Inferring and Explaining

7 in their coverage. But my sources don’t have to be your sources. I’d be genuinely happy if all my students came into my courses truly informed about what’s going on via information they gained from equally conservative sources such as the Wall Street Journal or the Economist . A Plea for Critical Thinking My entire professional life has been dominated by courses in critical thinking. When I began graduate school, I had the privilege of working with Professor Larry Wright as one of his teach- ing assistants in his course on critical thinking. Tis was truly a life-changing experience. It was in his course that I frst learned of inference to the best explanation, and it is thismethod of evi- dence evaluation that informsmuch of my teach- ing andmuch of my professional research. I have re-created much of what I learned from Profes- sor Wright in countless critical thinking courses that I have taught and in some cases created. All this forms the heart and soul of this book. As I think about it, however, perhaps themost important lesson I learned was not the details of a particular approach to critical thinking but just the value of taking a little time out of a busy undergraduate career focused on the details of majors, minors, and career training and paus- ing to refect on the more general questions of reason, truth, and logic. I take great gratifcation that some of my most satisfed critical thinking customers have been not marginal students who needed to be taught how to think correctly, whatever that’s supposed to mean, but truly excellent students who already possessed all the necessary skills and tools for academic success. To return to an earlier analogy, even great pia- nists and golfers beneft from devoted practice and a little coaching now and then. So welcome to the arena of reason, which, of course, you’ve been in almost the entirety of your life. And welcome to critical thinking. If you give it half a chance, I can almost prom- ise you that you will fnd the things we explore together in this book interesting and fun. I also remain confdent that most of you will fnd the central approach to evidence and the discovery of truth that we will be developing personally, academically, and professionally useful. ValuIng truth exerCIses 1. Generally speaking, do you think Connie has good evidence for her theory that her boy- friend was smooching Mary Jane during his absence at the record hop? Why? 2. What do you think is the strongest argument for the claim that truth is always relative to whom people are, their background, their experiences, their age, their sex, their race, and so on? 3. What do you think is the strongest argument against this relativist view?