Using Questions to Think: How to Develop Skills in Critical Understanding and Reasoning - Softcover

Dickman, Nathan Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350177717 ISBN 13: 9781350177710

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021

Synopsis

Our ability to think, argue and reason is determined by our ability to question. Questions are a vital component of critical thinking, yet we underestimate the role they play. Using Questions to Think puts questioning back in the spotlight. Naming the parts of questions at the same time as we name parts of thought, this one-of-a-kind introduction allows us to see how questions relate to the definitions of propositions, premises, conclusions, and the validity of arguments. Why is this important? Making the role of questions visible in thinking reasoning and dialogue, allows us to: - Ask better questions - Improve our capability to understand an argument - Exercise vigilance in the act of questioning - Make explicit what you already know implicitly - Engage with ideas that contradict our own - See ideas in broader context Breathing new life into our current approach to critical thinking, this practical, much-needed textbook moves us away from the traditional focus on formal argument and fallacy identification, combines the Kantian critique of reason with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics and reminds us why thinking can only be understood as an answer to a question.

About this title

About the Author

Nathan Eric Dickman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of the Ozarks, USA. He researches in hermeneutic phenomenology, philosophy of language, and comparative questions in philosophy of religions. He teaches a wide range of courses, such as Critical Thinking, Islam, Ethics, and the Historical Jesus. Over the last ten years, he has published seven peer-reviewed articles specifically on questions, thinking, and dialogue in diverse disciplines including philosophy, psychology, and education as well as presented at over sixteen conferences on these same topics. Moreover, as a multiple award-winning teacher on different campuses, he has successfully employed this theory of questioning and thinking in the classroom not only in Critical Thinking and Hermeneutics courses, but in all courses where high impact practices of active participation are fitting.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350177717
• ISBN 13: 9781350177710
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264