Asking the right questions : a guide to critical thinking / M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley.

Includes index.

The benefit of asking the right questions -- Critical thinking as a social activity -- What are the issue and the conclusion? -- What are the reasons? -- What words or phrases are ambiguous? -- What are the value and descriptive assumptions? -- Are there any fallacies in the reasoning? -- How good is the evidence : intuition, personal experience, testimonials, and appeals to authority? -- How good is the evidence : personal observation, research studies, case examples, and analogies? -- Are there rival causes? -- Are the statistics deceptive? -- What significant information is omitted? -- What reasonable conclusions are possible? -- Overcoming obstacles to critical thinking.

Used in a variety of courses in various disciplines, Asking the Right Questions helps students bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysis and synthesis. Specifically, this concise text teaches students to think critically by exploring the components of arguments--issues, conclusions, reasons, evidence, assumptions, language--and on how to spot fallacies and manipulations and obstacles to critical thinking. It teaches them to respond to alternative points of view and develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.