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Free Course: Reason & Argument

  • 26 Aug 2013
  • Online
https://www.coursera.org/course/thinkagain

Think Again: How to Reason and Argue

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Ram Neta

Reasoning is important.  This course will teach you how to do it well.  You will learn how to understand and assess arguments by other people and how to construct good arguments of your own about whatever matters to you.

Workload: 5-6 hours/week 
Watch intro video

Sessions:
Aug 26th 2013 (12 weeks long) Sign Up
Future sessions
 

About the Course

Reasoning is important.  This course will teach you how to do it well.  You will learn some simple but vital rules to follow in thinking about any topic at all and some common and tempting mistakes to avoid in reasoning.  We will discuss how to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments by other people (including politicians, used car salesmen, and teachers) and how to construct arguments of your own in order to help you decide what to believe or what to do. These skills will be useful in dealing with whatever matters most to you.

Course Syllabus

PART I: HOW TO ANALYZE ARGUMENTS (or identify, simplify, and arrange their parts to show how they are connected in a structure)
  • Week One: How to Spot an Argument
  • Week Two: How to Untangle an Argument
  • Week Three: How to Reconstruct an Argument
PART II: HOW TO EVALUATE DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS (or determine whether their premises validly imply their conclusions)
  • Week Four: Propositional Logic and Truth Tables
  • Week Five:  Categorical Logic and Syllogisms
PART III: HOW TO EVALUATE INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS (or determine whether their premises provide enough reason to believe their conclusions)
  • Week Six: What are Inductive Arguments?
  • Week Seven: Causal Reasoning
  • Week Eight:  Probability and Decisions
PART IV:  HOW TO MESS UP ARGUMENTS (or commit common but tempting fallacies)
  • Week Nine:  Fallacies of Vagueness and Ambiguity
  • Week Ten: Fallacies of Relevance and Vacuity
  • Week Eleven: How to Refute an Argument
  • Week Twelve: How to Apply these Methods to Everyday Arguments

Recommended Background

This material is appropriate for introductory college students or advanced high school studentsundefinedor, indeed, anyone who is interested. No special background is required other than knowledge of English.

Suggested Readings

Students who want more detailed explanations or additional exercises or who want to explore these topics in more depth should consult Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic . The text is also available in an e-book format.

Course Format

Each week will be divided into multiple video segments that can be grouped as three lectures or viewed separately. There will be short exercises after each segment (to check comprehension) and several longer midterm quizzes.

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