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This course provides an introduction to critical thinking, informal logic, and a small amount of formal logic. Its purpose is to provide you with the basic tools of analytical reasoning, which will give you a distinctive edge in a wide variety of careers and courses of study. While many university courses focus on the presentation of content knowledge, the emphasis here is on learning how to think effectively. Although the techniques and concepts covered here are classified as philosophical, they are essential to the practice of nearly every major discipline, from the physical sciences and medicine to politics, law, and the humanities. The course touches upon a wide range of reasoning skills, from verbal argument analysis to formal logic, visual and statistical reasoning, scientific methodology, and creative thinking. Mastering these skills will help you become a more perceptive reader and listener, a more persuasive writer and presenter, and a more effective researcher and scientist. The first unit introduces the terrain of critical thinking and covers the basics of meaning analysis, while the second unit provides a primer in analyzing arguments. All of the material in these first units will be built upon in subsequent units, which cover informal and formal logic, Venn diagrams, scientific reasoning, as well as strategic and creative thinking.
- Subjects:
- Philosophy
- Keywords:
- Logic Critical thinking
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
This course introduces the basic concepts and methods of moral and political philosophy. We focus on the development of moral reasoning and how to apply these ideas to contemporary social and political issues. Although the course is organized around the concept of justice, we will discuss a wide range of philosophical topics and perspectives. We explore the value of human life, the moral standing of the free market, the notion of fundamental human rights, equality of opportunity, and the conditions for a moral community. We make extensive use of Michael Sandel's lecture series on justice, which was delivered at Harvard University in 2009. In addition to these lectures, we study several moral and political philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls. We also examine the contemporary thinkers Alasdair MacIntyre, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, news articles, and primary source texts on important legal decisions. By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of the philosophical issues involved in many contemporary debates in the public sphere, and a refined sense of your own moral and political positions and intuitions.
- Subjects:
- Political Science and Philosophy
- Keywords:
- Political science -- Philosophy Reasoning (Psychology) Political ethics
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
Descriptions of the 4 courses.
- Subjects:
- Philosophy
- Keywords:
- Logic Environmental ethics Critical thinking
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
This course explores the relationship between ancient Greek philosophy and mathematics. We investigate how ideas of definition, reason, argument and proof, rationality / irrationality, number, quality and quantity, truth, and even the idea of an idea were shaped by the interplay of philosophic and mathematical inquiry. The course examines how discovery of the incommensurability of magnitudes challenged the Greek presumption that the cosmos is fully understandable. Students explore the influence of mathematics on ancient Greek ethical theories. We read such authors as: Euclid, Plato, Aristotle, Nicomachus, Theon of Smyrna, Bacon, Descartes, Dedekind, and Newton.
- Subjects:
- Philosophy and Mathematics and Statistics
- Keywords:
- Philosophy Ancient Mathematics -- Philosophy
- Resource Type:
- Courseware