48 BOOK REVIEWS

Robert H. Ennis (1996), Critical Thinking. Prentice Hall (ISBN 0-13-

374711-5) (xxiii + 407 pp.).

Since Robert Ennis has been a leading contributor to the development of

the Critical Thinking tradition for the last 40 years, it will come as no
surprise to discover that he has recently produced an excellent text for
teaching Critical Thinking to undergraduates. The contents of the book
arise quite naturally out of his previous work, although there are some inno-
vations too. Anyone who is familiar with the Cornell Tests of Critical
Thinking, particularly the Level Z Test, will be struck by the closeness of
fit between what is tested in that test and what is taught in this text.
The book begins with a novel approach to handling arguments and deci-
sions which Ennis calls the ‘FRISCO’ approach, where the letters stand for
‘Focus, Reasons, Inference, Situation, Clarity, Overview’. It is standard in
the Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (ILACT) tradition, when first
teaching students how to understand and produce arguments, to get them
to ask questions about conclusions (what he calls an argument’s ‘focus’),
reasons, inferences, clarity and so on, but using the mnemonic FRISCO
with its attendant explanations is new and rich, and students respond to it
very well. They find the mnemonic easy to remember and the general
process very helpful. Ennis is right to insist that understanding and eval-
uating an argument requires us to take into account the context in which
it is presented – the ‘situation’ as he calls it; this element is often omitted
in the ILACT tradition.
This introduction of the FRISCO approach is followed by some work
on diagramming arguments, their reasons and conclusions. This work is
fairly standard in the tradition and Ennis’s explanations are clear and full
enough for students to use without getting caught up in current disputes
about exactly how to characterise the difference between joint/linked and
independent/convergent reasoning. There are very many exercises here
which enable students to get a good grasp of what is involved in seeing an
argument’s structure. Ennis also gives particularly clear headed attention
to the difference between arguments and explanations which turns out to
be important for later work.
Given that so many of the reasons which serve as the basis of argument
are claims made by other people whose credibility may need to be con-
sidered, it is no surprise that Ennis follows the work on argument analysis
by work on the credibility of sources, and the credibility of observation.
Most of what we believe comes from other people, our teachers or friends
or experts, or comes from newspapers, magazines, learned journals, the
television etc. The question is, who should be believed, in what circum-
stances and why? Ennis sets out some of the standard criteria which apply
in this area and gives numerous exercises which helps students to grasp
these.
Once we have said whatever can be said about the credibility of the basic

Argumentation 14: 48–51, 2000.

 BOOK REVIEWS 49

claims of any argument (at least so far as their source is concerned) the
next question which arises is ‘What can be inferred from these basic
claims’, and Ennis deals with various kinds of inference in the next three
chapters. He deals firstly with Aristotelian Syllogistic Logic, then with
Propositional Logic and then with what he calls ‘loose derivation’.
Although this is ‘bread and butter’ material to logicians, students are liable
to react to this more formal material in one of two ways; either they are
good at it and enjoy it, but don’t see its general applicability to most argu-
ments and decisions, or they find it difficult and don’t enjoy it, and again
don’t see its applicability to most real arguments. Either way, it seems to
generate quite strong feelings in students. Since standards of deductive logic
have so little application in most real argumentation (argumentation which
is actually used to try to convince others – as distinct from logicians’
invented examples), giving so much space to these in a book which aims
at helping students with real arguments is odd, and teachers will have to
make their own judgments about how to use it. It is well done, but of ques-
tionable applicability to real arguments.
As one might expect given Ennis’s previous work, some of the very best
chapters in this book are concerned with causal explanation of one kind
or another. Having in mind modern ideas about how scientists employ
observation, hypothesis and experiment, Ennis uses excellent examples to
illustrate what can be learned through scientific method, through control
of variables etc. There is extensive discussion of the assumptions which
underlie the experimental method, and of the criteria for accepting
hypotheses. It would be hard to improve on the exercises which are con-
tained in these two chapters on Experimentation and Best Explanation
Inference, though the material on scientific reasoning in the Level Z Cornell
test would provide useful supplementary test questions.
It is increasingly common in the Critical Thinking tradition to recog-
nise the importance of generalisations and statistically based arguments,
and the chapter on this area is again very well worked.
Of course, many arguments not only include factual claims but value
statements, so Ennis gives a good explanation of the differences here.
This leads on to a discussion of decision theory where Ennis seems to be
more sceptical than most people in the Critical Thinking tradition of the
possibility of teaching decision making skills. However, he does expound
the Ben Franklin system and provides exercises in employing it. Since
rational decision theory is long established and has long been intellectu-
ally respectable, it is surprising that Ennis is not more robust in advo-
cating rational ways of decision-making, at least in the context of an
undergraduate critical thinking text, and I find the approach of Swartz and
Parks in Infusing the Teaching of Critical and Creative Thinking Into
Content Instruction, Critical Thinking Books and Software (1994), works
well with students and is more in tune with the positive tone of the rest of
Ennis’s book. Of course there are problems about applying rational decision
50 BOOK REVIEWS

making models (see for example Adam Morton’s Disasters and Dilemmas,
Basil Blackwell 1991), but these do not tell against the possibility of
improving most people’s rational decision making in many situations. One
might as well argue that there are problems about applying the FRISCO
approach to analysing arguments; yes, in more complicated cases there are,
but the method is of enormous utility to most students in many situations
where, without it, they flounder.
Part of the FRISCO method involves clarification, and Ennis gives two
chapters on definition; reported definition as contrasted with stipulative
definition, and many different ways of defining terms. These chapters
contain a lot of standard material, though my students had great difficulty
with the idea of positional definition as expounded by Ennis, and this may
not be as clear as could be wished.
If one is to teach Critical Thinking skills in a ‘stand-alone’ course such
as this, two things are necessary; (1) students must be given extensive
practice in the various skills, so that they can learn how to think critically
themselves – rather as one needs practice in order to learn how to ride a
bicycle, (2) students must be given opportunities to transfer those skills
into other contexts. Throughout this book Ennis gives an enormous number
of exercises; some of them are simply check-up exercises with straight
‘yes/no’ answers to check comprehension, but most of them are substan-
tial exercises which enable students to develop the skills being taught. Ennis
also provides answers to most of the exercises, so students can make quite
rapid progress on their own. Ennis also gives a number of opportunities
for students to transfer their skills into other domains by inviting them to
write on topics other than those that he is dealing with, but of course it is
largely down to the teacher who uses this text to provide opportunities for
transfer.
There are some misprints, for example the diagram on p. 41 has the
arrow going the wrong way, and the bottom diagram on p. 55 has F in the
wrong place, but students spot these fairly easily and I found none that
are seriously misleading.
Though Ennis does not mention the Cornell tests, teachers would almost
certainly find it helpful to have copies of the tests on hand, to provide addi-
tional material to test their students’ understanding of what is taught in
the text – or for further discussion. (They are published by Critical Thinking
Books and Software – www.criticalthinking.com.) The Level X test is really
for younger students than the undergraduates at which Ennis’s text is aimed,
but the Level Z test is intended for undergraduates. Many of its questions
would provide excellent test or discussion material after having studied the
relevant section of Ennis’s text.
To conclude, my own students have found the FRISCO method enor-
mously helpful. Many find argument diagramming very illuminating
(though some are bewildered by it and there are those, notably Richard
Paul, who think it is unnecessary to introduce this skill to students). All
 BOOK REVIEWS 51

found the credibility material helpful, though, as I have said, they were
divided on the deductive logic. The material on Causal Explanation is
probably the hardest in the book, but also the most rewarding; and, as I
said, some of my students had some difficulties with the definition material
on positional definition. But overall, there are few other books which
compare with Ennis’s for teaching Critical Thinking to undergraduates.
There are numerous books which aim to do this, and many which do it well
in restricted areas, but as things stand at present, this book strikes me as
the best on the market.

ALEC FISHER
University of East Anglia
Norwich
United Kingdom

Douglas Walton (1995) Arguments from Ignorance, University Park, PA,

The Pennsylvania State University Press, xii & 313 pp.

A person can earn tenure by publishing a book, and a person can earn tenure
by publishing articles. In some cases it’s even possible to earn tenure by
publishing a sufficient number of book reviews. Douglas Walton, however,
has added a new category to the list. It’s now possible to earn tenure by
publishing a sufficient number of book reviews of his books.
This is one of at least twenty books by Walton in argumentation theory,
and like the others, it’s must reading for anyone interested in its topic.
The topic here is a single argument-type, argumentum ad ignorantiam,
which in rough and ready form is an argument to the effect that a propo-
sition is true because there’s no reason to think it false, or because no one
has shown it to be false (or, similarly, that a proposition is false because
there’s no reason to think it true, or because no one has shown it to be true).
To the best of my knowledge, Walton’s is only the second book devoted
exclusively to the argument-type, the other being Richard Gaskins’ Burdens
of Proof in Modern Discourse.1 Of the two books, Walton’s has the edge,
at least from the point of view of argumentation theory. In addition to being
well versed in the literature on ad ignorantiam, Walton, unlike Gaskin,
doesn’t grind large social and political axes and isn’t out to set the world
aright on various public policy issues from which ad ignorantiam has led
us astray. His aims are theoretical through and through, and he’s studiously
non-partisan in his discussions of various ad ignorantiams offered in
everyday-life, the political arena, and the scientific lab. As in all Walton’s
books, the prose is clear and straightforward, modest in tone, honest in
tenor, and there are no affectations and very little in the way of aggres-
sion, condescension, deliberate slighting, or anger toward those, like myself,
who have disagreed with him on this or that particular point. What

Argumentation 14: 51–56, 2000.