Improving the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate the arguments of others:
Politicians
Used car dealers
Teachers
Building your own arguments:
Persuading others
Help with personal decisions
Introducing general standards of good thinking
Tools to improve critical thinking skills
Determining when an argument is raised:
Understanding the critical parts of the argument
Identifying enclaved premises
Applying deductive and inductive standards to evaluate arguments
Identifying and avoiding logical errors
Hands-on Learning Project
Four courses and an optional final project
In the final project:
Building an argument about a topic that interests you
Developing a thesis statement
Writing a 400-600 word argument to support your thesis
Details of the courses that make up the specialization
It’s important to rethink: how to understand arguments
Course 1 • 25 hours • 4.6 (2,947 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
In this course you will understand what an argument is.
The definition of an argument will allow you to identify when speakers present arguments and when they do not.
You will learn how to break down an argument into its main parts.
How to arrange them to reveal the connections between them.
How to fill in gaps in an argument by adding hidden premises.
At the end of the course, you will be able to better understand and evaluate the arguments you and others present.
Recommended reading shelves:
Students interested in more detailed explanations or additional exercises, or who wish to explore these topics in depth, should consult the book “Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic”, Ninth Edition, Chapters 1-5, by Walt Sinnott-Airmstrong and Robert Foglin.
Course format:
Each week will be divided into several video clips that can be watched individually or in groups.
There will be short, ungraded questions after each section (to check understanding).
And a long graded question at the end of the course.
Skills you will acquire
Category: Evaluation
Category: Interpretation
Category: Language
Category: Linguistics
It’s important to rethink II: How to argue deductively
Course 2 • 12 hours • 4.3 (383 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
Deductive arguments are supposed to be valid in the sense that premises guarantee that the conclusion is true.
In this course, you will learn how to use truth tables and Venn diagrams to represent the information contained in the premises and conclusion of an argument.
So you can determine whether the argument is deductively valid or not.
Recommended reading shelves:
Students interested in more detailed explanations or additional exercises, or who wish to explore these topics in depth, should consult the book “Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic”, Ninth Edition, Chapters 6 and 7, by Walt Sinnott-Airmstrong and Robert Foglin.
Course format:
Each week will be divided into several video clips that can be watched individually or in groups.
There will be short, ungraded questions after each section (to check understanding).
And a long graded question at the end of the course.
It’s important to rethink III: How to argue inductively
Course 3 • 24 hours • 4.7 (360 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
Want to solve a murder mystery? What caused your computer to fail? Who to rely on in everyday life?
In this course, you will learn how to analyze and evaluate five common types of inductive arguments:
Generalizations from examples
Generalization applications
Drawing the best conclusion
Analogous arguments
Causal inferences
The course ends with an answer to the question of how probabilities can be used to make decisions of all kinds.
Recommended reading shelves:
Students interested in more detailed explanations or additional exercises, or who wish to explore these topics in depth, should consult the book “Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic”, Ninth Edition, Chapters 8-12, by Walt Sinnott-Armstrong and Robert Foglin.
Course format:
Each week will be divided into several video clips that can be watched individually or in groups.
There will be short, ungraded questions after each section (to check understanding).
And a long graded question at the end of the course.
It’s important to rethink IV: How to avoid logical errors
Course 4 • 17 hours • 4.7 (343 ratings)
Course Details
What you’ll learn
We encounter logical errors almost everywhere.
Politicians, salespeople, and children often use logical fallacies to get you to think the way they want.
It is important to learn to identify logical errors to avoid being deceived.
It’s also important to know about logical fallacies so you don’t make illogical arguments yourself.
This course will show you how to identify and avoid many logical errors that mislead people.
In this course you will learn about logical fallacies.
Logical fallacies are arguments that suffer from a number of common, but avoidable, flaws:
fuzziness
Circularity
Vague
And more.
It is important to learn about logical fallacies so that you can identify them when you encounter them and not fool yourself.
It is also important to learn about logical fallacies to avoid presenting illogical arguments yourself.
Recommended reading shelves:
Students interested in more detailed explanations or additional exercises, or who wish to explore these topics in depth, should consult the book “Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic”, Ninth Edition, Chapters 13-17, by Walt Sinnott-Airmstrong and Robert Foglin.
Course format:
Each week will be divided into several video clips that can be watched individually or in groups.
There will be short, ungraded questions after each section (to check understanding).
And a long graded question at the end of the course.
