101 Critical Thinking (3) Fall, Spring
"Critical thinking is the best defense against intellectual trickery and self-delusion. It provides specific techniques and tools whereby we can avoid basic fallacies in our own thinking and detect them in the thought of others. Reasoning is a highly complicated human activity and cannot be satisfactorily studied in an intellectual vacuum. Hence, in this course, critical and uncritical thought are contrasted in the context of the world of human interests and activities - social, political and scientific. All of the basic "tricks" for persuading people to accept false premises and conclusions as true are systematically laid out and their detection practiced. Satisfies GE, category A3 (Critical Thinking). "
This class is an introduction to the critical analysis of language, a.k.a. critical thinking. The class aims to impart both a skill and some factual knowledge. The skill is an ability to recognize and also to construct common types of cogent and non-cogent reasoning. The knowledge is that of some of the technical terminology used to analyze would-be persuasive passages of language. One cannot acquire the skill without the knowledge. The skill will be learned by analyzing many examples. Since such analysis often involves picking apart other folk's reasoning, it can be entertaining as well as useful; when it's applied to one's own thought, it may be less entertaining, but is still therapeutic.
"[A]ll deep thought begins and ends in the attempt to grasp whatever touches one most immediately." [Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard 98 (1959) (quoted in Patricia F. Sanborn, Existentialism 21 (New York: Pegasus, 1968))]
Text: Critical Reasoning by Jerry Cederblom and David Paulsen. Other material will be distributed as handouts and posted on the class website. When in doubt about the meaning of a term in common use, consult a good general purpose dictionary.
For reflections on what philosophy and critical thinking are about, one might see: Discplines/Philosophy and Methods at the Critical Thinking Project (http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/critproj/opening.html) and the Archaeology of Criticism (http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/critproj/archaeo-contents.html).
Course outline and schedule:
Introduction to Critical Thinking
Week 1: Class orientation; a leisurely course overview: uses of language; rhetoric, propaganda, and persuasions to believe; being critical: explanation, description, and argumentation; recognizing and evaluating argumentation; distinguishing irrational and rational belief; appeals to emotion and believing-on-the-basis-of; fallacy vs. sophistry; confusing causes of belief with grounds for belief; justification and grounds for rational belief; statements, arguments, premises and conclusions; argument indicators; a first pass at classifying arguments (demonstrative, non-demonstrative, and cogent); examples, examples, examples.
First assignment: bring to the first class meeting of Week 2, two examples of argumentation. These may be taken from your other coursework, the Internet, your reading, or the press, but not from a Logic or Critical Thinking text. Write a paragraph saying if you found the argumentation convincing or not, and state your reasons. Cite your sources.
Section I, Weeks 2-3. Language and Rhetoric: Rational and Nonrational Persuasion
Analyzing language: grammaticality and nonsense; kinds of sentences, and their relations, statements; meaning and truth, connotation and denotation, intension and extension; vagueness and ambiguity; kinds of definition and criteria; analogy, simile, and metaphor.
Rationality and techniques of argumentation; both finding confidence in logic, and learning how easily it can lead astray (garbage in, garbage out).
More on being critical: inference (distinguishing logical and psychological aspects); texts and contexts; implicit and explicit reasons; enthymemes; reconstructing arguments; the Principle of Charity and its abuses.
Assignments: finding examples of uses of language, kinds of sentences, definitions, and of texts intended to be persuasive (both rationally and nonrationally). (Cite your sources.) Analyzing examples given in class.
End of week 3, first midterm examination, one hour.
Section II, Weeks 4-10, Deductive reasoning and formal logic
A glimpse of formal logic: what is it? Informal and formal reasoning; intuition and rigor; objectivity and subjectivity; absolute and relative; ordinary language and symbolization; logical terms; extensional and intensional language; logical forms and patterns of argument; truth tables (for both sentences and arguments); inconsistency; deduction, deductive validity and soundness; cases of indeterminacy of logical form.
Logical error - how reason goes wrong. Fallacies, fallacies, fallacies: formal and informal; deductive and nondeductive (=inductive).
Classification of fallacies: inconsistencies, petitios, and non sequitors.
Inconsistencies
Formal deductive petitios
Deductive petitios
"Undistributed middle"
Illicit premise
Affirming the consequent
Denying the antecedent
Informal petitios
Non sequitors resulting from ambiguity
Equivocation: composition, division, and "4 terms".
Terms: contrary and contradictory.
Amphiboly
Non sequitors resulting from irrelevance
Ad hominem (abusive, circumstantial, tu quoque)
Ad baculum
Ad verecundiam
Black-and-white thinking: on rocks and hard places, and the horns of dilemmas
Assignments: finding and analyzing examples of valid, fallacious and sophistical deductive reasoning. (Cite your sources.) Analyzing examples given in class.
End of week 11, second midterm examination, one hour.
Section III, Weeks 11-16, Nondeductive reasoning
Theories: conceptual and empirical.
Broadly inductive arguments: assessing their validity and soundness.
Informal logic: what is it? Does it exist?
Narrowly inductive arguments and their forms.
Argument by analogy
Inductive generalization
The problem of available evidence
Narrowly inductive fallacies: inductive petitios
Hasty generalization.
Forgetful induction.
Lazy induction.
Probability, numerical probability, and statistics; correlations and causes.
Mill's methods.
Hypotheses and confirmation.
A word about polls, their uses and misuses.
Assignments: finding examples of cogent, sophistical, and fallacious inductive reasoning. (Cite your sources). Analyzing examples given in class.
Recapitulation and coda
Week 17, a review of the semester's work.
Assignments: none.
Final Examination: Week 18, two hours.
Course requirements, examinations, grading, and other class policies and procedures
Attendance: Being There (you might enjoy the entertaining film of that name) is at least half the battle. So be there. Roll will be taken each class, and will not count toward your grade, except as nonattendance will naturally affect performance. However, too many absences according to school policy will result in, first, a warning, then dismissal from class. Homework cannot be made up for easily, and similarly for examinations, except in the direst of circumstances.
Coursework: There will be weekly short take-home exercises or other assignments, usually to be done over the weekend. Additionally, 3 one hour mid-course examinations will be given, and a two hour final examination. These examinations will consist of short essay questions; i.e., you will be asked to write cogent English explanations, give analyses of examples similar to those discussed in class, and sometimes to regurgitate definitions and to construct proofs.
Grading: 1/3 from the final (100 pts.), 1/3 (100 pts.) from the two midterms (hence, 1/6 each), 1/3 (100 pts.) from the homework assignments. The final will be cumulative; i.e., it will consist of questions about material taken equally from each of the class sections, as above.
Office hours: directly after class, by arrangement, or via e-mail.
Late work: Rarely will homework will be accepted late. Exams missed may be made up only under the direst of circumstances.
Classes will consist of a combination of lecture and discussion with the students. I like to conduct discussions casually and Socratically (up to a point!). Please feel free to interrupt the lectures with pertinent questions.
There will be a class website, on which handouts and weekly exercises will be posted.
Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and penalties attached to it.