A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense
Find Your Inner Chomsky
Baillargeon, Normand
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Year Published: 2008 First Published: 2005
Pages: 336pp Price: $18.50 ISBN: 978-1-58322-765-7
Library of Congress Number: BF441.B26413 2007 Dewey: 121'.6-dc22
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX9389
What must a citizen in a democracy know to make the word democracy meaningful? Baillargeon provides readers with the tools to see through everyday spin and jargon -- from politics to advertising, from mysticism to news reporting.
Abstract:
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One: Some Indispensable Tools for Critical Thinking
1 Language
Introduction
1.1 Treacherous Words
1.2 The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation: Some Everyday Fallacies
2 Mathematics: Those Who Refuse to Be Conned, Count!
Introduction
2.1 Treating Common Forms of Innumeracy
2.2 Probability and Statistics
Part Two: On the Justification of Belief
3 Personal Experience
Introduction
3.1 Perceiving
3.2 Remembering
3.3 Judging
4 Empirical and Experimental Science
Introduction
4.1 Science and Experimentation
4.2 Science and Epistemology
4.3 A Few Questions for the Critical Reading of Research Results
4.4 The SEARCH Model
5 The Media
Introduction
5.1 Another Kind of Democracy
5.2 The Propaganda Model of Media
5.3 Thirty-one Strategies for Fostering a Critical Approach to the Media
Conclusion
Appendix: Independent Media Guide
Suggested Readings
Notes
About the Author
About Seven Stories Press
Subject Headings
