Just as The Elements of Style provides a quick and authoritative reference for writers, The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook for Critical Thinking provides a quick and authoritative reference for issues regarding reasoning. The Handbook provides clear and succinct discussions of the following issues:
· Issues germane to clarifying sentences: ambiguity, vagueness, and propositional attitudes
· General discussions of descriptions, explanations, and arguments
· Criteria for evaluating observational statements and testimony
· Categorical syllogisms, including issues germane to both the Boolean and Aristotelian interpretations
· A complete system of propositional logic and a brief discussion of the use of truth tables
· Induction: generalization and particularization arguments, analogies, arguments to the best explanation, Mill's Methods, counterfactual reasoning, and making decisions under risk and uncertainty
· A brief discussion of the principle formulas involved in calculating probabilities
· An extended discussion of informal fallacies
· An essay on the relationship between critical thinking and writing