PHIL138-23SU1 (D) Summer Jan 2023 start (Distance)

Logic and Critical Thinking

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 9 January 2023
End Date: Sunday, 12 February 2023
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 15 January 2023
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 29 January 2023

Description

Thinking rationally involves many skills. This course will help students acquire and develop those skills.

Logic is about how to think rationally and critically. This six week course teaches students a wide variety of tools for reasoning in both academic contexts and daily life. It focuses specifically on the basic principles of deductive logic—on what arguments are and how to evaluate them to see if they are rationally persuasive. The tools it covers include truth tables, the tree method, and how to identify common fallacies of reasoning. The skills taught will be beneficial both to philosophy and non-philosophy students, and include an enhanced ability to assess academic texts critically and think independently about them. This is a course for everyone, and no prior knowledge of logic is required.

Learning Outcomes

Students will acquire the following knowledge and skills:
1. An understanding of the notions of truths, arguments, validity, and soundness.
2. The ability to identify arguments in texts.  
3. A familiarity with key elements of Aristotelian logic.
4. A familiarity with key elements of propositional logic.
5. The ability to analyse arguments using logical notation and rules of inference.
6. The ability to recognise logical fallacies in non-academic contexts.
7. An enhanced ability to effectively analyse arguments in philosophy.
8. Enhanced problem solving and argument-construction skills in daily life contexts.

Restrictions

PHIL132 (prior to 2006), MATH130, PHIL134/MATH134

Course Coordinators

Douglas Campbell and Douglas Campbell

Lecturers

Zhuo-Ran Deng and Zhuo-Ran Deng

Assessment

Four weekly quizzes over five weeks (8% x 4 = 32%).
Two in-class tests in T3 and T5 (34% x 2 = 68%).

Please check the course LEARN page for further details and updates.

Textbooks / Resources

There are no required textbooks for PHIL138. Recommended further reading(s) will be given after each lecture.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $821.00

International fee $3,750.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Humanities .

All PHIL138 Occurrences

  • PHIL138-23SU1 (C) Summer Jan 2023 start
  • PHIL138-23SU1 (D) Summer Jan 2023 start (Distance)
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