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Table of Contents
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
By
Richard W. Paul, Linda Elder
Publisher
: Financial Times Prentice Hall
Pub Date
: June 13, 2002
ISBN
: 0-13-064760-8
Pages
: 384
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Copyright
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FINANCIAL TIMES Prentice Hall
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Financial Times Prentice Hall Books
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Acknowledgment
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Preface
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Chapter 1.
Thinking in a World of Accelerating Change and Intensifying Danger
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The Nature of the Post-Industrial World Order
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A Complex World of Accelerating Change
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A Threatening World
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Change, Danger, and Complexity: Interwoven
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The Challenge of Becoming Critical Thinkers
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Recommended Reading
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Chapter 2.
Becoming a Critic of Your Thinking
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How Skilled is Your Thinking (Right Now)?
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Good Thinking Is as Easy as Bad Thinking (But It Requires Hard Work to Develop It)
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The Hard Cruel World
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Become a Critic of Your Own Thinking
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Conclusion
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Chapter 3.
Becoming a Fair-Minded Thinker
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Weak versus Strong Critical Thinking
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What Does Fair-Mindedness Require?
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Intellectual Humility: Having Knowledge of Ignorance
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Intellectual Courage: Being Willing to Challenge Beliefs
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Intellectual Empathy: Entertaining Opposing Views
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Intellectual Integrity: Holding Ourselves to the Same Standards to Which We Hold Others
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Intellectual Perseverance: Working Through Complexity and Frustration
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Confidence in Reason: Recognizing that Good Reasoning Has Proven Its Worth
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Intellectual Autonomy: Being an Independent Thinker
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Recognizing the Interdependence of Intellectual Virtues
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Conclusion
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Chapter 4.
Self-Understanding
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Monitoring the Egocentrism in Your Thought and Life
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Making a Commitment to Fair-Mindedness
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Recognizing the Mind''s Three Distinctive Functions
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Understanding That You Have a Special Relationship to Your Mind
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Chapter 5.
The First Four Stages of Development: What Level Thinker Are You?
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Stage One: The Unreflective ThinkerAre You an Unreflective Thinker?
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Stage Two: The Challenged ThinkerAre You Ready to Accept the Challenge?
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Stage Three: The Beginning ThinkerAre You Willing to Begin?
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Stage Four: The Practicing ThinkerGood Thinking Can Be Practiced Like Basketball, Tennis, or Ballet
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A "Game Plan" for Improvement
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A Game Plan for Devising a Game Plan
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Chapter 6.
The Parts of Thinking
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Reasoning Is Everywhere in Human Life
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Does Reasoning Have Parts?
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Beginning to Think About Your Own Reasoning
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The Elements of Thought: A First Look
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An Everyday Example: Jack and Jill
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Analysis of the Example
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The Elements of Thought in Relationship
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The Relationship Between the Elements
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Thinking to Some Purpose
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Thinking with Concepts
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Thinking with Information
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Distinguishing Between Inert Information, Activated Ignorance, and Activated Knowledge
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Some Key Questions to Ask When Pursuing Information
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Distinguishing Between Inferences and Assumptions
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Understanding Implications
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Thinking Within and Across Points of View
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Using Critical Thinking to Take Charge of How We See Things
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The Point of View of the Critical Thinker
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Conclusion
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Chapter 7.
The Standards for Thinking
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Taking a Deeper Look at Universal Intellectual Standards
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Bringing Together the Elements of Reasoning and the Intellectual Standards
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Using Intellectual Standards to Assess Your Thinking: Brief Guidelines
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Chapter 8.
Design Your Life
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Fate or Freedom: Which Do You Choose?
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Recognizing the Dual Logic of Experience
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Facing Contradictions and Inconsistencies
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Social Forces, the Mass Media, and Our Experience
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Reading Backwards
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Implications for the Design of Your Life
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Chapter 9.
The Art of Making Intelligent Decisions
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Thinking Globally About Your Life
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Evaluating Patterns in Decision-Making
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"Big" Decisions
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The Logic of Decision-Making
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Recognizing the Need for an Important Decision
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Accurately Recognizing the Alternatives
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Putting More Time into Your Decision-Making
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Being Systematic
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Dealing with One Major Decision at a Time
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Developing Knowledge of Your Ignorance
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Dimensions of Decision-Making
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Regularly Re-Articulate and Reevaluate Your Goals, Purposes, and Needs
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The Early Decisions
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Adolescent Decisions
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Early Adult Decisions
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Conclusion
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Chapter 10.
Taking Charge of Your Irrational Tendencies
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Egocentric Thinking
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Understanding Egocentric Thinking
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Understanding Egocentrism as a Mind Within the Mind
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"Successful" Egocentrism
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"Unsuccessful" Egocentrism
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Rational Thinking
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Two Egocentric Functions
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Dominating Egocentrism
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Submissive Egocentrism
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Pathological Tendencies of the Human Mind
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Challenging the Pathological Tendencies of the Mind
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The Challenge of Rationality
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Chapter 11.
Monitoring Your Sociocentric Tendencies
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The Nature of Sociocentrism
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Sociocentric Thinking as Pathology
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Social Stratification
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Sociocentric Thinking Is Unconscious and Potentially Dangerous
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Sociocentric Use of Language in Groups
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Disclosing Sociocentric Thinking Through Conceptual Analysis
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Revealing Ideology at Work Through Conceptual Analysis
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The Mass Media Foster Sociocentric Thinking
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The Mass Media Play Down Information That Puts the Nation in a Negative Light
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Freedom from Sociocentric Thought: The Beginnings of Genuine Conscience
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The Capacity to Recognize Unethical Acts
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Conclusion
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Chapter 12.
Developing as an Ethical Reasoner
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Why People are Confused About Ethics
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The Fundamentals of Ethical Reasoning
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Ethical Concepts and Principles
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The Universal Nature of Ethical Principles
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Distinguishing Ethics from Other Domains of Thinking
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Ethics and Religion
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Religious Beliefs Are Socially or Culturally Relative
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Ethics and Social Conventions
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Practices That Are Socially or Culturally Relative
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Ethics and the Law
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Ethics and Sexual Taboos
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Understanding Our Native Selfishness
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Chapter 13.
Analyzing and Evaluating Thinking in Corporate and Organizational Life
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Introduction
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Critical Thinking and Incremental Improvement
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An Obstacle to Critical Thinking Within Organizations: The Covert Struggle for Power
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Another Obstacle: Group Definitions of Reality
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A Third Obstacle: The Problem of Bureaucracy
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The Problem of Misleading Success
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Competition, Sound Thinking, and Success
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Stagnating Organizations and Industries
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Questioning Organizational Realities
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Assessing Irrational Thinking in Organizational Life
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The Power of Sound Thinking
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Some Personal Implications
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Conclusion
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Chapter 14.
The Power and Limits of Professional Knowledge (And of the Disciplines that Underlie Them)
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Professional Fallibility and the Glut of Information
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The Ideal of Professional Knowledge
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Who Should We Believe?
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True and False Loyalty to a Profession
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The Gap Between Fact and Ideal
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Assessing A Profession or a Professional Conclusion: Matters of Fact, Matters of Opinion, Matters of Judgment
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The Ideal Compared to the Real
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Professions Based on the Ideal of Mathematics and Abstract Quantification
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The Pain and Suffering of Those Who Fail
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Loss of Self-Esteem and Opportunity to Receive Higher Education
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Low Level of Math Competency of Those Who Pass School Examinations
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The Ideal of Science: Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, and Biology
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The Ideal of Social Science: History, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, and Psychology
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History as an Ideal
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Sociology as an Ideal
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Anthropology as an Ideal
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Economics as an Ideal
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The Social Sciences as Taught and Practiced
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The Ideal of the Arts and Humanities: Music, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Dance, Literature, and Philosophy
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The Promise of the Fine Arts and Literature
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The Reality of Instruction in the Fine Arts and Literature
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The Promise of Philosophy
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The Reality of Philosophy
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Conclusion
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Chapter 15.
Strategic Thinking Part One
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Understanding and Using Strategic Thinking
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Components of Strategic Thinking
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The Beginnings of Strategic Thinking
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Key Idea #1: Thoughts, Feelings, and Desires are Interdependent
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Key Idea #2: There is a Logic to This, and You Can Figure It Out
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Key Idea #3: For Thinking to Be of High Quality, We Must Routinely Assess it
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Chapter 16.
Strategic Thinking Part Two
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Key Idea #4: Our Native Egocentrism Is a Default Mechanism
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Key Idea #5: We Must Become Sensitive to the Egocentrism of Those Around Us
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Key Idea #6: The Mind Tends to Generalize Beyond the Original Experience
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Key Idea #7: Egocentric Thinking Appears to the Mind as Rational
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Key Idea #8: The Egocentric Mind Is Automatic in Nature
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Key Idea #9: We Often Pursue Power Through Dominating or Submissive Behavior
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Key Idea #10: Humans Are Naturally Sociocentric Animals
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Key Idea #11: Developing Rationality Requires Work
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Conclusion
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Glossary: Guide to Critical Thinking Terms and Concepts
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References