Applying Your Critical Thinking Skills Chapter 6 Applying Your Critical Thinking Skills

Strategy for Problem Solving Step 1: Be alert for problems Step 2: Express the problem Step 3: List possible solutions Step 4: Select and refine your best solution Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Guidelines for Successful Relationships Acknowledge other people Be generous with compliments, stingy with criticism and/or advice Keep your moods to yourself Expect more of yourself and less of others Make allowances for differences of opinion Be sensitive to others’ feelings Balance talking with listening Think before speaking Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Guidelines for Successful Relationships (cont’d) Purge negative emotions Refrain from gossiping Apologize when you are wrong Forgive when you are wronged Be a peacemaker Meet your responsibilities to others Look for opportunities to be kind Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Ethical judgments are the decisions people make about the rightness or wrongness of human behavior Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Requirements of Respect for Persons “That each and every person should be regarded as worthy of sympathetic consideration, and should be so treated . . . “That no person should be regarded as a mere possession, or used as a mere instrument, or treated as a mere obstacle, to another’s satisfaction . . . “That persons are not and ought never to be treated in any undertaking as mere expendables” --Errol E. Harris Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Criteria for Ethical Judgment Obligations Moral Ideals Consequences Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Strategy for Ethical Judgment Step 1: Examine the situation for obligations and relevant moral ideals Step 2: Determine possible actions and their consequences Step 3: Decide which action honors obligations and moral ideals and produce most desirable consequences Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Advertising Techniques Bandwagon Glittering generality Empty comparison Meaningless slogan Testimonial Transfer Stacking the deck Misleading statement Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Elements of Film Characters Setting Plot Theme Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Questions About Internet Sites Whose site is this? What function does the site serve? Which statements are facts and which are opinions? Where can statements of fact be confirmed? How widely shared is this opinion? What do authorities on the subject think of it? Is the reasoning behind the opinion logical? Does the evidence support the opinion? Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.