Evidence Latest Study Guide 2025
D265Critical Thinking Reason and
Evidence Latest Study Guide 2025
Critical Thinking -
The ability to think carefully about thinking and reasoning--to criticize your own
reasoning.
Critical -
Reflective, careful, or attentive to potential errors.
Critical Thinking -
Being curious and thinking creatively; Being billing to go the next step and think
about all of the possible positions and arguments before settling into a position.
Critical Thinking -
Separating the thinking from the position; Removing personal opinion from the
discussion and not making it personal against the other person.
Critical Thinking -
Knowing oneself enough to avoid biases and errors of thought; being thoughtful and
aware of personal biases and working against them to challenge thinking.
Critical Thinking -
Understanding arguments ,reasons, and evidence; thinking carefully about thinking,
about arguments, and positions.
Propositions -
Statements that can be true or false.
Non-Proposition Sentences -
Sentences that cannot be true or false; cannot disagree with them; cannot argue
whether they're right or wrong; cannot question them.
Simple Propositions -
Proposition with no internal logical structure, meaning whether they are true or false
does not depend on whether a part of them are true or false. They simply are true or
false on their own.
Complex Propositions -
Propositions with an internal logical structure, meaning they are composed of simple
propositions.
Common Anatomy of an Argument -
One or more premises that are propositions that support or demonstrate at least one
conclusion.
, D265Critical Thinking Reason and
Evidence Latest Study Guide 2025
Premise -
Propositions/statements that support or demonstrate the conclusion.
Conclusion -
The point being made and offered for acceptance or rejection as the basis of an
argument.
Bad Inferential Structure -
The argument's premises do not demonstrate or support the conclusion. We can
accept the premises as true without being compelled to accept the conclusion.
False Premise -
The premises in an argument are false.
Argument -
A set of statements where the premises attempt to provide a reason for thinking that
the conclusion is true.
Conclusion Indicators -
Therefore, Hence, We may conclude that, So, Thus, Implies that, It follows that,
Entails that, As a result
Premise Indicators -
Because, In that, As indicated by, Given that, Since, For, As
Inference -
Argument
Argument -
Any purportedly rational movement from evidence or premises to a conclusion.
Deductive Inferences -
Arguments where the premises guarantee or necessitate the conclusion.
Inductive Inferences -
Arguments where the premises make the conclusion probable, at best.
Abductive Inference -
Arguments where the best available explanation is chosen as the correct
explanation.
Truth -
A property of propositions--not arguments.
Valid -
A property of an argument structure. If both premises are true, the conclusion is true.
Only applies to deductive arguments.