Unit name | Logic and Critical Thinking |
---|---|
Unit code | PHIL10032 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Karim Thebault |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
N/A |
Co-requisites |
N/A |
School/department | Department of Philosophy |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit introduces the student to the analysis of arguments. It provides students with the tools to discern and analyze the structure of an argument, to distinguish good arguments from bad ones, to understand commonly encountered forms of reasoning, and to diagnose common ways in which arguments and reasoning may be flawed or misleading. Students will also be introduced to the tools of Formal Logic and taught how to use these to make arguments more precise and to evaluate their correctness in precise and rigorous ways. Topics covered will typically include the analysis of the sort of informal arguments occurring in everyday life (including statistical reasoning), as well as the exploration of common fallacies in reasoning, the effects of various biases (including implicit bias), and the way certain forms of propaganda work.
On successful completion of the unit the students will be able to:
22 x 1 hour lectures
11 x 1 hour seminars
Summative: 3 hour unseen exam (100%) designed to test ILOs 1-8
Formative: Regular short on-line problem sets designed to test ILOs 1-8
Bowell, T., and G. Kemp, Critical Thinking, Routledge, 2002.
Barwise, J., and J. Etchemendy, The Language of First Order Logic, CSLI Press, 1993.
Stanley, J., How Propaganda Works, Princeton University Press, 2016.