Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An introduction to the evaluation of arguments as they are encountered in everyday life. The central aim will be to sharpen skills of reasoning and argumentation by understanding how arguments work and learning to distinguish those which actually prove what they set out to show from those which do not. Open to all students. Quantitative.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course is designed to improve your natural ability to reason.  It is a course in the critical, thoughtful assessment of arguments.  Arguments consist, in this context, of the presentation of reasons to accept a conclusion.  They are what you should consult when trying to answer a variety of questions:  Should you vote for candidate X?  Should you change your behaviour in light of scientific study Y?  Should you buy my used van? 

In this course, we focus on two things.  One, we try to improve our ability to understand an argument (what conclusion does the writer or speaker intend us to believe?, what claims is he or she making and how are they supposed to provide support for the conclusion?).  Two, we try to improve our ability to evaluate an argument (does the argument offered give us good grounds for believing its conclusion?).  Somewhat more specifically, we will learn to distinguish arguments from other forms of persuasion, to understand deductive and inductive reasoning, to appreciate the appropriate use of statistical claims and claims about probability, to recognize types of informal fallacies, and to evaluate non-technical reports of scientific studies.


This is, in summary, a practical course, a course in applied logic.  It should help you to be a better reader and listener, thereby helping you to be a better writer and speaker.  It should give you some of the tools you will need to pursue your chosen interests and fulfill your capacity to be rational.  What it cannot do is hone those tools or delve deeply into the subjects that make their acquisition worthwhile.  Reflection and practice are required for those tasks; they must be left to the rest of your university career and other of your intellectual pursuits.  Our goal is lofty enough – to learn to reason well.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

PHIL XX1 may be applied towards the Certificate in Liberal Arts and the Quantitative Requirement.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

i>clicker

As you may know, i>clickers can be used in different classes.  If you already have one, don’t buy another.  If you don't already have one, buy one knowing that you can use it in other courses, or just borrow one if you can bring it to every lecture.  I>clicker 1 is fine for this course, as I ask only multiple-choice questions.  Later versions, such as i>clicker 2 should work fine, too, but Web-clicker will not.  Details available in early in the term.  Bring your clicker to the very first lecture if you have it, but don’t fret about registering it (until Week 2).

REQUIRED READING: