Critical Thinking Reference

This is the root page of the wiki texts supporting Dr. Mark Alfino's freshman Critical Thinking course at Gonzaga. The main text, The Five Disciplines of Thought will be distributed in class. If you are looking for other wiki resources for the course, go to the main Critical Thinking page.

Concepts and Definitions

• Glossary of Critical Thinking Terms
• Some Terms for Describing Your Reflective Persona

Assignments and Exercises

• Arguments for Reconstruction
• Assessing Rationales
• Distinguishing Argument and Explanation in a Reflective Context
• Identifying rationales
• Noticing Reflective Personae in Reflective/Deliberative Contexts | Fall 2008 Student Work for "Noticing Reflective Personae"
• Reflective Persona Paper

Topics and Notes

• Burden of Proof
• Case Study of a Reconstruction - old text 71-76 Note: Additional reconstruction examples can be found at the main Critical Thinking page.
• Categorical Logic - old text 102-112
• Deductive Argument Forms
• Inductive Argument Forms
• Logical Structure in Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
• Placebo Effect
• Presumption
• Propositional Logic - old text 112-125
• The Theory of Rationales
• Thinking and the Nature of thought
• Thinking in Stereo

Articles

• Huff, Darrell, "How to Lie with Statistics," (Pajer Reader)
• Males, Mike, "Stop Blaming Kids and TV", (Pajer Reader)