Departments

PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT

What Knowledge Skills, abilities do we want our students to have upon completion of our critical thinking class?


Some Program Goals:

- critically read, discuss and write argumentative prose

- develop non-judgmental attitudes (without falling into relativism)

- distinguish critical thinking & criticism

- question the assumptions we make


Some Course Goals (Philosophy 100: Logic as Critical Thinking):

- identify the structure of an argument (premises, conclusion, inferential link)

- distinguish arguments form non-arguments

- develop a willingness to work toward consistent belief sets with intellectual integrity

- distinguish evaluating the structure from evaluating the content of an argument

- identify, reject and avoid the use of fallacies of reasoning (formal and informal)

- understand the uses & misuses of language


Some Favorite Assignments

Find and evaluate arguments (fallacious and non-fallacious) in print/media

Take an old paper (student written) breaking down the arguments and removing fallacious reasoning (group project)

Evaluation of the plausibility of a claim-authoritative

Computer literacy Write a dialogue (group project) incorporating the fallacious and non-fallacious forms of reasoning studied in class. Then present the dialogue to the rest of the class and have them identify and evaluate the arguments in it. This serves as review for the final at the end of the semester.

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