Reasoning and Writing: An Introduction to Critical Thinking.

377 Pages·2012·8.09 MB·English

DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 361 708
CS 214 002
AUTHOR
Hatcher, Donald L.; And Others
TITLE
Reasoning and Writing: An Introduction to Critical
Thinking.
SPONS AGENCY
Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education
(EE), Washington, DC.
PUB DATE
90
CONTRACT
P-116B-80985-88; P-116B-91238
NOTE
376p.
PUB TYPE
Guides - Classroom Use
Teaching Guides (For
Teacher) (052)
Reports - Descriptive (141)
EDRS PRICE
MF01/PC16 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS
Class Activities; *Critical Thinking; Higher
Education; *Logical Thinking; Program Descriptions;
Textbook Preparation; *Thinking Skills; Writing
(Composition); Writing Assignments; Writir.g
Instruction
IDENTIFIERS
Baker University KS
ABSTRACT
Combining instruction in critical thinking and
expository writing with the study of classic texts, this
textbook was
developed at Baker University (Kansas) and is designed for
use in a
two-semester college course that fosters careful thinking and
good
reasoning in students. The textbook emphasizes the
pedagogical
principle that critical thinking and writing
can best be understood,
at least for beginners, as formal
processes with clear strategies for
success, and that some knowledge of formal logic is required to
understand better the patterns of good reasoning. Chapters in
the
book are:
(1) Introduction: Why Critical Thinking?; (2)
What Is
Critical Thinking?; (3) Understanding What You Read;
(4) Evaluating
Arguments: Deductive Reasoning and Logical Form;
(5) Inductive Logic;
(6) Informal Fallacies; and (7) Reasoning
and Writing. Appendixes
presents a glossary of grammar terms and
a sample paper: additional
appendixes discuss standards for written
prose; correcting faulty
grammar; documentation techniques; critical thinking and literary
criticism; critical thinking and values; and predicate
logic. An
attachment describes the initial project from which the textbook
was
developed and presents a course description and list of
readings.
(RS)
***********************************************************************
Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that
can be made
from the original document.
***********************************************************************
REASONING AND WRITING:
AN INTRODUCTION
TO
CRITICAL THINKING
BAKER
U.S. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION
Office of Educational Resesich and Improvement
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION
CENTER (ERIC)
AZdocument has been reproduced an
UNIVERSITY
eived from the person or organdahon
ornating
0 Minor changes have been made to improve
reproduchon Quality
Pnts of view or opinions stated in this dcc., .
ment do not necessarily represent official
OERI position or policy
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
Developed Collaboratively
by
Donald L. Hatcher, Project Director
E Dean Bevan
J. Preston Farnbrough
Karen Horvath
Virginia L Jones
Robert C. Kahle
Earl D. Kirk
Lucy J. Price
L Anne Spencer
George B. Wiley
Jane Woodruff
Funds necessary to research and write this text were provided by two grants from the U.S. Department
of
Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education. We are especially indebted
to David
Arnold, our FIPSE Program Officer, for his support and encouragement. We are also grateful for the
helpful comments of Ed Damer, Ralph Johnson, Connie Missimer, Steve Norris, Jerry Nosich, and Harvey
Siegel. Each acted as a consultant for the project and made invaluable suggestions for organizing the
text.
Much instructive criticism was also provided by Baker faculty, representing
a variety of disciplines, who
volunteered to work through the text. These faculty members include Mike Barbush, Rick Botkin, Steve
Brooks, Lowell Gish, Jean Johnson, Roger Kugler, Bob Miller, Merrie Skaggs, Mike Valk, and Thom
Ward. Special thanks must be given to Georgeann Haynes, Libby Snider, and Teri Wollin without
whom
the many drafts of this text would never have been completed. We especially appreciate the
support of the
Baker University Administration throughout the pilot stage of this project.
Baker University
Center for Critical Thinking
Baldwin City, Kansas 66006
Copyright 1990
Final Taw Preparasion:
Donald L Mather, Virginia Jona, and Ead Kit*
Dominate Layout Daionsid by L Anew Spence
3
lairrTABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Introduction: Why Critical Thinking?
1
Introduction
1.1
1
1.2 Critical Thinking and the Western Tradition
1.3 The Value of Critical Thinking
5
1.4 Critical Thinking and Logic
12
1.5 Critical Thinking Ind Writing
14
1.6 Conclusion
17
Exercise 1.6
19
Endnotes for Chapter One
20
Reading: Plato, "Allegory of the Cave"
23
Chapter Two
What Is Critical Thinking9
33
2.1 The Nature of Critical Thinking
33
2.2 Some General Principles for Critical Discussion
36
Exercise 2.2
40
2.3 What Critical Thinking Is Not
41
Exercise 2.3
45
2.4 A Profile of a Critical Thinker
46
Exercise 2.4
53
2.5 Hindrances to Critical Thinking
54
Exercise 2.5
60
2.6 Summary and Conclusion
61
Exercise 2.6
62
Endnotes for Chapter Two
65
Chapter Three
Understanding What You Read
67
3.1 The Uses of Language
67
Exercise 3.1
71
3.2 Summarizing
72
Exercise 3.2
76
33 Opinions and Arguments
88
Exercise 3.3
93
3.4 Enthymemes
95
Exercise 3.4
97
Glossary for Chapter Three
98
Endnotes for Chapter Three
99
Chapter Four
Evaluating Arguments: Deductive Reasoning and Logical Form
101
4.1 Introduction
101
4.2 Identifying Logical Form
104
Exercise 4.2
109
4.3 Logical Connectives and Truth-functional Connectives
110
Exercise 4.3
119
4.4 How to Determine Validity
121
Exercise 4.4
125
4.5 More on Symbolizing Arguments
127
Exercise 4.5
130
4.6 Implications for Critical Thinkers
131
Glossary for Chapter Four
133
Reading: James Madison, "Federalist Paper #10"
135
Chapter Five
//Inductive Logic
143
5.1 Introduction and Review
143
5.2 On Methods of Induction
146
53 The Logic of Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
155
5.4 The Logic of Correlations
157
5.5 Analogical Arguments
157
5.6 Conclusion
159
Exercise 5.6
161
Endnotes for Chapter Five
163
Reading: Francis Bacon, "The Four Idols"
165
Chapter Six
Informal Fallacies
177
Exercise 6.1
186
Exercise 6.2
188
Chapter Seven
Reasoning and Writing
189
7.1 Expository Writing
189
7.2 What is a Thesis?
189
Exercise 7.2
193
7.3 Using Reasoning Strategies to Construct a Thesis
194
Exercise 73
199
7.4 Using Reasoning Strategies to Critique a Position
200
7.5 Hints on How to Write a Critical Paper
203
Conclusion
205
Readings: Thomas Aquinas, "Five Proofs for the Existence of God"
211
Bertrand Russell, "Why I am not a Christian"
219
Plato, "Apology"
237
Plato, "Crito"
261
Page ii
5
Appendix A
Standards for Written Prose
777
Appendix B
Correcting Faulty Grammar
Appendix C
Glossary of Grammar Terms
797
Appendix D
Documentation Techniques
309
Appendix E
Critical Thinking and Literary Criticism
313
Appendix F
Critical Thinking and Values
315
A.1 Importance of Values
315
A.2 Values in General
316
A3 What is Human Happiness9
318
A.4 Evaluating Things and Institutions
320
A.5 Ethical Values
322
A.6 Intellectual Obligations
329
A.7 Conclusion
330
Exercise
331
Endnotes for Appendix E
332
Appendix G
Predicate Logic
333
A.1 Symbolizing Sentences
333
Exercise Al
335
A2 The Universal Quantifier
336
Exercise A.2
338
A.3 The Existential Quantifier
339
Exercise A.3
340
A.4 Proving Validity with Quantifiers
341
Exercise A.4
344
Appendix H
Sample Paper
345
11111111111111P
0
Page iii
Chapter One
Introduction
Why Critical Thinking?
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as
a great
thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it
may lead. Truth gains more even by the error of one who, with due
study and preparation, thinks for himself than by the opinions of those
who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
J. S. Mill, On
Liberty
Introduction
1.1
This is a book about reasoning and writing.
It is based on the assumption that
through the course of our college education we should
come to understand and
appreciate the nature of clear thinking and reasoned argument. Without
such an
understanding, it is impossible to evaluate honestly the worth of the alternative
claims.
human values, and ways of life that are often presented in various
courses and texts.
Evaluating alternative positions means understanding the claims and weighing
the
strength of the reasons given in their support. The ability
to conduct such an
evaluation is part of what it means to be a critical thinker.
To this end, we need to understand the
nature of careful thinking and good
reasoning. Just as importantly, however, we must also develop
a habit of mind that
inclines us to be critical in any area of life where deliberation, choice, and
action are
appropriate. As critical persons, we should be inclined
to discriminate between bcliefs
and values for which there are good reasons and those for which the
reasons are not
so strong. We should accept the former while remaining skeptical of the latter.
In
Page 1
Reasoning and Writing
other words, to use a metaphor common-in education, students who are critical
thinkers become "filters" who selectively allow only the more carefully considered
beliefs and values to guide their lives. Critical thinkers refuse to be "sponges" who
indiscriminately soak up whatever belief, value, or bit of information comes their
way.
Given such educational goals, certain important questions arise: What skills,
dispositions, and knowledge do critical thinkers need? What forces
prevent humans
from developing their critical faculties? How are critical thinking and the reading of
primary texts related? What is the relationship between learning to think critically and
becoming a good writer? These questions and others will be explored in the following
chapters.
imum.1.2
Critical Thinldng and the Western Tradition
Our approach combines instruction in critical thinking and expository writing with
the study of classic texts. How do these three areas of study fit together? In 1983,
after the College Board had conducted an extensive study of the skills college-bound
of
freshmen needed, board president George Hanford suggested that, beyond the skills
reading, writing, and arithmetic, it was imperative to teach *the Fourth R" (reasoning)
throughout high school. Hanford stated that reading and writing
were of little use if
one could not evaluate critically what one read or wrote. He claimed that, for the
sake of developing students' rational and critical abilities, teachers should be willing
to
sacrifice some course content and devote time to teaching the strategies for critical
evaluation. He urged teachers to design assignments
so that students were asked to
use these skills.'
A few years after Hanford made this plea for teaching "the Fourth R," other
critics of education began to lament the fact that American education
was ignoring the
intellectual foundations necessary for our students to understand
our culture, its
values, and its problems. In 1987 Allan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the
American Mind, presented a bleak view of contemporary university education. In
his
Page 2
Chapter One: Why Critical Thinking?
view, the foundations of our culture had been destroyed through neglect. and what
was called education had become a hodgepodge of requirements from disparate
disciplines with no unified vision or theme. He was concerned because modern
students were not required to read any of the classic texts of the Western tradition.
works which contained a wealth of competing positions and arguments. Bloom
maintained that if students had no knowledge of the arguments for alternative points
of view, they were no longer in a position to pass enlightened judgment on the wide
variety of competing positions, values, and institutions presented in our contemporary.
pluralistic society.
Bloom's book became a surprise best-seller. However, much of the university
community was predictably not very enthusiastic. It was..after all, the members of that
community who were being criticized for watering down education and for not
developing students' critical abilities, i.e., for "closing the American mind." When
Bloom claimed that students should study specific primary texts, most reviewers
seemed to think that he was proposing an elitist education.2 These critics assumed
that many of today's college students were incapable of understanding the works
studied by our nation's founding fathers, who used them as guides to their
own
thinking when they framed the U.S. Constitution. These critics held that to require all
students to study these works would be "elitist education."
Such criticism seems unduly negative.
It implies an irreversible degradation of
student abilities.
It implies that anything that is required in a college education should
be something that evety student can easily mastei. Such a position is egalitarianism
at
its worst: the best-prepared students remain unchallenged while the worst-prepared
develop a false sense of superiority.
The texts for this course sequence are not unchallenging. They are chosen with
the assumption that all students can learn to read, understand, and evaluate texts that
have been and continue to be important in our culture's continuing development.
These texts include writings by Plato, Aquinas, Bacon. and Madison. to
name only a
few.
Page 3
Reasoning and Writing
Another criticism of Bloom's book was that his prescribed readings from
the
Western tradition tended to be reductionist and ethnocentric. Many
of the works
were written by white males of the Western culture and hence tend to reflect the
values of that culture. Nonetheless. Bloom may have missed
a golden opportunity to
explain why the ideas expressed in these favored works
were important not only for
our culture's traditions but also for the development of any educated mind. The
sex
and race of an author may affect the author's ideas, but whether the
ideas are worthy
of study has nothing to do with their source. To reject
an idea because of its source is
to commit a logical fallacy. What one finds in the works of thinkers like
Homer,
Sophocles, Plato, and Shakespeare are important and thought-provoking
ideas. One
also finds arguments that support the ideas and critique alternatives.
Both the ideas
and the arguments call for an evaluation by the reader. The critical
reader soon imds
that the truth of claims about important ideas is not self-evident,
but is always
controversial The works invite us to analyze and evaluate claims
rather than to
accept them without thought. The value of studying
many of the "great works" of the
Western culture is that one soon finds that any idea, value,
institution, scientific
theory, or educational practice that is proposed
as a candidate for "the truth" at the
same time asks for critical scrutiny. Most of the great works of the Western
tradition
are unified in their rejection of dogmatism and uncritical acceptance of authoritarian
ideas. The Western tradition is one that endorses the value
of critical thought and
those other values nezessary to engage in
open diswssion and honest criticism. To
make a claim is at the same time to invite criticism.
If indeed this is what studying some of the important
works of Western culture
involves, then the study of such texts and the study of the
methods of critical thinking
form a marriage of naturally complementary subject
matter. Critical thinking and
primary texts belong together. Primary texts,
as do many great works of art, both
convey important ideas and invite the reader to think critically about those ideas.
Often the texts are themselves examples of the
process of critical thought, e.g., Plato's
dialogues, scenes from great plays or novels,
or philosophical essays. However, if one
studies only the texts without instruction in how
to evaluate critically the variety of
competing claims presented in the texts, one
may have the feeling of encountering a
Page 4
1 0