Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing : A Brief Guide to Argument

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writingis a compact but complete guide to critical thinking and argumentation. Comprising the text portion of the widely adoptedCurrent Issues and Enduring Questions, it draws on the authors' dual expertise in effective persuasive writing and comprehensive rhetorical strategies to help students move from critical thinking to argumentative and researched writing. With comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument, including Aristotle, Toulmin, and a range of alternative views, as well as 35 readings and a casebook on the state and the individual, it is an extraordinarily versatile text. This affordable guide can stand alone or supplement a larger anthology of readings.

PREFACE
PART ONE     CRITICAL THINKING AND READING  1 Critical Thinking
THINKING ABOUT DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTIFICATION THINKING ABOUT ANOTHER ISSUE CONCERNING DRIVERS’ LICENSES: 
IMAGINATION, ANALYSIS, EVALUATION THINKING ABOUT STUDENT EVALUATIONS OF THEIR PROFESSORS
Idea Prompt:  Visualizing Pros and ConsWRITING AS A WAY OF THINKING
Getting Ideas
Idea Prompt:  Understanding Classical TopicsA CHECKLIST FOR CRITICAL THINKING A SHORT ESSAY ILLUSTRATING CRITICAL THINKING
Harlan Coben   The Undercover Parent
Letter of Response by Carol Weston
A Checklist for Evaluating Letters of ResponseEXAMINING ASSUMPTIONS A CHECKLIST FOR EXAMINING ASSUMPTIONS Peter Cave, Should We Save the Jerboa?
Five Exercises in Critical Thinking 2 Critical Reading: Getting Started
ACTIVE READING SUMMARIZING AND PARAPHRASING
A Note about Paraphrase and Plagiarism
Last Words (Almost) about SummarizingSusan Jacoby, A First Amendment Junkie
Summarizing Jacoby, Paragraph by ParagraphA CHECKLIST FOR GETTING STARTED
Anya Kamenetz,  You’re 16, You’re Beautiful and You’re a Voter
Exercises Examining Paragraphs
Letters of Response by Betty Agard, Robert Epstein, Delia McQuade Emmons, and Amanda Bergson-ShilcockGwen Wilde (student essay), Why the Pledge of Allegiance Should Be RevisedA CASEBOOK FOR CRITICAL READING: SHOULD SOME KINDS OF SPEECH BE CENSORED?
Susan Brownmiller, Let’s Put Pornography Back in the Closet Charles R. Lawrence III,  On Racist Speech DEREK BOK, Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus Andrew Keen, Douse the Online Flamers
Thinking Further about Freedom of Expression, Cyberbullying, and Facebook
Exercise:  Letter to the Editor 3 Critical Reading: Getting Deeper into Arguments
PERSUASION, ARGUMENT, DISPUTE REASON VERSUS RATIONALIZATION SOME PROCEDURES IN ARGUMENT
Definition
Idea Prompt:  Ways to Give DefinitionsA CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING STATISTICAL EVIDENCE NONRATIONAL APPEALS DOES ALL WRITING CONTAIN ARGUMENTS? A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING AN ARGUMENT AN EXAMPLE: AN ARGUMENT AND A LOOK AT THE WRITER’S STRATEGIES
George F. Will, Being Green at Ben and Jerry’s
George F. Wills’s Strategies ARGUMENTS FOR ANALYSIS
Stanley Fish, When “ Identity” Politics is RationalJames Carroll, If Poison Gas Can Go, Why Not Nukes?Gloria Jimenez (student essay), Against the Odds, and Against the Common Good
Anna Lisa Raya (student essay), It’s Hard Enough Being Me Ronald Takaki, The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority James Q. Wilson, Just Take Away Their Guns Sally Satel, Death’s Waiting List
Letters of Response by Dorothy H. Hayes, Charles B. Fruit, and Michelle GoodwinHeather Rogers, Hiding in Plain Sight 4 Visual Rhetoric: Images as Arguments SOME USES OF IMAGES APPEALS TO THE EYE ARE SOME IMAGES NOT FIT TO BE SHOWN?
Politics and Pictures
Exercises: Thinking about ImagesREADING ADVERTISEMENTS A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING IMAGES (ESPECIALLY ADVERTISEMENTS) WRITING ABOUT A POLITICAL CARTOON
Idea Prompt:  Analysis of a Political Cartoon
A Checklist for Analyzing Political Cartoons
Jackson Smith (student essay), Pledging Nothing?VISUALS AS AIDS TO CLARITY: MAPS, GRAPHS, TABLES, AND PIE CHARTS
A Checklist for Charts and GraphsA NOTE ON USING VISUALS IN YOUR OWN PAPER A NOTE ON FORMATTING YOUR PAPER:  DOCUMENT DESIGNADDITIONAL IMAGES FOR ANALYSIS
Nora Ephron, The Boston Photographs
PART TWO
CRITICAL WRITING  5 Writing an Analysis of an Argument ANALYZING AN ARGUMENT
Idea Prompt:  Drawing Conclusions and Implying Proof
An Argument, Its Elements, and a Student’s Analysis of the Argument
Nicholas D. Kristof, For Environmental Balance, Pick Up a Rifle
Betsy Swinton (student essay) , Tracking  Kristof
An Analysis of the Student’s Analysis
A Checklist for Writing an Analysis of an ArgumentARGUMENTS FOR ANALYSIS Jeff Jacoby, Bring Back Flogging Gerald Jones, Violent Media Is Good for KidsSunaura Taylor and Alexander Taylor, Is It Possible To Be a Conscientious Meat Eater?Peter Singer, Animal Liberation JONATHAN SWIFT, A Modest Proposal  6 Developing an Argument of Your Own
PLANNING, DRAFTING, AND REVISING AN ARGUMENT
A Checklist for a Thesis Statement
A Checklist for Imagining an Audience
Idea Promt:  Using Transitions in ArgumentA CHECKLIST FOR ATTENDING TO THE NEEDS OF THE AUDIENCE PEER REVIEW A PEER REVIEW CHECKLIST FOR A DRAFT OF AN ARGUMENT A STUDENT’S ESSAY, FROM ROUGH NOTES TO FINAL VERSION
Emily Andrews, Why I Don’t Spare “Spare Change”
The Essay Analyzed
Exercise  7 Using Sources
WHY USE SOURCES? CHOOSING A TOPIC FINDING MATERIAL
Finding Quality Information on the Web
A Word about Wikipedia
Finding Articles Using Library Databases
Locating BooksINTERVIEWING PEERS AND LOCAL AUTHORITIES EVALUATING  YOUR SOURCES A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING PRINT SOURCES TAKING NOTES A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING ELECTRONIC SOURCES A NOTE ON PLAGIARIZING, PARAPHRASING, AND USING COMMON KNOWLEDGE A CHECKLIST FOR AVOIDING PLAGIARISM COMPILING AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY WRITING THE PAPER QUOTING FROM SOURCES
Incorporating Your Reading into Your Thinking: The Art and Science of Synthesis
The Use and Abuse of Quotations,
How to Quote,
A Checklist for Using Quotations Rather than SummariesDOCUMENTATION
Idea Prompt:  Signal Phrases
A Note on Footnotes (and Endnotes)
MLA Format: Citations within the Text
MLA Format: The List of Works Cited
APA Format: Citations within the Text
APA Format: The List of ReferencesA CHECKLIST FOR PAPERS USING SOURCES AN ANNOTATED STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER IN MLA FORMAT
THERESA WASHINGTON, Why Trials Should Not Be Televised AN ANNOTATED STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER IN APA FORMAT
LAURA DEVEAU, The Role of Spirituality and Religion in Mental Health  PART THREE
FURTHER VIEWS ON ARGUMENT  8 A Philosopher’s View: The Toulmin Model
THE CLAIM
GROUNDS
WARRANTS
BACKING
MODAL QUALIFIERS
REBUTTALS
A MODEL ANALYSIS USING THE TOULMIN METHOD
A CHECKLIST FOR USING THE TOULMIN METHOD
Putting the Toulmin Method to Work: Responding to an Argument
Michael S. Dukakis and Daniel J. B. Mitchell, Raise Wages, Not Walls
Thinking with Toulmin’s Method
9 A Logician’s View: Deduction, Induction, Fallacies
DEDUCTION
INDUCTION
FALLACIES
Fallacies of Ambiguity
Fallacies of Presumption
Fallacies of Relevance
A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING AN ARGUMENT FROM A LOGICAL POINT OF VIEW Exercise: Fallacies—Or Not?
MAX SHULMAN, Love Is a Fallacy  10 A Moralist’s View: Ways of Thinking Ethically
AMORAL REASONING
IMMORAL REASONING
MORAL REASONING: A CLOSER LOOK
CRITERIA FOR MORAL RULES
A CHECKLIST FOR MORAL REASONING Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality Garrett Hardin, Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor Randy Cohen, Three Letters (to an Ethicist)  11 A Lawyer’s View: Steps toward Civic Literacy CIVIL AND CRIMINAL CASES
TRIAL AND APPEAL
DECISION AND OPINION
MAJORITY, CONCURRING, AND DISSENTING OPINIONS
FACTS AND LAW
BALANCING INTERESTS
A WORD OF CAUTION
A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING LEGAL ARGUMENTS A CASEBOOK ON THE LAW AND SOCIETY: WHAT RIGHTS DO THE CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS PROTECT? Byron R. White and John Paul Stevens, New Jersey v. T.L.O. Harry Blackmun and William H. Rehnquist, Roe v. Wade  12 A Psychologist’s View: Rogerian Argument
Rogerian Argument: An IntroductionCarl R. Rogers, Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation A CHECKLIST FOR ANALYZING ROGERIAN ARGUMENT Edward O. Wilson, Letter to a Southern Baptist Minister  13 A Literary Critic’s View: Arguing about Literature
INTERPRETING
JUDGING (OR EVALUATING)
THEORIZING
A CHECKLIST FOR AN ARGUMENT ABOUT LITERATURE EXAMPLES: TWO STUDENTS INTERPRET ROBERT FROST’S “MENDING WALL”
Robert Frost, Mending Wall
Jonathan Deutsch, The Deluded Speaker in Frost’s “Mending Wall”
Felicia Alonso, The Debate in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” Exercises: Reading a Poem and a Story
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
THINKING ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF LITERATURE
Plato, “The Greater Part of the Stories Current Today We Shall Have to Reject” THINKING ABOUT GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR THE ARTS  14 A Debater’s View: Individual Oral Presentations and Debate
CLASSROOM INDIVIDUAL ORAL PRESENTATIONS
Personal Appearance
Forms of Delivery
The Language of the Talk
Pace of Speaking
Movement
Audiovisual Aids
A CHECKLIST FOR AN ORAL PRESENTATIONFORMAL DEBATES
Standard Debate Format
The Audience
Delivery
The Talk
A CHECKLIST FOR PREPARING FOR A DEBATE
PART FOUR
A CASEBOOK ON THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 5 What Is the Ideal Society?Thomas More, From UtopiaNiccolo Machiavelli, From The PrinceThomas Jefferson, The Declaration of IndependenceElizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments and ResolutionsMartin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas