Think Again: How to Reason and Argue

Pdf Book Name: Think Again: How to Reason and Argue
Author: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN-10, 13: 0190627123,9780190627126
Year: 2018
Pages: 256 pages
Language: English
File size: 1 MB
File format: PDF,EPUB

Think Again: How to Reason and Argue Pdf Book Description:

I have taught courses on reason and argument for over thirty-five years at Dartmouth College and now Duke University. Many students tell me that my courses have helped them in various areas of their lives. They motivate me to keep going. While my students learned to argue, the rest of the world lost that skill. The level of discourse and communication in politics and also in personal life has reached new lows. During election years, my course has always discussed examples of arguments during presidential debates. During the 1980s, I had no trouble finding arguments on both sides in the debates. Today all I find are slogans, assertions, jokes, and gibes but very few real arguments. I see dismissals, put-downs, abuse, accusations, and avoiding the issue more than actual engagement with problems that matter. There might be fewer protests in the streets today than in the 1960s, but there are still fewer serious attempts to reason together and understand each other. I could not help but conclude that our culture, like my students, could benefit from a strong dose of reason and argument. When I moved to Duke in 2010, I was offered a chance to reach a wider audience through the magical medium of MOOCs (that is, Massive Open Online Courses). With my friend, Ram Neta, I taught a MOOC (Think Again on the Coursera platform) that has attracted over 800,000 registered students from over 150 countries. This surprising response convinced me of a hunger around the world for learning how to reason and argue. Of course, not all of my students finished the course, much less learned how to argue well but many did. My hope is that their new skills helped them understand and work together with their neighbors.

We know that some of you love to argue and some of you doesn’t love it. but in some circumstance you need to argue to hold your opinion. so reading this book is a must for all of you that always put in argue situation. The book that you have in your hands (or on your screen?) is another step in that direction. My goal is to show what arguments are and what good they can do. This book is not about winning arguments or beating opponents. Instead, it is about understanding each other and appreciating strong evidence. It teaches logic instead of rhetorical tricks. Although this book began as a manual on how to argue, I realized that I also needed to start by explaining why people should argue. That motivational discussion then grew into Part I: Why Argue? The lessons on how to argue then became Part II, complemented by an overview of how not to argue in Part III. By the end of the book, I hope that you will be both willing and able to argue and assess arguments as well as to provide motivation and a model for others to join you in constructive engagement. These skills can improve not only your life but also our shared society