critical-thinkers

[Stan Borgenicht]

I dont know if anyone asked this already, can you recommend me some good critical thinking books?

Thanks!!!

 

[FriendlyHacker]

Depends what you mean by critical thinking.

[Stan Borgenicht]

      By critical thinking I mean tool by which one can come about reasoned conclusions based on a reasoned process.

Im looking at big selection of critical thinking books and, there is so many of them that, I dont know where to begin.

[PatrickC]

Here's an interesting read for you, 'Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking'

 

Otherwise Peter Beghossians latest book, 'A Manual for Creating Atheists'. Which uses critical thinking quite well. Actually, I'd say any of Peter's stuff relating to critical thinking is perhaps some of the best frankly.

[Stan Borgenicht]

Thank you very much xelent!

 

If enybody else have some suggestion, feel free to write it.

Im very hungy for it

[LovePrevails]

Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp

[Wesley]

I find the best way to learn critical thinking is to interact with people who are good critical thinkers. I know that's not exactly your question, but I thought I would add it anyway.

[Pepin]

Not a book, but here is a great video resource. Perhaps it is my personality, but critical thinking comes pretty naturally for me, though putting words to it all is the trickiest part. In a real world context, spotting fallacies and errors is much more difficult because sophists are very good creating a tangled web. Worse, they throw as many fallacies as they can at you so that responding to it is not only annoying, but a waste of time because their response will not address anything you pointed out, and will again contain as many fallacies as they can. What you'll discover is that there are many subtle variations of the same fallacy and most important: when an argument is not a fallacy.

 

The greatest example of this is the ad homeniem where instead of attacking the argument, the personal character is attacked. So many people think that the ad homeniem is always a fallacy, yet it is often valid, particularly in cases where the argument presented can be discredited by the person's character. For instance: if a man is called onto the stand and makes an argument as to why he is not guilty, if this man's character is stained with the propensity to lie, then not responding to the argument and attacking the man's character is completely valid.

 

An example Stefan gives a lot is that is an extremely obese person is selling a weight loss plan, you are completely in the right for disregarding the weight loss plan and pointing out that the person's weight. Many people respond to this argument saying that "you can't do that because you're not addressing the argument the person is making, they may be right regardless of their weight", to which you would respond: "if the person knows that they are overweight, claims that being at a healthy weight is better than being overweight, claims that they have a solution to being at a healthy weight, yet are still overweight, then how can they be taken seriously?". In a similar manner, all these politicians that are climate change activists while supporting war simply have no credibility.

[Stan Borgenicht]

You guys touched me : ) thank you very much! 

[Naer]

any free ebooks?

[FriendlyHacker]

Carl Sagan - Demon haunted world

[Josh F]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

 

all the basic rules of logic you need, critical thinking is just using these simple fallacies to determine if something is true or not.  Some are pretty obscure, but there are a few which are essential to understanding if someone is making a rational argument or not.

[marko]

Maybe try The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli. You can even download an audio version of the book from TPB, but do buy it if you read it all the way through!