In PHIL 252: Critical Thinking, students will practice and gain mastery in foundational methods of philosophical critical thinking that can be applied in a wide range of educational, professional, and life scenarios. They will become familiar with a variety of argument forms, both formal and informal, and gain experience evaluating arguments. This course also introduces students to introductory concepts in formal logic, such as syllogisms and Venn diagrams. Finally, students will learn to identify and explain informal fallacies in a range of contexts, including everyday language, statistics, media, and scientific reasoning.
Outline
PHIL 252 consists of ten units:
Unit 1: Why Critical Thinking?
Unit 2: Arguments and Bullshit
Unit 3: Validity as a Truth-Preserving Method
Unit 4: Classification and Definition
Unit 5: Categorical Logic and Syllogisms
Unit 6: Fallacies of Ambiguity, Meaning, and Representation
Unit 7: Science and Causal Reasoning
Unit 8: Science and Worldviews
Unit 9: Emotions, Generalizations, and Justification
Unit 10: Putting Critical Thinking into Practice
Learning outcomes
PHIL 252 has six major learning outcomes. After completing this course, students will be able to:
Explain philosophical approaches to critical thinking.
Reflect on their approach and attitudes toward critical thinking.
Describe key features of various forms of arguments, including premises and conclusions, syllogisms, inductive or deductive, etc.
Evaluate various arguments using appropriate methods, including validity, soundness, definitional clarification, fallacy identification, and appropriate skepticism for causal reasoning, statistical reasoning, and visual data representations.
Describe key features of successful arguments, including dialectical acceptability, relevance, cogency, clarity, precision of language, etc.
Apply select course concepts to their everyday critical thinking.
Evaluation
To receive credit for PHIL 252, you must complete and submit all of the assignments, quizzes, and the final project. You must achieve an overall grade of at least D (50 percent) for the course.
You will be evaluated on your understanding of the concepts presented in the course and on your ability to apply those concepts. Your final grade in the course will be based on the marks achieved for the following activities.
Activity
Weight
Assignment 1: Am I a Critical Thinker?
15%
Assignment 2: Reflection, Planning, and Practice
25%
Mastery Quizzes (5 quizzes at 6% each)
30%
Final Project: My Critical Thinking Toolkit
30%
Total
100%
To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University’s online Calendar.
Materials
Bergstrom, Carl T., and Jevin D. West. 2021. Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. New York: Random House. (Print)
Clark, Daniel J., dir. 2018. Behind the Curve. Los Angeles: Delta-v Productions. (Streamed video)
Dayton, Eric, and Kristin Rodier. 2024. Critical Thinking, Logic, and Argument: An Introduction. Athabasca: AU Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/remix/9781998944057.01. (eBook)
Athabasca University reserves the right to amend course outlines occasionally and without notice. Courses offered by other delivery methods may vary from their individualized study counterparts.