I often get emails from people asking for book recommendations, and the most common request is from people who describe themselves as “just starting out”, or are looking for a “basic introduction” to critical thinking. Then I ask if they have any specific areas of interest in mind (science, psychology, religion, business, rhetoric, logic, …?), and that usually helps me decide what to recommend.
My “starter kit” recommendation is to pick a good introductory book on basic argumentation and fallacies written from a logic/philosophy perspective, plus a good introductory book on the psychology of reasoning and decision making (something in the “biases and heuristics” tradition), and then a book that might be more specifically focused on their areas of interest.
Here are the two books that I often recommend in the first two categories.
A Rulebook for Arguments (Anthony Weston)
Anthony Weston is a professor of philosophy at Elon College in North Carolina. He works mainly in the areas of environmental philosophy and the philosophy of education. Early in his career (the first edition is 1987, it’s now on its fourth edition) he wrote this little gem that has subsequently been used as a supplementary text in many introductory philosophy courses.
A Rulebook for Arguments has ten short chapters that are organized as follows:
1. Composing a Short Argument: Some General Rules
2. Arguments by Example
3. Arguments by Analogy
4. Arguments from Authority
5. Arguments about Causes
6. Deductive Arguments
7. Composing an Argumentative Essay: Exploring an Issue
8. Composing an Argumentative Essay: Main Points of the Essay
9. Composing an Argumentative Essay: Writing
10. Fallacies
Appendix: Definitions
I’m a fan of Weston’s work in environmental philosophy, and I’m a fan of this little book.
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky pioneered the experimental study of human reasoning and decision making, creating what we now call the “biases and heuristics” research program in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics. Tversky passed away in 1996 but Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics 2002 for their work on “prospect theory”, an alternative to traditional economic rational choice theory in economics. Kahneman’s recent work is on the psychology of happiness.
In 2011 Kahneman published Thinking, Fast and Slow, a big book written for a general audience that summarizes key findings in all of the main areas of his work, and in the field more broadly. It’s a wonderful (and in some places disturbing) introduction to the psychology of cognitive biases, fallacies of probabilistic reasoning and decision making, the psychology of human choice and decision making, and the psychology of human happiness.
Here’s an editorial blurb from the publisher:
Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
It’s all true. For would-be critical thinkers, the concepts discussed in this book are absolutely vital.
