The Thinker's Guide to Intellectual Standards (Thinker's Guide Library)

Humans routinely assess thinking – their own thinking, and that of others, and yet they don’t necessarily use standards for thought that are reasonable, rational, sound. To think well, people need to routinely meet intellectual standards, standards of clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, fairness, significance, and so forth. In this guide authors Elder and Paul offer a brief analysis of some of the most important intellectual standards in the English language. They look at the opposites of these standards. They argue for their contextualization within subjects and disciplines. And, they call attention to the forces that undermine their skilled use in thinking well. At present intellectual standards tend to be either taught implicitly, or ignored in instruction. Yet because they are essential to high quality reasoning in every part of human life, they should be explicitly taught and explicitly understood.