Too many college students lack the power to reason and argue effectively. Hard Thinking allows students to rebuild their confidence in the possibility of objective reasoning, by challenging contemporary cliches about the limits of objectivity and the relativity of value judgements. An entertaining, clearly written text for courses in logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, and English composition, Hard Thinking presents dialogues that reproduce commonly used "argument stoppers" (Who are you to think that you know the truth? Isn't it all relative? Isn't it all subjective?), and subjects them to...

This text, written by a philosopher and a social psychologist, emphasizes concrete applications of decision research to problems of everyday living, as well as to business, social, and political issues. The text contains scores of interesting examples and problems for analysis, ranging from personal decisions about medical treatment to Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb. There is no other text with such a wide-ranging coverage, with so practical an orientation, with such clear descriptions of the steps to effective decision making, and with so many end-of-chapter problems for analysis...