Critical thinking also involves the skills of questioning one s own thinking and practices. Critical thinking includes the ability to reason skillfully, so that we may avoid the common fallacies and pitfalls of human thinking. Skillfull reasoning involves being able to understand arguments, uncover assumptions, search for both evidence and counter-evidence, and evaluate the arguments fairly.
Logic provides specific techniques for understanding and evaluating reasoning.
The purpose of this course, then, is to provide information about, and extensive practice in, both logic and critical thinking to develop specific cognitive skills and the dispositions to use these skills. Throughout the course we shall be particularly interested in how we can apply logic and critical thinking to various areas and to life. We shall be careful to articulate connections between logic, critical thinking and good analytic writing on the one hand and beween logic, critical thinking and everyday issues, problems, and decisions on the other.