Course Description, Introduction, Approach
Critical Thinking is a course designed to help students develop their skills in reasoning, analysis and the use of logical arguments. You will learn how to better interpret and evaluate the materials you read and to understand and appreciate viewpoints which are different from your own. One focus of the course will be toward learning to see the arguments for both sides of an issue as a part of the process of reaching sound conclusions. Class participation and interaction will be an extremely important part of the learning process. Lectures will be kept to a minimum with emphasis upon practical techniques and application of the materials in your reading.
The first section of the course will provide an introduction to the basics of critical thinking. For this part we'll use Ruggiero's Beyond Feelings: A Guide to Critical Thinking. The second section of the course will help you to further learn and apply these skills through an examination of different and unusual phenomena covered in the textbook, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age. While this text will be very useful for learning to do reasoned examination of issues we will also dare to critique it using logic and analysis of the author's presuppositions and arguments.
About Grading: To make the course more interesting we will, at times, be dealing with very controversial subjects. Consequently, it is important to emphasize that your grades will be based upon the quality of your analysis, logic, reasoning and presentation, not upon whether you agree or disagree with the personal view of the instructor on an issue. A paper which uses poorly reasoned arguments and insufficient evidence will receive a low grade regardless of its conclusion. Similarly, a well written paper which uses solid evidence and sound critical thinking will receive an "A" even if the conclusion directly contradicts the instructor's position on the subject. This course is about how you arrive at your conclusions.
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Intro to Critical Thinking
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