Analyze your own thought process with OPEN MINDS AND EVERYDAY REASONING! Structured around clear, compelling questions, such as "Do I have an open mind?" "Am I being clear?" and "Is my reasoning good?," this philosophy text prepares you to make difficult decisions in life. Each chapter contains concluding practice activities and exercises to help you master the material.

In 'A Logic of Facts; Or, Every-day Reasoning', George Jacob Holyoake addresses the need for practical reasoning in daily life, as opposed to the complex logic taught in schools. He argues that popular reasoning can only be corrected by making reasoning intelligible to the masses. Holyoake's work provides general rules and elementary remarks to help the uninitiated understand and apply logical thinking to their lives. He aims to help the illiterate and uneducated systematize their natural good sense and reduce it to rule and order, to give them power and develop their capacity.

The interpretation of the ‘if P then Q’ conditional statement is a central element in most logical systems. It largely shapes how these logical systems function. It is well known that, although attempts have been made, logical systems are principally unable to encapsulate how people reason in everyday life. This is mainly due to the discrepancies between the logical abstractions of the conditional statement and its everyday interpretation. Among other things, this makes it difficult to design artificial intelligence based on the abstract rules of logic. However, the ancient logicians who first defined the traditional interpretation of the conditional erroneously took into account more propositions than were actually being denoted. They characterised the ‘if P (or R) then Q’ relationship in place of the ‘if P then Q’ relationship. In relation to this, they also committed the error of leaving the context undenoted, which led to an unnatural interpretation of logical truth and logical necessity. This mistaken interpretation is still predominant today and can also be found in several mathematical logics, such as in propositional logic, even though mathematical logics were allegedly created independently of the ancient Greco-Roman logic. Fixing these problems reveals that the correct interpretation of the conditional statement is the equivalence/biconditional. This equivalent interpretation is interpreted by logicians as one of the most common everyday fallacies. Yet looking back on how the conditional statement was actually abstracted in the antiquity, it is evident that people were right and logicians were mistaken. Although the almost 50-year-old experimental psychological literature on the conditional did not confirm this common everyday tendency towards the biconditional interpretation, these findings are merely the result of unsystematic research. Running some of the long missing experiments leads the main experimental tasks to reveal overall the basic biconditional inferences. The approach presented in this book also resolves such dilemmas as the Wason’s abstract selection task, the paradox of the conditional statement and the Raven paradox. It is also shown here that the probabilistic interpretation of the conditional statement is not in conflict with this basic equivalent/biconditional interpretation. The approach is described in this book as the simplest possible non-monotonic logic, and pragmatic inferences, context effects, counterfactuals, possible world semantics and psychologism are also discussed. Since the conditional statement is equivalent to the universal affirmative statement in syllogisms, it is plausible to observe that fixing this same error in syllogisms also makes them compatible with people's actual inferences. Even the normally ambiguous Euler circles become an excellent tool to depict how this updated logic functions. Finally, with this new approach, the root of learning processes is inherently embedded into the logical abstraction of the conditional/universal affirmative statement, and hence, into logic in general. Therefore, this simple logic, presented in a non-technical way, has the potential to bring both human reasoning and learning under the umbrella of the same abstract system. This might be beneficial both for formalising psychology and for creating artificial intelligence.

This book examines the nature and operation of social thought and language as used in everyday life, and looks at social thinking through the complex patternings and functions of discourse. It is based on extensive empirical evidence about the language of contemporary racism and nationalism, drawn from the vast corpus of the discourse of Swiss racism gathered by the author from a variety of written and spoken sources. Three principal investigations, of sociocentrism, causality and the perception of time, are used to sinuate and define the nature and working of everyday speech and reasoning. First published in English in 1990, Speech and Reasoning in Everyday Life is a major contribution to the analysis of the discourse of contemporary ideology and politics. Its theoretical contribution makes this work richly deserving of an introduction to an English-speaking audience of sociologists, social psychologists and anthropologists.

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Statistical Reasoning for Everyday Life, Fourth Edition, provides students with a clear understanding of statistical concepts and ideas so they can become better critical thinkers and decision makers, whether they decide to start a business, plan for their financial future, or just watch the news. The authors bring statistics to life by applying statistical concepts to the real world situations, taken from news sources, the internet, and individual experiences. Note: This is the standalone book If you want the Book/Access Card you can order the ISBN below ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. NOTE: Make sure to use the dashes shown on the Access Card Code when entering the code. Student can use the URL and phone number below to help answer their questions: http://247pearsoned.custhelp.com/app/home 800-677-6337 0321890132 / 9780321890139 Statistical Reasoning for Everyday Life Plus NEW MyStatLab with Pearson eText -- Access Card Package 4/e Package consists of: 0321817621 / 9780321817624 Statistical Reasoning for Everyday Life 0321847997 / 9780321847997 My StatLab Glue-in Access Card 032184839X / 9780321848390 MyStatLab Inside Sticker for Glue-In Packages