Book description
3 great books help you think more clearly about any problem – and transform better thinking into better results – in business, and in life!
Three remarkable books help you think more clearly, flexibly, effectively — and transform better thinking into better personal and business performance! Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life offers practical tools for becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover. Richard W. Paul and Linda Elder reveal the core skills of effective thinking, helping you analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. The Truth About Making Smart Decisions brings together 50 powerful “truths” about making better decisions: real solutions for the tough challenges faced by every decision-maker, in business and in life. You'll discover how to systematically prepare to make better decisions...how to get the right information, without getting buried in useless data...how to minimize your risks, and then act decisively...how to make better group decisions...profit from mistakes...and a whole lot more. Finally, Now You're Thinking!: Change Your Thinking...Transform Your Life draws on an incredible story of survival in wartime to introduce a model of critical thinking that will help you recognize how your emotions are shaping your actions, evaluate arguments more effectively, and draw conclusions that lead you directly to better life decisions.
From world-renowned leaders in the promotion of effective thinking, includingDr. Richard Paul, Dr. Linda Elder, Robert E. Gunther,Judy Chartrand, Stewart Emery, Russ Hall, Heather Ishikawa, and John Maketa
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Contents
-
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
- Financial Times Prentice Hall Books
- Contents
- Acknowledgment
- Preface
- Chapter 1. Thinking in a World of Accelerating Change and Intensifying Danger
- Chapter 2. Becoming a Critic of Your Thinking
-
Chapter 3. Becoming a Fair-Minded Thinker
- Weak versus Strong Critical Thinking
- What Does Fair-Mindedness Require?
- Intellectual Humility: Having Knowledge of Ignorance
- Intellectual Courage: Being Willing to Challenge Beliefs
- Intellectual Empathy: Entertaining Opposing Views
- Intellectual Integrity: Holding Ourselves to the Same Standards to Which We Hold Others
- Intellectual Perseverance: Working Through Complexity and Frustration
- Confidence in Reason: Recognizing that Good Reasoning Has Proven Its Worth
- Intellectual Autonomy: Being an Independent Thinker
- Recognizing the Interdependence of Intellectual Virtues
- Conclusion
- Chapter 4. Self-Understanding
-
Chapter 5. The First Four Stages of Development: What Level Thinker Are You?
- Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker—Are You an Unreflective Thinker?
- Stage Two: The Challenged Thinker—Are You Ready to Accept the Challenge?
- Stage Three: The Beginning Thinker—Are You Willing to Begin?
- Stage Four: The Practicing Thinker—Good Thinking Can Be Practiced Like Basketball, Tennis, or Ballet
- A "Game Plan" for Improvement
- A Game Plan for Devising a Game Plan
-
Chapter 6. The Parts of Thinking
- Reasoning Is Everywhere in Human Life
- Does Reasoning Have Parts?
- Beginning to Think About Your Own Reasoning
- The Elements of Thought: A First Look
- An Everyday Example: Jack and Jill
- Analysis of the Example
- The Elements of Thought in Relationship
- The Relationship Between the Elements
- Thinking to Some Purpose
- Thinking with Concepts
- Thinking with Information
- Distinguishing Between Inert Information, Activated Ignorance, and Activated Knowledge
- Some Key Questions to Ask When Pursuing Information
- Distinguishing Between Inferences and Assumptions
- Understanding Implications
- Thinking Within and Across Points of View
- Using Critical Thinking to Take Charge of How We See Things
- The Point of View of the Critical Thinker
- Conclusion
- Chapter 7. The Standards for Thinking
- Chapter 8. Design Your Life
-
Chapter 9. The Art of Making Intelligent Decisions
- Thinking Globally About Your Life
- Evaluating Patterns in Decision-Making
- "Big" Decisions
- The Logic of Decision-Making
- Recognizing the Need for an Important Decision
- Accurately Recognizing the Alternatives
- Putting More Time into Your Decision-Making
- Being Systematic
- Dealing with One Major Decision at a Time
- Developing Knowledge of Your Ignorance
- Dimensions of Decision-Making
- Regularly Re-Articulate and Reevaluate Your Goals, Purposes, and Needs
- The Early Decisions
- Adolescent Decisions
- Early Adult Decisions
- Conclusion
-
Chapter 10. Taking Charge of Your Irrational Tendencies
- Egocentric Thinking
- Understanding Egocentric Thinking
- Understanding Egocentrism as a Mind Within the Mind
- "Successful" Egocentrism
- "Unsuccessful" Egocentrism
- Rational Thinking
- Two Egocentric Functions
- Dominating Egocentrism
- Submissive Egocentrism
- Pathological Tendencies of the Human Mind
- Challenging the Pathological Tendencies of the Mind
- The Challenge of Rationality
-
Chapter 11. Monitoring Your Sociocentric Tendencies
- The Nature of Sociocentrism
- Sociocentric Thinking as Pathology
- Social Stratification
- Sociocentric Thinking Is Unconscious and Potentially Dangerous
- Sociocentric Use of Language in Groups
- Disclosing Sociocentric Thinking Through Conceptual Analysis
- Revealing Ideology at Work Through Conceptual Analysis
- The Mass Media Foster Sociocentric Thinking
- The Mass Media Play Down Information That Puts the Nation in a Negative Light
- Freedom from Sociocentric Thought: The Beginnings of Genuine Conscience
- The Capacity to Recognize Unethical Acts
- Conclusion
-
Chapter 12. Developing as an Ethical Reasoner
- Why People are Confused About Ethics
- The Fundamentals of Ethical Reasoning
- Ethical Concepts and Principles
- The Universal Nature of Ethical Principles
- Distinguishing Ethics from Other Domains of Thinking
- Ethics and Religion
- Religious Beliefs Are Socially or Culturally Relative
- Ethics and Social Conventions
- Practices That Are Socially or Culturally Relative
- Ethics and the Law
- Ethics and Sexual Taboos
- Understanding Our Native Selfishness
-
Chapter 13. Analyzing and Evaluating Thinking in Corporate and Organizational Life
- Introduction
- Critical Thinking and Incremental Improvement
- An Obstacle to Critical Thinking Within Organizations: The Covert Struggle for Power
- Another Obstacle: Group Definitions of Reality
- A Third Obstacle: The Problem of Bureaucracy
- The Problem of Misleading Success
- Competition, Sound Thinking, and Success
- Stagnating Organizations and Industries
- Questioning Organizational Realities
- Assessing Irrational Thinking in Organizational Life
- The Power of Sound Thinking
- Some Personal Implications
- Conclusion
-
Chapter 14. The Power and Limits of Professional Knowledge (And of the Disciplines that Underlie Them)
- Professional Fallibility and the Glut of Information
- The Ideal of Professional Knowledge
- Who Should We Believe?
- True and False Loyalty to a Profession
- The Gap Between Fact and Ideal
- Assessing A Profession or a Professional Conclusion: Matters of Fact, Matters of Opinion, Matters of Judgment
- The Ideal Compared to the Real
- Professions Based on the Ideal of Mathematics and Abstract Quantification
- The Pain and Suffering of Those Who Fail
- Loss of Self-Esteem and Opportunity to Receive Higher Education
- Low Level of Math Competency of Those Who Pass School Examinations
- The Ideal of Science: Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, and Biology
- The Ideal of Social Science: History, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, and Psychology
- History as an Ideal
- Sociology as an Ideal
- Anthropology as an Ideal
- Economics as an Ideal
- The Social Sciences as Taught and Practiced
- The Ideal of the Arts and Humanities: Music, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Dance, Literature, and Philosophy
- The Promise of the Fine Arts and Literature
- The Reality of Instruction in the Fine Arts and Literature
- The Promise of Philosophy
- The Reality of Philosophy
- Conclusion
-
Chapter 15. Strategic Thinking Part One
- Understanding and Using Strategic Thinking
- Components of Strategic Thinking
- The Beginnings of Strategic Thinking
- Key Idea #1: Thoughts, Feelings, and Desires are Interdependent
- Key Idea #2: There is a Logic to This, and You Can Figure It Out
- Key Idea #3: For Thinking to Be of High Quality, We Must Routinely Assess it
-
Chapter 16. Strategic Thinking Part Two
- Key Idea #4: Our Native Egocentrism Is a Default Mechanism
- Key Idea #5: We Must Become Sensitive to the Egocentrism of Those Around Us
- Key Idea #6: The Mind Tends to Generalize Beyond the Original Experience
- Key Idea #7: Egocentric Thinking Appears to the Mind as Rational
- Key Idea #8: The Egocentric Mind Is Automatic in Nature
- Key Idea #9: We Often Pursue Power Through Dominating or Submissive Behavior
- Key Idea #10: Humans Are Naturally Sociocentric Animals
- Key Idea #11: Developing Rationality Requires Work
- Conclusion
- Glossary: A Guide to Critical Thinking Terms and Concepts
- References
- Index
-
The Truth About: Making Smart Decisions
- Contents
- Praise for The Truth About Making Smart Decisions
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I: The Truth About Preparing for Decisions
-
Part II: The Truth About Why Bad Decisions Are Good
- Truth 7. To make better decisions, make more mistakes
- Truth 8. Be prepared to profit from your mistakes
- Truth 9. Learn from your close calls
- Truth 10. Learn from the decisions of others
- Truth 11. Don't judge your decisions based on their outcome
- Truth 12. Leave yourself room to get back from the pole
-
Part III: The Truth About the Limits of Your Mind
- Truth 13. Understand common "decision traps"
- Truth 14. Giving up something? Get over it!
- Truth 15. It's possible to miss an entire gorilla
- Truth 16. You may see only what you're looking for
- Truth 17. You're not as clever as you think you are
- Truth 18. Your view of the world depends on what planet you're from
- Truth 19. Beware of seeing patterns that aren't there
- Truth 20. Different is not always better
- Part IV: The Truth About Complex Decisions
- Part V: The Truth About Data
- Part VI: The Truth About Acting Decisively
- Part VII: The Truth About Decisions in Groups
- Part VIII: The Truth About Emotions
- Part IX: The Truth About Ethical Decision Making
- Part X: The Truth About Big Decisions
- Part XI: The Truth About Moving On
- Additional Resources
- References
- About the Author
-
Now You’re Thinking: Change Your Thinking... Revolutionize Your Career... Transform Your Life
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- About the Authors
- Introduction
- Amenah’s Story
- Chapter 1. How Your Mind Works—Some Assembly Required
- Chapter 2. A New Way of Thinking
- Chapter 3. Take Stock of Your Style
- Chapter 4. Change Your Thinking... Revolutionize Your Career... Transform Your Life
- Appendix A. Characters
- Appendix B. Cognitive Biases: Common Mental Mind Traps
- Appendix C. Resources
- Index
-
Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality
- Contents
- Introduction. When Intuition Isn’t Enough
- Part I: Describing Personality Differences
- Part II: Explaining Personality Differences
- Part III: Whole Persons, Whole Lives
- Endnotes
- References
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Index
Product information
- Title: Critical Thinking Strategies for Success (Collection)
- Author(s):
- Release date: December 2011
- Publisher(s): Pearson
- ISBN: 9780132938570
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