Elements Of Reasoning - 5th edition

Summary: This text is a concise and lucid introduction to the basic elements of argumentative prose and the conceptual tools necessary to understand, analyze, criticize, and construct arguments. The book serves not only as a text for college courses in argument analysis, but as a useful handbook of reasoning in much the same way that Strunk and White's ELEMENTS OF STYLE provides a handbook for writers. While the book covers the standard formal tools of introductory logic, its ...show more emphasis is on practical applications to the kinds of arguments students most often encounter.

New to the Edition

• While many passages throughout the book have been rewritten to clear up potential confusions and to highlight particularly important explanations, treatment of the differences between argument and explanation and the discussion of the importance of context in recognizing and analyzing arguments have both been extended in this edition.
• Numerous exercises have been revised to add timeliness and to present realistic, if not actual, scenarios in which critical thinking can play a decisive role.
• For instructors, this book now features an online instructor's manual that includes supplemental exercises, answers to all exercises (both those in the book and the supplemental exercises), and a battery of easily-graded true-false questions that can be used as reading quizzes for each chapter.

• Concise and easy-to-read, this text serves not only as a core text but is also an appropriate supplement for disciplines other than philosophy, including English, communication, and college success.
• The text features coverage of common methods of argument not included in most concise texts: causal reasoning, analogical reasoning, reasonable belief, and categorical logic.
• This book presents readily accessible treatment of real-life arguments, presented in a way that doesn't demand excessive theoretical preparation.

Edition/Copyright: 5TH 07
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: Wadsworth, Inc
Published: 03/24/2006

View Table of Contents

Preface.
Orientation.

1. Recognizing Arguments.
2. Analyzing Arguments.
3. Evaluating Arguments.
4. Some Valid Argument Forms.
5. More Valid Argument Forms: Categorical Reasoning and Venn Diagrams.
6. Causal Analysis.
7. Argument by Analogy and Models.
8. Errors in Reasoning: Fallacies.
9. Definition.
10. Vagueness and Ambiguity.
11. Reasonable Beliefs.
12. Rules for Writing.

Exercises: Some Answers, Hints, and Comments.
Index.

Other Editions of Elements Of Reasoning:

Elements of Reasoning - 6 edition

ISBN13: 978-0495809180