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46 INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
I. Introduction
I have argued elsewhere that the market for critical thinking
textbooks is not only glutted, but that it is filled with poor
products that are not informed by relevant scholarly literature and
that fail to meet some important, though not exhaustive, criteria
that make for a good critical thinking textbook (Hamby, 2013,
forthcoming):
Many textbooks, for instance, do not have a plausible,
theoretically elucidated conception of critical thinking that
stands behind their textbook treatment (Johnson, 1996). Nor do many
textbooks recognize the central role of critical thinking
dispositions, though in general terms this is a near-unanimous
point of agreement among critical thinking theorists (Facione,
1990). Nor do they reflect a nuanced approach to the teaching of
fallacies beyond an adversarial and taxonomic label-ing approach
(Hundleby, 2010). Nor do they reveal an awareness of the problem of
characterizing argu-ment according to the deductive-inductive
distinction (Blair, 2006). Nor do they stress dialectic, dialogue,
or argument revision (ibid.). Nor do they focus on the analysis and
evaluation of real arguments that have been or could plausibly be
used in practice (Hamby, 2012). Furthermore, textbooks commonly
equate reasoning and argument analysis with critical think-ing, but
this is a common assumption that has been discredited (Govier,
1989).
Thankfully, Facione and Gittens THINK Critically, 2nd edition,
is a textbook that in general avoids these mis-takes that many of
its competitors make, and, though not without some aspects of the
book that I find problematic, I recommend it for any course that
explicitly is billed as an introduction to critical thinking.
In this review I will discuss the format and organiza-tion of
the textbook, and then summarize its chapters, fo-cusing on a few
in particular. I will explain why I think this textbook satisfies
criteria that any quality critical thinking textbook should meet,
but that many other textbooks fail to live up to. Throughout, I
will be offering a few points of critique, but my review of Facione
and Gittens treatment of critical thinking will conclude by
summarizing some
aspects that especially recommend it for adoption.
II. Format, Organization, Special Features, and Exercises
Unlike many textbooks, regardless of the subject, THINK
Critically is visually attractive, formatted like a magazine, with
a soft cover and glossy, colorful pages, interspersed with
photographs throughout with thoughtful captions beneath them that
relate to the textbook material. The text is written in an easy,
conversational tone, with plausible narrative vignettes often
setting up and exempli-fying chapter content. Section and
sub-section headings guide the reader through each chapter in a
helpful way, providing a kind of road map for the content.
Illustrative quotations, Thinking critically text-boxes, and other
relevant supplementary readings (what the authors call special
features) are strategically placed to provide the reader with
eye-catching and informative additions to the principal content of
the reading.
For example, on p. 21 the authors include a two-thirds page
rendering of a document produced by Measured Reasons LLC, the
critical thinking company that Peter and his wife Noreen Facione
spearhead. Measured Rea-sons is associated with the critical
thinking measurement company, Insight Assessment, with which the
Faciones are also intimately involved (see www.measuredreasons.com
and www.insightassessment.com). The document on p. 21 is the
Critical Thinking Disposition Self-Rating Form. It is a series of
20 questions that the reader can ask herself regarding her own
disposition to think critically. According to the authors, it
offers a rough approxima-tion of the tendency a person has to think
critically. As another example, on pp.140-41 the authors include a
list of questions meant to test the readers command of argument
evaluation (more on argument evaluation below). These questions are
arguments that are somewhat complicated, having more than three
premises, and almost all are the sorts of arguments that could
plausibly be used by someone in a real-life context of deciding
what to believe or do. As a final example, on p. 224 the authors
offer an exercise that tests argument interpretation and mapping
(more on argument mapping below), in the context of the decision of
then-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger to deny death-row
inmate Stanley Tookie Williams clem-ency. Happily, all these
special features are accessed easily
Review of THINK Criticallyby Peter Facione and Carol Ann
Gittens
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2nd Edition, 2013, 338
pagesISBN 13:978-0-205-49098-1
Benjamin Hamby
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47Spring 2013, VOL. 28, nO. 1
through the dedicated Special Features and Exercises table of
contents at the front of the textbook (pp. xiii-xvi), giving
readers easy access to quick and engaging examples of critical
thinking in practice.
The content of this extra material is interesting, current,
relevant, and often quite novel, regarding top-ics that are
controversial. As such, this material comes close to being as
important as the proper content of the chapters, by offering
readers opportunities to be reflective about important issues or
topics in a variety of plausible real-life contexts. One surprising
context of note on this point is the authors tendency to illustrate
critical thinking in practice by referring to the military context,
so on p. 7 Facione and Gittens say that a failure of critical
thinking might result in combat casualties. On p.81 they give a
full page table of language communities and corre-sponding examples
of their special terms and symbols, one row of which is the
language community of military field commanders, and on p.116 the
authors discuss the criteria that make for authority and expertise,
referring to Jack Nicholsons character in the 1992 film A Few Good
Men. In the film Nicholson played a U.S. Marine Colonel who argues
that the military is justified in perpetuating a Noble lie.
Finally, on p. 258 there is a half-page spread that showcases
Nineteenth-Century Ideologies and Twen-tieth Century Wars.
The variety of topics that the textbook covers in these special
features does not stop there; for example, on p.56 there is another
half page thinking critically text-box that queries How can we
protect ourselves from ourselves? and is a brief discussion of the
sin tax, asking readers to begin to go through the process of
formulating a judg-ment on how and whether society should be in the
business of guiding individual lifestyle choices through taxation.
The book is filled with examples such as these, which substantively
challenge readers to think about serious and important problems
that deserve their considered attention in real-life contexts of
deciding what to believe or do.
Facione and Gittens textbook also has a significant amount of
on-line content that the reader is directed to in the body of the
text. If there is some video or interactive material that is
related to the content that the authors dis-cuss, then it is likely
to be found by going to the address www.mythinkinglab.com, a
companion website developed by Pearson publishing that supplements
the textbook. This has become a standard part of many textbooks,
but it is a benefit of THINK Critically that there is so much
electronic content associated with the printed book.
Another aspect of the organization of the textbook that is
unusual, but refreshing in its originality, is the con-tent and
design of the exercise sections at the end of each chapter. As
opposed to other textbooks, the exercises are not one-dimensionally
dominated by short, decontextual-ized, artificial questions that
test rote knowledge of the material that is introduced in the text.
While there are some such short question/short answer question
sections,
the exercise sections are mostly divided into individual
subsections that do not fit this mold. Instead, each of them asks
the reader in a detailed way to approach various critical thinking
problems from a different perspective, in a way that is relevant to
the chapter content. No two ex-ercise sections for any two chapters
are organized exactly alike, but all exercise sections require the
reader to engage substantively in a process of thinking critically
about the material. Many have an analyze and interpret section,
where readers are encouraged in detailed ways to take an active
role in responding to some portion of text that the authors
highlight, going through a process of thinking at-tempting to
arrive at a judgment. For instance, on p. 178 the authors prompt as
a challenge exercise to evaluate the arguments of the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concludes
that humans are partly responsible for climate change. The
exercises are dominated by real-life problems such as these that
require real arguments to come to a judgment about.
Furthermore, almost all exercise sections have group exercises,
where the authors prompt readers in detailed ways to go through
research reports or other documents, and to develop with their
peers, reasoned-out positions on the problems at issue. This is an
excellent, and not very common, approach to textbook exercises,
and, since criti-cal thinking is often a social activity undertaken
by groups of people, it makes sense that the textbook work
encour-ages such group interaction. Also, many of the exercise
sections have reflective log sections where the reader is prompted
in detailed ways to reflect about her own thinking concerning the
material in question.
What sets the exercises of this book apart from other treatments
is in the end the detail and thoroughness that has gone into the
way the questions are written. Facione and Gittens offer an
approach to exercises that prioritizes the real-life context of the
questions, that calls for deeper and more substantial critical
thinking, and that deemphasizes drill-style short answer questions
that only superficially prompt reflective thinking.
A critic of this approach to the exercise sections might point
out that since exercises in textbooks are typically used by
instructors to drill the skills introduced within chapters and
since this requires using short questions with short, easily marked
answers, Facione and Gittens book fails in this respect, because
the questions they have generated to exercise the skills and
concepts are long and do not involve simple answers. From an
instructors per-spective this makes marking exercises a more
substantial task, as answers to exercises will often come in the
form of short-answer compositions. However, from this reviewers
perspective this is not a drawback to the format of the ex-ercises
but rather a substantial benefit. This is because the exercises
mimic what a student should actually be able to do in any instance
of real-life thinking that aims at well-reasoned-out judgments,
which almost never involves a simple and easily evaluated response.
So those problems
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48 INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
offer a more realistic, and therefore a more useful, way for
readers to practice the skills of critical thinking, even if it
will take some effort on an instructors part to incorporate the
exercises, and the attentive marking that comes with them, into a
course curriculum.
Finally, the book is written with a significant section of
endnotes, and the endnotes allow the reader to follow up on
scholarly material that supports the textbooks content. This is a
major positive of the book, because it allows readers to go to the
next step and investigate the primary sources themselves that the
authors reference. Very few critical thinking textbooks offer the
resources to follow up on scholarly references, when such
references are made at all, and it is refreshing to see Facione and
Gittens cite relevant material for further reading.
So, this textbook succeeds in the way it presents itself; it is
immediately a pleasure to hold, read, and peruse, and it is
theoretically informed. The exercise sections give read-ers
something substantial to think about, not just another set of
boring drills that do not really test the application of skills in
real-life critical thinking. Furthermore, since the majority of
extant critical thinking textbooks are in a more or less
traditional format and since they do not offer the reader a
pleasurable reading experience beyond the body of the text, Facione
and Gittens book is to be highly recom-mended just for the interest
it is sure to bring to students who are used to textbooks that look
and read the same.
III. Contents of the Chapters
What sets Facione and Gittens treatment of critical thinking
apart from other texts, other than the format and organization of
the textbook, the special features, and the exercise sections, is
the substantial chapter content the book contains, and its somewhat
non-standard approach. While not without some aspects of the
content that deserve to be questioned on their theoretical merits,
the major content of the book still offers an introduction to the
skills, and especially the dispositions, of critical thinking that
few other textbooks live up to. This is done in a way that departs
from the typical textbook, which tends to cover anything and
everything relating to argumentation in an unsubtle and
theoretically crude way: the dogs breakfast approach to the call it
what you will course(Johnson & Blair, 2009).This textbook is
distinctive instead for merg-ing a traditionally philosophical
approach that includes content on arguments and fallacies, while
also stressing decision-making from a modern psychological
perspective, with chapters on heuristics, dominance structuring,
and self-regulation strategies. In the end the chapters set out a
coherent set of tools for reflecting on ones judgment-making
process, offering readers a way to improve that process and become
better critical thinkers.
The first chapters set out the books conception of criti-cal
thinking, which is based on an important study in the canon of
critical thinking scholarship, The Delphi Project
Report (Facione,1990), an expert consensus statement on critical
thinking made by 46 interdisciplinary scholars and facilitated by
Facione under the aegis of the American Philosophical Association
(APA). The APA Delphi Proj-ect Report found that critical thinking
is the process of purposeful, self-regulatory judgment. (Facione,
1990, p. 2). In other words, critical thinking is about making
well-reasoned judgments about what to believe or do (Facione and
Gittens, 2012, p.7). This language is also reflected in Ennis
popular definition of critical thinking that defines the concept as
reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe
or do (Ennis, 1991).
The books conception of critical thinking being based on this
consensus statement immediately puts Facione and Gittens treatment
in a class by itself in this reviewers view. Part of what makes a
practical difference in the textbook by virtue of this fact is
that, unlike many critical thinking textbooks, which introduce the
concept of critical thinking in a cursory introductory chapter,
Facione and Gittens spend the first two chapters (41 pages)
providing an in-depth introductory analysis of critical thinking,
help-ing to frame the concept so that readers better understand how
the chapters that follow will fulfill the promise of helping to
teach people how to be better critical thinkers. The Delphi Project
Report consensus statement is not im-mune from criticism, but it
nevertheless aligns with many other mainstream conceptions of
critical thinking in that it stresses that critical thinking is an
ends-directed, reflec-tive process of thinking, involving skills
and virtues, and aiming towards judgments about what to do or
believe. While some theorists who participated disagreed on the
details and while many theorists who did not participate may also
disagree on certain specifics, the Delphi Project Report is in many
respects a superior normative articula-tion of critical thinking
that captures many aspects of the multi-faceted concept.
In the first chapter, The Power of Critical Thinking, the
authors motivate their understanding of critical thinking and gloss
their conception. They link the concept with the importance of an
educated citizenry in a free society, an idea that has deep roots
in Western thinking and in con-nection with the concept of critical
thinking (e.g., Dewey, 1910). Importantly, they provide a holistic
rubric for scoring any instance of critical thinking, where the
highest score satisfies most or all of the six core skills that are
major components of their conception of critical thinking. Those
six skills are (1) interpretation, (2) analysis, (3) inference, (4)
explanation, (5) evaluation, and (6) self-reg-ulation. A high score
also is indicative of the dispositions the authors say are
necessary for critical thinking, such as judiciousness and
fair-mindedness. They exemplify some instances of plausible real
life critical thinking in narratives that are then subject to
evaluation based upon the rubric. This initial introduction to the
skills that make for good critical thinking is thus excellent both
in the way it sets up the study of critical thinking, as based on
an expert
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49Spring 2013, VOL. 28, nO. 1
consensus about the concept, and in the way it prioritizes
illustrations of real-life thinking based on its clearly stated
criteria for what makes good critical thinking.
In Chapter 2, Skilled and Eager to Think, the authors delve
deeper into their conception of critical thinking, stressing that
the process is a skilled and virtuous activity, which involves a
person who has certain abilities, as well as certain habits of mind
such as open-mindedness and judiciousness. By stressing the
dispositions necessary for a person to be a critical thinker
Facione and Gittens do what few other critical thinking textbook
authors do, which is to pay curricular attention to something
theorists have recognized for decades: that a critical thinker must
be not only skilled at the processes of critical thinking, but also
must be willing to employ those skills in efforts at reaching
reasoned judgments.
The authors go deeper too into the six core skills of critical
thinking, which provide a framework for the remaining chapters.
Helpfully, they provide a table of questions to fire up our
critical thinking skills (p. 31), each associated with one of these
six core skills. These questions illustrate in a general way the
sorts of thoughtful questioning that is needed to properly employ
the skills of critical thinking. Readers are helped further when
the authors break down each skill into sub skills, and also provide
a table listing the description of skills and their associated sub
skills. For example, part of the skill of infer-ence involves the
ability [t]o identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable
conclusions and the associ-ated sub skills of query[ing] evidence,
conjecture[ing] alternatives, and draw[ing] conclusions using
inductive or deductive reasoning (p. 33).
Indeed, in these first chapters, even if instructors have some
disagreements with the authors over the details of their conception
of critical thinking, those who adopt this textbook will find the
opportunity to direct student atten-tion to the points of
disagreement, which is a useful way to exemplify the process of
thinking critically in a real-life context. The fact that the
consensus statement was not reached unanimously offers a natural
segue into a discus-sion regarding what elements of the conception
might have met with resistance from certain theorists. And, in any
case where theorists might disagree, an instructor can profitably
move ahead with the textbook treatment without lingering on
theoretical details.
Spending too much time on introductory statements or
prioritizing theoretical talking about critical thinking rather
than having students practically do critical thinking is a danger
that Facione seems to be well aware of (Facione, 2003, pp.
299-300). But I do not think that in Facione and Gittens book we
have an instance of over-prioritizing theoretical talk. Rather,
what we have is just what most textbook authors agree is an
important first step in learning how to be better critical thinker;
it is simply that Facione and Gittens have more to say about the
concept than most authors because of Faciones research on the
topic.
Furthermore, the introductory chapters on the nature of critical
thinking are anything but dry reading in my opinion; instead, I
found their exposition interesting and engaging. Chapters 1 and 2
therefore frame the remaining chapters in a particular light,
setting a deep foundation for those that follow.
In Chapter 3, Solve Problems and Succeed in Col-lege, we
continue to see an unconventional approach to an introductory
textbook on critical thinking, when the authors introduce IDEAS, an
acronym for a five-step critical thinking problem solving process,
and then spend considerable narrative effort in exemplifying
real-life situations in the college-life context, where this
process could plausibly be put to use. That process is: (1)
Identify problems and set priorities, (2) Deepen understanding and
gather relevant information, (3) Enumerate options and anticipate
consequences, (4) Assess the situation and make a preliminary
decision, and (5) Scrutinize the process and self-correct as needed
(p. 47). This chapter, new to the second edition, might be one that
instructors have their students pass over in a one term course, but
it is no less interesting, nor is it any less potentially useful
for students should they read it on their own, since they will find
it is a plausible reflection of decisions and situations they might
confront in their own lives.
Furthermore, the approach Facione and Gittens take is also
unconventional in that, while they cover arguments and fallacies,
and point to the inductive/deductive dis-tinction, they do not
simply equate critical thinking with reasoning or argument. Thus
the basics of interpretation are covered in the entire fourth
chapter, Clarify Ideas and Concepts. This chapter sets the stage
for argument interpretation and analysis in the next chapter by
covering ambiguity, vagueness, and the importance of context. It
also deepens contextual appreciation of the purposes of
communication, by offering observations on language communities, or
communities of [p]eople who shar[e] an understanding of the
meanings of . . . words and icons (p. 78). Chapter 4 offers a good
foundation for readers to focus on the skill of interpretation and
the associated subskills of clarifying meaning and
categorizing.
Facione and Gittens do not get to the concept of argu-ment until
Chapter 5, Analyze Arguments and Diagram Decisions, and then they
avoid confusing critical thinking with argumentation, and they
avoid calling just any kind of reasoning an argument. With this
chapter on the basics of argument interpretation (which the authors
call analysis) based on a method for diagramming arguments, the
authors attempt to prepare the reader for the next four chapters.
Those four chapters are the real meat and potatoes of the textbook,
and they stress the evaluation of arguments. But before arguments
can be evaluated, they need to be ana-lyzed, in other words,
interpreted and put into a standard form where the structure of the
reasons for some claim can be clearly exhibited. Hence the need for
Chapter 5. The method of diagramming that the authors have
devised
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50 INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
is straightforward and easy to remember, and somewhat standard
in the way arrows are used to express inferences between different
statements. It should aid students in picking out conclusions,
claims, and implicit aspects of arguments, especially in longer
passages.
It is good to see the authors avoid an equation of critical
thinking with argumentation, and they delay the introduction of
argument analysis and evaluation until approximately one-third of
the way through the book. Furthermore, the practice of diagramming
arguments makes sense for students who are more visual learners.
However, this brings me to one issue I take with the explicit
conception of argument found in Chapter 5 and how it is translated
into the diagramming framework. Facione and Gittens say they follow
the standard usage of the phrase make an argument, to refer to the
process of giving a reason in support of a claim (p. 88, emphasis
added). This is a problematic formulation, however, because, as the
authors admit, [i]t is common in natural conversation to give more
than one reason in support of a claim (p. 88).
They nevertheless go on to say that they will treat each
separate combination of reason-plus-claim as a separate argument
(p. 88). But, if more than one reason is offered to support a
claim, it is not clear that those reasons should automatically be
interpreted as independent reasons in support of that claim, so
that they should be represented as two separate arguments and
evaluated as such. Some-times reasons are clearly linked together
by an arguer in an interdependent way in order to offer inferential
support for a claim, because the arguer makes explicit that they
are not only relevant to the claim, but also relevant to each other
regarding the claim. If that is so, then separating those reasons
in order to see the single argument as if it were two arguments
confuses matters, because without representing both reasons as
acting in concert, such an interpretation departs from the way the
reasons were explicitly used in practice to support the
conclusion.
However, regardless of the way an argument is used, or the
intentions of the arguer in how she used it, this tactic seems to
go beyond mere interpretation, and begins to be an evaluative
effort since determining the relevance of more than one claim to
the support of another is a matter not just of charitably
representing those claims, but also of making a judgment as to
whether thetruth or acceptability of them would make the conclusion
more likely to be true or ac-ceptable. Deciding to interpret
multiple premise arguments as if each premise independently
supports the conclusion is thus a matter of evaluation, not simply
interpretation of what some author could have most plausibly
intended. We should, therefore, not separate premises into separate
arguments, treating each premise as being independent of the others
in itssupport of the conclusion,before we can make a determination
regarding how they are being used to support thatconclusion, and
whether they are relevant to each other regarding the
conclusion.
Facione and Gittens give as an example the argument
I should buy thin crust pizza because it costs less and tastes
better (p. 88). They treat this as being two separate arguments:
Thin crust pizza costs less; therefore, I should buy thin crust
pizza and Thin crust pizza tastes better; therefore, I should buy
thin crust pizza. While I agree that with this specific example it
is plausible to analyze these reasons as each providing independent
support for the conclusion, and therefore interpret and (further)
evaluate them as two separate arguments, I do not think it is
helpful to blanket all arguments with this interpretive tactic.
First of all, by interpreting the argument this way one is doing
more than analyzing; one is in fact engaging in evalua-tion because
one is making a determination as to how the premises actually do
hang together to provide support for the conclusion. Tasting better
and costing less are not rel-evant to buying thin crust pizza in a
jointly interdependent way. Another reason is, in part, articulated
by Facione and Gittens themselves when they say that the aim of
argu-ment analysis is to display with accuracy the arguments as the
speaker made them (p. 90, original emphasis). But, as noted above,
if a speaker or writer makes a claim that is supported by multiple
reasons that she represents as being dependent upon one another,
then separating them does not do justice to the argument as it was
made. In any case, unless the inferential support of the premises
is made explicit, which might happen rarely, determining just
whether an author of some argument intended some reasons to be
dependent (or not) upon each other seems a futile effort; besides,
even if the author of the argument could be queried, she might not
have had any intention in mind regarding the strength of the
inferential support, since she might not have any concept of joint
sufficiency (cf. Ennis, 2001, p.105, and contra Fohr, 1979, p. 8).
This is to stress that interpreting all multiple premise arguments
as if they are most plausibly single premise arguments is a
questionable tactic.
As an example, take the way I might reason if I am meeting a
friend-of-a-friend for dinner, someone whom I have never met and
whose personality I am wondering about. I reason Omar must be
polite, because Omar is a Canadian, and Canadians are in general
polite. Should this argument be evaluated as two separate
arguments: Omar is Canadian, therefore Omar is polite, and
Ca-nadians are in general polite, therefore Omar is polite? I would
say no since when those premises are separated from each other,
their relationship as being jointly suffi-cient to establish the
conclusion is lost: should one of the premises be rejected, the
other becomes irrelevant toward establishing the conclusion. The
argument therefore is more cogent when the joint relevance of the
premises is taken for granted, rather than their independence. As
such our interpretive tactic should be to think of this as one
argu-ment with premises that are jointly relevant to the
conclu-sion (cf. Hitchcock, 1980, p. 15). As can be seen in this
example, the role the premises play in working together is
evaluated before any interpretation is made about whether
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51Spring 2013, VOL. 28, nO. 1
they were intended by the speaker to be used that way or not.
These concerns might not be the most devastating, but diagramming
all arguments without allowing for premises working in concert
seems a mistake.
In Chapter 6, Evaluate the Credibility of Claims and Sources,
the authors move on to skills involved in evalua-tion. They stress
the importance of a healthy skepticism in efforts at critical
thinking, and list twelve criteria that every authoritative source
should meet, including being unbiased, truthful, and free from
conflicts of interest. This chapter sets the stage for the
introduction of further skills of argument evaluation by covering
one of the essential skills needed before any kind of argument
evaluation goes on: the evaluation of so-called experts as
trusted-sources.
Chapter 7, Evaluate Arguments: The Four Basic Tests, stands as a
sort of midway culmination of chapters introduced until that point.
The authors introduce argu-ment evaluation as a core aspect of the
skills of critical thinking that they say is necessary for the
process of reach-ing judgments about what to believe or do. They
offer a four-part test to determine whether reasons support a
conclusion well: (1) truthfulness of the premises, (2) logi-cal
strength, (3) relevance, and (4) non-circularity. While this format
for argument cogency is mostly standard by stressing premise
truthfulness along with the importance of logical strength of
arguments and the relevancy of the premises, it still could be
critiqued for incorporating non-circularity as a criterion for
cogency and for focusing on thetruth of premises as a criterion for
argument worthiness without mentioning premise acceptability.
Regarding the latter, as Ralph Johnson (2000) has pointed out,
and as others have echoed in their own text-book treatments of
argumentation (for instance, Govier, 2010), premises can be
acceptable without necessarily being true, or true without being
believed or granted to be true by an audience. The difference is
that [t]he truth criterion concerns the relationship between the
premise and the state of affairs in the world. The acceptability
criterion concerns the relationship between the premise and the
audience (Johnson, 2000, 336-337). For Johnson, both truth and
acceptability of premises should be criteria for an arguments
worthiness, because what an audience should find as acceptable is
highly relevant to whether an argument is persuasive or not for
that audience. For Govier, truth should not be thought of as either
a necessary or sufficient condition for the worthiness of an
argument. This is not meant as a devastating critique of Facione
and Gittens treatment of argument evaluation, but it is to
acknowledge that their treatment fits squarely into the common
textbook approach that stresses premise truthful-ness and neglects
to take into consideration the rhetorical orientation of premise
acceptability.
It is also in Chapter 7 that the authors first discuss
fal-lacies, and their introductory remarks are to be applauded for
their concise, yet thorough, exposition of deceptive arguments that
appear logical and seem at times to be
persuasive, but, upon closer analysis, fail to demonstrate their
conclusions (p. 140). This formulation of the defi-nition of
fallacies is superior to many because it stresses that fallacies
occur in argumentation, that they appear to be logical, and that
they do not support their conclusions well. The authors should also
get a nod for acknowledg-ing that responding to fallacies is an
important part of recognizing them when they say that [l]earning
how to recognize common fallacies and learning how to explain in
ordinary, non-technical terms the mistaken reasoning they contain
is a great aid to evaluating arguments (p. 140). However, nowhere
in these first remarks about fal-lacies do the authors also
acknowledge that recognizing and then responding to fallacies (at
least sometimes) might involve an effort to improve the argument in
question such that it is no longer fallacious, progressing dialogue
and discussion. As Hundleby (2010) has argued, an ap-proach that
neglects to encourage argument improvement perpetuates an
adversarial approach to argumentation and fallacy identification
that prioritizes negative critique over constructive criticism.
Having said this, it should also be noted that another positive
aspect of their initial treatment of fallacies miti-gates this
omission by reminding us that the specialized terminology of
logicians is not the most important thing to remember about
fallacies--rote memorization, the authors claim, is not a critical
thinking skill (p. 146). Instead, the authors stress that it is
possible for a person to recite the textbook definition of the
rules and terms . . . but yet, in practice, still lack skill at
evaluating arguments. This is significant, the authors claim,
because [b]eing able to explain why an argument is unworthy of
acceptance is a stronger demonstration of ones critical thinking
skills than being able to remember the names of the different types
of fallacies (p. 146). This statement is supported in practice when
the authors prompt readers to evaluate the worthiness of some
realistic sample arguments by giving a detailed explanation to
support your evaluation (p. 140). In these ways the first section
on fallacies that Facione and Gittens provide is helpful and
informative, and, even while they provide a taxonomic
classification of fallacies of relevance such as appeals to
ignorance and appeals to the mob, this section does not merely
introduce students to a simplistic and rough-cut notion of
fallacies, but also gives them a nuanced perspective on what the
fallacies are and on the most appropriate way to identify and
respond to them in practice.
In Chapter 8, Valid Deductive Reasoning and De-ductive
Fallacies, and Chapter 9, Justified Inductive Reasoning and
Fallacies, the authors provide two chapters with enough content
that instructors might want to spend more time covering the
material they contain. However, the articulation the authors give
to the inductive-deductive distinction is problematic, ignoring
important scholarship in argumentation theory. This is especially
true for the chapter on deductive reasoning, which attempts to give
a
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52 INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
crash course introduction to deductive relationships when
reasoning about declarative statements (p. 152), classes of objects
(p. 155), and relationships (p. 157). The authors introduce the
idea of deductively valid arguments (p. 152) by giving a standard
definition, saying that with such arguments it must be impossible
for the premises all to be true and the conclusion false (p. 152).
But, as Hitchcock (1979) has plausibly argued, the idea of
deduc-tive validity should be understood to apply to inferences,
not arguments. And as Goddu (2002) has also argued, we can
distinguish deductive from inductive reasoning, [and] distinguish
deductive from inductive logic without appeal to the idea of
deductive and inductive arguments (p. 15). Instead of making the
distinction between deduc-tive and inductive arguments in the
interpretation stage, appealing to an arguers intentions, we should
determine with a sufficient degree of precision the actual strength
of the relationship between premises and conclusion (p. 8, emphasis
added). In other words, we need to evaluate the argument on how
adequately the premises support the conclusion, without deciding
beforehand what standard of validity it should meet in our
interpretation of it.
On a somewhat related theoretical point, it should be noted that
Facione and Gittens definition of deductively valid arguments in
the body of the textbook differs slightly from the definition given
in the glossary for deductive reasoning, which they say is drawing
inferences in which it appears that the conclusion cannot possibly
be false if all of the premises are true (p. 314). But this leaves
open the possibility that one could be reasoning in a way such that
it appears the truth of the conclusion is necessitated by the truth
of the premises, but in fact is not, and that such reasoning would
still be called deductive. That is a bad consequence, because to
call a bit of reasoning deductive we should be saying that if that
reasoning employs true premises than the conclusion adduced through
them must be true. To call reasoning deductive that appears as if
this is the case is not enough - it must really be the case.
The authors continue to cover fallacies in the remain-der of
Chapter 8, contrasting valid deductive forms with their
counterparts. For instance, the authors introduce the valid form of
denying the consequent (p. 152) and then contrast this with the
fallacious form of affirming the consequent (p. 158). Chapter 8
offers some real-life examples to practice the skill of identifying
valid deduc-tive inferences and recognizing deductive fallacies,
and in general it offers the reader a helpful introduction to
deductive relationships.
The same can be said for Chapter 9, which introduces inductive
reasoning as a contrast to deductive reasoning. In this chapter
Facione and Gittens simplistically gloss induc-tive reasoning as
different from the structural necessity of valid deductive
reasoning by claiming that inductive reasoning is probabilistic (p.
167). In this way Facione and Gittens textbook is guilty (along
with many others) of ignoring what Blair (2006) calls the challenge
of infer-
ence pluralism (p. 263) implying instead the idea that all
reasoning or arguments are either deductively valid or else have
some quantifiable degree of inductive strength less than 1.0 (p.
262). But to ignore other kinds of inference making is to deny that
under some conditions an infer-ence can be reasonable even if it is
deductively invalid and not quantifiably strong (p. 262). This to
my mind is not a devastating critique of the textbook, but it is to
acknowledge that the authors treatment of the inductive-deductive
distinction is not nuanced or informed by recent and relevant
scholarly discussions.
A significant chapter in the textbook that again sets it apart
in a positive way from other approaches is Chapter 10: Think
Heuristically: Risks and Benefits of Snap Judgments. This chapter
is a consolidated treatment of heuristics, a more complete
treatment of which can be found in Facione and Facione (2007). It
is distinctive that a critical thinking textbook would spend an
entire chapter covering the kind of thinkingSystem I thinkingthat
is not usually considered critical thinking (and indeed the authors
themselves do not consider heuristics to be the kind of Systems-II
thinking that is reflective). Yet Facione and Gittens appropriately
do not disparage heuristic thinking that is non-reflective; instead
they put it in its place as a useful tool that often accompanies
reflective judgment making. Indeed, to be aware of the ways we make
snap judgments is to begin to walk the path of recognizing when
such a judgment is appropriate, and when a problem, decision, or
action deserves more considered reflection to come to a judgment
about. It is also a way to begin to be self-aware of, and
self-correct for, the sorts of cognitive biases that thwart proper
snap-judgments from being made. This chapter then serves as both a
warning and a guide for readers who are trying to be more
reflective about the way they make judgments.
Chapter 11, Think Reflectively: Strategies for De-cision Making,
is another chapter on the psychological practice of coming to
judgments about what to do or believe, and contains an interesting
section on domi-nance structuring, again a concept covered in
greater detail in Facione and Facione (2007). Readers will find
here an interesting and informative discussion and many
exemplifications of the phenomenon of locking into our decisions
(p. 210). In this chapter Facione and Gittens also provide readers
with a detailed series of precautions to keep in mind when thinking
critically in an effort to aid self reflection about the process of
thinking critically so as to avoid prematurely or unreasonably
locking onto poor decisions or judgments.
Chapters 12 through 14 are perhaps the most practical chapters
of the textbook, as these are the chapters that put the previous
chapters exploring the skills and dispositions of critical thinking
into practice, providing criteria for and exemplifying Comparative
Reasoning (Chapter 12), Ideological Reasoning (Chapter 13), and
Empirical Reasoning (Chapter 14). In this latter chapter readers
are
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53Spring 2013, VOL. 28, nO. 1
offered an interesting and informative two-page spread that
articulates the 13-step process that the authors claim isa part of
any scientific investigation (pp. 274-275).
Finally, in Chapter 15, Write Sound and Effective Arguments, the
authors provide readers with a series of questions that are meant
to stress the importance of audi-ence, context, and the purposes of
whatever arguments a person is trying to write. This chapter offers
readers a chance to practice and improve upon a skill that college
and university students should expect to exercise across a wide
range of academic classes.
An appendix ends the textbook with examples of extended argument
mapping strategies based on real-life arguments and of the method
for mapping that the authors introduced in Chapter 5. Finally, the
textbook has a glos-sary, an index, and as mentioned above,
endnotes from the main body of the text.
IV. Conclusion
This is a textbook that breaks the mold of tradition-ally
conceived critical thinking pedagogy. The format is fresh and
original, the content relates to real-life problems in decision and
judgment making, and the conception of critical thinking is
reinforced by important scholar-ship. Where the book falls short,
in its treatment of the deductive-inductive distinction, and in its
conception of argument, this is more than made up for in the other
ways it guides readers through the complicated and challenging
process of developing ones skills and dispositions to be a better
critical thinker. This book might be a challenge for some
instructors who are used to a traditionally formatted textbook with
traditional content and a typical approach to exercising the skills
of critical thinking, but for all the challenge it might be just
the thing for instructors who are looking for a new and engaging
approach to teaching what has become almost ubiquitously accepted
as a laudable educational ideal.
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Author Information
Benjamin Hamby is currently a fourth year doctoral student (ABD)
in the Philosophy Department at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada. His dissertation is an inquiry into the
relationship between critical thinking skills and virtues.