Noel Hendrickson - Böcker

Just as The Elements of Style provides a quick and authoritative reference for writers, The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook for Critical Thinking provides a quick and authoritative reference for issues regarding reasoning. The Handbook provides clear and succinct discussions of the following issues:· Issues germane to clarifying sentences: ambiguity, vagueness, and propositional attitudes. ·General discussions of descriptions, explanations, and arguments.·Criteria for evaluating observational statements and testimony. ·Categorical syllogisms, including issues germane to both the Boolean and Aristotelian interpretations. ·A complete system of propositional logic and a brief discussion of the use of truth tables. ·Induction: generalization and particularization arguments, analogies, arguments to the best explanation, Mill's Methods, counterfactual reasoning, and making decisions under risk and uncertainty. ·A brief discussion of the principle formulas involved in calculating probabilities. ·An extended discussion of informal fallacies. ·An essay on the relationship between critical thinking and writing.

The goal of Reasoning for Intelligence Analysts is to address the three distinct dimensions of an analyst’s thinking: the person of the analyst (their traits), the processes they use (their techniques), and the problems they face (their targets). Based on a decade of academic research and university teaching in a program for aspiring intelligence analysts, this multidimensional approach will help the reader move beyond the traditional boundaries of accumulating knowledge or critical thinking with techniques to assess the unique targets of reasoning in the information age. This approach is not just a set of techniques, but covers all elements of reasoning by discussing the personal, procedural, and problem-specific aspects. It also addresses key challenges, such as uncertain data, irrelevant or misleading information, indeterminate outcomes, and significance for clients through an extensive examination of hypothesis development, causal analysis, futures exploration, and strategy assessment. Both critical and creative thinking, which are essential to reasoning in intelligence, are integrated throughout.Structured around independently readable chapters, this text offers a systematic approach to reasoning a long with an extensive toolkit that will serve the needs of both students and intelligence professionals.