Cael Cohen, PhD

Email: cmcohen@yorku.ca

In-Person Office Hours: Tuesday, 9:00 am – 11:00 am, 447 South Ross Building.

Q & A Skills Incubator Office Hour Online: Friday, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, in Zoom.

This in-class, skills-based course teaches learners how to read, write and think independently, critically, and for meaning, through:

• A collection of critical skills, practices, techniques, attitudes, and principles that can be used every day to systematically evaluate your own and others’ reasoning about morality and values.
• An approach to ethical disagreements and controversial moral issues using rational standards and mindfulness awareness.
• Critical assessment and formulation of ethical beliefs, arguments, and concepts based on relevant, acceptable, and sufficient grounds, rather than passive acceptance.

Graded Assessment:

Earn 1% BONUS MARKS added to your TOTAL FINAL MARK:

Write a “Letter to a Future Student” at the end of the course:

• Answer questions to earn 1% bonus mark added to your final mark. When answering these questions, imagine that you are writing a letter to a student who will be taking this course in the future. When you have finished answering these questions, after you click on "Submit", please take a picture or screenshot of the "Completion" screen. Next, upload the photo or screenshot as an attachment to the "Assignment" submission link posted to Lesson 22, Tuesday, April 5, to prove that you completed this OPTIONAL, ANONYMOUS assignment.

• This is an in-person course that takes place on Tuesday in the Life Sciences Building, room 105, 11:30 am to 211:20 am. This course has a mandatory website hosted by the York University EClass. To access the course site, you need to log in with your passport York @ eclass.yorku.ca.
• The course work consists of 8 Modules containing a total of 21 lessons over the entire course. Each lesson is composed of mini-lectures, discussion, or small-group exercises.

Why should learners bother taking this course?

• Increase ability to assess situations and act in a way that reflects reasoned assessment and choices.
• Understand the world more clearly.
• Clarify confusing ideas.
• Analyze reasons and claims.
• Evaluate the quality of claims and arguments.
• Gain a better understanding of who you are by enhancing your autonomy, what you believe, and who you can become.
• Give you more control of your life by grounding your understanding, decisions, and actions on reason rather than merely on a gut feeling, habit, or social convention.
• Read for meaning better and systematically assess what is read.
• Think more independently.
• Formulate stronger, more convincing arguments that depend on relevant, sufficient, and acceptable reasons.

General Education course. There are course credit exclusions on MODR1730, 1760, and 1770 as a set.  Students cannot take two Modes of Reasoning courses for credit.

Learning Outcomes → By the end of this course, if you apply yourself, do all the readings, attend all classes, and fully participate, you can expect to see improvement in your reading, writing, critical reasoning and critical thinking skills in the following areas:

• Clarify meaning in arguments and passages.
• Recognize and avoid prejudicial and emotional rhetoric in arguments.
• Analyze, identify, portray, and assess non-deductive arguments.
• Identify, neutralize, and avoid common errors in reasoning, specifically informal logical fallacies.
• Analyze, practice, and assess dynamic processes of verbal argumentation with others, including constructing and presenting arguments, and challenging and responding to those challenges in an ongoing dialogue.
• Recognize and identify some core patterns that help define the key features of an ideal argumentation encounter.
• Identify, analyze, and assess concepts or abstract ideas in ordinary contexts.
• Use the techniques of reasoning by cases, similarities and differences, and conjectures and refutations to analyze cases and develop criteria for the meaning of concepts or ideas.
• Determine the meaning of abstract ideas using reasoning by cases.
• Develop skills required to read and listen for meaning.

Recognize and develop necessary skills for ethical disagreement.

Course Work Submission Policies:

• Successful academic performance includes students not only completing assignments but completing them on time. Late penalties of 5% for the first day late and 1% for every late day after the first date is applied to assignments submitted after the due date. Exceptions to the late penalty can be presented to the course director with documented evidence (e.g., a doctor’s note) for consideration.

Assistance with Special Needs: https://accessibility.students.yorku.ca/

https://counselling.students.yorku.ca/

• As your Course Instructor, I am committed to maximizing your potential for academic achievement at York and to guaranteeing the services and accommodations for persons with special needs. It is vitally important that students request any specific accommodations and/or services they require and inform the course instructor on the first day of class.  This will help avoid any potential conflicts or misunderstandings that may be encountered during the academic year.
• It is important that students with special learning needs, requiring accommodations of any sort in connection with their successful completion of a course, contact the appropriate office(s). A good place to start is with the Counselling and Disability Services (CDS) on campus (Room N110 of the Bennett Centre for Student Services).
• Ultimately, your success in this course is important to me and I encourage you to come and speak to me at any point during the term, in my office, to plan or discuss strategies to help you succeed. Do not wait until deadlines have passed.

Academic Integrity:

• You have committed plagiarism when you use someone else’s ideas and present them as your own. This could take several forms: cheating on a test; letting someone copy from you during a test; having someone write your paper; copying parts or all of the paper off the internet; buying a paper; summarizing ideas from any source without properly citing this source. For further information on plagiarism see: http://www.yorku.ca/academicintegrity/
• It is also a violation of academic honesty to represent another's artistic or technical work or creation as one's own. Just as there are standards to which one must adhere in the preparation and publication of written works, there are standards to which one must adhere in the creation and presentation of music, drawings, designs, dance, photography, and other artistic and technical works. In different forms, these constitute a theft of someone else's work. This is not to say that students should not use the work of others with the proper acknowledgement.
• It is also a violation of academic honesty to forge another student’s signature on an attendance sheet, submit a fraudulent medical excuse, or collaborate on work with classmates or peers which is assigned individually.    
• It is your responsibility as a student to be informed about academic integrity. No level or form of plagiarism or academic dishonesty will be tolerated. Penalties for academic dishonesty range from a grade of zero on the specific assignment, to failing the course, to having an official note of academic dishonesty on your university record.

Unauthorized Collaboration:

• Unauthorized Collaboration is a form of “cheating” and means working with others without the specific permission of the instructor on assignments that will be submitted for a grade.
• Students may not collaborate without faculty authorization.
• All work submitted for a grade must be the student’s own original, independent work, unless the instructor permits collaboration, use of sources, or outside assistance.
• Students must comply with the course rules, and may only work together, or receive help, to the extent allowed by the instructor.
• If unsure about the limits, students must seek the instructor’s permission before working with one another.
• Even if the instructor permits collaboration, it is never ethical to copy someone’s work or let them copy yours, unless specified by the instructor. If your instructor asks whether you worked with anyone on an assignment, always tell the truth.
• Finally, study groups in the form of Facebook User Groups are seen by the course instructor as forms of “unauthorized collaboration.”

Copyright and Intellectual Property:

• The educational materials developed for this course, including, but not limited to, lecture notes and slides, handout materials, examinations and assignments, and any materials posted to eClass, are the intellectual property of the course director. These materials have been developed for student use only and they are not intended for wider dissemination and/or communication outside of a given course. Posting or providing unauthorized audio, video, or textual material of lecture content to third-party websites violates an instructor’s intellectual property rights, and the Canadian Copyright Act.
• Failure to follow these instructions may be in contravention of the university’s Code of Student Conduct and/or Code of Academic Conduct and will result in appropriate penalties.
• Participation in this course constitutes an agreement by all parties to abide by the relevant University Policies, and to respect the intellectual property of others during and after their association with York University.