Course Description:
 

Every day we are asked to come to a decision, form a belief, take a stand. An advertisement tries to convince us to buy a certain kind of car. Politicians want to assure us that they are the best candidate. We have to decide which classes to take next semester. A common thread runs through these issues. In each case we want to make a good decision -- which really is the better car, who is the most qualified candidate, or which are the right classes to take. We are asked to form a belief or have an opinion as to the truth of some matter. And we want our beliefs to stand a good chance of being true.

The whole point of a course in "Critical Thinking" is to determine under what circumstances and to what extent we should believe that something is true. Obviously, part of the answer to such a question has to do with evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something being true, the more likely that it is true. While this is broadly right, we'll see that we need to take a careful look at what counts as good and bad evidence. For example, sometimes what looks to be good evidence, we find ourselves committing a "fallacy of reasoning." In fact, an alternative way of describing this course is to say that it is a course in "reasoning where this simply means the process by which we attempt to support our beliefs and opinions that something is true.
 

Course Requirements:

    * Each chapter contains exercise sets. Unless otherwise instructed, you are expected to do all the exercises.

    *   The graded work will consist in three, equally graded, exams. Each exam will be based upon the homework exercise sets.
 
 

Grading Scale:

92-100 A
89-91 A-
86-88 B+
82-85 B
79-81 B-
76-78 C+
72-75 C
69-71 C-
66-68 D+
62-65 D
59-61 D-
0-58 F
 

Textbook: Critical Thinking (7th edition), Moore and Parker
 
 

CALENDAR
 

Part One:  Introduction
1/6-1/8    Chapt. 1: “What is Critical Thinking”
1/13-1/15    Chapt. 2:  “Critical Thinking and Argumentative Writing”
1/20-1/22    Chapt 3:  “Credibility”
1/27-1/29    Review of chapts. 1-3 / Exam on chapts. 1-3 (1/29)
Part Two:  Claims
2/3-2/5    Chapt. 4:  “Persuasion Through Rhetoric”
2/10-2/12    Chapt. 5:  “More Rhetorical Devices”
2/17-2/19    Chapt. 6:  “More Pseudoreasoning”
Part Three:  Arguments
2/24-2/26    Chapt. 7:  “The Anatomy and Varieties of Arguments”
3/2-3/4    Review of Chapts 4-7 / Exam on Chapts. 4-7 (3/4)
3/9-3/11    Chapt. 8:  “Deductive Arguments I”
3/16-3/18    Chapt. 9: “Deductive arguments II”
3/23-3/25    Spring Break
3/30-4/1    Chapt.10: “Inductive Arguments”
4/6-4/8    Chapt. 11:  “Causal Arguments”
4/13-4/15    Review of Chapts. 8-11
 

Final exam on chapts. 8-11  Thurs 4/22 @ 9:30