Critical Thinking

Do you want to improve your critical thinking skills? In our everyday life, we are constantly giving reasons to believe things and take decisions. In this introductory course you will learn how to identify arguments, how to evaluate them, and how to avoid fallacies, and believing mistakes that lead to the formation of bad Beliefs. Or to think about the misuse of such tools!
Critical argumentation is a practical skill that needs to be learnt, from the very beginning, through the use of real examples of arguments. The real arguments we will analyze in the course will give practice in putting the desired skills to work. The methods presented are based on the latest state-of the-art techniques developed in argumentation theory and informal logic, as well as the most updated discoveries on cognition and argumentation.
During the course we will organize an Argument Debate, where the students could put into practice the different learnt skills. There are no prerequisites to this course.
Week | Contents | Teaching/learning activities |
---|---|---|
1 | a) The nature of arguments and “evidence” b) Rethorics and different types of arguments c) Deductive and inductive arguments Abductive arguments |
- Analysis of arguments - Deductive and inductive arguments - Logic Games |
2 | d) Fallacies e) Post-truth and fake news f) Into the Reasoner’s Minds g) Generalizations, analogies, metaphors, and causal arguments |
- Identification of fallacies - Contemporary challenges case studies: climate change, cancer, AIDS - Argument Writing Workshop: argumentative essays and argument diagramming |
3 | h) Visual aspects of arguments i) Numbers, data, and statistics in argumentation j) General rules for composing arguments. k) Possible counter-argument techniques |
- Multimodal arguments analysis |
Schedule is pending to be confirmed
The course will be evaluated on the basis of diary exercises and on the qualifications of 3 weekly Assignments (A):
A1) Exercises on deductive and inductive arguments
A2) Writing a short argument
A3) Group class debate activity.
The grading formula is: A1 (20%) + A2 (30%) +A3 (50%, as a result of several sums of related exercises, to be detailed in class)
- Douglas, M. (1996). Thought styles: critical essays on good taste. UK: Sage.
- Groarke, L. (2017) Informal Logic, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL= https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/logic-informal/ .
- Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2006). How we reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Kahneman, D., & Egan, P. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow (Vol. 1). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Moore, B. N., Parker, R., & Rosenstand, N. (2011). Critical thinking. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Walton, D. (2005). Fundamentals of critical argumentation. Cambridge University Press.
- Swatridge, C. (2014). Oxford guide to effective argumentation and critical thinking, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Vallverdú, J. & Müller, V. (2018). Blended Cognition. Germany: Springer.
- van Eemeren, F. H. , Garssen B., & Krabbe, E.C.W. (2014). Handbook of Argumentation Theory, Berlin: Springer Verlag.
Jordi Vallverdú, Ph.D., M.Sci., B.Mus, B.Phil is ICREA Acedèmia researcher and Professor of Philosophy of Sciences, Computing & AI. His current main research is Causality and Deep Learning, but as an expert in Cognitive Sciences, his research on natural and artificial reasoning integrates also several disciplines and topics, being focused into emotions as well as (culturally laden) multi-heuristics. His true passion is robotics, besides enjoying haiku poetry, and jazz music.
- Department of Philosophy
- E-mail: Jordi.vallverdu@uab.cat