PH 110 - PLE Logic and Critical Thinking

4.00 credits.

(Power of Language Core Course)
This course is an overview of the key skills that are necessary for being a critical thinker in general, and it is an overview of the various impediments to critical thinking and the pitfalls they can lead to such as prejudice and authoritarianism. The student will learn the difference between mere rhetoric and persuasion on the one hand, and cogent reasoning on the other. The student will be trained in both deductive and inductive patterns of reasoning, and learn to spot and evaluate such arguments in the wild—magazines, political speeches, advertising, etc. In addition to learning how to be a critical (and thus persuasive) thinker, writer and speaker, the student will also learn about the many roadblocks to critical thinking such as: formal/informal fallacies, naïve ideas about the reliability of memory/perception, social context/group-think, etc. The focus of the course will be critical thinking in real world decision making. This course is open to students with advanced English placement as well as those who have already completed their PLE requirement.