Fit to Be Shown?
A Checklist for Publishing Controversial Images  
Accommodating, Resisting, and Negotiating the Meaning of Images  
Writing about Political Cartoons and Memes  
THINKING CRITICALLY: Analyzing Memes and Political Cartoons  
An Example: A Student’s Essay Analyzing Images  
Ryan Kwon, The American Pipe Dream? (student essay)  
Visuals as Aids to Clarity: Maps, Graphs, and Pie Charts  
A Checklist for Charts And Graphs  
Using Visuals in Your Own Paper  

6   Writing an Analysis of an Argument  
Analyzing an Argument  
Examining the Author’s Thesis  
Examining the Author’s Purpose  
Examining the Author’s Methods  
Examining the Author’s Persona  
Examining the Author’s Audience  
A Checklist for Analyzing an Author’s Intended Audience  
Organizing Your Analysis  
VISUAL GUIDE: ORGANIZING YOUR ANALYSIS  
Summary versus Analysis  
A Checklist for Analyzing a Text  
An Argument, Its Elements, and a Student’s Analysis of the Argument  
Nicholas D. Kristof, For Environmental Balance, Pick Up a Rifle  
THINKING CRITICALLY: Examining Language to Analyze an Author’s Argument  
The Essay Analyzed   
Theresa Carcaldi, For Sound Argument, Drop the Jokes: How Kristof Falls Short in Convincing His Audience (student essay)  
An Analysis of the Student’s Analysis  
A Checklist for Writing an Analysis of an Argument  

7   Developing an Argument of Your Own  
Planning an Argument  
Getting Ideas: Argument as an Instrument of Inquiry  
Brainstorming Strategies   
Revision as Invention  
The Thesis or Main Point  
Raising the Stakes of Your Thesis    
A Checklist For A Thesis Statement  
THINKING CRITICALLY: “Walking the Tightrope”  
Imagining an Audience  
Addressing Opposition and Establishing Common Ground  
A Checklist for Imagining an Audience  
Drafting and Revising an Argument  
The Title  
The Opening Paragraphs  
Organizing the Body of the Essay  
VISUAL GUIDE: ORGANIZING YOUR ARGUMENT  
Checking Transitions 
THINKING CRITICALLY: Using Transitions in Argument  
The Ending
Uses of an Outline  
A Checklist for Organizing an Argument  
Tone and the Writer’s Persona  
THINKING CRITICALLY: Eliminating We, One, and I  
A Checklist for Establishing Tone and Persona 
Avoiding Sexist Language 
Peer Review  
A Checklist for Peer Review  
A Student’s Essay, from Rough Notes to Final Version  
Emily Andrews, Why I Don’t Spare “Spare Change” (student essay)  

8   Using Sources  
Why Use Sources?  
Entering a Discourse  
Understanding Information Literacy  
Choosing a Topic  
A Checklist for Approaching a Topic  
Finding Sources  
VISUAL GUIDE: FINDING DISCOURSE ON YOUR TOPIC  
Finding Quality Information Online  
Finding Articles Using Library Databases  
THINKING CRITICALLY: Using Search Terms  
Locating Books  
Evaluating Sources  
Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Sources  
Evaluating Online Sources  
A Checklist for Identifying Reliable Websites  
A Checklist for Identifying Fake News  
Considering How Current Sources Are  
A Checklist for Evaluating Sources  
Performing Your Own Primary Research  
Interviewing Peers and Local Authorities 
Conducting Observations  
Conducting Surveys  
Research in Archives and Special Collections  
Synthesizing Sources  
Taking Notes  
A Note on Plagiarizing  
A Checklist for Avoiding Plagiarism  
Compiling an Annotated Bibliography  
Quoting from Sources  
VISUAL GUIDE: INTEGRATING QUOTATIONS  
Thinking Critically: Using Signal Phrases  
Documentation  
A Note on Footnotes (and Endnotes)  
MLA Format: Citations within the Text  
MLA Format: The List of Works Cited  
An Annotated Student Research Paper in MLA Format  
Lesley Timmerman, An Argument for Corporate Responsibility (student essay)  
APA Format: Citations within the Text  
APA Format: The List of References    
An Annotated Student Research Paper in APA Format  
Hannah Smith Brooks, Does Ability Determine Expertise? (student essay)  

PART TWO  Further Views on Argument  
9   A Philosopher’s View: The Toulmin Model  
Understanding the Toulmin Model  
VISUAL GUIDE: THE TOULMIN METHOD  
Components of the Toulmin Model  
The Claim  
Grounds  
Warrants  
Backing  
Modal Qualifiers  
Rebuttals  
THINKING CRITICALLY: Constructing a Toulmin Argument  
Putting the Toulmin Method to Work: Responding to an Argument  
*Jonathan Safran Foer, Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast    
Thinking with the Toulmin Method  
A Checklist for Using the Toulmin Method  

10  A Logician’s View: Deduction, Induction, and Fallacies  
Using Formal Logic for Critical Thinking  
Deduction  
Visual Guide: Deduction and Induction
Examples of Deduction  
Induction  
Observation and Inference  
Probability  
Mill’s Methods  
Fallacies  
VISUAL GUIDE: COMMON FALLACIES         
Fallacies of Ambiguity  
Fallacies of Presumption  
Fallacies of Irrelevance  
A Checklist for Evaluating an Argument with Logic  
Additional Fallacies  
THINKING CRITICALLy: Identifying Fallacies  
Max Shulman, Love Is a Fallacy 

11 A Psychologist’s View: Rogerian Argument  
Rogerian Argument: An Introduction  
VISUAL GUIDE: ROGERIAN ARGUMENT  
A Checklist for Analyzing Rogerian Argument  
Carl R. Rogers, Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation  
*Lewis Oakley, Is It Time to Retire the Word “Privileged”?          

Appendix: Sentence Guides for Academic Writers
Index of Authors, Titles, and Terms

Authors

Sylvan Barnet

Sylvan Barnet was a professor of English and former director of writing at Tufts University. His several texts on writing and his numerous anthologies for introductory composition and literature courses have remained leaders in their field through many editions. His titles, with Hugo Bedau, include Current Issues and Enduring Questions; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing; and From Critical Thinking to Argument.

Hugo Bedau

Hugo Bedau was a professor of philosophy at Tufts University and served as chair of the philosophy department and chair of the university’s committee on College Writing. An internationally respected expert on the death penalty, and on moral, legal, and political philosophy, he wrote or edited a number of books on these topics. He co-authored, with Sylvan Barnet, of Current Issues and Enduring Questions; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing; and From Critical Thinking to Argument.

John O'Hara

John Fitzgerald O’Hara is an associate professor of Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing at Stockton University, where he is the coordinator of the first-year critical thinking program, and former Director of the Master of Arts in American Studies Program. He regularly teaches writing, critical thinking, and courses in American literature and history and is a nationally-recognized expert on the 1960s. He is the co-author of Current Issues and Enduring Questions; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing; and From Critical Thinking to Argument.

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