Arguments in Context

Abstract

This is what is commonly called a “Critical Thinking” textbook, and is intended to be used as a resource in a semester-long course. The goal of this text is to help students reflectively enhance their general reasoning skills. Before unpacking this goal, it is important to say something about how a course in Critical Thinking differs from the many courses students have already taken on the subject of reasoning. Our society takes the reasoning skills of its citizens very seriously, and we expend vast resources teaching our children the quantitative reasoning skills that we generically refer to as ‘math’. In kindergarten (if not before) we start with basic arithmetic, and over at least the next decade of their lives we move on to teach children fractions, ratios, exponents, algebra, geometry, and so forth. What unifies these subjects is that they are largely focused on methods for determining precise numerical values (albeit in different contexts and/or situations). Society’s commitment to learning these skills makes perfect sense: knowing how to manipulate and determine numerical values is crucial in the modern world, and most people wouldn’t learn these skills without instruction.