So You Think You Can Think

Unlike any other time in history, we are inundated with information from many sources of media, and depending on one’s ideology, the results can be fractious. Everyone’s racing to catch up to what is reliable, dependable, and true – all the while, feeling deep, emotional, attachments to our personal understanding of important issues. It has unfortunately become fashionable to claim that what people feel about issues should be taken as seriously as the facts about those issues. Emotional attachment to specific viewpoints and the facts about the world are often two completely different things, and we need to keep them distinct.The skill set of Critical Thinking allows us to better separate facts from feelings and acknowledges that there is value to our beliefs, our ideas, and our opinions and that some are simply better than others. But what makes these objects of the mind and influences of behavior good, bad, better, or worse? Luckily, much of the hard work has already been done. Philosophers, mathematicians, logicians, scientists, writers, and many others have developed the Critical Thinking tools that require all of us to make such valued distinctions.Here, DiCarlo has taken six of the most important tools and distilled them into a skill set that is easy to remember and practical to apply in everyday life. This skill set provides anyone with the capacity to be mature, diplomatic, and fair, and to disagree in a civil manner. For the majority of us, developing such skills will not happen overnight ... or in a week, or a month. It is something that is ongoing and requires continuous practice, development, and use. And in today’s age of immediacy, with information and opinion just a click away, there seems to be less and less time in which to practice such skills. Perhaps this is one of the reasons so many people are feeling their way through issues rather than thinking critically about them. With a better understanding of the tenets of critical thinking, though, readers will come away from this book with a renewed sense of engagement with thoughts, opinions, feelings, and facts.

“So You Think You Can Think is written in a very accessible style and form for modern readers. They'll enjoy learning a lot about good arguments (and bad) - and how to tell the difference!”

DiCarlo breaks down the steps of critical thinking and the process of making a persuasive argument in this useful guide. To dissect core principles of argumentation, DiCarlo works through topics such as bias (biological, cultural, and ethnic), types of reasoning (deductive, inductive, and abductive), fallacies (red herrings and ad hoc), and how to address disagreement. . . . Those looking to critically engage with information or 'value discourse over hatred' will learn a lot from DiCarlo's thorough study.

Christopher W. DiCarlo, PhD, is a philosopher, educator, and author. He often teaches in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Toronto (in Scarborough). He is also a lifetime member of Humanist Canada and an Expert Advisor for the Centre for Inquiry Canada. He has been invited to speak at numerous national and international conferences and written many scholarly papers ranging from bioethics to cognitive evolution. He is the author of How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Asking the Right Questions and Six Steps to Better Thinking: How to Disagree and Get Along. He is a past Visiting Research Scholar at Harvard University in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences: Department of Anthropology and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. DiCarlo is the Principal and Founder of Critical Thinking Solutions, a consulting business for individuals, corporations, and not-for-profits in both the private and public sectors. He is also the developer of the first Pilot Project in Canada to introduce Universal Critical Thinking skills into the Ontario Public High School curriculum which has begun in the Upper Grand District School Board. 

Unlike any other time in history, we are inundated with information from many sources of media, and depending on one's ideology, the results can be fractious. Everyone's racing to catch up to what is reliable, dependable, and true - all the while, feeling deep, emotional, attachments to our personal understanding of important issues. It has unfortunately become fashionable to claim that what people feel about issues should be taken as seriously as the facts about those issues. Emotional attachment to specific viewpoints and the facts about the world are often two completely different things, and we need to keep them distinct. The skill set of Critical Thinking allows us to better separate facts from feelings and acknowledges that there is value to our beliefs, our ideas, and our opinions and that some are simply better than others. But what makes these objects of the mind and influences of behavior good, bad, better, or worse? Luckily, much of the hard work has already been done. Philosophers, mathematicians, logicians, scientists, writers, and many others have developed the Critical Thinking tools that require all of us to make such valued distinctions. Here, DiCarlo has taken six of the most important tools and distilled them into a skill set that is easy to remember and practical to apply in everyday life. This skill set provides anyone with the capacity to be mature, diplomatic, and fair, and to disagree in a civil manner. For the majority of us, developing such skills will not happen overnight ... or in a week, or a month. It is something that is ongoing and requires continuous practice, development, and use. And in today's age of immediacy, with information and opinion just a click away, there seems to be less and less time in which to practice such skills. Perhaps this is one of the reasons so many people are feeling their way through issues rather than thinking critically about them. With a better understanding of the tenets of critical thinking, though, readers will come away from this book with a renewed sense of engagement with thoughts, opinions, feelings, and facts.

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