Critical Reasoning

I invite you to visit me during my office hours and to talk with me via telephone and e-mail. I always welcome your comments and questions, and I am exceptionally happy to talk with you about the course material or about other philosophical or administrative matters.

Department office: ST 522

Department phone: 818.677.2757

Aims of the Course: This course is designed to introduce the principles and methods of sound reasoning and in so doing to provide you with the skills necessary to formulate and to evaluate arguments. You will become familiar with the basic concepts of logic, and you will learn to recognize certain informal fallacies. You will become familiar with the methods of traditional (or Aristotelian) logic, and you will become familiar with the methods of modern (or symbolic) logic, and with some of the methods of inductive logic. Each of these methods is useful, if not crucial, in making everyday decisions (for example, the decision for whom to vote) and in evaluating arguments that you encounter in business proposals, in doctors’ recommendations, in magazine or journal articles, and even in friendly discussions.

This course satisfies the “Critical Reasoning” (A.2) section of the General Education Program, which recognizes critical reasoning as a fundamental competence. Courses in this section of General Education take reasoning itself as their focus. Their goals are to provide students with criteria and methods for distinguishing good reasoning from bad and to help students develop basic reasoning skills that they can apply both within a broad range of academic disciplines and outside the academic environment. Students are expected to acquire skill in recognizing the logical structure of statements and arguments, the ability to distinguish rational from non-rational means of persuasion, skill in applying the principles of sound reasoning in the construction and evaluation of arguments, and an appreciation of the value of critical reasoning skills in the pursuit of knowledge.

Required Text: Moore, Brooke Noel and Richard Parker, Critical Thinking, 8^th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007).

Attendance and Homework: Since you are responsible for any and all material presented in class, regular attendance is essential to doing well in this course. Furthermore, logic is akin to mathematics, for example, in the following respect: becoming proficient in logic requires the development of a certain set of skills. And you can’t develop those skills without practice. This means, among other things, that you should diligently work on logic both in class and outside of class: Both class attendance and completing the exercises at the end of each chapter are essential to doing well in this course.

“Students wishing to withdraw partially or completely from the University prior to or during the first two weeks of instruction—through the second Friday of each session—may do so on SOLAR without permission from their instructors.”
If you are a CSUN student, you may add, drop, swap or change the grading basis of classes from April 16-June 15. Any student may add, drop, swap or change the grading basis of classes from April 23-June 15.
You are solely responsible for enrolling in or withdrawing from your classes. I cannot officially add you to or drop you from the roster for this class.
For more information, see CSUN’s Schedule of Classes (SOC), online at http://www.csun.edu/a&r/soc/index.html.

Students with Disabilities: If you have a disability, please identify yourself to me and to the University so that we can reasonably accommodate your learning and the preparation and evaluation of the work that you must do for this course. Please contact the Center on Disabilities, Student Services Building, Room 110, 818.677.2684 (Fax: 818.677.4932; email: sdr@csun.edu) For more information, visit the COD’s website at the following address: http://www.csun.edu/cod.

Evaluation: Your final grade in the course will be based on the following:

Exam 1	June 15	25%
Exam 2	June 29	25%
Exam 3	July 13	26%
Other	5 (out of 7) projects	24%

Grades: I will use the plus/minus grading system. Letter grades are assigned according to the following system:

100-92% = A	86-83% = B	76-73% = C	66-63% = D
91-90% = A-	82-80% = B-	72-70% = C-	62-60% = D-
89-87% = B+	79-77% = C+	69-67% = D+	59-0% = F

If your final grade falls just short of some higher grade, I will consider the quality of your participation as grounds for improving your final grade. I strongly encourage your participation, which can come in class, during office hours, by phone, or by email.

Cheating and Plagiarism: I consider academic dishonesty a very serious issue. If you are unclear about what constitutes academic dishonesty or about the possible repercussions of and penalties for acts of academic dishonesty, please consult the California State University, Northridge Student Conduct Code at http://www.csun.edu/anr/soc/studentconduct.html. Moreover, I subscribe to and will enforce California State University, Northridge’s Policies on Nondiscrimination and Student Conduct, which include its policy on Academic Dishonesty and the Faculty Policy on Academic Dishonesty, as they are stated on pages 536-537 of its 2006-2008 Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog.

Exams: There will be three exams, each of which will be designed to determine whether you understand the material covered in class and in the homework assignments. You may take a make-up exam only if either (a) you have received, prior to the scheduled date of the exam, my permission to do so, or (b) you miss the exam due to a documented medical or family emergency.

Projects: You will have the opportunity to complete seven projects this semester. These will typically be in-class assignments, completed with the help of your classmates. Your completion—and, in some cases, your successful completion—of five of these seven projects will count toward your final grade for the course. I will not accept late submissions of these projects.

Extra Credit: I will assign no extra-credit work. There is nothing that you, individually or collectively, can do for extra credit. This means that you should concentrate on the credit assignments; you should make every effort to do as well as you can on the exams and on the projects.

Schedule
Date	Topic and Readings	Assignments
June 4	Course Introduction Critical Thinking Basics
June 5	Clear Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Clear Writing
June 7		Project 1
June 12	Credibility
June 13		Project 2
June 15	** Exam 1 **
June 19	Persuasion Through Rhetoric: Common Devices and Techniques
June 20		Project 3
June 22	More Rhetorical Devices: Psychological and Related Fallacies More Fallacies
June 26	The Anatomy and Varieties of Arguments	Project 4
June 27		Project 5
June 29	** Exam 2 **
July 3	Deductive Arguments I: Categorical Logic
July 4	*Holiday: Independence Day***
July 6		Project 6
July 10	Inductive Arguments Causal Arguments	Project 7
July 11	Moral, Legal, and Aesthetic Reasoning
July 13	** Exam 3 **

Note: Everything in this syllabus, including the reading assignments, the homework assignments and the dates of exams and projects, is subject to revision. I will announce any and all revisions in class and, in general, do my best to make sure that everyone knows about revisions. If you miss class, you must nevertheless submit assignments according to any revisions that I make to the Schedule. You should either make sure that you don’t miss class or find a sure way of becoming aware of any revisions that I make to the Schedule or to the syllabus.

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