CriticalThinking Tutorial 1

’’(wwvv(1 Chapter 1: Reasoning and Critical Thinking1.1 ReasoningItisimportanttodistinguishmerethinking, i.e.asequenceofunrelatedthoughts,fromreasoning,in which case one thought directly leads to another. The active process of reasoning is calledinference.inference: When we infer B from A, we move from A to B because we believe that A supportsor justifies or makes it reasonable to believe in the truth of B.Words that indicate that one thought is intended to provide support for another thought arecalled inference indicators. The main examples of inference indicators are:sincethusimpliesconsequentlybecauseit follows thatgiven thatIt should be noted that inference indicators are not always present.Whenever we express a thought, we do so by means of statements. A statement is a sentencethat is used to make a claim that is capable of being true or false. So, questions and commandsare not statements. Statements are the basic units of arguments. An argument is a set ofstatements along with the claim that one or more of those statements, called the premises,supports another (particular one) of them called the conclusion.It is important to distinguish arguments from explanations. An explanation is a set of state-ments along with the claim that a particular one of them (what is being explained), called theexplanandum, is true because of the others, called the explanans. Thus, in an explanationwe begin with the knowledge that a particular ...