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I. Introduction

I have argued elsewhere that the market for critical thinking textbooks is not only glutted, but that it is filled with poor products that are not informed by relevant scholarly literature and that fail to meet some important, though not exhaustive, criteria that make for a good critical thinking textbook (Hamby, 2013, forthcoming):

Many textbooks, for instance, do not have a plausible, theoretically elucidated conception of critical thinking that stands behind their textbook treatment (Johnson, 1996). Nor do many textbooks recognize the central role of critical thinking dispositions, though in general terms this is a near-unanimous point of agreement among critical thinking theorists (Facione, 1990). Nor do they reflect a nuanced approach to the teaching of fallacies beyond an adversarial and taxonomic label-ing approach (Hundleby, 2010). Nor do they reveal an awareness of the problem of characterizing argu-ment according to the deductive-inductive distinction (Blair, 2006). Nor do they stress dialectic, dialogue, or argument revision (ibid.). Nor do they focus on the analysis and evaluation of real arguments that have been or could plausibly be used in practice (Hamby, 2012). Furthermore, textbooks commonly equate reasoning and argument analysis with critical think-ing, but this is a common assumption that has been discredited (Govier, 1989).

Thankfully, Facione and Gittens THINK Critically, 2nd edition, is a textbook that in general avoids these mis-takes that many of its competitors make, and, though not without some aspects of the book that I find problematic, I recommend it for any course that explicitly is billed as an introduction to critical thinking.

In this review I will discuss the format and organiza-tion of the textbook, and then summarize its chapters, fo-cusing on a few in particular. I will explain why I think this textbook satisfies criteria that any quality critical thinking textbook should meet, but that many other textbooks fail to live up to. Throughout, I will be offering a few points of critique, but my review of Facione and Gittens treatment of critical thinking will conclude by summarizing some

aspects that especially recommend it for adoption.

II. Format, Organization, Special Features, and Exercises

Unlike many textbooks, regardless of the subject, THINK Critically is visually attractive, formatted like a magazine, with a soft cover and glossy, colorful pages, interspersed with photographs throughout with thoughtful captions beneath them that relate to the textbook material. The text is written in an easy, conversational tone, with plausible narrative vignettes often setting up and exempli-fying chapter content. Section and sub-section headings guide the reader through each chapter in a helpful way, providing a kind of road map for the content. Illustrative quotations, Thinking critically text-boxes, and other relevant supplementary readings (what the authors call special features) are strategically placed to provide the reader with eye-catching and informative additions to the principal content of the reading.

For example, on p. 21 the authors include a two-thirds page rendering of a document produced by Measured Reasons LLC, the critical thinking company that Peter and his wife Noreen Facione spearhead. Measured Rea-sons is associated with the critical thinking measurement company, Insight Assessment, with which the Faciones are also intimately involved (see www.measuredreasons.com and www.insightassessment.com). The document on p. 21 is the Critical Thinking Disposition Self-Rating Form. It is a series of 20 questions that the reader can ask herself regarding her own disposition to think critically. According to the authors, it offers a rough approxima-tion of the tendency a person has to think critically. As another example, on pp.140-41 the authors include a list of questions meant to test the readers command of argument evaluation (more on argument evaluation below). These questions are arguments that are somewhat complicated, having more than three premises, and almost all are the sorts of arguments that could plausibly be used by someone in a real-life context of deciding what to believe or do. As a final example, on p. 224 the authors offer an exercise that tests argument interpretation and mapping (more on argument mapping below), in the context of the decision of then-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger to deny death-row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams clem-ency. Happily, all these special features are accessed easily

Review of THINK Criticallyby Peter Facione and Carol Ann Gittens

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2nd Edition, 2013, 338 pagesISBN 13:978-0-205-49098-1

Benjamin Hamby

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through the dedicated Special Features and Exercises table of contents at the front of the textbook (pp. xiii-xvi), giving readers easy access to quick and engaging examples of critical thinking in practice.

The content of this extra material is interesting, current, relevant, and often quite novel, regarding top-ics that are controversial. As such, this material comes close to being as important as the proper content of the chapters, by offering readers opportunities to be reflective about important issues or topics in a variety of plausible real-life contexts. One surprising context of note on this point is the authors tendency to illustrate critical thinking in practice by referring to the military context, so on p. 7 Facione and Gittens say that a failure of critical thinking might result in combat casualties. On p.81 they give a full page table of language communities and corre-sponding examples of their special terms and symbols, one row of which is the language community of military field commanders, and on p.116 the authors discuss the criteria that make for authority and expertise, referring to Jack Nicholsons character in the 1992 film A Few Good Men. In the film Nicholson played a U.S. Marine Colonel who argues that the military is justified in perpetuating a Noble lie. Finally, on p. 258 there is a half-page spread that showcases Nineteenth-Century Ideologies and Twen-tieth Century Wars.

The variety of topics that the textbook covers in these special features does not stop there; for example, on p.56 there is another half page thinking critically text-box that queries How can we protect ourselves from ourselves? and is a brief discussion of the sin tax, asking readers to begin to go through the process of formulating a judg-ment on how and whether society should be in the business of guiding individual lifestyle choices through taxation. The book is filled with examples such as these, which substantively challenge readers to think about serious and important problems that deserve their considered attention in real-life contexts of deciding what to believe or do.

Facione and Gittens textbook also has a significant amount of on-line content that the reader is directed to in the body of the text. If there is some video or interactive material that is related to the content that the authors dis-cuss, then it is likely to be found by going to the address www.mythinkinglab.com, a companion website developed by Pearson publishing that supplements the textbook. This has become a standard part of many textbooks, but it is a benefit of THINK Critically that there is so much electronic content associated with the printed book.

Another aspect of the organization of the textbook that is unusual, but refreshing in its originality, is the con-tent and design of the exercise sections at the end of each chapter. As opposed to other textbooks, the exercises are not one-dimensionally dominated by short, decontextual-ized, artificial questions that test rote knowledge of the material that is introduced in the text. While there are some such short question/short answer question sections,

the exercise sections are mostly divided into individual subsections that do not fit this mold. Instead, each of them asks the reader in a detailed way to approach various critical thinking problems from a different perspective, in a way that is relevant to the chapter content. No two ex-ercise sections for any two chapters are organized exactly alike, but all exercise sections require the reader to engage substantively in a process of thinking critically about the material. Many have an analyze and interpret section, where readers are encouraged in detailed ways to take an active role in responding to some portion of text that the authors highlight, going through a process of thinking at-tempting to arrive at a judgment. For instance, on p. 178 the authors prompt as a challenge exercise to evaluate the arguments of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concludes that humans are partly responsible for climate change. The exercises are dominated by real-life problems such as these that require real arguments to come to a judgment about.

Furthermore, almost all exercise sections have group exercises, where the authors prompt readers in detailed ways to go through research reports or other documents, and to develop with their peers, reasoned-out positions on the problems at issue. This is an excellent, and not very common, approach to textbook exercises, and, since criti-cal thinking is often a social activity undertaken by groups of people, it makes sense that the textbook work encour-ages such group interaction. Also, many of the exercise sections have reflective log sections where the reader is prompted in detailed ways to reflect about her own thinking concerning the material in question.

What sets the exercises of this book apart from other treatments is in the end the detail and thoroughness that has gone into the way the questions are written. Facione and Gittens offer an approach to exercises that prioritizes the real-life context of the questions, that calls for deeper and more substantial critical thinking, and that deemphasizes drill-style short answer questions that only superficially prompt reflective thinking.

A critic of this approach to the exercise sections might point out that since exercises in textbooks are typically used by instructors to drill the skills introduced within chapters and since this requires using short questions with short, easily marked answers, Facione and Gittens book fails in this respect, because the questions they have generated to exercise the skills and concepts are long and do not involve simple answers. From an instructors per-spective this makes marking exercises a more substantial task, as answers to exercises will often come in the form of short-answer compositions. However, from this reviewers perspective this is not a drawback to the format of the ex-ercises but rather a substantial benefit. This is because the exercises mimic what a student should actually be able to do in any instance of real-life thinking that aims at well-reasoned-out judgments, which almost never involves a simple and easily evaluated response. So those problems

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offer a more realistic, and therefore a more useful, way for readers to practice the skills of critical thinking, even if it will take some effort on an instructors part to incorporate the exercises, and the attentive marking that comes with them, into a course curriculum.

Finally, the book is written with a significant section of endnotes, and the endnotes allow the reader to follow up on scholarly material that supports the textbooks content. This is a major positive of the book, because it allows readers to go to the next step and investigate the primary sources themselves that the authors reference. Very few critical thinking textbooks offer the resources to follow up on scholarly references, when such references are made at all, and it is refreshing to see Facione and Gittens cite relevant material for further reading.

So, this textbook succeeds in the way it presents itself; it is immediately a pleasure to hold, read, and peruse, and it is theoretically informed. The exercise sections give read-ers something substantial to think about, not just another set of boring drills that do not really test the application of skills in real-life critical thinking. Furthermore, since the majority of extant critical thinking textbooks are in a more or less traditional format and since they do not offer the reader a pleasurable reading experience beyond the body of the text, Facione and Gittens book is to be highly recom-mended just for the interest it is sure to bring to students who are used to textbooks that look and read the same.

III. Contents of the Chapters

What sets Facione and Gittens treatment of critical thinking apart from other texts, other than the format and organization of the textbook, the special features, and the exercise sections, is the substantial chapter content the book contains, and its somewhat non-standard approach. While not without some aspects of the content that deserve to be questioned on their theoretical merits, the major content of the book still offers an introduction to the skills, and especially the dispositions, of critical thinking that few other textbooks live up to. This is done in a way that departs from the typical textbook, which tends to cover anything and everything relating to argumentation in an unsubtle and theoretically crude way: the dogs breakfast approach to the call it what you will course(Johnson & Blair, 2009).This textbook is distinctive instead for merg-ing a traditionally philosophical approach that includes content on arguments and fallacies, while also stressing decision-making from a modern psychological perspective, with chapters on heuristics, dominance structuring, and self-regulation strategies. In the end the chapters set out a coherent set of tools for reflecting on ones judgment-making process, offering readers a way to improve that process and become better critical thinkers.

The first chapters set out the books conception of criti-cal thinking, which is based on an important study in the canon of critical thinking scholarship, The Delphi Project

Report (Facione,1990), an expert consensus statement on critical thinking made by 46 interdisciplinary scholars and facilitated by Facione under the aegis of the American Philosophical Association (APA). The APA Delphi Proj-ect Report found that critical thinking is the process of purposeful, self-regulatory judgment. (Facione, 1990, p. 2). In other words, critical thinking is about making well-reasoned judgments about what to believe or do (Facione and Gittens, 2012, p.7). This language is also reflected in Ennis popular definition of critical thinking that defines the concept as reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do (Ennis, 1991).

The books conception of critical thinking being based on this consensus statement immediately puts Facione and Gittens treatment in a class by itself in this reviewers view. Part of what makes a practical difference in the textbook by virtue of this fact is that, unlike many critical thinking textbooks, which introduce the concept of critical thinking in a cursory introductory chapter, Facione and Gittens spend the first two chapters (41 pages) providing an in-depth introductory analysis of critical thinking, help-ing to frame the concept so that readers better understand how the chapters that follow will fulfill the promise of helping to teach people how to be better critical thinkers. The Delphi Project Report consensus statement is not im-mune from criticism, but it nevertheless aligns with many other mainstream conceptions of critical thinking in that it stresses that critical thinking is an ends-directed, reflec-tive process of thinking, involving skills and virtues, and aiming towards judgments about what to do or believe. While some theorists who participated disagreed on the details and while many theorists who did not participate may also disagree on certain specifics, the Delphi Project Report is in many respects a superior normative articula-tion of critical thinking that captures many aspects of the multi-faceted concept.

In the first chapter, The Power of Critical Thinking, the authors motivate their understanding of critical thinking and gloss their conception. They link the concept with the importance of an educated citizenry in a free society, an idea that has deep roots in Western thinking and in con-nection with the concept of critical thinking (e.g., Dewey, 1910). Importantly, they provide a holistic rubric for scoring any instance of critical thinking, where the highest score satisfies most or all of the six core skills that are major components of their conception of critical thinking. Those six skills are (1) interpretation, (2) analysis, (3) inference, (4) explanation, (5) evaluation, and (6) self-reg-ulation. A high score also is indicative of the dispositions the authors say are necessary for critical thinking, such as judiciousness and fair-mindedness. They exemplify some instances of plausible real life critical thinking in narratives that are then subject to evaluation based upon the rubric. This initial introduction to the skills that make for good critical thinking is thus excellent both in the way it sets up the study of critical thinking, as based on an expert

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consensus about the concept, and in the way it prioritizes illustrations of real-life thinking based on its clearly stated criteria for what makes good critical thinking.

In Chapter 2, Skilled and Eager to Think, the authors delve deeper into their conception of critical thinking, stressing that the process is a skilled and virtuous activity, which involves a person who has certain abilities, as well as certain habits of mind such as open-mindedness and judiciousness. By stressing the dispositions necessary for a person to be a critical thinker Facione and Gittens do what few other critical thinking textbook authors do, which is to pay curricular attention to something theorists have recognized for decades: that a critical thinker must be not only skilled at the processes of critical thinking, but also must be willing to employ those skills in efforts at reaching reasoned judgments.

The authors go deeper too into the six core skills of critical thinking, which provide a framework for the remaining chapters. Helpfully, they provide a table of questions to fire up our critical thinking skills (p. 31), each associated with one of these six core skills. These questions illustrate in a general way the sorts of thoughtful questioning that is needed to properly employ the skills of critical thinking. Readers are helped further when the authors break down each skill into sub skills, and also provide a table listing the description of skills and their associated sub skills. For example, part of the skill of infer-ence involves the ability [t]o identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions and the associ-ated sub skills of query[ing] evidence, conjecture[ing] alternatives, and draw[ing] conclusions using inductive or deductive reasoning (p. 33).

Indeed, in these first chapters, even if instructors have some disagreements with the authors over the details of their conception of critical thinking, those who adopt this textbook will find the opportunity to direct student atten-tion to the points of disagreement, which is a useful way to exemplify the process of thinking critically in a real-life context. The fact that the consensus statement was not reached unanimously offers a natural segue into a discus-sion regarding what elements of the conception might have met with resistance from certain theorists. And, in any case where theorists might disagree, an instructor can profitably move ahead with the textbook treatment without lingering on theoretical details.

Spending too much time on introductory statements or prioritizing theoretical talking about critical thinking rather than having students practically do critical thinking is a danger that Facione seems to be well aware of (Facione, 2003, pp. 299-300). But I do not think that in Facione and Gittens book we have an instance of over-prioritizing theoretical talk. Rather, what we have is just what most textbook authors agree is an important first step in learning how to be better critical thinker; it is simply that Facione and Gittens have more to say about the concept than most authors because of Faciones research on the topic.

Furthermore, the introductory chapters on the nature of critical thinking are anything but dry reading in my opinion; instead, I found their exposition interesting and engaging. Chapters 1 and 2 therefore frame the remaining chapters in a particular light, setting a deep foundation for those that follow.

In Chapter 3, Solve Problems and Succeed in Col-lege, we continue to see an unconventional approach to an introductory textbook on critical thinking, when the authors introduce IDEAS, an acronym for a five-step critical thinking problem solving process, and then spend considerable narrative effort in exemplifying real-life situations in the college-life context, where this process could plausibly be put to use. That process is: (1) Identify problems and set priorities, (2) Deepen understanding and gather relevant information, (3) Enumerate options and anticipate consequences, (4) Assess the situation and make a preliminary decision, and (5) Scrutinize the process and self-correct as needed (p. 47). This chapter, new to the second edition, might be one that instructors have their students pass over in a one term course, but it is no less interesting, nor is it any less potentially useful for students should they read it on their own, since they will find it is a plausible reflection of decisions and situations they might confront in their own lives.

Furthermore, the approach Facione and Gittens take is also unconventional in that, while they cover arguments and fallacies, and point to the inductive/deductive dis-tinction, they do not simply equate critical thinking with reasoning or argument. Thus the basics of interpretation are covered in the entire fourth chapter, Clarify Ideas and Concepts. This chapter sets the stage for argument interpretation and analysis in the next chapter by covering ambiguity, vagueness, and the importance of context. It also deepens contextual appreciation of the purposes of communication, by offering observations on language communities, or communities of [p]eople who shar[e] an understanding of the meanings of . . . words and icons (p. 78). Chapter 4 offers a good foundation for readers to focus on the skill of interpretation and the associated subskills of clarifying meaning and categorizing.

Facione and Gittens do not get to the concept of argu-ment until Chapter 5, Analyze Arguments and Diagram Decisions, and then they avoid confusing critical thinking with argumentation, and they avoid calling just any kind of reasoning an argument. With this chapter on the basics of argument interpretation (which the authors call analysis) based on a method for diagramming arguments, the authors attempt to prepare the reader for the next four chapters. Those four chapters are the real meat and potatoes of the textbook, and they stress the evaluation of arguments. But before arguments can be evaluated, they need to be ana-lyzed, in other words, interpreted and put into a standard form where the structure of the reasons for some claim can be clearly exhibited. Hence the need for Chapter 5. The method of diagramming that the authors have devised

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is straightforward and easy to remember, and somewhat standard in the way arrows are used to express inferences between different statements. It should aid students in picking out conclusions, claims, and implicit aspects of arguments, especially in longer passages.

It is good to see the authors avoid an equation of critical thinking with argumentation, and they delay the introduction of argument analysis and evaluation until approximately one-third of the way through the book. Furthermore, the practice of diagramming arguments makes sense for students who are more visual learners. However, this brings me to one issue I take with the explicit conception of argument found in Chapter 5 and how it is translated into the diagramming framework. Facione and Gittens say they follow the standard usage of the phrase make an argument, to refer to the process of giving a reason in support of a claim (p. 88, emphasis added). This is a problematic formulation, however, because, as the authors admit, [i]t is common in natural conversation to give more than one reason in support of a claim (p. 88).

They nevertheless go on to say that they will treat each separate combination of reason-plus-claim as a separate argument (p. 88). But, if more than one reason is offered to support a claim, it is not clear that those reasons should automatically be interpreted as independent reasons in support of that claim, so that they should be represented as two separate arguments and evaluated as such. Some-times reasons are clearly linked together by an arguer in an interdependent way in order to offer inferential support for a claim, because the arguer makes explicit that they are not only relevant to the claim, but also relevant to each other regarding the claim. If that is so, then separating those reasons in order to see the single argument as if it were two arguments confuses matters, because without representing both reasons as acting in concert, such an interpretation departs from the way the reasons were explicitly used in practice to support the conclusion.

However, regardless of the way an argument is used, or the intentions of the arguer in how she used it, this tactic seems to go beyond mere interpretation, and begins to be an evaluative effort since determining the relevance of more than one claim to the support of another is a matter not just of charitably representing those claims, but also of making a judgment as to whether thetruth or acceptability of them would make the conclusion more likely to be true or ac-ceptable. Deciding to interpret multiple premise arguments as if each premise independently supports the conclusion is thus a matter of evaluation, not simply interpretation of what some author could have most plausibly intended. We should, therefore, not separate premises into separate arguments, treating each premise as being independent of the others in itssupport of the conclusion,before we can make a determination regarding how they are being used to support thatconclusion, and whether they are relevant to each other regarding the conclusion.

Facione and Gittens give as an example the argument

I should buy thin crust pizza because it costs less and tastes better (p. 88). They treat this as being two separate arguments: Thin crust pizza costs less; therefore, I should buy thin crust pizza and Thin crust pizza tastes better; therefore, I should buy thin crust pizza. While I agree that with this specific example it is plausible to analyze these reasons as each providing independent support for the conclusion, and therefore interpret and (further) evaluate them as two separate arguments, I do not think it is helpful to blanket all arguments with this interpretive tactic. First of all, by interpreting the argument this way one is doing more than analyzing; one is in fact engaging in evalua-tion because one is making a determination as to how the premises actually do hang together to provide support for the conclusion. Tasting better and costing less are not rel-evant to buying thin crust pizza in a jointly interdependent way. Another reason is, in part, articulated by Facione and Gittens themselves when they say that the aim of argu-ment analysis is to display with accuracy the arguments as the speaker made them (p. 90, original emphasis). But, as noted above, if a speaker or writer makes a claim that is supported by multiple reasons that she represents as being dependent upon one another, then separating them does not do justice to the argument as it was made. In any case, unless the inferential support of the premises is made explicit, which might happen rarely, determining just whether an author of some argument intended some reasons to be dependent (or not) upon each other seems a futile effort; besides, even if the author of the argument could be queried, she might not have had any intention in mind regarding the strength of the inferential support, since she might not have any concept of joint sufficiency (cf. Ennis, 2001, p.105, and contra Fohr, 1979, p. 8). This is to stress that interpreting all multiple premise arguments as if they are most plausibly single premise arguments is a questionable tactic.

As an example, take the way I might reason if I am meeting a friend-of-a-friend for dinner, someone whom I have never met and whose personality I am wondering about. I reason Omar must be polite, because Omar is a Canadian, and Canadians are in general polite. Should this argument be evaluated as two separate arguments: Omar is Canadian, therefore Omar is polite, and Ca-nadians are in general polite, therefore Omar is polite? I would say no since when those premises are separated from each other, their relationship as being jointly suffi-cient to establish the conclusion is lost: should one of the premises be rejected, the other becomes irrelevant toward establishing the conclusion. The argument therefore is more cogent when the joint relevance of the premises is taken for granted, rather than their independence. As such our interpretive tactic should be to think of this as one argu-ment with premises that are jointly relevant to the conclu-sion (cf. Hitchcock, 1980, p. 15). As can be seen in this example, the role the premises play in working together is evaluated before any interpretation is made about whether

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they were intended by the speaker to be used that way or not. These concerns might not be the most devastating, but diagramming all arguments without allowing for premises working in concert seems a mistake.

In Chapter 6, Evaluate the Credibility of Claims and Sources, the authors move on to skills involved in evalua-tion. They stress the importance of a healthy skepticism in efforts at critical thinking, and list twelve criteria that every authoritative source should meet, including being unbiased, truthful, and free from conflicts of interest. This chapter sets the stage for the introduction of further skills of argument evaluation by covering one of the essential skills needed before any kind of argument evaluation goes on: the evaluation of so-called experts as trusted-sources.

Chapter 7, Evaluate Arguments: The Four Basic Tests, stands as a sort of midway culmination of chapters introduced until that point. The authors introduce argu-ment evaluation as a core aspect of the skills of critical thinking that they say is necessary for the process of reach-ing judgments about what to believe or do. They offer a four-part test to determine whether reasons support a conclusion well: (1) truthfulness of the premises, (2) logi-cal strength, (3) relevance, and (4) non-circularity. While this format for argument cogency is mostly standard by stressing premise truthfulness along with the importance of logical strength of arguments and the relevancy of the premises, it still could be critiqued for incorporating non-circularity as a criterion for cogency and for focusing on thetruth of premises as a criterion for argument worthiness without mentioning premise acceptability.

Regarding the latter, as Ralph Johnson (2000) has pointed out, and as others have echoed in their own text-book treatments of argumentation (for instance, Govier, 2010), premises can be acceptable without necessarily being true, or true without being believed or granted to be true by an audience. The difference is that [t]he truth criterion concerns the relationship between the premise and the state of affairs in the world. The acceptability criterion concerns the relationship between the premise and the audience (Johnson, 2000, 336-337). For Johnson, both truth and acceptability of premises should be criteria for an arguments worthiness, because what an audience should find as acceptable is highly relevant to whether an argument is persuasive or not for that audience. For Govier, truth should not be thought of as either a necessary or sufficient condition for the worthiness of an argument. This is not meant as a devastating critique of Facione and Gittens treatment of argument evaluation, but it is to acknowledge that their treatment fits squarely into the common textbook approach that stresses premise truthful-ness and neglects to take into consideration the rhetorical orientation of premise acceptability.

It is also in Chapter 7 that the authors first discuss fal-lacies, and their introductory remarks are to be applauded for their concise, yet thorough, exposition of deceptive arguments that appear logical and seem at times to be

persuasive, but, upon closer analysis, fail to demonstrate their conclusions (p. 140). This formulation of the defi-nition of fallacies is superior to many because it stresses that fallacies occur in argumentation, that they appear to be logical, and that they do not support their conclusions well. The authors should also get a nod for acknowledg-ing that responding to fallacies is an important part of recognizing them when they say that [l]earning how to recognize common fallacies and learning how to explain in ordinary, non-technical terms the mistaken reasoning they contain is a great aid to evaluating arguments (p. 140). However, nowhere in these first remarks about fal-lacies do the authors also acknowledge that recognizing and then responding to fallacies (at least sometimes) might involve an effort to improve the argument in question such that it is no longer fallacious, progressing dialogue and discussion. As Hundleby (2010) has argued, an ap-proach that neglects to encourage argument improvement perpetuates an adversarial approach to argumentation and fallacy identification that prioritizes negative critique over constructive criticism.

Having said this, it should also be noted that another positive aspect of their initial treatment of fallacies miti-gates this omission by reminding us that the specialized terminology of logicians is not the most important thing to remember about fallacies--rote memorization, the authors claim, is not a critical thinking skill (p. 146). Instead, the authors stress that it is possible for a person to recite the textbook definition of the rules and terms . . . but yet, in practice, still lack skill at evaluating arguments. This is significant, the authors claim, because [b]eing able to explain why an argument is unworthy of acceptance is a stronger demonstration of ones critical thinking skills than being able to remember the names of the different types of fallacies (p. 146). This statement is supported in practice when the authors prompt readers to evaluate the worthiness of some realistic sample arguments by giving a detailed explanation to support your evaluation (p. 140). In these ways the first section on fallacies that Facione and Gittens provide is helpful and informative, and, even while they provide a taxonomic classification of fallacies of relevance such as appeals to ignorance and appeals to the mob, this section does not merely introduce students to a simplistic and rough-cut notion of fallacies, but also gives them a nuanced perspective on what the fallacies are and on the most appropriate way to identify and respond to them in practice.

In Chapter 8, Valid Deductive Reasoning and De-ductive Fallacies, and Chapter 9, Justified Inductive Reasoning and Fallacies, the authors provide two chapters with enough content that instructors might want to spend more time covering the material they contain. However, the articulation the authors give to the inductive-deductive distinction is problematic, ignoring important scholarship in argumentation theory. This is especially true for the chapter on deductive reasoning, which attempts to give a

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crash course introduction to deductive relationships when reasoning about declarative statements (p. 152), classes of objects (p. 155), and relationships (p. 157). The authors introduce the idea of deductively valid arguments (p. 152) by giving a standard definition, saying that with such arguments it must be impossible for the premises all to be true and the conclusion false (p. 152). But, as Hitchcock (1979) has plausibly argued, the idea of deduc-tive validity should be understood to apply to inferences, not arguments. And as Goddu (2002) has also argued, we can distinguish deductive from inductive reasoning, [and] distinguish deductive from inductive logic without appeal to the idea of deductive and inductive arguments (p. 15). Instead of making the distinction between deduc-tive and inductive arguments in the interpretation stage, appealing to an arguers intentions, we should determine with a sufficient degree of precision the actual strength of the relationship between premises and conclusion (p. 8, emphasis added). In other words, we need to evaluate the argument on how adequately the premises support the conclusion, without deciding beforehand what standard of validity it should meet in our interpretation of it.

On a somewhat related theoretical point, it should be noted that Facione and Gittens definition of deductively valid arguments in the body of the textbook differs slightly from the definition given in the glossary for deductive reasoning, which they say is drawing inferences in which it appears that the conclusion cannot possibly be false if all of the premises are true (p. 314). But this leaves open the possibility that one could be reasoning in a way such that it appears the truth of the conclusion is necessitated by the truth of the premises, but in fact is not, and that such reasoning would still be called deductive. That is a bad consequence, because to call a bit of reasoning deductive we should be saying that if that reasoning employs true premises than the conclusion adduced through them must be true. To call reasoning deductive that appears as if this is the case is not enough - it must really be the case.

The authors continue to cover fallacies in the remain-der of Chapter 8, contrasting valid deductive forms with their counterparts. For instance, the authors introduce the valid form of denying the consequent (p. 152) and then contrast this with the fallacious form of affirming the consequent (p. 158). Chapter 8 offers some real-life examples to practice the skill of identifying valid deduc-tive inferences and recognizing deductive fallacies, and in general it offers the reader a helpful introduction to deductive relationships.

The same can be said for Chapter 9, which introduces inductive reasoning as a contrast to deductive reasoning. In this chapter Facione and Gittens simplistically gloss induc-tive reasoning as different from the structural necessity of valid deductive reasoning by claiming that inductive reasoning is probabilistic (p. 167). In this way Facione and Gittens textbook is guilty (along with many others) of ignoring what Blair (2006) calls the challenge of infer-

ence pluralism (p. 263) implying instead the idea that all reasoning or arguments are either deductively valid or else have some quantifiable degree of inductive strength less than 1.0 (p. 262). But to ignore other kinds of inference making is to deny that under some conditions an infer-ence can be reasonable even if it is deductively invalid and not quantifiably strong (p. 262). This to my mind is not a devastating critique of the textbook, but it is to acknowledge that the authors treatment of the inductive-deductive distinction is not nuanced or informed by recent and relevant scholarly discussions.

A significant chapter in the textbook that again sets it apart in a positive way from other approaches is Chapter 10: Think Heuristically: Risks and Benefits of Snap Judgments. This chapter is a consolidated treatment of heuristics, a more complete treatment of which can be found in Facione and Facione (2007). It is distinctive that a critical thinking textbook would spend an entire chapter covering the kind of thinkingSystem I thinkingthat is not usually considered critical thinking (and indeed the authors themselves do not consider heuristics to be the kind of Systems-II thinking that is reflective). Yet Facione and Gittens appropriately do not disparage heuristic thinking that is non-reflective; instead they put it in its place as a useful tool that often accompanies reflective judgment making. Indeed, to be aware of the ways we make snap judgments is to begin to walk the path of recognizing when such a judgment is appropriate, and when a problem, decision, or action deserves more considered reflection to come to a judgment about. It is also a way to begin to be self-aware of, and self-correct for, the sorts of cognitive biases that thwart proper snap-judgments from being made. This chapter then serves as both a warning and a guide for readers who are trying to be more reflective about the way they make judgments.

Chapter 11, Think Reflectively: Strategies for De-cision Making, is another chapter on the psychological practice of coming to judgments about what to do or believe, and contains an interesting section on domi-nance structuring, again a concept covered in greater detail in Facione and Facione (2007). Readers will find here an interesting and informative discussion and many exemplifications of the phenomenon of locking into our decisions (p. 210). In this chapter Facione and Gittens also provide readers with a detailed series of precautions to keep in mind when thinking critically in an effort to aid self reflection about the process of thinking critically so as to avoid prematurely or unreasonably locking onto poor decisions or judgments.

Chapters 12 through 14 are perhaps the most practical chapters of the textbook, as these are the chapters that put the previous chapters exploring the skills and dispositions of critical thinking into practice, providing criteria for and exemplifying Comparative Reasoning (Chapter 12), Ideological Reasoning (Chapter 13), and Empirical Reasoning (Chapter 14). In this latter chapter readers are

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offered an interesting and informative two-page spread that articulates the 13-step process that the authors claim isa part of any scientific investigation (pp. 274-275).

Finally, in Chapter 15, Write Sound and Effective Arguments, the authors provide readers with a series of questions that are meant to stress the importance of audi-ence, context, and the purposes of whatever arguments a person is trying to write. This chapter offers readers a chance to practice and improve upon a skill that college and university students should expect to exercise across a wide range of academic classes.

An appendix ends the textbook with examples of extended argument mapping strategies based on real-life arguments and of the method for mapping that the authors introduced in Chapter 5. Finally, the textbook has a glos-sary, an index, and as mentioned above, endnotes from the main body of the text.

IV. Conclusion

This is a textbook that breaks the mold of tradition-ally conceived critical thinking pedagogy. The format is fresh and original, the content relates to real-life problems in decision and judgment making, and the conception of critical thinking is reinforced by important scholar-ship. Where the book falls short, in its treatment of the deductive-inductive distinction, and in its conception of argument, this is more than made up for in the other ways it guides readers through the complicated and challenging process of developing ones skills and dispositions to be a better critical thinker. This book might be a challenge for some instructors who are used to a traditionally formatted textbook with traditional content and a typical approach to exercising the skills of critical thinking, but for all the challenge it might be just the thing for instructors who are looking for a new and engaging approach to teaching what has become almost ubiquitously accepted as a laudable educational ideal.

References

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Ennis, R. H. (1991). Critical thinking: A streamlined con-ception. Teaching Philosophy, 14(1), 5-25.

Ennis, R. H. (2001). Argument appraisal strategy: A com-prehensive approach. Informal Logic, 21, 97-140.

Facione, P. (1990). Critical thinking: A statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction. Millbrae, CA: The California Academic Press.

Facione, P. (2003). Review of Evidence-Based Practice: Logic and Critical Thinking in Medicine, by M. Jen-icek and D. Hitchcock. Informal Logic, 23(3), 297-301.

Facione, P. & Facione, N. (2007). Thinking and reasoning in human decision making: The method of argument and heuristic analysis. Millbrae, CA: The California Academic Press.

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Hamby, B. (2013, forthcoming). Libri ad nauseam: the critical thinking textbook glut. Paideusis, 21(1).

Hitchcock, D. (1979). Deductive and inductive: types of validity, not types of argument. Informal Logic Newsletter, 2(3), 9-10.

Hitchcock, D. (1980). Deduction, induction and conduc-tion. Informal Logic Newsletter, 3(2), 7-15.

Hundleby, C.E. (2010). The authority of the fallacies approach to argument evaluation. Informal Logic, 30(3), 279-308.

Johnson, R. H., & Blair, J. A., (2009). Teaching the dogs breakfast: Some dangers and how to deal with them. APA Newsletters: Newsletter on teaching philosophy, 9(1): 2-5.

Johnson, R. (1996). The problem of defining critical think-ing. In R. Johnson, The rise of informal logic. Newport News, VA: Vale Press, 216-229.

Johnson, R. H. (2000). Manifest rationality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.

Author Information

Benjamin Hamby is currently a fourth year doctoral student (ABD) in the Philosophy Department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His dissertation is an inquiry into the relationship between critical thinking skills and virtues.