Good Reasoning Matters!
A Guide to Critical Thinking in a Digital Age, Sixth Edition
Good Reasoning Matters!
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  • Publication Date: June 30, 2025
  • ISBN: 9781554816842 / 155481684X
  • 480 pages; 7" x 9"

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Good Reasoning Matters!

A Guide to Critical Thinking in a Digital Age, Sixth Edition

  • Publication Date: June 30, 2025
  • ISBN: 9781554816842 / 155481684X
  • 480 pages; 7" x 9"

Good Reasoning Matters! teaches students how to decipher, evaluate, analyze, construct, and engage in argument. This sixth edition incorporates many timely topics, including the impact of artificial intelligence and social media on how we propose and respond to arguments. The instruction in the book is rooted in traditional philosophical understandings of argument, but is expanded to account for the complexities that characterize real-life arguments. This includes an examination of the role that images, sounds, and other non-verbal components play in attempts to convince us of some point of view—in advertising, television, YouTube, film, interpersonal exchange, and elsewhere. Numerous and varied exercises—formative within the chapters and summative at their end—help students improve their reading, reasoning, and writing skills. Instructors will find the text is informed by research in digital pedagogy and works well in a variety of course formats: in-person, remote, hybrid, and synchronous or asynchronous delivery. The authors’ expertise in argumentation theory and decades of teaching experience ensure that this book prepares students for the complexities of arguing in the 21st century.

Preface
Acknowledgements

PART ONE: INTRODUCING ARGUMENTS

  • 1 Making Room for Argument
  • 2 Arguments, Weak and Strong
  • 3 Standardizing Arguments
  • 4 Argument Diagrams

PART TWO: JUDGING ARGUMENTS

  • 5 Defining What You Mean
  • 6 Premises: Consistent, True, Acceptable
  • 7 Linking Premises to Conclusions

PART THREE: REAL LIFE COMPLICATIONS

  • 8 Modes of Arguing
  • 9 Arguments and Audiences

PART FOUR: SCHEMING IN ALL ITS FORMS

  • 10 Schemes and Counter Schemes
  • 11 Looking for the Facts
  • 12 Thinking Like a Scientist
  • 13 Schemes of Value
  • 14 Scheming People
  • 15 Essaying Arguments

Glossary of Key Terms
Credits
Index

Leo Groarke is Professor of Philosophy at Trent University. Christopher W. Tindale is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor. Linda Carozza is an instructor at York University.

KEY FEATURES

  • • A dynamic, comprehensive account of real-life arguing.
  • • Examines the logical, rhetorical, and dialectical features of arguments.
  • • Up-to-date coverage of the methods and contexts through which people argue in the real world, including a discussion of AI and the use (and abuse) of emotion in arguing.
  • • Surveys many modes of arguing, including those that depend on non-verbal elements (music, photographs, video, sounds, etc.).
  • • Offers methods that can be used to analyze and assess all kinds of arguments.
  • • Introduces students to the most common schemes of argument (causal arguing, argument by analogy, etc.).
  • • Graduated, streamlined exercises that develop different cognitive skills.
  • • Online resources include quizzes that integrate with learning management systems, as well as presentation slides.
  • • Discusses the varied applications of critical thinking to academic, professional, and personal settings.

NOTABLE CHANGES FOR THE NEW EDITION

  • • Thoroughly revised and reorganized, offering an arrangement of topics that provides instructors with maximum flexibility in their approach.
  • • Updated and timely examples.
  • • Text is informed by research in digital pedagogy and is written for diverse class contexts: synchronous or asynchronous; in-person, online, or hybrid.
  • • More attention to the argumentative role of images, sounds, and other non-verbal elements.
  • • A new discussion of consistency, truth, and acceptability in Chapter 6.
  • • New Chapter 9 introduces students to the complexities that characterize real-life arguers and arguing.

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