46

INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

Review of THINK Critically

by Peter Facione and Carol Ann Gittens
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2nd Edition, 2013, 338 pages
ISBN 13:978-0-205-49098-1
Benjamin Hamby

I. Introduction
I have argued elsewhere that the market for critical
thinking textbooks is not only glutted, but that it is filled
with poor products that are not informed by relevant
scholarly literature and that fail to meet some important,
though not exhaustive, criteria that make for a good critical
thinking textbook (Hamby, 2013, forthcoming):
Many textbooks, for instance, do not have a plausible,
theoretically elucidated conception of critical thinking
that stands behind their textbook treatment (Johnson,
1996). Nor do many textbooks recognize the central
role of critical thinking dispositions, though in general
terms this is a near-unanimous point of agreement
among critical thinking theorists (Facione, 1990). Nor
do they reflect a nuanced approach to the teaching of
fallacies beyond an adversarial and taxonomic labeling approach (Hundleby, 2010). Nor do they reveal
an awareness of the problem of characterizing argument according to the deductive-inductive distinction
(Blair, 2006). Nor do they stress dialectic, dialogue,
or argument revision (ibid.). Nor do they focus on the
analysis and evaluation of real arguments that have
been or could plausibly be used in practice (Hamby,
2012). Furthermore, textbooks commonly equate
reasoning and argument analysis with critical thinking, but this is a common assumption that has been
discredited (Govier, 1989).
Thankfully, Facione and Gittens THINK Critically, 2nd
edition, is a textbook that in general avoids these mistakes that many of its competitors make, and, though not
without some aspects of the book that I find problematic,
I recommend it for any course that explicitly is billed as
an introduction to critical thinking.
In this review I will discuss the format and organization of the textbook, and then summarize its chapters, focusing on a few in particular. I will explain why I think this
textbook satisfies criteria that any quality critical thinking
textbook should meet, but that many other textbooks fail
to live up to. Throughout, I will be offering a few points of
critique, but my review of Facione and Gittens treatment
of critical thinking will conclude by summarizing some

aspects that especially recommend it for adoption.

II. Format, Organization, Special Features, and

Exercises
Unlike many textbooks, regardless of the subject,
THINK Critically is visually attractive, formatted like a
magazine, with a soft cover and glossy, colorful pages,
interspersed with photographs throughout with thoughtful
captions beneath them that relate to the textbook material.
The text is written in an easy, conversational tone, with
plausible narrative vignettes often setting up and exemplifying chapter content. Section and sub-section headings
guide the reader through each chapter in a helpful way,
providing a kind of road map for the content. Illustrative
quotations, Thinking critically text-boxes, and other
relevant supplementary readings (what the authors call
special features) are strategically placed to provide the
reader with eye-catching and informative additions to the
principal content of the reading.
For example, on p. 21 the authors include a two-thirds
page rendering of a document produced by Measured
Reasons LLC, the critical thinking company that Peter
and his wife Noreen Facione spearhead. Measured Reasons is associated with the critical thinking measurement
company, Insight Assessment, with which the Faciones
are also intimately involved (see www.measuredreasons.
com and www.insightassessment.com). The document
on p. 21 is the Critical Thinking Disposition Self-Rating
Form. It is a series of 20 questions that the reader can ask
herself regarding her own disposition to think critically.
According to the authors, it offers a rough approximation of the tendency a person has to think critically. As
another example, on pp.140-41 the authors include a list of
questions meant to test the readers command of argument
evaluation (more on argument evaluation below). These
questions are arguments that are somewhat complicated,
having more than three premises, and almost all are the
sorts of arguments that could plausibly be used by someone
in a real-life context of deciding what to believe or do. As
a final example, on p. 224 the authors offer an exercise
that tests argument interpretation and mapping (more on
argument mapping below), in the context of the decision
of then-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger to
deny death-row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams clemency. Happily, all these special features are accessed easily

Spring 2013, VOL. 28, NO. 1

through the dedicated Special Features and Exercises
table of contents at the front of the textbook (pp. xiii-xvi),
giving readers easy access to quick and engaging examples
of critical thinking in practice.
The content of this extra material is interesting,
current, relevant, and often quite novel, regarding topics that are controversial. As such, this material comes
close to being as important as the proper content of the
chapters, by offering readers opportunities to be reflective
about important issues or topics in a variety of plausible
real-life contexts. One surprising context of note on this
point is the authors tendency to illustrate critical thinking
in practice by referring to the military context, so on p. 7
Facione and Gittens say that a failure of critical thinking
might result in combat casualties. On p.81 they give
a full page table of language communities and corresponding examples of their special terms and symbols,
one row of which is the language community of military
field commanders, and on p.116 the authors discuss the
criteria that make for authority and expertise, referring to
Jack Nicholsons character in the 1992 film A Few Good
Men. In the film Nicholson played a U.S. Marine Colonel
who argues that the military is justified in perpetuating a
Noble lie. Finally, on p. 258 there is a half-page spread
that showcases Nineteenth-Century Ideologies and Twentieth Century Wars.
The variety of topics that the textbook covers in these
special features does not stop there; for example, on p.56
there is another half page thinking critically text-box that
queries How can we protect ourselves from ourselves?
and is a brief discussion of the sin tax, asking readers
to begin to go through the process of formulating a judgment on how and whether society should be in the business
of guiding individual lifestyle choices through taxation.
The book is filled with examples such as these, which
substantively challenge readers to think about serious and
important problems that deserve their considered attention
in real-life contexts of deciding what to believe or do.
Facione and Gittens textbook also has a significant
amount of on-line content that the reader is directed to in
the body of the text. If there is some video or interactive
material that is related to the content that the authors discuss, then it is likely to be found by going to the address
www.mythinkinglab.com, a companion website developed
by Pearson publishing that supplements the textbook. This
has become a standard part of many textbooks, but it is a
benefit of THINK Critically that there is so much electronic
content associated with the printed book.
Another aspect of the organization of the textbook
that is unusual, but refreshing in its originality, is the content and design of the exercise sections at the end of each
chapter. As opposed to other textbooks, the exercises are
not one-dimensionally dominated by short, decontextualized, artificial questions that test rote knowledge of the
material that is introduced in the text. While there are
some such short question/short answer question sections,

47
the exercise sections are mostly divided into individual
subsections that do not fit this mold. Instead, each of
them asks the reader in a detailed way to approach various
critical thinking problems from a different perspective, in
a way that is relevant to the chapter content. No two exercise sections for any two chapters are organized exactly
alike, but all exercise sections require the reader to engage
substantively in a process of thinking critically about the
material. Many have an analyze and interpret section,
where readers are encouraged in detailed ways to take an
active role in responding to some portion of text that the
authors highlight, going through a process of thinking attempting to arrive at a judgment. For instance, on p. 178
the authors prompt as a challenge exercise to evaluate
the arguments of the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, which concludes that humans
are partly responsible for climate change. The exercises are
dominated by real-life problems such as these that require
real arguments to come to a judgment about.
Furthermore, almost all exercise sections have group
exercises, where the authors prompt readers in detailed
ways to go through research reports or other documents,
and to develop with their peers, reasoned-out positions on
the problems at issue. This is an excellent, and not very
common, approach to textbook exercises, and, since critical thinking is often a social activity undertaken by groups
of people, it makes sense that the textbook work encourages such group interaction. Also, many of the exercise
sections have reflective log sections where the reader is
prompted in detailed ways to reflect about her own thinking
concerning the material in question.
What sets the exercises of this book apart from other
treatments is in the end the detail and thoroughness that has
gone into the way the questions are written. Facione and
Gittens offer an approach to exercises that prioritizes the
real-life context of the questions, that calls for deeper and
more substantial critical thinking, and that deemphasizes
drill-style short answer questions that only superficially
prompt reflective thinking.
A critic of this approach to the exercise sections might
point out that since exercises in textbooks are typically
used by instructors to drill the skills introduced within
chapters and since this requires using short questions
with short, easily marked answers, Facione and Gittens
book fails in this respect, because the questions they have
generated to exercise the skills and concepts are long and
do not involve simple answers. From an instructors perspective this makes marking exercises a more substantial
task, as answers to exercises will often come in the form of
short-answer compositions. However, from this reviewers
perspective this is not a drawback to the format of the exercises but rather a substantial benefit. This is because the
exercises mimic what a student should actually be able to
do in any instance of real-life thinking that aims at wellreasoned-out judgments, which almost never involves a
simple and easily evaluated response. So those problems

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INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

offer a more realistic, and therefore a more useful, way for

readers to practice the skills of critical thinking, even if it
will take some effort on an instructors part to incorporate
the exercises, and the attentive marking that comes with
them, into a course curriculum.
Finally, the book is written with a significant section
of endnotes, and the endnotes allow the reader to follow up
on scholarly material that supports the textbooks content.
This is a major positive of the book, because it allows
readers to go to the next step and investigate the primary
sources themselves that the authors reference. Very few
critical thinking textbooks offer the resources to follow up
on scholarly references, when such references are made
at all, and it is refreshing to see Facione and Gittens cite
relevant material for further reading.
So, this textbook succeeds in the way it presents itself;
it is immediately a pleasure to hold, read, and peruse, and it
is theoretically informed. The exercise sections give readers something substantial to think about, not just another
set of boring drills that do not really test the application of
skills in real-life critical thinking. Furthermore, since the
majority of extant critical thinking textbooks are in a more
or less traditional format and since they do not offer the
reader a pleasurable reading experience beyond the body of
the text, Facione and Gittens book is to be highly recommended just for the interest it is sure to bring to students
who are used to textbooks that look and read the same.

III. Contents of the Chapters

What sets Facione and Gittens treatment of critical
thinking apart from other texts, other than the format and
organization of the textbook, the special features, and the
exercise sections, is the substantial chapter content the
book contains, and its somewhat non-standard approach.
While not without some aspects of the content that deserve
to be questioned on their theoretical merits, the major
content of the book still offers an introduction to the skills,
and especially the dispositions, of critical thinking that
few other textbooks live up to. This is done in a way that
departs from the typical textbook, which tends to cover
anything and everything relating to argumentation in an
unsubtle and theoretically crude way: the dogs breakfast
approach to the call it what you will course(Johnson &
Blair, 2009).This textbook is distinctive instead for merging a traditionally philosophical approach that includes
content on arguments and fallacies, while also stressing
decision-making from a modern psychological perspective,
with chapters on heuristics, dominance structuring, and
self-regulation strategies. In the end the chapters set out
a coherent set of tools for reflecting on ones judgmentmaking process, offering readers a way to improve that
process and become better critical thinkers.
The first chapters set out the books conception of critical thinking, which is based on an important study in the
canon of critical thinking scholarship, The Delphi Project

Report (Facione,1990), an expert consensus statement

on critical thinking made by 46 interdisciplinary scholars
and facilitated by Facione under the aegis of the American
Philosophical Association (APA). The APA Delphi Project Report found that critical thinking is the process of
purposeful, self-regulatory judgment. (Facione, 1990, p.
2). In other words, critical thinking is about making wellreasoned judgments about what to believe or do (Facione
and Gittens, 2012, p.7). This language is also reflected in
Ennis popular definition of critical thinking that defines
the concept as reasonable, reflective thinking focused on
deciding what to believe or do (Ennis, 1991).
The books conception of critical thinking being based
on this consensus statement immediately puts Facione and
Gittens treatment in a class by itself in this reviewers
view. Part of what makes a practical difference in the
textbook by virtue of this fact is that, unlike many critical
thinking textbooks, which introduce the concept of critical
thinking in a cursory introductory chapter, Facione and
Gittens spend the first two chapters (41 pages) providing
an in-depth introductory analysis of critical thinking, helping to frame the concept so that readers better understand
how the chapters that follow will fulfill the promise of
helping to teach people how to be better critical thinkers.
The Delphi Project Report consensus statement is not immune from criticism, but it nevertheless aligns with many
other mainstream conceptions of critical thinking in that
it stresses that critical thinking is an ends-directed, reflective process of thinking, involving skills and virtues, and
aiming towards judgments about what to do or believe.
While some theorists who participated disagreed on the
details and while many theorists who did not participate
may also disagree on certain specifics, the Delphi Project
Report is in many respects a superior normative articulation of critical thinking that captures many aspects of the
multi-faceted concept.
In the first chapter, The Power of Critical Thinking,
the authors motivate their understanding of critical thinking
and gloss their conception. They link the concept with the
importance of an educated citizenry in a free society, an
idea that has deep roots in Western thinking and in connection with the concept of critical thinking (e.g., Dewey,
1910). Importantly, they provide a holistic rubric for
scoring any instance of critical thinking, where the highest
score satisfies most or all of the six core skills that are
major components of their conception of critical thinking.
Those six skills are (1) interpretation, (2) analysis, (3)
inference, (4) explanation, (5) evaluation, and (6) self-regulation. A high score also is indicative of the dispositions
the authors say are necessary for critical thinking, such as
judiciousness and fair-mindedness. They exemplify some
instances of plausible real life critical thinking in narratives
that are then subject to evaluation based upon the rubric.
This initial introduction to the skills that make for good
critical thinking is thus excellent both in the way it sets
up the study of critical thinking, as based on an expert

Spring 2013, VOL. 28, NO. 1

consensus about the concept, and in the way it prioritizes
illustrations of real-life thinking based on its clearly stated
criteria for what makes good critical thinking.
In Chapter 2, Skilled and Eager to Think, the authors
delve deeper into their conception of critical thinking,
stressing that the process is a skilled and virtuous activity,
which involves a person who has certain abilities, as well
as certain habits of mind such as open-mindedness and
judiciousness. By stressing the dispositions necessary
for a person to be a critical thinker Facione and Gittens
do what few other critical thinking textbook authors do,
which is to pay curricular attention to something theorists
have recognized for decades: that a critical thinker must
be not only skilled at the processes of critical thinking,
but also must be willing to employ those skills in efforts
at reaching reasoned judgments.
The authors go deeper too into the six core skills
of critical thinking, which provide a framework for the
remaining chapters. Helpfully, they provide a table of
questions to fire up our critical thinking skills (p. 31),
each associated with one of these six core skills. These
questions illustrate in a general way the sorts of thoughtful
questioning that is needed to properly employ the skills
of critical thinking. Readers are helped further when the
authors break down each skill into sub skills, and also
provide a table listing the description of skills and their
associated sub skills. For example, part of the skill of inference involves the ability [t]o identify and secure elements
needed to draw reasonable conclusions and the associated sub skills of query[ing] evidence, conjecture[ing]
alternatives, and draw[ing] conclusions using inductive
or deductive reasoning (p. 33).
Indeed, in these first chapters, even if instructors have
some disagreements with the authors over the details of
their conception of critical thinking, those who adopt this
textbook will find the opportunity to direct student attention to the points of disagreement, which is a useful way
to exemplify the process of thinking critically in a real-life
context. The fact that the consensus statement was not
reached unanimously offers a natural segue into a discussion regarding what elements of the conception might
have met with resistance from certain theorists. And, in
any case where theorists might disagree, an instructor can
profitably move ahead with the textbook treatment without
lingering on theoretical details.
Spending too much time on introductory statements or
prioritizing theoretical talking about critical thinking rather
than having students practically do critical thinking is a
danger that Facione seems to be well aware of (Facione,
2003, pp. 299-300). But I do not think that in Facione and
Gittens book we have an instance of over-prioritizing
theoretical talk. Rather, what we have is just what most
textbook authors agree is an important first step in learning
how to be better critical thinker; it is simply that Facione
and Gittens have more to say about the concept than
most authors because of Faciones research on the topic.

49
Furthermore, the introductory chapters on the nature
of critical thinking are anything but dry reading in my
opinion; instead, I found their exposition interesting and
engaging. Chapters 1 and 2 therefore frame the remaining
chapters in a particular light, setting a deep foundation for
those that follow.
In Chapter 3, Solve Problems and Succeed in College, we continue to see an unconventional approach to
an introductory textbook on critical thinking, when the
authors introduce IDEAS, an acronym for a five-step
critical thinking problem solving process, and then spend
considerable narrative effort in exemplifying real-life
situations in the college-life context, where this process
could plausibly be put to use. That process is: (1) Identify
problems and set priorities, (2) Deepen understanding and
gather relevant information, (3) Enumerate options and
anticipate consequences, (4) Assess the situation and make
a preliminary decision, and (5) Scrutinize the process and
self-correct as needed (p. 47). This chapter, new to the
second edition, might be one that instructors have their
students pass over in a one term course, but it is no less
interesting, nor is it any less potentially useful for students
should they read it on their own, since they will find it is a
plausible reflection of decisions and situations they might
confront in their own lives.
Furthermore, the approach Facione and Gittens take
is also unconventional in that, while they cover arguments
and fallacies, and point to the inductive/deductive distinction, they do not simply equate critical thinking with
reasoning or argument. Thus the basics of interpretation
are covered in the entire fourth chapter, Clarify Ideas
and Concepts. This chapter sets the stage for argument
interpretation and analysis in the next chapter by covering
ambiguity, vagueness, and the importance of context. It
also deepens contextual appreciation of the purposes of
communication, by offering observations on language
communities, or communities of [p]eople who shar[e]
an understanding of the meanings of . . . words and icons
(p. 78). Chapter 4 offers a good foundation for readers
to focus on the skill of interpretation and the associated
subskills of clarifying meaning and categorizing.
Facione and Gittens do not get to the concept of argument until Chapter 5, Analyze Arguments and Diagram
Decisions, and then they avoid confusing critical thinking
with argumentation, and they avoid calling just any kind of
reasoning an argument. With this chapter on the basics of
argument interpretation (which the authors call analysis)
based on a method for diagramming arguments, the authors
attempt to prepare the reader for the next four chapters.
Those four chapters are the real meat and potatoes of the
textbook, and they stress the evaluation of arguments. But
before arguments can be evaluated, they need to be analyzed, in other words, interpreted and put into a standard
form where the structure of the reasons for some claim
can be clearly exhibited. Hence the need for Chapter 5.
The method of diagramming that the authors have devised

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INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

is straightforward and easy to remember, and somewhat

standard in the way arrows are used to express inferences
between different statements. It should aid students in
picking out conclusions, claims, and implicit aspects of
arguments, especially in longer passages.
It is good to see the authors avoid an equation of
critical thinking with argumentation, and they delay the
introduction of argument analysis and evaluation until
approximately one-third of the way through the book.
Furthermore, the practice of diagramming arguments
makes sense for students who are more visual learners.
However, this brings me to one issue I take with the explicit
conception of argument found in Chapter 5 and how it is
translated into the diagramming framework. Facione and
Gittens say they follow the standard usage of the phrase
make an argument, to refer to the process of giving
a reason in support of a claim (p. 88, emphasis added).
This is a problematic formulation, however, because, as the
authors admit, [i]t is common in natural conversation to
give more than one reason in support of a claim (p. 88).
They nevertheless go on to say that they will treat
each separate combination of reason-plus-claim as a
separate argument (p. 88). But, if more than one reason is
offered to support a claim, it is not clear that those reasons
should automatically be interpreted as independent reasons
in support of that claim, so that they should be represented
as two separate arguments and evaluated as such. Sometimes reasons are clearly linked together by an arguer in an
interdependent way in order to offer inferential support for
a claim, because the arguer makes explicit that they are not
only relevant to the claim, but also relevant to each other
regarding the claim. If that is so, then separating those
reasons in order to see the single argument as if it were two
arguments confuses matters, because without representing
both reasons as acting in concert, such an interpretation
departs from the way the reasons were explicitly used in
practice to support the conclusion.
However, regardless of the way an argument is used,
or the intentions of the arguer in how she used it, this tactic
seems to go beyond mere interpretation, and begins to be an
evaluative effort since determining the relevance of more
than one claim to the support of another is a matter not just
of charitably representing those claims, but also of making
a judgment as to whether thetruth or acceptability of them
would make the conclusion more likely to be true or acceptable. Deciding to interpret multiple premise arguments
as if each premise independently supports the conclusion
is thus a matter of evaluation, not simply interpretation
of what some author could have most plausibly intended.
We should, therefore, not separate premises into separate
arguments, treating each premise as being independent of
the others in itssupport of the conclusion,before we can
make a determination regarding how they are being used
to support thatconclusion, and whether they are relevant
to each other regarding the conclusion.
Facione and Gittens give as an example the argument

I should buy thin crust pizza because it costs less and

tastes better (p. 88). They treat this as being two separate
arguments: Thin crust pizza costs less; therefore, I should
buy thin crust pizza and Thin crust pizza tastes better;
therefore, I should buy thin crust pizza. While I agree
that with this specific example it is plausible to analyze
these reasons as each providing independent support for the
conclusion, and therefore interpret and (further) evaluate
them as two separate arguments, I do not think it is helpful
to blanket all arguments with this interpretive tactic. First
of all, by interpreting the argument this way one is doing
more than analyzing; one is in fact engaging in evaluation because one is making a determination as to how the
premises actually do hang together to provide support for
the conclusion. Tasting better and costing less are not relevant to buying thin crust pizza in a jointly interdependent
way. Another reason is, in part, articulated by Facione and
Gittens themselves when they say that the aim of argument analysis is to display with accuracy the arguments
as the speaker made them (p. 90, original emphasis).
But, as noted above, if a speaker or writer makes a claim
that is supported by multiple reasons that she represents
as being dependent upon one another, then separating
them does not do justice to the argument as it was made.
In any case, unless the inferential support of the premises
is made explicit, which might happen rarely, determining
just whether an author of some argument intended some
reasons to be dependent (or not) upon each other seems
a futile effort; besides, even if the author of the argument
could be queried, she might not have had any intention
in mind regarding the strength of the inferential support,
since she might not have any concept of joint sufficiency
(cf. Ennis, 2001, p.105, and contra Fohr, 1979, p. 8). This
is to stress that interpreting all multiple premise arguments
as if they are most plausibly single premise arguments is
a questionable tactic.
As an example, take the way I might reason if I am
meeting a friend-of-a-friend for dinner, someone whom
I have never met and whose personality I am wondering
about. I reason Omar must be polite, because Omar is a
Canadian, and Canadians are in general polite. Should
this argument be evaluated as two separate arguments:
Omar is Canadian, therefore Omar is polite, and Canadians are in general polite, therefore Omar is polite? I
would say no since when those premises are separated
from each other, their relationship as being jointly sufficient to establish the conclusion is lost: should one of the
premises be rejected, the other becomes irrelevant toward
establishing the conclusion. The argument therefore is
more cogent when the joint relevance of the premises is
taken for granted, rather than their independence. As such
our interpretive tactic should be to think of this as one argument with premises that are jointly relevant to the conclusion (cf. Hitchcock, 1980, p. 15). As can be seen in this
example, the role the premises play in working together is
evaluated before any interpretation is made about whether

Spring 2013, VOL. 28, NO. 1

they were intended by the speaker to be used that way or
not. These concerns might not be the most devastating, but
diagramming all arguments without allowing for premises
working in concert seems a mistake.
In Chapter 6, Evaluate the Credibility of Claims and
Sources, the authors move on to skills involved in evaluation. They stress the importance of a healthy skepticism
in efforts at critical thinking, and list twelve criteria that
every authoritative source should meet, including being
unbiased, truthful, and free from conflicts of interest. This
chapter sets the stage for the introduction of further skills
of argument evaluation by covering one of the essential
skills needed before any kind of argument evaluation goes
on: the evaluation of so-called experts as trusted-sources.
Chapter 7, Evaluate Arguments: The Four Basic
Tests, stands as a sort of midway culmination of chapters
introduced until that point. The authors introduce argument evaluation as a core aspect of the skills of critical
thinking that they say is necessary for the process of reaching judgments about what to believe or do. They offer
a four-part test to determine whether reasons support a
conclusion well: (1) truthfulness of the premises, (2) logical strength, (3) relevance, and (4) non-circularity. While
this format for argument cogency is mostly standard by
stressing premise truthfulness along with the importance
of logical strength of arguments and the relevancy of the
premises, it still could be critiqued for incorporating noncircularity as a criterion for cogency and for focusing on
thetruth of premises as a criterion for argument worthiness
without mentioning premise acceptability.
Regarding the latter, as Ralph Johnson (2000) has
pointed out, and as others have echoed in their own textbook treatments of argumentation (for instance, Govier,
2010), premises can be acceptable without necessarily
being true, or true without being believed or granted to
be true by an audience. The difference is that [t]he truth
criterion concerns the relationship between the premise
and the state of affairs in the world. The acceptability
criterion concerns the relationship between the premise
and the audience (Johnson, 2000, 336-337). For Johnson,
both truth and acceptability of premises should be criteria
for an arguments worthiness, because what an audience
should find as acceptable is highly relevant to whether
an argument is persuasive or not for that audience. For
Govier, truth should not be thought of as either a necessary
or sufficient condition for the worthiness of an argument.
This is not meant as a devastating critique of Facione
and Gittens treatment of argument evaluation, but it is
to acknowledge that their treatment fits squarely into the
common textbook approach that stresses premise truthfulness and neglects to take into consideration the rhetorical
orientation of premise acceptability.
It is also in Chapter 7 that the authors first discuss fallacies, and their introductory remarks are to be applauded
for their concise, yet thorough, exposition of deceptive
arguments that appear logical and seem at times to be

51
persuasive, but, upon closer analysis, fail to demonstrate
their conclusions (p. 140). This formulation of the definition of fallacies is superior to many because it stresses
that fallacies occur in argumentation, that they appear to
be logical, and that they do not support their conclusions
well. The authors should also get a nod for acknowledging that responding to fallacies is an important part of
recognizing them when they say that [l]earning how to
recognize common fallacies and learning how to explain
in ordinary, non-technical terms the mistaken reasoning
they contain is a great aid to evaluating arguments (p.
140). However, nowhere in these first remarks about fallacies do the authors also acknowledge that recognizing
and then responding to fallacies (at least sometimes) might
involve an effort to improve the argument in question
such that it is no longer fallacious, progressing dialogue
and discussion. As Hundleby (2010) has argued, an approach that neglects to encourage argument improvement
perpetuates an adversarial approach to argumentation and
fallacy identification that prioritizes negative critique over
constructive criticism.
Having said this, it should also be noted that another
positive aspect of their initial treatment of fallacies mitigates this omission by reminding us that the specialized
terminology of logicians is not the most important thing to
remember about fallacies--rote memorization, the authors
claim, is not a critical thinking skill (p. 146). Instead,
the authors stress that it is possible for a person to recite
the textbook definition of the rules and terms . . . but yet,
in practice, still lack skill at evaluating arguments. This
is significant, the authors claim, because [b]eing able to
explain why an argument is unworthy of acceptance is a
stronger demonstration of ones critical thinking skills
than being able to remember the names of the different
types of fallacies (p. 146). This statement is supported
in practice when the authors prompt readers to evaluate
the worthiness of some realistic sample arguments by
giving a detailed explanation to support your evaluation
(p. 140). In these ways the first section on fallacies that
Facione and Gittens provide is helpful and informative,
and, even while they provide a taxonomic classification
of fallacies of relevance such as appeals to ignorance
and appeals to the mob, this section does not merely
introduce students to a simplistic and rough-cut notion of
fallacies, but also gives them a nuanced perspective on
what the fallacies are and on the most appropriate way to
identify and respond to them in practice.
In Chapter 8, Valid Deductive Reasoning and Deductive Fallacies, and Chapter 9, Justified Inductive
Reasoning and Fallacies, the authors provide two chapters
with enough content that instructors might want to spend
more time covering the material they contain. However,
the articulation the authors give to the inductive-deductive
distinction is problematic, ignoring important scholarship
in argumentation theory. This is especially true for the
chapter on deductive reasoning, which attempts to give a

52

INQUIRY: CRITICAL THINKING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

crash course introduction to deductive relationships when

reasoning about declarative statements (p. 152), classes of
objects (p. 155), and relationships (p. 157). The authors
introduce the idea of deductively valid arguments (p.
152) by giving a standard definition, saying that with
such arguments it must be impossible for the premises
all to be true and the conclusion false (p. 152). But, as
Hitchcock (1979) has plausibly argued, the idea of deductive validity should be understood to apply to inferences,
not arguments. And as Goddu (2002) has also argued,
we can distinguish deductive from inductive reasoning,
[and] distinguish deductive from inductive logic without
appeal to the idea of deductive and inductive arguments
(p. 15). Instead of making the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments in the interpretation stage,
appealing to an arguers intentions, we should determine
with a sufficient degree of precision the actual strength
of the relationship between premises and conclusion (p.
8, emphasis added). In other words, we need to evaluate
the argument on how adequately the premises support the
conclusion, without deciding beforehand what standard of
validity it should meet in our interpretation of it.
On a somewhat related theoretical point, it should be
noted that Facione and Gittens definition of deductively
valid arguments in the body of the textbook differs slightly
from the definition given in the glossary for deductive
reasoning, which they say is drawing inferences in which
it appears that the conclusion cannot possibly be false if all
of the premises are true (p. 314). But this leaves open the
possibility that one could be reasoning in a way such that
it appears the truth of the conclusion is necessitated by
the truth of the premises, but in fact is not, and that such
reasoning would still be called deductive. That is a bad
consequence, because to call a bit of reasoning deductive
we should be saying that if that reasoning employs true
premises than the conclusion adduced through them must
be true. To call reasoning deductive that appears as if this
is the case is not enough - it must really be the case.
The authors continue to cover fallacies in the remainder of Chapter 8, contrasting valid deductive forms with
their counterparts. For instance, the authors introduce
the valid form of denying the consequent (p. 152) and
then contrast this with the fallacious form of affirming
the consequent (p. 158). Chapter 8 offers some real-life
examples to practice the skill of identifying valid deductive inferences and recognizing deductive fallacies, and
in general it offers the reader a helpful introduction to
deductive relationships.
The same can be said for Chapter 9, which introduces
inductive reasoning as a contrast to deductive reasoning. In
this chapter Facione and Gittens simplistically gloss inductive reasoning as different from the structural necessity
of valid deductive reasoning by claiming that inductive
reasoning is probabilistic (p. 167). In this way Facione
and Gittens textbook is guilty (along with many others)
of ignoring what Blair (2006) calls the challenge of infer-

ence pluralism (p. 263) implying instead the idea that all
reasoning or arguments are either deductively valid or else
have some quantifiable degree of inductive strength less
than 1.0 (p. 262). But to ignore other kinds of inference
making is to deny that under some conditions an inference can be reasonable even if it is deductively invalid
and not quantifiably strong (p. 262). This to my mind
is not a devastating critique of the textbook, but it is to
acknowledge that the authors treatment of the inductivedeductive distinction is not nuanced or informed by recent
and relevant scholarly discussions.
A significant chapter in the textbook that again sets it
apart in a positive way from other approaches is Chapter
10: Think Heuristically: Risks and Benefits of Snap
Judgments. This chapter is a consolidated treatment of
heuristics, a more complete treatment of which can be
found in Facione and Facione (2007). It is distinctive that
a critical thinking textbook would spend an entire chapter
covering the kind of thinkingSystem I thinkingthat
is not usually considered critical thinking (and indeed the
authors themselves do not consider heuristics to be the kind
of Systems-II thinking that is reflective). Yet Facione and
Gittens appropriately do not disparage heuristic thinking
that is non-reflective; instead they put it in its place as a
useful tool that often accompanies reflective judgment
making. Indeed, to be aware of the ways we make snap
judgments is to begin to walk the path of recognizing
when such a judgment is appropriate, and when a problem,
decision, or action deserves more considered reflection to
come to a judgment about. It is also a way to begin to be
self-aware of, and self-correct for, the sorts of cognitive
biases that thwart proper snap-judgments from being made.
This chapter then serves as both a warning and a guide for
readers who are trying to be more reflective about the way
they make judgments.
Chapter 11, Think Reflectively: Strategies for Decision Making, is another chapter on the psychological
practice of coming to judgments about what to do or
believe, and contains an interesting section on dominance structuring, again a concept covered in greater
detail in Facione and Facione (2007). Readers will find
here an interesting and informative discussion and many
exemplifications of the phenomenon of locking into our
decisions (p. 210). In this chapter Facione and Gittens
also provide readers with a detailed series of precautions
to keep in mind when thinking critically in an effort to aid
self reflection about the process of thinking critically so as
to avoid prematurely or unreasonably locking onto poor
decisions or judgments.
Chapters 12 through 14 are perhaps the most practical
chapters of the textbook, as these are the chapters that put
the previous chapters exploring the skills and dispositions
of critical thinking into practice, providing criteria for and
exemplifying Comparative Reasoning (Chapter 12),
Ideological Reasoning (Chapter 13), and Empirical
Reasoning (Chapter 14). In this latter chapter readers are

Spring 2013, VOL. 28, NO. 1

offered an interesting and informative two-page spread that
articulates the 13-step process that the authors claim isa
part of any scientific investigation (pp. 274-275).
Finally, in Chapter 15, Write Sound and Effective
Arguments, the authors provide readers with a series of
questions that are meant to stress the importance of audience, context, and the purposes of whatever arguments
a person is trying to write. This chapter offers readers a
chance to practice and improve upon a skill that college
and university students should expect to exercise across a
wide range of academic classes.
An appendix ends the textbook with examples of
extended argument mapping strategies based on real-life
arguments and of the method for mapping that the authors
introduced in Chapter 5. Finally, the textbook has a glossary, an index, and as mentioned above, endnotes from the
main body of the text.

IV. Conclusion
This is a textbook that breaks the mold of traditionally conceived critical thinking pedagogy. The format is
fresh and original, the content relates to real-life problems
in decision and judgment making, and the conception
of critical thinking is reinforced by important scholarship. Where the book falls short, in its treatment of the
deductive-inductive distinction, and in its conception of
argument, this is more than made up for in the other ways
it guides readers through the complicated and challenging
process of developing ones skills and dispositions to be a
better critical thinker. This book might be a challenge for
some instructors who are used to a traditionally formatted
textbook with traditional content and a typical approach
to exercising the skills of critical thinking, but for all the
challenge it might be just the thing for instructors who are
looking for a new and engaging approach to teaching what
has become almost ubiquitously accepted as a laudable
educational ideal.

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Facione, P. (2003). Review of Evidence-Based Practice:
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53
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Author Information
Benjamin Hamby is currently a fourth year doctoral
student (ABD) in the Philosophy Department at McMaster
University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His dissertation
is an inquiry into the relationship between critical thinking
skills and virtues.