Acerca de este curso: How to Reason Deductively Think Again: How to Reason and Argue Reasoning is important. This series of four short courses will teach you how to do it well. You will learn simple but vital rules to follow in thinking about any topic at all and common and tempting mistakes to avoid in reasoning. We will discuss how to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments by other people (including politicians, used car salesmen, and teachers) and how to construct arguments of your own in order to help you decide what to believe or what to do. These skills will be useful in dealing with whatever matters most to you. Courses at a Glance: All four courses in this series are offered through sessions which run every four weeks. We suggest sticking to the weekly schedule to the best of your ability. If for whatever reason you fall behind, feel free to re-enroll in the next session.We also suggest that you start each course close to the beginning of a month in order to increase the number of peers in the discussion forums who are working on the same material as you are. While each course can be taken independently, we suggest you take the four courses in order. Course 1 - Think Again I: How to Understand Arguments Course 2 - Think Again II: How to Reason Deductively Course 3 - Think Again III: How to Reason Inductively Course 4 - Think Again IV: How to Avoid Fallacies About This Course in the Series: Imagine that a friend denies that modus ponens is a valid form of argument. Can you prove that it is valid without using modus ponens itself and thereby assuming that it is valid? If so, how? If not, what does this show about the validity of modus ponens? How can phrases like "and", "or", "if", and "not" work as "truth-functional connectives"? In this course, you will learn how to evaluate deductive arguments for validity. In particular, you will learn new ways of representing the information that is contained in the premises of a deductive argument. Using these new representational devices (devices that we call "truth tables" and "Venn diagrams"), we will be able to apply rules to determine whether or not a particular deductive argument is valid. Suggested Readings: Students who want more detailed explanations or additional exercises or who want to explore these topics in more depth should consult Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, Ninth Edition, Concise, Chapters 6 and 7 by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Robert Fogelin. Course Format: Each week will be divided into multiple video segments that can be viewed separately or in groups. There will be short ungraded quizzes after each segment (to check comprehension) and a longer graded quiz at the end of the course.
Enseñado por: Dr. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor
Philosophy
Enseñado por: Dr. Ram Neta, Professor
Philosophy
| Nivel | Beginner |
| Idioma | English, Subtítulos: German |
| Cómo aprobar | Aprueba todas las tareas calificadas para completar el curso. |
| Calificaciones del usuario |
- Vídeo: Introduction to the Course
- Reading: Course Logistics (Start Here)
- Vídeo: Introduction to Deductive Logic
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: Validity
- Vídeo: Propositions and Propositional Connectives
- Vídeo: "And" and the Truth-Functional Connectives
- Practice Quiz: "And" and the Truth-Functional Connectives
- Vídeo: Using Truth Tables to Show Validity
- Practice Quiz: Using Truth Tables to Show Validity
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: Truth Tables
- Vídeo: Rules Variables and Generality
- Vídeo: Disjunction
- Practice Quiz: Disjunction
- Vídeo: Combining Conjunctions and Disjunctions
- Vídeo: Negation and Truth Functional Operators
- Practice Quiz: Negation and Truth Functional Operators
- Vídeo: Negating Conjunctions and Disjunctions
- Practice Quiz: Negating Conjuctions and Disjunctions
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: The Variety of Truth-Functions
- Vídeo: Commutativity and Associativity
- Vídeo: The Conditional
- Practice Quiz: The Conditional
- Vídeo: Conditionals in Ordinary Language
- Practice Quiz: Conditionals in Ordinary Language
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: Using Truth-Tables to Prove Reasoning is Always Valid
- Vídeo: Biconditionals
- Practice Quiz: Biconditionals
- Vídeo: Conclusion
- Vídeo: Categorical Logic
- Vídeo: Categories and Quantifiers
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: Categories and Objects
- Vídeo: How Quantifiers Modify Categories
- Practice Quiz: How Quantifiers Modify Categories
- Vídeo: Immediate Categorical Inferences
- Practice Quiz: Immediate Categorical Inferences
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: How Venn Diagrams Work
- Vídeo: Syllogisms
- Practice Quiz: Syllogisms
- Vídeo: Categories, Individuals, and Language
- Practice Quiz: Categories, Individuals, and Language
- Vídeo: Venn Diagrams and Validity
- Practice Quiz: Venn Diagrams and Validity
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: What Venn Diagrams Can and Cannot Represent
- Vídeo: Other Ways of Expressing A, E, I, or O Propositions
- Vídeo: Reasoning from Venn Diagrams or Truth Tables Alone
- Practice Quiz: Reasoning from Venn Diagrams or Truth Tables Alone
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: Representational Formats
- Vídeo: Different Ways of Representing Information
- Discussion Prompt: Share Your Thoughts: Information by Venn Diagram
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Excellent !
Amazing course, something utile for everyone.
The professor teaching the course did a good job explaining the concepts behind deductive reasoning. There are however some minor things that annoyed me:
(1) Some of the definitions could have been more formal. Sure, you can describe a category as a "collection of things", but a more rigid approach is useful for the more mathematically inclined.
(2) Wrong answers in the quizzes are not always explained. You just see "You should not have selected this answer." Okay, but WHY NOT? The learning experience would be better if an explanation would always be given.
(3) Some parts are incomplete. For example, the topic on immediate categorical inferences only discusses conversion. It would have been nice to discuss the obversion and contrapositive inference as well. Another example is the lack of the explicit treatment of the biconditional introduction and elimination argument, while the conjunction and disjunction introduction and elimination methods are fully covered.
(4) The time spent on the course is short in comparison to Think Again I. For example, week 3 contains less than an hour's effort. Week 2 is also rather short. Instead of cutting it short, useful concepts such as the square of opposition, which is pretty much the basis of the relations between categorical propositions, could have been discussed.
(5) At the end of one of the lectures, three links are given for further practice. One of the links didn't work.
(6) Some quizzes deal with material that is discussed in later sections.
(7) The exam was unbalanced. One lecture was about addressing the validity of an argument containing an unknown/ foreign word. The exam had many many questions about this (IMHO) less relevant subject.
All in all: the professor gets a 4.5, the content gets a 3, which makes a 4-.
I loved to take this course.
The professor is clever, funny and clear.
However, maybe because of being English my second language, I found difficult to get some issues ( i.e. "speech act" ) or understand the nuances in some exercises regarding "speech act" and" suppressed premises" (particularly in the final quiz, the more difficult questions to me were about the "suppressed premises").
So I would have liked that these harder issues have had found a clearer explanation during the lectures. Also in the final quizzes, it would have been useful giving the reason for the wrong answer (besides explaining the right one).
In fact, the quizzes are useful both for testing our understanding the matter and for learning from our mistakes too. In fact, we learn in a different and deeper way from our mistakes. To explain the reason for the mistakes is a good way to teaching and learning.
Although these notes, the course give enough awareness about our logical and linguistic skill and I'm going to take another one: "Think Again II: How to Reason Deductively". See you soon!