In response to this problem, instructors began teaching informal logic or critical thinking courses. Here students practiced shooting down arguments, but they often did not practice constructing their own arguments and argumentative essays. In this critical thinking course we will attempt to meet these problems and avoid the difficulties. We will study, sometimes for their own sakes, deductive, nonsymbolic logic and some of the methods of inductive logic. But other parts of this course are not so theoretically oriented.
Students can expect to practice critical thinking with various readings, e.g. newspaper editorials.
More than this, students in this course will learn to construct arguments as well. You will gain in this course an appreciation for how a liberal arts context encourages you to expand and deepen your ability to think critically and reflectively. However, most of your time will be devoted to learning the basic skills that will enable you to examine arguments. Specifically, you will learn what it means to recognize what issues, claims, and arguments and how to evaluate them. Our principal text will be Critical Thinking , excluding chapter 10.