Models for Critical Thinking A Fundamental Guide to Effective Decision Making, Deep Analysis, Intelligent Reasoning, and Independent Thinking

Stay alert and avoid being tricked. Apply logic and analysis to your everyday life. Detect hidden assumptions, spot inconsistencies, and recognize dishonesty. The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our thinking. And the quality of our thinking is often determined by the quality questions we ask from ourselves. Critical thinking is the art of asking relevant, necessary, and meaningful questions to discover the objective truth behind words, events, and opinions in general. Critical thinking is the ability to think objectively and rationally about a particular situation without letting your emotions hijack you. Like any other skill, critical thinking can be learned through rigorous practice and commitment.Today we have more access to information than ever before. Information influences our worldview and decisions often without us noticing it. Following wrong idols can lead us to bad decisions which lead to unhappiness and a dissatisfying life. When what's "right, beautiful, successful, and cool" gets dictated around us by ads and through "influencers" we often forget to think for ourselves and make our own choices. Thus we make bad decisions based on the opinion of others - not even our own.Models for Critical Thinking provides you with unique insights into the nature of thinking and reasoning - why are we often so wrong, why are we so inclined to avoid the responsibility of thinking for ourselves and how can we develop solid, objective thinking patterns. Models for Critical Thinking lays out: - the function of critical thinking; its main impediments, the social counterfeits of ethics, - the elements of critical reasoning, - important abilities and traits of critical thinkers,- the vocabulary of critical analysis, - and the models essential to critical thinking.The most secure way of making good decisions is to have well-practiced and predictable strategies that you can use when you are faced with a problem that requires deeper analysis. This book will provide you with helpful information and exercises tips, which if you follow, you can find better solutions to your problems. - Learn the essential critical thinking skills when reading, writing, and speaking;- Be on your guard to hidden cognitive traps when shopping and interacting with advertisers. - Find out what tools and strategies can help you become a more disciplined thinker, developing your analytical, reasoning, and reflective thinking skills. Be ready to learn. Be ready to argue intellectually. - Learn to read between the lines, assess the validity of statements.- Identify and separate logical reasoning and illogical reasoning. - Learn how to construct a fair, well-reasoned argument with the help of formal and informal logic. As a physicist and computer scientist, I was always looking for logical, well-founded answers to questions. Yet, I needed to stay open to question my knowledge fairly often, revise my beliefs held, and unlearn some -to that point - objective, universal facts to keep up, and keep my job, in the ever-changing, ever demanding IT industry. Without critical self-analysis, and objective assessment, I couldn't have done it - couldn't have worked in this industry for 30 years. In this book, I share the best knowledge of the best critical thinkers - intertwined with my own - to help you develop this essential skill that the contemporary job market so keenly demands. I will help you create thinking patterns that lead to a critical and more objective understanding of the world.