Critical Philosophy

Critical thinking is regularly cited as an essential 21st century skill, the key to success in school and work. Given our propensity to believe fake news, draw incorrect conclusions, and make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, it might even be said that critical thinking is vital to the survival of a democratic society. But what, exactly, is critical thinking? Haber describes the term's origins in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, and science.

Famous for his advocacy of "critical pedagogy", Paulo Freire was Latin America's foremost educationalist, a thinker and writer whose work and ideas continue to exert enormous influence in education throughout the world today. Education for Critical Consciousness is the main statement of Freire's revolutionary method of education. It takes the life situation of the learner as its starting point and the raising of consciousness and the overcoming of obstacles as its goals.

Was America founded on the auction block in Jamestown in 1619 or aboard the Mayflower in 1620? The controversy erupted in August 2019 when the New York Times announced its 1619 Project. The Times set to transform history by asserting that all the laws, material gains, and cultural achievements of Americans are rooted in the exploitation of African Americans. Historians have pushed back, saying that the 1619 Project conjures a false narrative out of racial grievance.

Your argument is valid and you know it; yet once again you find yourself leaving a debate feeling defeated and embarrassed. The matter is only made worse when you realize that your defeat came at the hands of someone's abuse of logic - and that with the right skills you could have won the argument. The ability to recognize logical fallacies when they occur is an essential life skill. Mastering Logical Fallacies is the clearest, boldest, and most systematic guide to dominating the rules and tactics of successful arguments.

Logic is synonymous with reason, judgment, sense, wisdom, and sanity. Being logical is the ability to create concise and reasoned arguments - arguments that build from given premises, using evidence, to a genuine conclusion. But mastering logical thinking also requires studying and understanding illogical thinking, both to sharpen one's own skills and to protect against incoherent or deliberately misleading reasoning. Elegant, pithy, and precise, Being Logical breaks logic down to its essentials through clear analysis, accessible examples, and focused insights.

Critical thinking is the essential tool for ensuring that students fulfill their promise. But, in reality, critical thinking is still a luxury good, and students with the greatest potential are too often challenged the least. Colin Seale, a teacher-turned-attorney-turned-education-innovator and founder of thinkLaw, uses his unique experience to introduce a wide variety of concrete instructional strategies and examples that teachers can use in all grade levels and subject areas. 

From the pioneers of Los Alamos who got up close and personal with the cores of atomic bombs, to the hapless engineers in Soviet fuel-processing plants who unwittingly mixed up a disaster in a bucket, and from the terrifying impact of a tsunami at Fukushima to the mystery of the recent Russian incident, Meltdown explores the past and future of this extraordinary and potentially lethal source of infinite power

A thoroughly updated introduction to the concepts, methods, and standards of critical thinking, A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking: Deciding What to Do and Believe, Second Edition is a unique presentation of the formal strategies used when thinking through reasons and arguments in many areas of expertise. Pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to critical thinking, the audiobook offers a broad conception of critical thinking and explores the practical relevance to conducting research across fields such as, business, education, and the biological sciences.

In this enlightening Very Short Introduction, Simon Critchley shows us that Continental philosophy encompasses a distinct set of philosophical traditions and practices, with a compelling range of problems all too often ignored by the analytic tradition. He discusses the ideas and approaches of philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Habermas, Foucault, and Derrida. He also introduces key concepts such as existentialism, nihilism, and phenomonology, by explaining their place in the Continental tradition.

In our ever-more-polarized society, there's at least one thing we still agree on: The world is overrun with misinformation, faulty logic, and the gullible followers who buy into it all. Of course, we're not among them - are we? Scientist David Robert Grimes is on a mission to expose the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that drive our discourse on a dizzying array of topics - from vaccination to abortion, 9/11 conspiracy theories to dictatorial doublespeak, astrology to alternative medicine, and wrongful convictions to racism.

In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone as the world's premier military power. Yet its martial confidence contrasted vividly with its sense of cultural inferiority. Still looking to a defeated and dispirited Europe for intellectual and artistic guidance, burgeoning transnational elite in New York and Washington embraced not only the war's refugees but many of their ideas as well, and nothing has proven more pernicious than those of the Frankfurt School and its reactionary philosophy of "critical theory".

Do you want to ask smart questions like Socrates or be an out-of-the-box thinker like John Stuart Mill, and rational like Descartes? These people have at least one thing in common: They were great critical thinkers of their time, and their shared wisdom lived through the centuries. Lessons from Critical Thinkers provides intellectual power to engage with and participate in effective critical thoughts, arguments, debates, reading, and reflection drawn from methods in the history of philosophical cognitive development.

In today's fast world, it's important to have certain skills for success. With so much fake news and information everywhere, critical thinking and logic are crucial. These skills help us think well and make good decisions. They help us understand why things are how they are, figure out what influences them, and come up with ways to make things better. One of the reasons most of us fall short in thinking critically is that our educational system doesn't teach critical thinking.

The history of philosophy is beset by unresolved disputes. These disputes are passed down from generation to generation as problems to be solved. If not solved, they engender skepticism. Philosophical disputes, posed as problems, can be resolved or dissolved if we first acknowledge that some things are clear to reason.

In The Assistant Principal 50, award-winning, four-time principal Baruti Kafele presents reflective questions that encompass the breadth and depth of the assistant principalship—from finding your leadership "lane" to thriving and being an asset to your principal. Kafele infuses the book from beginning to end with personal anecdotes and accounts of both failures and successes from his years as an assistant principal. He arms you with tools and insights that will drive you to view the assistant principalship as critical to the climate and culture of your school as well as to student achievement.

Did you know that 93 percent of CEOs agree that this skill is more important than your college degree? Amazon's market cap is 1.7 trillion dollars. And it all started when Jeff Bezos used this skill to see a market inefficiency back in the day, before anyone else. Having this skill in your back pocket is like shortcutting Malcom Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule to learning something (who's got time for that?). So, what is it? Nothing complex or fancy. It's critical thinking. This audiobook is dedicated to imparting to you the maxims of how to think critically.

For philosophers, a fallacy is an error in reasoning: a piece of bad logic. Just as it is a good idea to avoid eating bad food, it is a good idea to avoid bad reasoning. Unfortunately, bad reasoning is all too common—it pours out of social media and infests the web like a swarm of venomous spiders. Perhaps even worse than the fallacies imposed on people are the self-inflicted fallacies. These can lead people to make poor decisions about matters great and small. Fortunately, there is a defense against bad reasoning, namely knowledge. This concise book provides the reader with definitions, ...

Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose—and, if at all possible, cure—the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations.

Education is in bad shape in America and beyond today. It’s obvious. Everyone perceives it. Something is going badly wrong in our schools. Our children aren’t learning as they should be. Their mastery of core academic curriculum like reading, writing, history, mathematics, science, and civics has declined to crisis levels and shows no signs of improvement. Meanwhile, they’re all learning to be activists, turning their backs on their nations, societies, and even their parents and religions.

Questioning, skepticism, reasoning...all these things have one thing in common: They are the traits of a true critical thinker, someone who doesn't just accept something because everyone else is screaming the same claims. You're going to learn more about some of the following things: Inductive and deductive thinking, skeptical reasoning, rationalism and what it entails, how to make better decisions with logic and numbers, and so much more!