Arguing using critical thinking

A few days ago, I received an email proposition. There apparently was a great deal of money in a Nigerian Bank that a sick widow wanted to share with me. Imagine my good fortune. Of all the people in the world, she selected me. I was going to be rich. Wait, before you start screaming at me, I realized that this email was part of a very popular scam and I easily rejected it. This was an easy test of my critical thinking skills. But every day, we are treated to advertisements; we are subjected to scams, Fake News, and just differences of opinions. How do we analyze these encounters and respond to them?

There is a quote that has been passed down many years and is most recently accounted to P.T. Barnum, “There is a sucker born every minute.” Are you that sucker? If you were, would you like to be “reborn?” The goal of this book is to help you through that “birthing” process. Critical thinking and standing up for your ideas and making decisions are important in both your personal and professional life. How good are we at making the decision to marry? According to
the Centers for Disease Control, there is one divorce in America every 36 seconds. That is nearly 2,400 every day. And professionally, the Wall Street Journal predicts the average person will have 7 careers in their lifetime. Critical thinking skills are crucial.

Critical thinking is a series learned skills. In each chapter of this book you will find a variety of skills that will help you improve your thinking and argumentative ability. As you improve, you will grow into a more confident person being more in charge of your world and the decisions you make.

Welcome to this introduction to Argumentation and Critical Thinking.