The Art of Reasoning

Catalog description

This is an introductory course in informal fallacies and critical reasoning. The course will focus on critical thinking strategies and skills, the elements of an argument, distinctions between deductive and inductive logic, and comparing the strength of arguments. The course will cover causal relations and scientific, statistical, moral, and legal reasoning. The course will present techniques for analyzing arguments used in political rhetoric, advertisements, editorials, scientific claims, social media and social commentary. There is a strong emphasis on the written expression and the application of critical thinking in a series of presentations, compositions, or a term paper.