A Useful Guide for Critical Thinking

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Top Ten Argument Mapping Tutorials. Six online tutorials in argument mapping, a core requirement for advanced critical thinking. The Skeptic's Dictionary - over 400 definitions and essays. The Fallacy Files by Gary Curtis. Best website on fallacies. Butterflies and Wheels. Excellent reading - news, articles, and much more. Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts by Peter Facione. Good overview of the nature of critical thinking. (pdf file) Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion by John Stuart Mill. Classic chapter, densely packed with wisdom about thinking. Chance - best resource for helping students think critically about issues involving probability and statistics Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, by Richards Heuer. A good overview of how to improve thinking in the light of insights from cognitive psychology. A Handbook on Writing Argumentative and Interpretative Essays by Ian Johnston Baloney Detection Part 1 and Part 2 - by Michael Shermer. 10 step guide. What is critical thinking? Nobody said it better than Francis Bacon, back in 1605: For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. A shorter version is the art of being right. Or, more prosaically: critical thinking is the skillful application of a repertoire of validated general techniques for deciding the level of confidence you should have in a proposition in the light of the available evidence. More definitions...

Software for Critical Thinking