Study Guide for Final Exam
Critical Thinking
Chapter Eleven
You should be able to: identify analogical arguments, identify the parts of an analogy, evaluate and
criticize arguments by analogy, identify disanalogies between two cases, judge the relevance of a
similarity to a given conclusion, identify inductive generalizations, identify the sample and target
population, evaluate and criticize generalizations, identify the property in question, identify causal
arguments, specify purported cause and effect, distinguish between correlation and causation, briefly
evaluate causal arguments.
Chapter Twelve
You should be able to: judge the credibility of a given source, choose among sources for the one with the
most credibility, paraphrase short passages, be able to decide whether a given passage should be quoted,
paraphrased, or summarized.
Chapter Fourteen
You should be able to: understand and describe the entertainment pressures of modern media, relate
common defenses and criticisms of advertising, recognize and define all of the common advertising ploys
listed in the chapter
Chapter Fifteen
You should be able to: list and explain the basic steps of the scientific method, understand that
confirming a hypothesis is not an exercise of valid reasoning, understand and explain the limits of science,
explain the problems of scientism, define and explain pseudoscience, understand the several standards for
scientific reasoning (testability, consistency with well-established science, acceptance of evidence, precise
language, progressiveness and self-correction)
Previous Chapters
You should be able to: recognize arguments and write them in standard form, distinguish deductively
valid arguments from inductively strong or weak arguments, analyze the inference within an argument
independently of evaluating the truth of the premises, offer a sophisticated analysis of whether a passage
contains an argument, and if it does, a reasonable criticism of that argument, rewrite an argument in
symbolic form if it relies on truth functional logic, recognize basic patterns of truth-functional arguments
to determine validity, use Venn diagrams to evaluate categorical syllogisms.
In general, given a passage, you should be able to evaluate it using everything we have learned throughout
the semester. You should be able to take a position on the strength of an argument, and defend your
position using proper terminology and critical thinking, without engaging in fallacious reasoning.
Chapter One
Things you should know: the definition of “critical thinking”, the definitions for the intellectual standards in
the book, the list of critical thinking barriers and what they mean, the problems with cultural moral relativism,
the characteristics of critical thinkers.
Chapter Two
Things you should know:
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All terminology associated with arguments and how to use them competently: argument, conclusion,
premise, statement, rhetorical questions, ought imperatives, reports, unsupported assertions, conditional
statements, illustrations, explanations, the therefore test, the “because trick”
Things you should be able to do (skills):
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Distinguish statements from non-statements.
Recognize ought imperatives and rephrase them to make them explicit.
Identify the conclusion and premises in an argument, and write the argument in standard form.
Decide whether non-statements should be treated as statements for the purpose of argument analysis
(such as rhetorical questions).
Decide when claims should be paraphrased, and when they should be left out of an argument altogether.
Distinguish argumentative passages from non-inferential ones, especially explanatory ones.
Recognize conditional and disjunctive statements, and realize that they are single claims and not
arguments (by themselves).
Chapter Three
Things you should know:
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All terminology associated with evaluating arguments: deductive arguments, validity, invalidity,
soundness, inductive arguments, strong, weak, cogency, common patterns of deductive arguments, the
various patterns of hypothetical syllogisms, common patterns of inductive arguments
Things you should be able to do (skills):
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Distinguish deductive arguments from inductive arguments.
Evaluate arguments, in particular recognizing deductively valid, deductively invalid, inductively strong,
and inductively weak arguments, as well as sound, unsound, cogent, and uncogent arguments.
Analyze the inference within an argument independently of evaluating the truth of the premises.
Recognize and distinguish different types of hypothetical syllogisms.
Recognize and distinguish different types of inductive arguments.
Chapter Four
Things you should know:
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Terminology associated with language: vagueness, overgenerality, syntactic ambiguity, semantic
ambiguity, factual dispute, verbal dispute, the various “types” of definitions, the various “strategies” for
defining words, rules for constructing good lexical definitions, denotation, connotation, euphemism
Things you should be able to do (skills):
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Identify vague and ambiguous language, and distinguish between the two.
Disambiguate ambiguous passages.
Distinguish between factual and verbal disputes.
Recognize and distinguish the various “types” of definitions.
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Recognize and distinguish the various “strategies” for defining words.
Criticize definitions by using the rules given for constructing good lexical definitions.
Recognize emotive language, and distinguish between words with positive or negative connotations.
Paraphrase passages to reduce emotive language.
Chapter Five & Six
Things you should know:
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The definition of each fallacy
Things you should be able to do (skills):
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Recognize each fallacy in passages
Avoid using fallacies in your own arguments and analyses
Chapter Seven
You should be able to: diagram arguments, identify missing premises
Chapter Eight
You should be able to: decide whether premises are true and defend your position, know what a “good”
argument does or doesn’t mean
Chapter Nine
You should know or be able to:
The four basic statements, paraphrase standard English into the four basic statements, evaluate categorical
syllogisms
Chapter Ten
You should know or be able to:
The four symbols, translate statements into symbolic form, evaluate arguments using a truth table