PHL 204 Critical Thinking and Logic

Lecture Hours: 4
Credits: 4

Develops critical thinking skills to identify reasons for believing truth claims and to assess the cogency of these reasons. Facilitates sympathetic understanding of beliefs one does not share and enables one to subject to critical scrutiny one’s own beliefs and one’s own reasons for believing. Uses logic as the technique for the rational assessment of argument. Identifies both informal and formal reasons for the success or the failure of arguments

Prerequisite: Placement into WR 115 (or higher), or completion of WR 090 (or higher) with a grade of C or better; or consent of instructor.
Student Learning Outcomes:

Formulate their own reasons for believing what they believe and articulate those reasons as arguments supporting their beliefs.
Develop reasonable arguments for beliefs contrary to their own. views.
Distinguish between persuasive and non-persuasive uses of language generally, and, in particular, distinguish between arguments and explanations.
Distinguish inductive from deductive reasoning, and explain how cogency is relative to each kind of reasoning.
Identify informal fallacies in the arguments of others and in their own thinking.
Test the validity of arguments in Aristotelian logic by means of the application of rules of inference; identify fallacies committed when these rules are violated.
Explain truth-functionality in the formal system and construct through tables as tests for validity.
Make immediate inferences allowed in Aristotelian logic.
Translate arguments from ordinary language into set-theoretical language and into the artificial formal language, using variables and operators.
Apply critical thinking skills to the wide variety of contexts in which arguments are appropriately deployed.

Statewide General Education Outcomes:

Interpret and engage in the Arts & Letters, making use of the creative process to enrich the quality of life. 
Critically analyze values and ethics within a range of human experience and expression to engage more fully in local and global issues.

Content Outline

Informal Logic
- Critical thinking
  - Reconstructing reasons for believing as arguments
  - Identifying arguments and kinds of arguments
    - Arguments and explanations
    - Inductive and deductive arguments
- Isolating and assessing arguments
  - Analyzing argumentative passages
  - Identifying informal fallacies
Formal Logic
- Categorical logic
  - Translating arguments in ordinary language into quantified logic; quasi-numerical quantifiers, non-standard verbs, “the only”
  - Immediate inferences
- Formal system
  - Symbols and logical constants; truth tables and short-cut truth tables
  - Identifying rules as justifications for steps in already completed proofs
  - Constructing direct proofs
  - Constructing indirect proofs.