The author of this crucial text brings to the art of reasoning a concern and emphasis that other books on the subject lack: stimulating intellectual content and focus on the actual world. Francis Watanabe Dauer's belief is that students in the art of reasoning don't need to be inundated with traditional logic and quasi-mathematical problems. What they need, and what Critical Thinking provides, is help reasoning about matters they face in daily life. The material covered by this book, from accepting the unproblematic through language and its levels of meaning, is challenging, but the presentation is clear and simple, so students are encouraged to make efforts. And while the text is primarily concerned with presenting canons or principles of critical thinking, it is not heavy-handed in its presentation of rules and maxims. Instead, these are made plausible at an intuitive level, so that students can master the art of reasoning without having to memorize rules and tables and diagrams. Most important, one of the principal aims of the author in writing Critical Thinking has been to give a unified and coherent account of reasoning rather than a patchwork of disparate topics, as seen in so many texts on the subject. - Jacket flap.