PHIL/PSYC 2120 - Critical Thinking (formerly Methods of Reasoning)

Course Overview

This course provides tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of the various patterns of reasoning as they occur in the real world, from dorm room to court room. Patterns of reasoning include deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, scientific reasoning, statistical reasoning, and causal reasoning. The course also covers some basic psychology and sociology of reasoning and belief, and concludes with a critical discussion of science and the scientific method. Students will maintain a journal in which examples of reasoning are collected and analyzed.

Students please note: This course spends only little time on formal logic, since its applications to everyday life reasoning are very limited. If you want to know more about formal logic, take PHIL-2140 Introduction to Logic.