Chapter 1: Introduction

The aim of this book is to help you to improve your reasoning skills. There are three parts to this: a) getting better at detecting when other people are trying to get you to believe things or do things without really giving good reasons why you should, b) getting better at persuading people yourself, and c) getting better at thinking through the reasons you have for believing the things that you believe, and whether or not they are good reasons.

This chapter has the following sections:

• What is critical thinking, and why is it important?
• Arguments
• Premises, conclusions, and statements
• Standard form
• Chapter 1 questions