Main description:

How to Think about Weird Things, is a concise and engaging text that offers students a step-by-step process by which to determine when a claim is likely to be true. Schick and Vaughn provide a course on critical thinking- emphasizing neither debunking nor advocating specific claims, but rather explaining principles of good reasoning that enable students to evaluate any claim, no matter how strange, for themselves. By teaching readers how to distinguish good reasons from bad reasons for believing a claim, this text helps students improve their decision-making abilities and provides them with a powerful weapon against all forms of hucksterism.

Contents:

How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking For a New Age, 8e

CHAPTER 1: Introduction: Close Encounters with the Strange
CHAPTER 2: The Possibility of the Impossible
CHAPTER 3: Arguments Good, Bad, and Weird
CHAPTER 4: Knowledge, Belief, and Evidence
CHAPTER 5: Looking for Truth in Personal Experience
CHAPTER 6: Science and Its Pretenders
CHAPTER 7: Case Studies in the Extraordinary
CHAPTER 8: Relativism, Truth, and Reality