How to Think about Weird Things : Critical Thinking for a New Age
ISBN: 9780073535777 | 007353577X
Edition: 6thFormat: Paperback
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Pub. Date: 2/3/2010
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This brief, affordable text helps students to think critically, using examples from the weird claims and beliefs that abound in our culture to demonstrate the sound evaluation of any claim. It explains step by step how to sort through reasons, evaluate evidence, and tell when a claim no matter how strange is likely to be true.
The emphasis is neither on debunking nor on advocating specific assertions, but on explaining principles of critical thinking that enable readers to evaluate claims for themselves.
The authors focus o... MORE
| Foreword | |
| Preface | |
| Introduction: Close Encounters with the Strange | |
| The Importance of Why | |
| Beyond Weird to the Absurd | |
| A Weirdness Sampler | |
| Notes | |
| The Possibility of the Impossible | |
| Paradigms and the Paranormal | |
| Logical Possibility Versus Physical Impossibility | |
| The Possibility of ESP... MORE | |
| Theories and Things | |
| On Knowing the Future | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Arguments Good, Bad and Weird | |
| Claim and Arguments | |
| Deductive Arguments | |
| Inductive Arguments | |
| Enumerative Induction | |
| Analogical Induction | |
| Hypothetical Induction (Abduction, or Inference to the Best of Explanation) | |
| Informal Fallacies | |
| Unacceptable Premises | |
| Irrelevant Premises | |
| Insufficient Premises | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Knowledge, Belief, and Evidence | |
| Babylonian Knowledge-Acquisition Techniques | |
| Propositional Knowledge | |
| Reasons and Evidence | |
| Expert Opinion | |
| Coherence and Justification | |
| Sources of Knowledge | |
| The Appeal to Faith | |
| The Appeal to Intuition | |
| The Appeal to Mystical Experience | |
| Astrology Revisited | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Looking for Truth in Personal Experience | |
| Seeming and Being | |
| Perceiving: True or False? | |
| Perceptual Constancies | |
| The Role of Expectation | |
| Looking for Clarity in Vagueness | |
| The Blondlot Case | |
| "Constructing" UFOs | |
| Remembering: Do We Revise the Past? | |
| Judging: The Habit of Unwarranted Assumptions | |
| Denying the Evidence | |
| Subjective Validation | |
| Confirmation Bias | |
| The Availability Error | |
| The Representativeness Heuristic | |
| Against All Odds | |
| The Limits of Personal Experience | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Science and Its Pretenders | |
| Science and Dogma | |
| Science and Scientism | |
| Scientific Methodology | |
| Confirming and Confuting Hypotheses | |
| Criteria of Adequacy | |
| Testability | |
| Fruitfulness | |
| Scope | |
| Simplicity | |
| Conservatism | |
| Creationism, Evolution, and Criteria of Adequacy | |
| Scientific Creationism | |
| Intelligent Design | |
| Parapsychology | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Case Studies in the Extraordinary | |
| The Search Formula | |
| State the Claim | |
| Examine the Evidence for the Claim | |
| Consider Alternative Hypotheses | |
| Rate, According to the Criteria of Adequacy, Each Hypothesis | |
| Homeopathy | |
| Intercessory Prayer | |
| UFO Abductions | |
| Communicating with the Dead | |
| Near-Death Experiences | |
| Ghosts | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims by Using the Search Method | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Relativism, Truth, and Reality | |
| We Each Create Our Own Reality | |
| Reality Is Socially Constructed | |
| Reality Is Constituted by Conceptual Schemes | |
| The Relativist's Petard | |
| Facing Reality | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| How to Assess a "Miracle Cure" | |
| Personal Experience | |
| The Variable Nature of Illness | |
| The Placebo Effect | |
| Overlooked Causes | |
| The Doctor's Evidence | |
| The Appeal to Tradition | |
| The Reasons of Science | |
| Medical Research | |
| Single Studies | |
| Conflicting Results | |
| Studies Conflicting with Fact | |
| Limitations of Studies | |
| Types of Studies | |
| In Vitro Experiments | |
| Animal Studies | |
| Observational Studies | |
| Clinical Trials | |
| Study Questions | |
| Evaluate These Claims | |
| Discussion Questions | |
| Field Problem | |
| Critical Reading and Writing | |
| Suggested Readings | |
| Notes | |
| Credits | |
| Index | |
| Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved. |
