Formal Reasoning: A Guide to Critical Thinking

Formal Reasoning: A Guide to Critical Thinking helps readers to master the basic elements of formal reasoning as a practical way to overcome bias, think clearly, and improve their decision-making. The publication presents strategies drawn from formal philosophy, logic, mathematics, cognitive psychology, and economics. Together, these areas of research can help us to understand the patterns of reasoning that feature commonly in ordinary life and how we can improve our ability to reason. This book organizes the results of this research in an accessible and useful way. John Symons' Formal Reasoning: A Guide to Critical Thinking: Connects basic logic and probability theory in an accessible and applicable way with our growing understanding of the psychology of reasoning. Opens a door into the world of formal reasoning for readers who might otherwise feel alienated from mathematics and from the more formal reaches of philosophy. Introduces the practice reading and analyzing to help readers understand what it means to think though problems like a mathematician. Provides an introduction to both sentential and first-order logic in a relatively conventional manner that omits syllogistic logic, Mill's methods, and analogical reasoning and replaces it with Toversky, Kahneman, Hinitikka and Bachman's work.