Dr. Linda Carozza
Lcarozza@yorku.ca
Office Hours:  By Appointment

Critical reasoning is an important skill that can be transferred to your other courses and life’s work. It enables you to avoid being duped, to see the heart of arguments and positions, to understand how your biases, and the biases of others, influence argumentation, and to be able to evaluate competing views to determine which is strongest. With these skills in mind, we spend the majority of time in this course examining the nature and structure of arguments, how they are composed, and how they can be analyzed. We accumulate several “tools” that can equip you to engage in arguments - whether with your family, co- workers, sales people, etc.

In addition to being a skill in analysis and comprehension, a good arguer also understands that argumentation is a human interactive process that involves people, their feelings, goals, belief systems, values, egos, and personalities. We examine these aspects of argumentation too, with reference to recent work in Argumentation Theory.

Being a strong critical thinker is a main ingredient in becoming a “competent layperson” - an individual who has the confidence to engage in discussions about issues that s/he may not have expertise but has the skills to engage in a fruitful discussion.

Concise Guide to Critical Thinking

By Lewis Vaughn

2020

Oxford University Press

978-0197535790

• Participation – 10%
• Quizzes – 30%
• Argumentative Assignment – 30%
• Critical Essay – 30%

• You do not have to attend campus for this course.
• This is an asynchronous course – you can review weekly material at a convenient time for you during each week.
• The course will go live on eClass July 4, so you can review the syllabus, schedule, readings, etc.
• This course will release weekly lecture materials on Thursdays: July 6, 13, 20, 27, August 3, 10.
• There will be three 1-hour synchronous webinars, which students have found helpful to connect with the course requirements and content: July 13, July 27, August 10. The time will be determined the first week of the course.
• All course deadlines will be Thursdays at noon.

• Understand and diagram simple and complex arguments by breaking them down into conclusion-premise form
• Supplement arguments by revealing underlying assumptions in consideration with relevant contexts
• Recognize and respond to obstacles to cogent thinking and reasoning
• Evaluate the strength of arguments
• Determine argument schemes and/or fallacies
• Deliver a strong argument
• Write critically and argumentatively

Full syllabus with detailed weekly reading and assignment schedule will be available on the course eClass site.